A lean painter has just finished putting a coat of grey paint on the farthest wall of the reception area of a residential building. He wipes his brow with a kerchief and whistles as a favorable gust of wind blows in through the vestibule. The painter sees an old man dressed in denim amble in through the vestibule door along with the cool breeze. He offers his arm out to the old man but the old man declines this gesture, though fine as it is, with a gracious nod. Two ancient boots shuffle onward across the floor. It sounds like they belong to tired feet. 

 

The old man approaches the building’s lone glass elevator. It is inset amongst a massive marble pillar and fixed to a simple cable. The cable ushers residents to and from their apartments, which ring the building’s immense atrium. Looking up from the checkered tile floor the old man notes the descending numbers flashing on the square display above the elevator doors. Drawn up in a bright magenta overcoat, a woman sporting a coiffed shock of white hair shivers beside him.

 

“Another cold one out there.” The old man acknowledges gently. 

 

“But the sun is shining.” The white-haired woman replies. She has a nice and calm rasp to her voice. The old man is quite taken with the way she enunciates each syllable. He supposes that every little word matters to her, as each does with him. 

 

The elevator doors slide open and a jubilant young boy toting a stuffed owl and a purple backpack skips out into the atrium. His mother, little more than a shadow, flits along behind the boy like an afterthought. The old man feels the face of the old woman next to him brighten as she cranes her neck. A small part of her lurches out for the young boy. Though she mostly succeeds in stifling this part of her, the old man notices it.

 

The old woman boards first. Her little heels knock against the floor and are triumphant if not peckish in their lightness. 

 

“Oh dear.” She announces with neither pleasure nor displeasure. 

 

Every circular button on the elevator panel is lit up, covered in a streak of sticky brown goo. There can be only one culprit.

 

“We must forgive him, won’t we?” The old woman adjusts her green spectacles, which have slipped down the bridge of her long nose and settled gamely against her broad tip. In doing so she flashes a light pink scar that arcs from her left eyelid up to her right eyebrow. She catches the old man’s eye lingering on her childhood wound and flushes at the cheek. The old man however does not perturb. Rather, he is flattered by the very sight and subtlety of her embarrassment.

 

The glass elevator ascends to floor two where it is obliged to open and close its doors. A businessman below passes a cube sculpture in the main atrium before shouldering his way out the door of the vestibule, chatting away on his phone.

 

“I imagine so. There’s no more fun in pretending to be tough when you’re this old, anyway.” He laughs. The old woman notices how the wrinkles around his eyes carve up his cheeks like plunked spoons in a happening lake. She feels, rather than deduces, a matter of reconciled bitterness living in these marks of his. Perhaps when he was young and handsome this sort of severity would have been attractive to her. But now, all it does is lend more character to his laugh, which she finds kind and sweet.

 

“So, what’s the story?” The old woman asks the old man. She can tell he is shy. For an unknown reason, she feels inclined to, respectfully, press him about certain details.

 

The old man ruffles the denim collar of his denim button-down and then scratches his cheek with a hearty finger. 

 

“Cancer. Seven years ago.”

 

“Did it happen quickly or slowly?”

 

“Slowly.” 

 

The elevator doors open and close at floor five. 

 

“You must already know the next question I want to ask.”

 

“Fifty-four years.” The old man says. He turns to his elevator companion and chuckles with a wince. “She was the best, of course.”

 

“And what do you miss most?”

 

The eyes of the old man search the ceiling for clues to unspoken sentences. 

 

“I miss her presence. Maybe that’s a bad answer.”

 

“It isn’t.”

 

The old man gives the old woman an obvious up-down. He has already logged mentally that her ring finger is bare and not discolored.

 

“You seem hopeful.”

 

“In what sense?”

 

He gestures to her wardrobe. 

 

“You’re dolled up very nicely, don’t you know.”

 

The lips of the old woman quiver. 

 

“Thank you. That’s a wonderful thing to hear.” The rasp in her calm voice exudes a note of honeysuckle.

 

“It is.” The old man chuckles. Complimenting others on their appearance no longer makes him feel bashful.

 

“And–I haven’t heard the term ‘dolled up’ in ages.”

 

“That’s because dolls are relics, just like the two of us.” The old man unleashes an unexpected giggle. 

