COOLGUY
You snap the picture because you realize just how rare, how unlikely, this scene is. It’s a one-in-a-million find. You know because you’re been here before. You’ve been transfixed by this building, by this elevator, ever since you first came upon it, entirely by chance. You walked under the rust-coloured stone archway and down the marble corridor toward the woman whose job it is to greet visitors and point them in the right direction. She smiles at you and you smile back as you approach her before veering off to the left, where you hear the elevator noisily going up and down in the shaft. This is your favourite moment: the moment it hasn’t yet arrived. When it does, you see everyone inside through the metal grill. The elevator moves far too quickly for such an old piece of machinery: this can’t be good, you always think, as it flies toward the floors above or those below. But it’s always the same operator, so he must know what he’s doing. A very young black man with glasses. He can’t be more than twenty. And he’s thin as a rail. This, you assume, gives him certain advantages for his position: it’s less weight for the old elevator to deal with, and more people are able to fit in there with him than if he were fat. Then again you’ve only ever seen one or two people in there with him. Curiously, though, he’s never alone. It’s as though the elevator had a rule: either it’s occupied by more than one person or no one at all. This means that when the operator drops someone off, he must have to wait at the same floor for someone else to come by before he gets going again. Perhaps he’s made up an intricate schedule of pick-ups and drop-offs, you think, allowing him not to annoy anyone, not to make anyone wait too long. Allowing him, too, to take a break when he needs one. To get refreshments: a sandwich, say, or maybe a donut. But how to eat the donut if he can never be alone in the elevator? It’s a question you’d like to ask him: this, you think, would give you a chance to speak to him for the first time. But he’s nowhere to be seen.