“Dreaming about being an actress is more exciting than being one.”
–Marilyn Monroe
Prompt: Write about dreaming.
Out the door had gone the gang which had not only freed their leader, Stone Face, but had also, inexplicably, absconded with my wife’s cat, Pushka. No one in the gang, especially Stone Face, had paused in their exit, to explain what my wife’s cat was doing in the middle of a prison escape. Perhaps if they had explained Pushka’s role, I wouldn’t have followed the gang out the door, trailed them in their car, and followed them into a high-rise condominium building.
“Hold the door please!” I called out, ignoring all prudence and every ounce of common sens, to join the gang in one of the building’s two elevators. As the doors closed, I was facing the back of the elevator where Stone Face stood like a quarterback behind his offensive line. He had handed off Pushka to what would be, staying with the football metaphor, one of his running backs.
“Beautiful day,” I said, to no one in particular. “It’s a shame to be inside.”
“What floor?” one of Stone Face’s minions asked, a hand poised over the elevator control panel.
I looked at the selection. I had never been in this building before, and I didn’t want to name a floor higher in number than the building contained. “There’s no 13,” I said without thinking.
“There usually isn’t,” the gang member at the control panel said. “Some dickheads think it’s unlucky.”
“Right,” I said. “But there still is a 13th floor. I mean, it’s not like there’s just a gap in the middle of the building.”
“Are you going to name a floor or not?” Stone Face asked from the back of the elevator, his voice half a human rumbling and half a reptilian hiss.
“Absolutely,” I said. “How about 12?” When the control-panel gangster had pushed the button for that floor, I turned back to where Stone Face and Pushka were located and said, “That’s a nice-looking cat. Does it have a name?
Instead of replying, Stone Face leveled a stare at me which in a confined space like the elevator could have been harmful; but before the lethality of his expression began to burn a hole in my forehead, the minion who was holding Pushka said, “Of course it has a name. Does it look like a damn cat that wouldn’t have a name?”
“Of course not,” I said. “It looks like it might have nine names, to go with its nine lives.”
“Do you have a name?” Stone Face asked, and I began to wonder why I was engaging my fellow elevator travellers in conversation when what I should be cultivating was stealth. My plan, such as it was, was to grab Pushka the moment the elevator doors opened and to run for it. What the plan lacked in sophistication it made up for, I hoped, with the element of surprise.
“You haven’t pressed the button for the floor you’re going to,” I said to the control-panel gangster in what can only be called a reckless blurting out of whatever thought came to mind; and the moment I had spoken I realized that the gang did not wish to indicate a floor level until I had exited; and I was about to mention, as offhandedly as possible that I didn’t actually care what floor they were travelling to and that even if I knew, I would immediately forget it. However, before I could get started on compounding the error I had already made, the elevator stopped on the third floor and the door opened, revealing an elderly man wearing a fedora and holding a cane.
“The elevator’s full,” one of Stone Face’s minions intoned.
“Hardly,” the elderly man said, and using his cane like a rapier, he cleared a space for himself, and stepped into the elevator. “Fourth floor,” he said, and the tension in the elevator had, I noticed, spiked.
To be continued.
A Year of Writing 