The Elevator Wait

Okay so this happened six months into my job at Thornwood Lodge, and I still can't tell it without grinning like an idiot.

It was a Friday night in November, we'd just closed the bar, and I was riding down in the lodge elevator with Angelique and Cole. The lift is old. I mean old old, some iron box from before the war, and it rattles like a dice cup every time it moves.

"Every single time," I said, holding the rail. "It's going to drop us into the basement one of these days."

"You say that every single time," Angelique said. She was still in her farrier apron, smelling like hoof and iron, arms crossed and grinning at me. "And every single time it doesn't drop us."

"That's how traps work. It waits."

Cole leaned on the wall, arms folded, all calm the way he always is. "It's waited forty years, Jeffrey. I think it likes us."

Then it stopped liking us.

The whole car shuddered, there was this clunk from somewhere above us, and we just stopped. Between floors. Lights flickered and steadied.

"Okay," Angelique said slowly. "That was new."

Cole hit the button for the ground floor. Nothing. He hit the basement one. Nothing. Then he popped the little panel open and picked up the phone in there, held it to his ear for a long moment.

"Line's dead," he said. "And the motor's not even humming. Power's out to the shaft."

"Out? The bar lights were on five minutes ago."

"Bar's on a different circuit. Somebody tripped something, or a fuse went. Either way, we're parked here till somebody finds us."

Angelique looked at her watch. "It's half past one. Cabins are empty, guests leave Sunday. So who exactly is finding us?"

"Housekeeping comes through at seven," Cole said. "Maybe sooner if they notice the lift's stuck."

"Seven." She let that sit. "Six hours in a box."

And here's where I made my mistake, the one she never let me forget. I said, "I could climb out. Top hatch, cable gate, I've read about it. I don't need to sit here for six hours waiting on housekeeping."

Angelique turned to me real slow. "Oh, this is good. This is very good."

"What?"

"Two hours ago. In the bar. You were out of clean glasses and the dishwasher was running and I said, Jeffrey, just call down for Cole, he's in the maintenance room, he'll bring glasses up. And you said... what did you say?"

I remembered. "I said I had it handled."

"You said you had it handled!" She smacked the rail. "You were balancing pint glasses on your forearm like a circus act, and you said you had it handled, because God forbid the big strong bartender ask a maintenance man for help carrying glasses. And now look at you. Trapped in a box with the man you wouldn't ask, and me."

Cole was trying not to laugh. He failed. "She's got you there, buddy."

"I wasn't going to bother you, you were elbows deep in the boiler."

"I was wiping down a workbench."

"Whatever."

"No, no, please continue," Angelique said, "tell us more about how you have everything handled. Do you have this handled? Would you like to handle the hatch, since you've read about it?"

"That was a low blow."

"It was an accurate blow."

Cole held up both hands. "Alright, alright. Look. We're stuck, it's warm enough, nobody's hurt. We could make the best of it. I've got half a flask in my jacket, Angelique's got snacks in her bag because she always has snacks, and we've got six hours. There are worse places to be stuck."

"Worse people, you mean," she said, but she was already digging in her bag. She came up with a bag of those chili crisps and the flask appeared from Cole's jacket like magic. Cole fished a folded moving blanket out of the lift's emergency locker, we spread it on the floor, and sat down on it, three across, knees up.

"See? Civilized," Cole said.

We passed the flask around and I'll admit the edge came off. And then Angelique got that look. I knew that look. I'd been seeing that look for weeks and ducking it every time.

"So, Jeffrey," she said, settling back. "Since we've got time. You want to tell me why you go stiff as a fence post every time I flirt with you?"

"I don't go stiff as a fence post."

"You do. I'll say something filthy right to your face and you'll suddenly need to check the taps."

Cole made a noise into the flask that was almost a choke.

