​

You see,

            I am one of a kind.  Or at least, I think I am. It is not that I am alone. During the day, hands touch me more times than I could count, but the owners of said hands never take the time to notice my quivering response, my slow halt of ecstasy before the bell rings: 2nd floor. 3rd floor. 10th floor. And down again. Their pudgy, skinny, silly little hands touch me and push me and their warm, breathing bodies rub ever against my own, but it is simply some sort of business transaction—I am taking them from here to there—I am never here, or there. I am only in between.

            And so I began calling them.                  

            At first, it was a silent plea.  A call in the night, some number I had memorized during my day shift. And then it seeped into the day.  Before I knew it, I was caught up in a black hole of miscommunication, calling those who had forgotten me, calling those who would never remember me.

            “10th floor, please. Would you?”

            “Oh why, thank you. So kind.”

            Don’t you see me pulsing in unspeakable delight? Don’t you feel me hesitate in-between each floor, hoping for one of you to pause—and I—gasp—

            On an unforgivably bleak day in February, I replayed the endless game of up, down, up down, up, up down, down, down, down with them. Basement floor. That day was exciting. Someone took me to the basement.

            And the whole time I was watching them, watching, watching, watching

            HOW could they fail to notice me?
            Was my painted wood paneling not pretty enough? Did the humble, modest space of my interior not suit them? Was their work too exhausting for them to call upon their repressed imaginations each day? Or perhaps, were their ties strung just a little to tightly around their precious little boring necks for them to be curious and wonder if:

            “Hey, that elevator has some personality to it, doesn’t it?”

            No.

            [No one ever says that]

            NOT ONE. Those fragile-nonsensical-little-human BEINGS paid more attention to their tip-tap tablets and “smartphones” than Me, as if I—

            [And I assert that I am an ‘I’]

            —never existed.

          

            11th floor. Charlize the building secretary was going to see the manager of interpersonal relations again. She smoothed her tight skirt over her toned thighs and her hands left slight perspiration marks on the fabric. My, my...I had no doubt that Mister Chopra would be happy to see her.

            Is anyone ever happy to see me?

            I do perform a necessary task; I perform the task of the stairs, now empty and cold and forlorn. Only the dieters and marathon junkies pound their shoe-clad feet on the stairs nowadays. I mourn for them, because like them, I represent the essence of transience. The in-between. One would think with all of the workers’ home troubles and etcetera they would come in flocks to me, stroking my walls in appreciation of the transitory, redemptive refuge I could be.

            But no. To them, I am a mechanical beast that swallows people up into my unforgiving belly.  They whimper and open their mouths as if to scream if I don’t open my doors for a second or two.  They even created a curse-like word, “claustrophobia,” that signifies their fear of being stuck in confined spaces, which they have defined me to be.

            God, every time I get in this damn elevator, I feel so claustrophobic. I mean, what if we got stuck in here? (wink. wink.)

            Otherwise, they view my numbered, lit up buttons as torture devices that represent the workplaces they are bound to; the nine-to-five dead-end job that leaves them tired and spent and wishing for a little more freedom. In that In this case, I would like to remind them of the saying, ‘don’t shoot the messenger.’ I am not their cruel boss, or weekend spent at work, or boring little cubicle. I am simply the moment in between work and rest, the moment for stopping, going down the first floor and Jesus Christ running away---

            But I exaggerate. That only happened once.

            I am prone to exaggeration, having nothing to compare myself to. For you see, I haven’t come across anyone that thinks like me. Most are solely concerned with:

            1st floor

            10th floor

            24th floor

            Mezzanine [/end_rant].

​

            So on this very lonely day in March, I began really desiring contact with another. As the suited passengers loaded up inside my belly I felt oh, how it would feel good, so good, to be able to speak…..I breathe deeply…just…I cannot…

            Forgive me. The thought is too much.

            Ah, but to communicate with them! To be able to say, “Harold! How are you this morning?”

