Elevator Music

Sarah Martinez was having the kind of Tuesday that made her question every life choice that had led her to working on the fourteenth floor of a building with exactly one functioning elevator. She was already twenty minutes late for a meeting because of a coffee shop disaster involving a broken espresso machine and what appeared to be a small fire, and now she was trapped between floors with the one person in the entire building she'd been actively avoiding for three months.

Brad Kowalski from Accounting.

"Well, this is quite the predicament!" Brad announced with the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for lottery winners or people discovering puppies. "Good thing I brought snacks!"

He reached into his messenger bag – which Sarah now realized was covered in tiny embroidered tacos – and pulled out what appeared to be a family-sized bag of trail mix.

"Trail mix?" he offered, shaking the bag in her direction. "It's got those little M&Ms in it. The good stuff."

Sarah stared at him. In the three years she'd worked at Morrison & Associates, she'd never seen Brad without that exact same expression of genuine, inexplicable cheerfulness. He was the kind of person who said "Living the dream!" when people asked how he was doing, and who had once organized a surprise birthday party for the office printer when they got a new one.

"I'm good, thanks," she said, pressing the emergency button for the fourth time. Still nothing.

"You know," Brad said, settling onto the floor with the casual comfort of someone who had clearly never met a situation he couldn't make friends with, "I've always thought elevators were like little meditation chambers. Forced downtime, you know? When's the last time you just stood still for ten minutes?"

"I don't need to meditate, Brad. I need to get to my meeting."

"Oh, the Pemberton account thing? Yeah, I heard about that. Don't worry, though – Mrs. Chen from Reception texted me that they're running late too. Something about their car getting towed." He held up his phone. "Still got signal. Technology is amazing, right?"

Sarah blinked. "You're getting texts? Why didn't you call for help?"

"I did! Maintenance is on their way. Should be about thirty minutes." Brad offered the trail mix again. "Plenty of time to get to know each other! We've worked in the same building for years and barely talked. Isn't that wild?"

It wasn't wild, Sarah thought. It was intentional. Brad was the kind of person who wore bow ties unironically, who had strong opinions about the correct way to load a dishwasher, and who had once given a twenty-minute presentation to the entire office about the superiority of fountain pens. He was, in Sarah's carefully considered opinion, aggressively quirky in the way that made her teeth itch.

"So," Brad continued, apparently impervious to her lack of enthusiasm, "what's your story? I mean, I know you're in marketing and you always order the same salad from that place across the street, but what's the real Sarah Martinez story?"

"How do you know what I order for lunch?"

"Oh, I'm very observant. Occupational hazard of being an accountant, I guess. Numbers, patterns, details – it all connects." He popped a handful of trail mix into his mouth. "Also, you always look really happy when you eat that salad, which I think says something nice about a person. Not everyone finds joy in vegetables."

Despite herself, Sarah found this oddly touching. "It's my grandmother's recipe. For the dressing, I mean. She taught me to make it when I was twelve."

"That's beautiful! Food memories are the best memories. My grandpa taught me to make pierogies from scratch. I still make them every Christmas, even though they take forever and I always burn at least one batch." Brad's entire face lit up. "Do you cook? I bet you cook. You have that look."

"What look?"

"The look of someone who understands that good food takes time and love. Most people just want fast and easy, but you get it, don't you? That the best things are worth waiting for?"

Sarah looked at him more carefully. Beneath the bow tie and the relentless cheerfulness, there was something genuinely thoughtful in his expression. "I do cook, actually. It's kind of my stress relief."

"Mine too! Well, that and my podcast."

"You have a podcast?"

"Oh yeah! 'Fascinating Figures: A Deep Dive into Historical Accounting.' " Brad's enthusiasm somehow increased, which should have been physically impossible. "It's mostly about how different civilizations developed their record-keeping systems, but I branch out into economics, trade routes, that sort of thing. Riveting stuff."

Sarah stared at him. "People listen to that?"

"Dozens of people! Maybe even hundreds. I got a review last week that said I made the Mesopotamian barley trade sound 'surprisingly compelling,' which is basically the best compliment I've ever received."

There was something so earnest about his pride in his deeply niche podcast that Sarah felt her irritation beginning to crack. "That's... actually kind of impressive."