"It's not..." I looked at the ceiling of the lift. "Fine. It's not you. You're great. You're obviously great. It's that we work together. I just got here six months ago, I finally have a job people don't laugh at, and the last thing I need is to fumble something with the farrier and then have to stand across the bar from her every night for the next five years."

Angelique was quiet a second. "That's it? That's the big mystery?"

"That's it."

"Jeffrey. I flirt with half the lodge for fun. But I've been flirting with you differently for weeks, and I noticed you noticed, and I kept doing it because I figured you'd get around to it. I'm a grown woman. I've worked here two years. I know how to be awkward at work and still show up. I had a fling with a ranch hand named Dean last spring, it ended fine, we still say hello."

"Wait, with Dean?" Cole said. "I thought that was just..."

"It was not just."

"Huh. Good for him."

"See, this is why nobody tells you things," she said, and he shrugged like fair enough.

"So you weren't just being friendly," I said. "All those times."

"Jeffrey, I asked you to help me carry a saddle to the tack room and then did absolutely nothing with the saddle. I stood there holding a door for ten minutes. I'm many things but subtle with a saddle isn't one of them."

Cole cleared his throat, and I felt him shift next to me. "Can I say something? Since we're apparently doing confessions in a broken lift."

"Go on," Angelique said.

"I've noticed too. Both of you. For months. And I kept my mouth shut because you two were circling each other and I figured it wasn't my lane." He took a pull from the flask. "But seeing as we're stuck here till dawn, it seems dumb to keep sitting on it. I like you both. More than the normal amount. I have for a while."

The lift creaked. Somewhere far off, water dripped. Angelique looked at Cole, then at me, then back at Cole, and this smile spread across her face slow, like she'd just been handed exactly the thing she wanted.

"Well," she said. "Now the night's gotten interesting!"

---

I should back up and explain how we got to confessions in a broken lift, because it didn't happen all at once. The flask went around a couple more times, small sips, until Angelique declared it finished and passed round a water bottle from her bag. "Water now," she said. "Nobody does anything tonight they wouldn't sign off on stone sober, so drink up, and if you still mean it in an hour, ask me again." Angelique told a story about a duke's son who kicked her while she was shoeing his horse and she made him hold the hoof for an hour while she lectured him. Cole told one about flooding the guest sauna on his second week. I told one about a wedding party that ordered forty shots and then forty waters.

And somewhere in there Angelique put her hand on my knee. Just rested it there, like it was nothing, while she was mid-story about the duke's son. And I didn't go stiff as a fence post. I put my hand over hers.

She stopped talking. Looked at me.

"There he is," she said softly. "Finally."

"So," I said, my mouth going dry. "If I wanted to kiss you right now, would that be a work problem?"

"Only if you're bad at it."

Cole, next to us, very quietly said, "I'd not mind watching that, honestly."

And Angelique laughed, that big warm laugh, and said, "Oh, we're going to have a fun six hours."

"There's a problem with your plan, though," I said. "I've only got one condom in my wallet from a cousin's wedding in September."

"Why is it there?" Cole asked.

"Wedding in September. My cousin kept handing them out as a joke."

"That's a terrible origin story for a condom," Angelique said. "Cole, do you have one?"

"Do I appear to be someone who keeps condoms in a maintenance jacket?" He patted himself down anyway. "Actually... yeah. Left pocket. Don't ask. And a lube sachet from the honeymoon suite baskets, right pocket, don't ask that either."

"We're going to need more than two," she said, and we all went quiet and did the math.

"Okay," Cole said slowly. "So one each, and whatever else happens happens with what we've got, and if it doesn't get that far, it doesn't. Deal?"

"Deal," Angelique said. "And I'm clean, I got tested in October, and I've not been with anyone since Dean last spring."

"Clean too," Cole said. "Tested when I started here."

"Same," I said. "August. After my ex and I..." I waved a hand. "You know."

"So the condoms are belt and braces," she said. "Good. I like a careful man." She turned to me, put her hand flat on my chest, and