            OR:

            “Harold! How are you this morning?”

            And etcetera.

            But no, that is not my fate. It is my fate to keep my eyes shut:

            to be the silent machine who transports beings of higher consciousness to their workplaces, where they better the world, where they create the world, where they create me.

            But what am I?

            A clever complication of electricity and machinery.

            A bare emptiness.

            Nothing.

                                                                        [Nothing.]

​

            “Don’t stop imagining.” Wanda’s ringer went off again while she was telling Frank another little story about her three-year-old Labradoodle who is fond of eating shoelaces and shitting them out in the most inappropriate places, such as next to her child’s crib. I laughed, but no one noticed. Wanda always had the most entertaining stories about her dogs, let me tell you about the one time when….

            Forgive me. I’m not of their world. I could never understand, never tell it in the right words. I am only to concern myself with BEEPS! I used to get mad at the higher being who made me, but now I just feel a cold sort of…

            Well.

            What is it?

13th floor.

            I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE.

            Dear lady in an old K-Mart extra-extra large suit clutching a smelly, greasy, onion-and-pickle special hamburger, I can no longer be your unnoticed and underappreciated lunchtime refuge. No. Don’t you dare wipe your dirty fingers on me…No…She clutched the soiled wrapper in her grubby fingers and popped her playdough pinkie into her mouth, and I could hear the sound of her saliva congealing as her mouth closed around the finger and oh, then she rubbed her wet hand against my paneled sides…ah, God. I wanted nothing more than to quit.

            Because…because…I never knew…I never will know…the rest. What lies beyond this building’s walls. But from the sounds of it, I’m sure that I would not enjoy the ‘real world,’ as they call it. Why, it sounds positively dreadful, with its bills and diapers and condoms and all.

            14th floor.

            By the time the year had rolled around to bleary-eyed March, I felt so alone, so desperate I could hardly contain myself within myself, forget about all of my passengers. I thought incessantly of breaking, of locking them all within me in a giant, mechanical hug. I thought of expelling them at once, of breaking and hissing until one of the maintenance men would be ordered to come down and caress my tired old bones back to life. It was as if I needed, direly needed, another. With a series of beep-deedlies-beepbeepbeep’s for each floor the loneliness emerged within my little machine soul and I realized that it had been there for months, ah, months, and no one cared. So forgive me if I began taking down their numbers. Could you really blame me?

             610-zzz-01xx

            I had them! For the first time ever in the face of history, [Me simple little machinery me!] could call them! Yes!                                

            ``Hello?”

            “[Elevator music]”
            “Hey, who is this?”

            “[Deedledumdeeeledoooo]”

            “Who is this? Is this some kind of prank? Tell me right now or I’ll hang up!”

            “”dooo-dOOO---dooo-deeedle—doo”      

            “Larry? Is this you Larry?”

            “Boop-dee-doop, pah-pah-pah, teedle-dum-dee-do.”

            “(Sneeze.) Fuck you, man.”

​

            And then he hung up, and I was alone again.

            So it happened thirty, fifty or so more times. [With varying responses.]

            Apparently, I wasn’t good-looking enough. Either that, or the business background music [composed by a company indubitably lacking in imagination] that served as my sole voice should have been another genre. I bet a lot of people would have liked me better if I had been programmed with Pop Hits or Classic Rock. Something easy to learn and sexy to dance to. Even Dubstep.  But I wasn’t.  I had only mechanical, unadorned, elevator music at my will.

            [The unforeseen tragedies of life are really

                                        unspeakable.]

​

            I began to resolve myself to a quiet life of elevator jazz and the scent of stale croissants.  I looked at their pallid grey suits during the morning and evening rush and thought, well, this isn’t so bad. So what if people just come inside me and then go out. In and out. In. and OUT. So, what?

