held out the FedEx package. “I wanted to give you this. That’s all. I just want you to have it.”
“I told you to stay away from me,” she said, not accepting it.
The man and woman turned their heads.
“It’s cool,” Stuart said, smiling at them. “Everything’s fine.” He kept holding out the package to Sherry. “Take it. You’ll love it.”
“I’m sorry, you have to—”
“Okay, okay, wait. Let me just tell you about it, then. Once you hear what it’s about, I guarantee you’ll want to read it.”
The elevator made a soft whirring noise as it sped past the first twenty floors.
Sherry glanced at the numbers flashing by on the display above the door, then up to the news line. Latest unemployment figures show rate fell 0.2 percent last month. She sighed, her resistance fading.
“You’ve got fifteen seconds,” she said. “If you follow me off, I’ll call security.”
Stuart beamed. “Okay! Right. So you’ve got this guy, he’s like, thirty, and he works—”
“Ten seconds,” she said. “Sum it up in one sentence.”
Stuart suddenly looked panicked. He blinked a couple of times, his mind racing to encapsulate his brilliant script into a phrase, to distill it to its essence.
“Um,” he said.
“Five seconds,” Sherry said, the elevator almost to the thirty-third floor.
“Guy works at a factory that makes clocks but one of them is actually a time machine!” he blurted. He let out a long breath, then took one in.
“That’s it?” she said.
“No!” he said. “There’s more! But to try to explain it in—”
“What the hell?” Sherry said, but not to him.
The elevator had not stopped at her floor. It shot right past thirty-three, and then glided right on by thirty-four.
“Crap,” said Sneaker Girl. “That’s me.”
The two women both reached out to the panel at the same time to press the button for their floors again, their fingers engaged in a brief bit of fencing.
“Sorry,” said Sherry, who’d managed to hit the button for her floor first. She edged out of the way.
US militant group Flyovers prime suspect in Seattle coffee shop bombing that killed two.
As the elevator continued its ascent, Business Guy grimaced and said, “Guess I’ll join the club.” He put his index finger to the “37” button.
“Someone at the top must have pushed for it,” Sneaker Girl said. “It’s going all the way up first.”
She turned out to be right. The elevator did not stop until it reached the fortieth floor.
But the doors did not open.
“God, I fucking hate elevators,” she said.
Stuart did not share her distress. He grinned. The elevator malfunction had bought him a few extra seconds to make his pitch to Sherry. “I know time travel has been done a lot, but this scenario is different. My hero, he doesn’t go way into the past or way into the future. He can only go five minutes one way or the other, so—”
Business Guy said, “I’ll walk back down.” He pressed the button to open the doors, but there was no response.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
Sherry said, “We should call someone.” She pointed to the button marked with the symbol of a phone.
“It’s only been a few seconds,” Stuart said. “It’ll probably sort itself out after a minute or so and—”
With a slight jolt, the elevator started moving again.
“Finally,” Sneaker Girl said.
Storm hitting UK approaching hurricane status.
“The interesting angle is,” Stuart said, persisting, “if he can only go five minutes into the past or five minutes into the future, how does he use that? Is it a kind of superpower? What kind of advantages could that give someone?”
Sherry glanced at him dismissively. “I’d have gotten on this elevator five minutes before you showed up.”
Stuart bristled at that. “You don’t have to insult me.”
“Son of a bitch,” the man said.
The descending elevator had gone past his floor. He jabbed at “37” again, more angrily this time.
The elevator sailed past the floors for the two women as well, but stopped at twenty-nine.
“Aw, come on,” Business Guy said. “This is ridiculous.” He pressed the phone button. He waited a moment, expecting a response. “Hello?” he said. “Anyone there? Hello?”
“This is freaking me out,” Sneaker Girl said, taking a cell phone from her purse. She tapped the screen, put the phone to her ear. “Yeah, hey, Steve? It’s Paula. I’m gonna be late. I’m stuck in the fucking eleva—”
There was a loud noise from above, as though the world’s largest rubber band had snapped. The elevator trembled for a second. Everyone looked up, stunned. Even Stuart, who had stopped trying to sell his idea to Sherry D’Agostino.
“Fuck!” said Sneaker Girl.
“What the hell was that?” Sherry asked.
Almost instinctively, everyone started backing up toward the walls of the elevator, leaving the center floor area open. They gripped the waist-high brass handrails.
“It’s probably nothing,” Stuart said. “A glitch, that’s all.”
“Hello?” Business Guy said again. “Is anybody there, for Christ’s sake? This elevator’s gone nuts!”
Sherry spotted the alarm button and pressed it. There was only silence.
“Shouldn’t we be hearing that?” she asked.
The man said, “Maybe it rings someplace else, you know, so someone will come. Down at the security desk, probably.”
For several seconds, no one said anything. It was dead silent in the elevator. Everyone took a few calming breaths.
Average US life expectancy now nearly 80.
Stuart spoke first. “Someone’ll be along.” He nodded with false confidence and gave Sherry a nervous smile. “Maybe this is what
