By Les Cohen
Copyright 2013 by Les Cohen, Ellicott City, Maryland.
All rights reserved.
* * *
Life is short. Are you tired of not having anything good to read while you’re eating out at the diner by yourself? Have you flipped through the magazines and catalogs you keep in your bathroom one too many times?
Now you’ll have an answer for people who try to intimidate you, intellectually speaking, by asking, “So what have you read lately?” without your having put in all that much effort.
Just tell them the name of the last short-short story you read and my name. They'll think you read a whole book. ("Yeah, like that's ever going to happen.")
"Very impressive," they'll say to themselves. "You're reading, what, a book or two a week?"
What do they know?
* * *
Contents
1. The Elevator Trilogy
2. Last Picked
3. Birmingham Airport
4. IM
5. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
6. Finding Dana
7. Precocious
8. Dialogue
9. Creative Running
10. Mind Over Maury
11. "Dream a little dream of me."
12. Memo To Carolyn
13. Business Management 213
14. Jones
15. Double Fake
16. Bob
17. Guardian
18. Corporate Culture
19. Jimmy Loves Melissa
20. Organic Gardening
21. The Bully
22. The Eulogy
23. Relationship Saving Time
24. The Babysitter
25. The Penny
26. Say “Goodbye” to Jane.
27. Dream On
28. Enchilada Books
29. The Speed Date
30. Broken Rose
31. Silent Partners
32. Lot Boy
33. The Commute
34. The Ripple Effect
35. Exhausted
36. Next Contestant
37. HonoLulu's
38. Road Trip
39. Unfaithful
40. First Date
41. I, Your Son
42. The Hangover
43. Trouble Sleeping
44. Shiny Things
45. Stranger On The Bus
46. Craig's Lisp
47. The Dishes Fairy
48. "Hello?"
49. The Plug-In
50. Pretense
51. The Badger
52. Schmutz Patrol
53. The Desk
54. Imperfect Together
55. "Gesundheit!"
56. The Ladies Room
57. The Proposal
58. The De-Creeping Of Ross
59. Dear Journal
60. Interview With An Alien
61. Bathroom Windows
62. Mary
That's it for now.
* * *
1. The Elevator Trilogy
Part 1: Going up.
Our story begins the morning after the night when the crew from Otis started renovating the other elevator. There were only two. True, the building was relatively short, a mere 28 stories tall, having been built in an era before downtown property values pushed buildings to the sky, but the elevators were soooo slow, so crowded, stopping on virtually every floor. They were the prefect place, you guessed it, for love.
Of the twelve people waiting in the lobby, two of them, unbeknownst to each other, were about to meet. For the sake of discussion, we’ll call them Bob and Jane, not because I’m trying to protect their identities, but because those were their names. Their names may have been ordinary but, trust me on this, they were not.
Jane was one of the first on and, being polite and given that she worked on the twenty-third floor, went to the back. Leaning up against the wall, a briefcase in one hand, large pocket book over the other shoulder, that hand on the strap, her plan was to relax on the way up, preparing herself mentally for what promised to be a strenuous day.
Bob, on the other hand, had less control over his destiny. This morning, as it turned out, was his turn to get coffee for his team. Right now, he had his hands full, literally, trying to balance the ridiculously flexible cardboard box they gave him to hold eight cups, two of which were on top of two of the other six, his computer backpack slung over his right shoulder and the morning paper rolled under his left arm – all this while he kept wondering whether or not he’d remembered to zip up before he left his apartment. (He’d been running late and rushed out of his apartment without checking.) Focused as he was on keeping it all together, Bob was pushed into the elevator by the wave of people behind him. When it was all over, and door was closing on the coat of the last person on board, Bob found himself facing the back of the elevator, smashed up against one person in particular – close enough to have children had the circumstances been different, if you get my drift.
Jane, all the while, was trying to ignore this unexpected moment of public intimacy by looking over Bob’s shoulder, pretending to read the “Maximum Occupancy” notice above the buttons panel, and then mentally counting the number of people who stood to die with her if the cable broke.
“Hi.” Bob was the first to talk.
“Hi.”
“Sorry about...”
“It’s okay, as long as you promise to practice safe elevating.” Jane smiled.
Bob was caught off guard, but recovered quickly. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“Sorry.” Jane was sincerely embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to flirt.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a special anonymity you have in crowded bars and elevators. Nobody’s paying attention, and it’s not like we’re ever going to see each other again.”
“Of course not,” Jane agreed with him, but then saw something in his eyes. “You look disappointed.”
“Oh, no.”
“You’re not disappointed that you won’t be seeing me again.”
“No. I’d love to see you again, of course, and I'll be… heartbroken if I don’t.”
Jane smiled at him.
“It’s not disappointment, it’s just that liquid is beginning to bubble up onto the lid of this one cup and, if I’m not careful, it’s going to drip onto your white blouse, possibly staining it and you’ll have to walk around all day with a spot,” Bob nodded in the direction of Jane's left breast, “there. ...Is that silk?”
“It’s fake silk, but thank you for noticing.” Looking at the lid in question, just a couple of inches above her mouth, everything suddenly went into adrenaline-induced slow motion. The elevator chime made a slow, deep tone announcing its arrival on a particular floor. People on the still-crowded elevator started to move, jostling Bob as they did. The tray shook, the two top cups even more so and there, teetering at the edge of the one lid, a single drop lost its hold.
“Zaappp!!” Instantly, and with perfect timing and position, Jane stuck out her tongue, way out, and caught the drop, and then held it out there for just a second before reeling it into her mouth.
“Geez.” Bob was impressed. “You could catch flies like that.”
“You saying I remind you of a frog.”
“Sort of. A very, uh, attractive frog?”
“I do look good in brown,” Jane was thinking out loud, and then smacked her lips. “That’s not coffee.”
“You mean green.”
“What?”
“Toads are brown. Frogs are green,” Bob corrected her, shaking his head up and down slightly.
&nbs
p; Jane gave Bob her trademark “Who cares?” look.
“No. Actually, it’s a ‘Pineapple, Mango, Coconut Paradise Smoothie.’ It’s healthier and I’m trying to avoid the whole coffee breath thing.”
Instinctively, Jane closed her mouth and rolled her lips inward, doing her beast to avoid breathing on him.
“Oh, you don’t have coffee breath. Of course not.”
The elevator chimed again.
“This is my floor,” Jane announced, surprised by her own reluctance to move.
“Right,” was all he had to say, that and the fact that he didn’t move either.
“You need to move.”
“Of course,” and he carefully stepped aside to let her by.
“What floor are you getting off,” Jane asked as she brushed past him.
“Eighteen.”
“This is twenty-three.”
“I’ll get off on the way back down.”
And then she turned back just short of the door. “Maybe I’ll see you later?”
“Absolutely. …Bob.”
“What?” Jane called back from the hallway, just as the doors were starting to close.
“I’m Bob.”
“Jane. And your fly’s d..,” but the doors cut her off.