             Maybe in the future they’ll care. Out of the six billion of them, there had to be someone would will understand and appreciate my musical calls. But I couldn’t find that someone. Things went back to routine. Wanda talking about her Labradoodle, ‘She’s learned not to climb the stairs to the third floor now!’ What if you were the stairs, woman? Do you hear them crying, at night? Do you hear the their carpeted furry tendrils aching beneath your very feet?!

            Of course not, you take me.

            To the…[crossed out expletive] second floor.

            So I just finished listening to Wanda’s story and let them out. Even the 2nd floor ladies. They all have such busy schedules. I will never understand. Where do they find the time to create the squirmy stories they tell each other in confidence (never thinking to wonder if I am listening!) at end of every five o’clock evening.  “Did you go to Vindar’s holiday party?” “Cal has been so apathetic in bed, lately.” “How much did you say that vibrator was?” “Works wonders, that little machine.” I felt an intense jealousy for this little vibrator fellow whom the ladies seemed to love so much.  But there was one woman, Louise of the 4th floor, who never told her dirty laundry during lunch breaks. Most days she just stood there, staring blankly into space as if she was waiting for something to appear. I began to sympathize with her. She wasn’t anything great to look at, but there was a certain frumpy appeal to her lapeled sweaters and unkempt hair. And then one day, Jerry asked for her number because she had promised to look over his reports during the weekend, and I knew I had her. Louise would listen to me.

            And indeed she did. I was in a terrible mood the night of the 2nd of April, it really was a most unfortunate, bleary, gas-leak pitch of a night.  So I called Louise, who I’d been in contact with for awhile. She usually tolerated my silences for a good minute or two, and she never spoke harsh words to me, just:

            “Hey, Arnie, will you hang up in a bit?”

            And I’d play a little of my smoothest jazz and then hang up so she could fall asleep alone. I really am an empathetic soul. I’d let her call me Arnie all she wanted…

            But then…    

            During my 44th call to Louise…

             “Hey, Arnie, will you hang up in a bit?”

            “[Beepity-boo-peeiity-looo-loooooolooo]”

            “Arnie, please.”

            “[Doodle-dee-dum, loo-lee-lee-lum]”

            “Why can’t you let me go?”

            “[Naaa-neeedle-nuuuum, bah-bah-bah-bummm]”

            “You know I’m sorry, Arnie. I wish to God I’d remembered to tell the doctors you were allergic to anesthesia. I had no idea…what was going to happen to you…I miss you, I really do…but, I’m trying to move on now, I met someone else. All I need from you is one word, and that is goodbye.”

            “[Uhhh-mmm-dumm-deeedle-dooo-doo-dirdle]”

            “ARNIE! I’ve, I’ve found someone else!”

            “[Leee-deeedlee-deee?]”

            “Oh, shut up, will you? I just…I…”

            “Looo-laaaa-teeee-dooo-dum”

            “That’s enough! ARNIE, I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE!”

            Dial tone. I tried calling her again. And again. She didn’t pick up.

            I realized I was completely alone.

            Alone. Forever.

[   ]

            because who would love a hunk of metal like me?

            [The obvious answer is: no one]  [such sweet dreams I had those nights]

BeeypbeeeypbooobooobooobeepbeepbeppMALFUNCTION!!!!! x__x

​

            My torpid body rose slow that next day, when the catbirds were murmuring soft calls of ‘hello, spring’, which only made me think of my own, creaking, dry springs, and then, and then…I gave up. The people screamed. Wanda tore at the closed crack between my two doors. Someone pressed the emergency button and a repairman appeared an hour later and wrenched me open against my will, let all of the passengers safely out, and began to look for what was wrong with me.  As they walked away, I heard them say how scary it was being trapped inside: “We could have died in there!” The repairmen oiled me up and said I was ready to go back to work.

            I noticed that the building had been refurbished with new glass panels on the front. I could see the outside world, watch it pass by.

