Southern-bound trickery: I think I'll pass on the elevator, this time

The phone rang, an explosive burst of sound to my tired ears. Drunkenly stupored, I fumbled the receiver and it banged and clanked across the nightstand.

"Oh, phone... come here!" I barked.

"Artie, is that you?" The dead electronic voice in the phone was obviously still attentive.

"No. I am still asleep. I'm distraught, torn, devastated, dead. Leave me be."

"Artie?"

With a guttural growl, I slid out of the sheets - limp and ophidian - and took hold of the cold blue phone with my left hand. Propped that way, head against floor, feet elevated and bedridden, I spoke.

"Yes?"

"Come downstairs right away, there's something you should see."

"No. It's," I glanced at the alarm, "two in the morning. I'm dead. I'm asleep. No."

"Just coooome!" With minimal pleading she'd convinced me. I was half-dressed but didn't care. In my shorts and shirt I drifted emptily down the hall. My feet shuffled like clothes against washboard, only more slowly and with less vigor. My tousled hair was thick with sleep and unwashed. I considered taking the elevator, but a small curiosity inside me told me to take the stairs instead. That'd get my blood racing. Maybe Lara had something important to show me after all. But I had just left her two hours ago - what could have transpired in that time that warranted such urgency?

I took the stairs carefully, studying them, wishing they were cushioned with down or made from razorwire, anything other than the dull rubber-edged finish that lacked inspiration. Step, shuffle, step, shuffle. It seemed that the sun rose and arced and set again in the time that it took me to ferry down those stairs. I'd left Lara earlier in anger, planning to ignore her voice and phone calls and to erase her image from all the furthest reaches of my memory. She hadn't known I was upset, of course, and I had no plans to tell her. But that's the way it seemed to be in my life. The least bit of information was all that I could expose, while the rest remained clouded in my own self-schizophrenia, stagnant just long enough for me to feed upon it and let it ruin my relationships and personality.

I entered the fifth floor from the stairwell door with about the pomp and circumstance befitting a slug. Some giggling sounds of gaiety bounced around the hallways and broke the silence mandate that usually gripped 2:00 AM. Lara's door was number 515, four ahead and to the left. I approached a bit apprehensively, to be honest, suddenly intimidated by the nature of her request. But my mind began to wander, like I'd shifted into neutral and was coasting down a rounded hillside road that stretched indefinitely into a sea of sunset. In blurry, numbed motion I pictured my knuckles at her door and it immediately opening, she standing there in pink, eyes twinkling with adoration, her arms outstretched to me for an embrace. She'd whisper into my ear and thank me for coming and oh how she missed me, couldn't we do this more often? Oh yes, thank you - what was it you wanted to show me? Oh that was just an excuse to see me? How interesting. Oh and now a kiss, yes I'll reciprocate, why thank you again very much. Would you like something to drink? Please. Stay a while.

I knocked.

Some feet rustled about and miniature earthquaking thumps moved from one end to another across the apartment's interior. "Hold on!"

She creaked the door ajar and stood smiling a giddy grin of restraint.

"What did you want?" I spoke first.

"You have to see this. Come here."

The door swallowed me and her too-lit apartment drew spinning circles on my eyelids even as I closed them.

"See, as I was walking home after you left me, I decided to get the newspaper. And right here on the front page - take a look at this picture!"

I looked. It was a photograph of the four car accident that occurred yesterday morning while we were out at the Calvary Cafe. We'd been innocuously eating bagels and sipping drinks outside, under the shade of a stilted table umbrella, when from nowhere a nondescript sedan ran a stoplight to our right and careened around the corner while making a left hand turn. I could still hear the screech of its tires; their treadmarks remained burnt into the asphalt at the intersection, little devilish trails of fire. This recklessness caused the collision, resulting in one death and various other injuries. It was a quite tragic situation, but not particularly uncommon for our city. Lara, Tim, Richard and I had started immediately from our sidewalk outpost toward the scene with the intention to help, but other witnesses had taken control and beckoned the rest of us to stand aside.

Lara's fingertip motioned to the top right of the photo, where a group of bystanders stood clustered with grim stares and hands in pockets.

"There we are!"

I was infuriated, aghast. "This was what you wanted to show me?" I asked, trying to put up a facade of calm. Come on, Arthur, you can keep it together.

"But Artie, we're in the paper! See, right there, all four of us."

A hesitation on my part. "Lara, this is ridiculous!" Ah, to hell with it, I was wild with anger now. "Who cares! We didn't do anything special! This isn't worthy of scrapbooking, or showing to posterity, or clipping and posting to the corkboard in the lobby! Utter rubbish. Disposable. Morbid to say the least! You called me out of my dire necessity of sleep to show me this?! It couldn't wait until morning, or next year, or next decade?! Are you even serious?"

She looked surprised, even pained. "I just thought you'd like it."

"Well I... I don't, and I'm tired. And thanks but I'm going back to bed."

I opened and shut the door the door in one powerful, graceful motion. The laughter in the hallway had dissipated completely. I felt barbaric. Walking over to the elevator, I disgustedly depressed the up button and held it down until the light lit and the bell chimed. No way would I take the stairs now. As the metallic doors shifted apart, they revealed a solemn old man standing against the wall in the corner of the otherwise-barren elevator cavity. He was eastern-looking, and welcomed me with a slight bow.

"Hi," I said. Entrances are not my forte.

"Another night. Another fight." He winked at me. Such a curiously and bizarrely odd encounter to contribute to my already extenuated day.

I got out at my floor and slogged sluggishly to my door, visions of pillaging Viking furs ready to infuse my dreams. With a sneer I fell back into my unmade bed and left the covers where they were. It was plenty warm out, and I sank to sleep instantly with the dusty impact of mattress and shoulder.