March 2023 - Nellskitchen. All rights reserved. This story or any portion thereof may not be reproduced without the writer's express (written) permission. All characters appearing in "ELEVATOR MAN" are over eighteen.
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She was late. Fortunately, the elevator was not. Empty, it sat there, doors open, ready to take her to the hotel's swank Apollo Room. There, the office party was well underway.
Having stepped quickly through the hotel lobby and with her thoughts steeped in this morning's disillusionment, she mechanically strode to the vacant stainless steel box. Upon entering and about to press button number twelve, she heard a deep male voice say, "Eleven."
Looking up, she hoped that her eyes would not betray the slender alarm his unanticipated presence aroused. She wondered just how noiseless a man could be to have entered the elevator undetected.
Concluding he had to have been right behind her in the hotel hallway, she set the question aside, veiled her surprise with a counterfeit smile, and politely pressed number eleven for him and twelve for herself. After that, and in keeping with elevator protocol, she pretended distraction.
Through the following moments, she stared at the advancing floor numbers as they lighted in ascending order above the door. Feeling the man's eyes on her, she sensed she was being imbibed, then, half-reluctantly conceded the feeling was probably her overly-charged imagination.
The awkwardness of the commonplace elevator setting lasted through the next few seconds it took to reach the man's eleventh-floor destination.
She wondered if he noticed she had dressed alluringly in preparation for the evening's event. Perhaps the man's attention, if it was real, meant she had achieved her goal, that the emerald green, sleeveless halter evening gown, whose selection, facilitated by the three pounds she shed to fit into it, had done the trick.
Chosen to highlight her laser-green eyes, she lectured herself that any hint of sexiness was unintended, that attracting some random stranger was beyond her. Instead, she was dressed for business, a display of authority through the next three hours designed to keep her staff in line for the next six months. There was nothing more, or that is what she told herself.
Three floors into the ride, curiosity got the better of her, and she glanced his way. His eyes, fixed below the 'Wall Street Journal,' fold, stayed fixed. Disappointingly, he projected harmlessness, though the furtive moment allowed her the chance to get a good look at him.
Standing six feet and more, he appeared athletic. He was slender, his broad shoulders accentuated by the black dinner jacket he sported like a tight-fitting glove. Some men just look good in formal clothes; he was one. He was about her age and modeled a sharp Vandyke; his hair was black with a sprinkling of gray, and his features chiseled, distinct. Besides the goatee and his apparent physical fitness, he reminded her of Nick, her husband. Her inspection complete, she speedily looked away.
Seconds later, the elevator stopped, its doors whooshed open, and, without comment, he stepped out. As the doors closed behind him, she indulged herself and, pursing her lips, drew a long deep nasal breath. Like a feminist thief, she scarfed his retreating fragrance; as with any good cigarette, he was both pleasurable to inhale and bad for you. Absent cologne, he left a singular maleness in his wake.
Her mind returned to her immediate concern, the twelfth-floor office party. She hated such things, not traversing floors with handsome, stealthy men but appearing at parties like the one to which the elevator was about to deliver her.
More than hating them, she loathed that her husband, away at one of his things, had left her obligated to attend on her own. Love him though she did; at times, Nick was inconsiderate. He should know, for instance, how self-conscious showing up alone at hospital-related functions made her feel. He should have canceled his outing to be with her. She hated office politics. Nick knew she was duty-bound to make believe she relished projecting enjoyment through every sickening moment. Worse, her supervisory responsibilities required it.
Dr. Belinda Burke, a general practitioner affectionately nicknamed 'Billie' by her husband, had twenty years of experience in medicine. Her husband, Nicholas Faught, M.D., was a surgeon and practiced for twenty-one years. Their two children, honor students Daniel and Margarete, attended private school and were the couple's pride and joy.
The family lived as such families do, in a gated community, in a sprawling white house. The ultra-private backyard was made to order for naked swims on hot summer nights, occasionally topped off by a hot fuck, Belinda's definition of family fun.
On occasion, Dr. Fought chained his wife to a patio pole where he beat her with his belt, leaving her bruised and swollen before retreating to the family room to watch the Guardians lose to the Yankees. Belinda did not complain. She not only accepted Nick's discipline, she understood her emotional well-being, and lust for attention demanded it. Following one of his 'treatments,' she uncomplainingly admired her bruising. She patiently waited for her body to heal while yearning for the painful, fulfilling measure's inevitable repetition.
To the casual observer, Belinda Burke's life was every woman's envy. Yet a measure of emptiness came with it and stalked the couple's relationship. An inexplicable thing, it dwelled deep inside her and never entirely went away.
Therapist Emily Ellison, Ph.D., M.D., thought the issue simple and conjectured the beautiful physician suffered from a poverty of abundance, that she had accomplished too much, and that accomplishing too much might have been too much. The thought unsettled her patient, who dismissed the shrink's diagnosis as laughable.
The elevator suddenly stopped, and upon exiting, Belinda slipped into the cocktail party where, subduing her innate nervousness, she wandered about the room, in the process, clinging to the sidelines. In so doing, she touched superficial base after superficial base, her destination, the bartender to whom she motioned for her drug of choice, a margarita, straight up.
Once accomplished, she worked her way to the opposite side of the lounge, far from the insufferable multitude known as her colleagues. Once apart, she skirted the small talk typical of half-looped doctors in bunches.
Three-quarters of an hour into the annual happening, Belinda, bored, annoyed, and nursing her drink, nodded here, lifted her glass there, nursed more, then trained her eyes on Case Western's newest, snobbiest, most self-assured and fashionably late medical staff addition. An eye-batting rookie, she was quick to manipulate the department's stupid, mostly married, elder statesmen, several of whom she had already wrapped around her finger.
Tallish, long-legged, striking, the newbie moved poetically about the gathering. She made her way through the merriment from one to the next and the next, attracting the attention of the men but, above all, of the women, who, like Belinda, eyed her suspiciously.
Though it was neither the time nor the place, Belinda knew she would eventually need to address the neophyte's escapades. Now, however, Dr. Malixa Mal continued in her direction and, annoyed at the thought of making chitchat with the approaching phony, Belinda further separated herself from the swirling crowd of pandering physicians. She sought additional inconspicuousness and gravitated to what looked like perfect apartness near the fire exit.
There, appropriately present but less exposed, Belinda set her drink on a countertop upon which several vases bursting with fragrant, long-stemmed roses rested. Disinterested, she leaned forward on her elbows and watched the comings and goings.
Among the flowers was an imposing marble statue of the demure Greek goddess, Daphne, and her pursuer, Apollo. Hinting at the thrill of the chase and feminine surrender, Belinda discreetly raised her glass to the impassioned lovers from classical antiquity.
Taking advantage of her out-of-the-way place, she savored her drink through its slim straw, felt her tension subside, and thought back to the man she encountered in the elevator.