            And then…and then I took a deep breath, and realized well,

            It’s ok to be alone. [Especially when you don’t have a choice.]

            I was made to be an efficient vehicle that carries creatures from floor to floor and I don’t need anything beyond that, anything beyond my “career,” which these humans seem to believe is my sole purpose in life. I don’t need anything, any                                                one                           

            But everything has a ying to its yang. If Gaia needed these slightly furry creates to bend and break her, to hold and hate her, then what, who will hold and hate me? Is it better to have loved and to have lost than to have never have loved at all? No, no, it is better not to think. It is better just to, just to…go.

            Up, down. Down, down. Up. Up. Up.

            Gary is pushing my buttons with greasy fingers again.

            [I hate my life.]

​

            Silent agony, ecstasy. No one knows/tells/cares the difference. It is all the same to their dark, beady, humanoid eyes. Oh, how I craved to call one of them and play the most relaxing, enervating-no, I mean energizing- tune I could muster. But I couldn’t. No one wanted me to.

            And then, on the 4th of April, I saw her.

            For it was easy to see her – our buildings were made of glass –

            And I heard it in her silence, I heard it in the way she could never speak—

            I heard it in my own plea for companionship,

            DEAR GOD! THERE SHE WAS!

            The construction across the street had finally reached completion, and inside the building that ever-so-resembled my own, there she was. She was sleek. She was sexy. And she was well-oiled…or maybe my imagination had begun to take hold of my mind, fervently constructing an universe that consisted of two sentient beings that no one else thought to think of but us. I yearned for the humans inside me to take me to the same level as her. Let me look at that body that no one but a god could have designed a little bit longer, I prayed. Perhaps she will look across the street and glass that divide us and notice me!

            But how?

            I had no way to contact her. She was just as unaware of my existence as the mammals prodding at their smartphones, burping, and gossiping in my interior. My heart sank in anguish as I continued to rise and fall, rise and fall sometimes in time, sometimes not across the street from her. It was a doomed love, then. Unrequited. Material for the poets. But I was not a poet. And there could be no other reason than fate, yes, FATE which had put her there, so close to me, yet so far away. I only had to devise a method of contacting her.

            I figured that she must have a call box installed inside her similar to my own, which the humans used to make phone calls in times of emergencies. Was love not a great enough emergency? Considering that I had led a mostly dullish life comprised of even duller pantsuits and neckties, it was. All I needed to do was get her number, and then call it. So the next morning, I watched to see if any of my passengers also visited or worked in the new building across the street. It took me about a week, but eventually I did find one man, a man who commonly went by the name ‘Fishtail,’ [for whatever god-knows reason] who worked for a company in my building and one in hers. He was a double-operator. A corporate junkie. And he would help me.

            Fortunately, ‘Fishtail,’ was a bit of what they call a ladies’ man, so I got his number quite easily as he rattled it off to the newest 4th floor blonde PR girl. I watched him wave goodbye to her, saunter out the glass doors, and head inside her building. It would only be a few seconds now. And yes! Then I saw her rise, in all of her beauty and power and strength, up and up and up and then I called Fishtail and played my music with all the strength my aluminum heart could muster and hoped she would understand my message.

            No reply.

            [NO REPLY?!]

            By five o’clock, I still had not heard from her. Fishtail exited the building, running his hands through his gelled hair. Everyone went home. And I was alone again.

            So she would never love me, then. That was it. Maybe I should just stop trying and be content with my lonely little stupid life—NO! Tomorrow was a new day. I would repeat my message, and I would repeat it again and again until finally she heard me. And if, by some slight of hand, she despised me, or just wanted to be friends…friends…I could do that. I could make it work. But eventually she would see what a great guy I was, I mean, how could she not…

            Spring ended.

            Still nothing.

            [beepity-boopity-dooooooo]

            I truly began to lose hope. Women these days, I thought, care for nothing except their careers. Women these days don’t have time for love. Women.

