Saturday morning and here he was walking through the parking lot for work. He looked up and sighed. It was a beautiful day with just a few puffy clouds floating lazily across a bright blue sky. The temperature even at ten in the morning was warm enough that it promised to be a day for beaches, strolling down the lakeshore or sitting in a park watching the girls go by.
Jason Maxwell sighed once more and pushed on the glass doors to the main entrance.
The chilly air conditioned blast that hit him in the face told him he was right to wear his corduroy blazer over his short-sleeved shirt. He wondered to himself who the moron was that set the temperature in the building to twenty degrees Celsius; some bureaucratic pinhead no doubt who read somewhere that a person's optimum efficiency was obtained at twenty degrees Celsius.
What they failed to consider was all the sick days that people inevitably took because they caught summer colds from the building being too chilly.
Jason frowned and made his way to the bank of elevators in the center of the building. All the windows to the outside were out of sight from here so the lighting in this area was generated completely by the fluorescent banks embedded in the ceiling.
He pushed the button and listened idly to the pinging as each floor icon lit up with the elevator's passing. The doors slid open smoothly and he stepped through. He pushed the button for the eighth floor and leaned against the side panel of the car looking bored.
As the doors closed he heard a woman's voice shouting frantically.
"Hold the door!" she said excitedly.
Jason pushed the "Open Door" button and the doors stopped closing with about ten inches of space between them. They reversed direction ponderously and then slid to the open position and stopped.
"Oh thank you so much!" the woman said as she stepped gratefully through the doors.
"British accent!" was the first thought that raced through Jason's mind. He had a thing for British girls. They always sounded so prim and proper. Their accents sounded so much more alluring when they screamed during sex. He looked her over in what he thought was an unobtrusive manner.
She was dressed well in a dark blue suit jacket and form-fitted skirt of the same color. Her blouse just had to be silk judging by the soft sheen it gave off and the way it hung so well on her frame. It had white buttons shaped like pearls; they may have been real pearls, which were fastened all the way to her collar. Her hair was dark brown and was caught in a neat ponytail that fell to between her shoulder blades. She stood about five foot six inches in her heels and had a body that Jason would have liked to see in a bikini; or better yet naked.
"Enjoying the view are you?" she said coldly, meeting his eyes in the reflection from the highly polished stainless steel doors.
He frowned and looked away quickly.
"Which floor?" he said.
She gave him a look; a look that held a myriad of expressions in it, most of them not good as far as Jason's self worth was concerned. She reached up and pushed the button for the tenth floor and then turned toward the door, and consequently away from Jason.
It was then that Jason acknowledged to himself that one of the things about British girls he didn't like was their bitchiness.
He frowned an acidic frown and then realized as she met his eyes in the reflection in the stainless steel that she could see every nuance on his face. She blinked slowly, an expression that somehow made her look more haughty. She looked at him coldly and then turned slightly as if to put him completely out of her mind. Jason thought she did that rather well.
Brenda Caldwell was a ball-buster. She had been in business for fifteen of her thirty-eight years and she played the game. She read body language the way some people read a menu. She knew what people wanted even before they knew it themselves and she knew from the few glances she had spared for this man in the elevator that he wanted her.
He wasn't bad looking himself, but nothing was that simple as far as Brenda was concerned. She had to make the situation right for her before she would even entertain the idea of giving into this man's lusts. Firstly she had to set the ground rules.
Twice she had given him "the look"; the look that told him he was less than the dirt under her nine hundred dollar shoes. And now she had told him in no uncertain terms that looking was not allowed, at least not until she allowed it.
She smiled to herself at the thought of twisting this man to her will. She knew it would happen if she wanted it to, but then she looked at the icons over the elevator door and saw that their shared journey was about to end; they had just passed the fourth floor and he had already pushed the eighth floor button so, there would be no time for her to play the game properly with him.
She smiled again and discreetly checked out the man's form. He was good looking enough with reddish blond hair and a broad friendly face. He had wide shoulders and a big chest but he was no athlete. His belly had a slight paunch to it but she liked a man to have a little softness around the middle. It was indicative of them being soft enough in the head for her game to be played properly; properly meaning on her terms.
He looked a little older than her; another thing she liked in her men. She liked bending older men to her will. Younger men were too easy to manipulate. Older men were more set in their ways, more stubborn. The challenge of an older man was what made the game fun for her.
She looked down at his shoes and frowned. She shook her head in disgust and then looked up at the reflective door once more.
"What god-awful shoes!" she said to herself with disgust. "Where did he get those, at Wal-Mart?"
"Enjoying the view?" Jason asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about," she said in clipped tones, studiously avoiding his eyes in the reflective door.
Jason chuckled and was about to step past her as he saw his floor approaching.
Suddenly the elevator lurched to a stop and the car went dark. The sounds one got used to in a large building; the whir of electrical engines, the low hum of the boiler room several floors below, the sound and feel of vented air being pushed into every crevice of the building. All of them came to an end and then there was just the sound of two people breathing. The dim red emergency light came on within seconds and Jason could see the woman's eyes wide with shock.
"What's happened?" Brenda said unsteadily.
Jason turned to her with a look of disbelief, a look which she couldn't make out in the dimness.
"Is it the power?" she went on, her voice becoming slightly more shrill.
"Yes it's the power," Jason said as if her were talking to a retarded child.
He reached past her shoulder for the electrical panel and Brenda gave a startled shout.
"What are you doing?" she asked in a near panic.
She waved her hand in the general direction of the touch she'd felt to bat his hand away and succeeded only in whacking her hand against the polished door.
"Damn!" she said, her voice becoming more unsteady with each passing minute.
"I'm just trying to see if pushing any of these buttons will have any effect," Jason said impatiently. "It probably won't help but it's worth a try."
"What do you mean it won't help?" she said in a high voice.
"I mean the power is out," he said with a snarl. "It's probably the whole building and it's more likely the whole neighborhood."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He popped it open and read the "no service" icon with dismay.
"Humph!" he snorted. "Try your cell phone. Mine has no service."
Brenda frantically reached into her bag and pulled out her phone. She was shaking when she held it to her ear. She stabbed at the buttons a few times and then held it out for Jason to see it.
"It doesn't work!" she squeaked.
