The lights died at 11:42.
I know because I was watching the clock, counting the minutes until I could call the care home back.
Then the whole lobby went black.
The emergency lights stuttered on, thin and pink.
My radio coughed and quit. All three screens on the desk went dark.
The elevator line rang. Old copper. It runs on its own power.
Talia: Night desk.
Coren: I'm stopped between fourteen and fifteen.
I knew the voice. Everyone in this building knew that voice.
Coren: Fix it.
Maintenance went to voicemail. Facilities went to voicemail. The guard on three did not pick up.
Fuck this building, I told the dark.
The manual release lives in a closet behind the desk. A steel crank, cold as a pipe.
Someone showed me once, at three in the morning. He quit two weeks later.
Fourteen floors. The freight car was dead too, so it was me, the stairs and the crank.
My mother's care bill was due Friday. I did the math while I climbed.
There was a seam of light under the doors. I could hear him breathing on the other side.
Talia: Step back from the doors, Mr. Marsh.
Coren: I've been stepped back for nine minutes.
The crank bit into the socket and I put my whole body on it. It slipped once and took the skin off my knuckle.
He heard me swear. I didn't care.
The doors opened a hand's width. Then a shoulder's width.
Coren: There's a manual override on fourteen. You walked up to use the lobby crank.
Talia: The override doesn't work when the panel's dead.
Coren: It works.
He said it the way you'd read a weather report. Dry. Certain.
He stepped out. Tall, charcoal suit, no tie, silver watch catching the pink light.
Nine minutes in a dark box and not one hair out of place.
I waited. For a thank you. For a look, even a bad one.
He looked over my shoulder at the dead panel. Then at the logbook I hadn't been able to open.
Coren: Who else knows?
Talia: Me. You. Maintenance, if they check their phones tomorrow.
Coren: They won't.
Then he looked at me. Not past me. At me.
The crank. The blood on it. My hand. My face, a beat too long.
I felt my coat like a hand on the back of my neck. Like he could see the whole shape of my week.
Coren: Fourteen flights. In those shoes.
Talia: They're the only black ones I own.
He didn't smile. Something went across his face and went back in.
Coren: You don't ask for help.
Talia: Nobody sends help to the desk.
He pulled a folded handkerchief from his pocket. Gray, pressed, expensive.
He held it out and said nothing. That was the part that got me. The nothing.
The lights came back all at once, buzzing and bright and indifferent.
He was already on his phone, walking, the building closing around him.
Coren: Log the whole outage. Not just the elevator.
He stopped for half a step. Like he'd walked past something he'd meant to pick up.
He didn't turn around.
I wrapped his handkerchief around my knuckle and took the stairs down, because the elevator was out of order.
Being noticed by him. Was that a promotion, or a punishment? And did I get a vote?