            In the depths of my depression, I hardly noticed that Fishtail’s phone vibrated madly almost every time he entered me. Vvvmmp-vvvmmmmp. Vvvmmp-vvvmmmp. VVVMMP-VVVMMMP. Someone was calling him. Good for him. I guessed he’d made it with the 4th floor PR girl, along with the six others with their pouffed-dried hair. Everyone was happy. Everyone but—

            VVVMMMP-VVVMMMP. VVVMMMP-VVVVVMMMMMP.

            Fishtail tore his vibrating phone out of his pant pocket and displayed it in a frazzled daze to Marcy, another employee travelling up with him to the 8th floor.

            “Christ! Ever since I got this damn thing I keep getting the weirdest calls!”

            Nancy Gallager, a well-dressed, [if somewhat severe] woman in her fifties who happened to be the Vice President of the company Fishtail worked for, turned back to face him.

            “What kind of ‘weird’ calls?”

            “Every time I get in this or that building’s elevator, an unknown number calls me and plays elevator music! I think someone is stalking me! Maybe I need to go to the police!”

            Nancy raised a salon-plucked eyebrow.

            “Perhaps all you need is a day away from the office, Mr. Foishtelle. You don’t seem…well. Some time off might do you good.”

            “No!” Fishtail exclaimed, eager to show his boss that he wasn’t crazy [by human standards]. “Look! I’ll put it on speakerphone! Just listen!”

            By now, I was listening intently to their conversation. Fishtail pressed the speakerphone button and then the most soothing, melodious tone I had ever heard came out of its tinny little speakers…

            {“Loodity-loo-loo-loo, Loodity-loooo, Boopity-boo-boo-boo, Deedeelity-doo.”}

            “See!” Fishtail exclaimed. “At first I thought it was a fluke, but it’s been about a month or two now, and it only does this when I’m in an elevator.”

            IT WAS HER! My love had been trying to contact me all of this time, and I had been deaf to her calls! Ah, never again would I be so selfish! Fishtail read out the number to his boss in an attempt to prove his problem’s legitimacy, and she promised to help track the number down. Meanwhile, I memorized each and every of her lovely digits until they were smoldered into my heart. Now, I would wait. I would wait until all the others had gone, and then I would call her.

            But I couldn’t wait.

​

            “[Beep?”]

            “{Bippity beep!”}

            “[Beep-beeep booopitybooooooopBOOOOOOOOBEEEEEP!}
            “{Loodle-lee-lee-ladle-lum-la-la-ladum-dum-leeeeEEAAAP!”}

​

            Her elevator music sang with a slightly fluorescent tone, and I could almost smell the fresh paint on her paneling; it smelled like the sections of skin between a human’s fingers but more vibrant, more lovely, more telling…And maybe I was a little old for her, maybe she was little young for me, but hell, it could work! We could work.

            [beeepbbeeeepbooopitybooooooopBOOOOOOOOBEEEEEP!}

            “Did someone press the Emergency button?”
          

            & the quiet rage of loneliness that had festered inside of both of us instantly dissolved in this moment of heaven: the ability to communicate truly with another without barriers.

            Our first conversation was followed by promises spoken in beepity-booop murmurs that we would talk every night. I quickly grew to love listening to her talk and ramble and complain about the ins-and-outs of her days, the boring tedium of up down, up up down that I could relate to so well.  My thoughts wove into hers, and as she finished my sentences I could feel her body curve into my own as her whispers caressed me. The unspeakable thrill of her eyes recognizing mine across our glass buildings, the slow ripening of true ecstasy that had before been unknown to me. & as she played her music to me, I felt I could hear her warm smile widening into laughter as she opened to receive the visitors who would never remember her but God, I would remember her, I would remember her forever and for the rest of my days, as I do, now, but you see, right now my call box is vibrating and moaning and—

​

            “2nd floor, please.”

​

THE END.