 

“You have an infectious laugh.” Replies the old woman while nurturing a secret thought. 

 

“I’m not your average former medicine man, you know.”

 

“You were a doctor?”

 

“Yes.” 

 

“What kind?”

 

“A vet.”

 

“And did you have children?” The old woman is very suddenly curious about the old man. She watches him as he peers out of the glass elevator, reaching out with his pupils out over the edge of the elevator railing. The old man surmises they have climbed up past floor twelve. The humans below, he concludes, have lost some of the features that make them so unique and fun to observe during his regular walks around the block.

 

“That’s a dodge and a leap, huh.” The old man has a lot on his mind. He pauses, hoping to measure his next words with great care. “My wife Charle and I had four children. And then our four children had us. And next thing’s next, we had somehow turned into mannequins at holiday suppers and birthday parties.”

 

The old woman reaches out and grazes with her fingertips the old man’s forearm. 

 

He then adds, “You have a funny way of making me speak. Normally, I’m quite normal. And quiet.” 

 

“I’m not making you do anything. I’m just fabulous company is all. We can ride up in silence if you’d like to do that instead.” 

 

The hum of the elevator climbing the unseen cable wire fills the small cabin. The old man takes this opportunity to catch his breath. In doing so, he notices the old woman’s perfume.

 

“Chanel No. 5?” He asks, unable to suppress a small and uncharacteristic desperation.

 

“You needn’t try so hard, dear. I’m enjoying the conversation and in particular, your vulnerability.” Then her face turns suddenly buttery warm. “That was harsh. Oh. Know this: You are a beautiful twist in what already has been another beautiful day.” She squeezes his elbow with the lightest possible touch. It is the touch of a friend fast becoming something more than just a friend.

 

The old man points to himself. 

 

“My laugh. Your positivity. Getting old is a hoot.”

 

“A twist of the screw.” The old woman alights, speaking not to the old man in the elevator but to a ghost. 

 

There are five floors left between the elevator riders and the top of the building. The old man sighs. His vision no longer extends to the reception area below. The elevator, with its paneled windows clearer than glass, floats on a blur.

 

The old man speaks.

 

“Imagine if you had lived on the second floor.” 

 

The old woman gasps. 

 

“Why must you frighten me so.”

 

“I may never have had the opportunity to mistake your scent.”

 

“And I, the opportunity to size up the bones of your arm.” The old woman winks.

 

There are only four floors left between them and the rooftop now.

 

“Have you ever been up to the sky terrace?” The old man inquires of the happy face bobbing up and down out of the magenta overcoat.

 

“Many times. Sometimes even in my dreams.”

 

“Maybe, you and I could catch a sunset one of these evenings.” He says this shakily, surprised by the sudden appearance of his nerves. 

 

“Hold on.” The old woman pauses. She places her hands inches away from the chest of the old man and leans into him ear-first. “I think I can hear the wings of tiny butterflies flapping away in your belly.” 

 

He giggles and, as if spurred on by an inert force, pats her securely on her back. 

 

“How about a sunrise. I like the idea of that better. Sunrises are full of opportunity.” She appends with a smirk.

 

The twenty-eighth floor dings. A pair of heels lift off the ground and pass through the open elevator doors. A shock of white hair pirouettes one hundred and eighty degrees after crossing the threshold of the cabin. The old woman fixes her glasses. The golden trim of the glass elevator frames the old man wonderfully. His likeness she thinks belongs in a museum.  

 

“Which apartment do you live in?” The old man asks as the elevator doors shutter up, beginning to close. 

 

The old woman laughs and then, allowing the doors to square off, takes a knuckle to the shiny sheet metal which has glided into her path. The old man hears two faint knocks resound from the other side.

 

He quickly calculates the number of apartments there are on each floor. Twelve is the number.

 

Feeling love drunk, a curious and well-worn turn of phrase flies through the head of the old man as he stoops to burnish the sticky goo from the elevator buttons. 

 

Not a moment later, a second equally curious and well-worn turn of phrase comes to him. He suddenly reels in his hand. The elevator doors open to the top floor. The old man practically glides down the well-lit hall towards home, this time with a new and different-feeling smile spreading across his face.