"Right? Who knew accounting could be so adventure-packed?" Brad leaned back against the elevator wall. "What about you? What's your secret passion? And don't say marketing, because nobody's secret passion is marketing."

Sarah laughed despite herself. "Pottery, actually. I have a little wheel in my apartment. It's completely impractical and I'm terrible at it, but there's something about working with clay that makes everything else quiet down."

"That's amazing! The connection between creativity and mindfulness, right? I bet your marketing brain loves the problem-solving aspect too. Like, how do you make the clay do what you want it to do?"

It was exactly right, and Sarah was surprised by how accurately he'd understood something she'd never really articulated. "Yeah, actually. It is like problem-solving. But with mud."

"The best kind of problem-solving!" Brad grinned. "My sister does metalworking – jewelry, mostly – and she says the same thing. There's something about working with your hands that makes your brain work differently."

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, sharing the trail mix and listening to the soft hum of the elevator's ventilation system.

"Can I ask you something?" Sarah said.

"Sure."

"Are you always this... happy? Like, genuinely, or is it a work thing?"

Brad considered this seriously. "Both, I guess. I mean, I'm not happy about everything. I hate brussels sprouts and people who don't return their shopping carts and the fact that they cancelled my favorite TV show after one season. But mostly, yeah, I'm happy. Life's weird and short and full of interesting stuff. Why not be excited about it?"

"Don't you ever just want to be grumpy? To complain about things without someone trying to find the bright side?"

"Oh, absolutely. Want to complain about something right now? We're literally trapped in a metal box. This is prime complaining territory."

Sarah looked around the elevator – the flickering fluorescent light, the terrible carpet, the faint smell of whatever someone had eaten for lunch three days ago. "This carpet is hideous."

"It really is. It looks like it was designed by someone who had only heard colors described to them but never actually seen them."

"And this music," Sarah continued, warming to the theme. "Who thought elevator music should sound like a dying robot playing a kazoo?"

"It's like they asked a computer to compose something that would make people actively uncomfortable. Mission accomplished!"

"And the lighting makes everyone look like they have a terrible disease."

"Zombie chic! Very trendy in underground transportation design."

They dissolved into laughter, and Sarah realized she was having more fun trapped in an elevator than she'd had in most normal social situations recently.

"You know," Brad said eventually, "I always thought you didn't like me. You kind of avoid me at office parties."

Sarah felt a flutter of guilt. "I don't dislike you. I just... you're very enthusiastic about things I don't understand. It's intimidating."

"Intimidating? Me?" Brad looked genuinely surprised. "I wear bow ties with tiny hamburgers on them. I'm the opposite of intimidating."

"That's exactly what's intimidating! You're comfortable being completely yourself, even when other people think you're weird. That takes a kind of confidence I don't have."

Brad was quiet for a moment. "You know what I think? I think you're plenty confident. You just show it differently. Like, you walk into client meetings and convince people to spend money on ideas. That's terrifying. I can barely convince people to listen to my podcast about ancient tax systems."

The elevator suddenly lurched, then began moving smoothly upward.

"Oh," Sarah said, feeling oddly disappointed. "I guess they fixed it."

"Looks like it." Brad stood up and brushed off his pants. "Back to reality."

The doors opened on the fourteenth floor, and Sarah's normal world rushed back in – the fluorescent lights, the sound of keyboards, the sight of her coworkers rushing around with the urgent purposelessness of office life.

"Sarah," Brad said as she stepped out. "Would you maybe want to grab coffee sometime? I promise not to talk about historical accounting for more than fifteen minutes."

Sarah turned back to look at him – this strange, earnest person who collected details about her lunch orders and made terrible accounting puns and somehow understood exactly why she loved pottery. "How about twenty minutes? I'm actually kind of curious about that Mesopotamian barley trade."

Brad's smile could have powered the entire building. "Really?"

"Really. But I get to pick the coffee shop."

"Deal. And Sarah? Thanks for being trapped with me. This was way better than meditating."

As the elevator doors closed and Brad disappeared behind them, Sarah realized she was smiling. Sometimes, she thought, the universe had a very strange sense of humor. And sometimes, that was exactly what you needed.