“No, listen.” I raise my hands. “I’m not involved. I was trying to work in my office when this pandemonium started.”
She ignores my comment and crosses her arms on her chest. “Mr. Cavendish, unless you want me to ask for a restraining order, I suggest you leave.”
“A restraining order? But for what? I just want to talk to my wife. Diana, Diana, I’m sorry. I love you.”
From somewhere inside the corner office, his wife mumbles, “He sounds sincere.”
The witch’s nostrils flare. “He only wants to pay less alimony, trust me, Mrs. Cavendish.”
“No,” the man insists. “I don’t want to pay any alimony, because I don’t want a divorce.”
Mr. Cavendish really does sound sincere, so, despite my better judgment, I get involved. “Let them talk,” I suggest. “If there’s a chance they could resolve their issues, why prevent it?”
Medusa crosses the hall to the elevator and pushes the call button. “There’s no chance,” she says. “Mrs. Cavendish has decided.”
Once the machine arrives, she opens the metal grate door, showing the poor man the inside. “Now, I suggest you leave, Mr. Cavendish, this is private property. Unless you want me to add stalking to the list of grounds for the proceedings.”
The dejected husband is ready to give up, when I once again intervene. “No need to leave, Mr. Cavendish. You’re my guest, you’re not trespassing.”
He falters on the elevator doorstep.
“Get in,” the witch orders, “or I’ll have no choice but to call the police.”
So it isn’t just me; Medusa likes to terrorize everyone. To hell with the police and the private property. This is now equally about helping Mr. Cavendish and sticking it to Miss High-And-Mighty.
The threat, however, is enough to scare the poor bastard for good, and he gets into the elevator. And since I’m already too invested in the drama, I follow him inside. “Mr. Cavendish, why don’t you come to my office and explain the situation to me, and we can see if we might find a solution.”
While I’m distracted with talking, the witch reaches inside and pushes the Lobby button. Medusa pulls the grate door closed, setting the elevator in motion.
I glare at her, and she gives me a one-handed goodbye wave, smirking with satisfaction as we disappear into the bowels of the building.
There’s no way I’m giving up that easily. I push the stop button. The freight machine bumps to a halt between floors. I push the third-floor button, but nothing happens. Uh oh.
Mr. Cavendish’s breath turns ragged as he asks, “It isn’t working?”
He looks pale and sweaty and is rolling a finger inside the collar of his dress-shirt as if to loosen it.
“Are you claustrophobic, Mr. Cavendish?”
“Yes. No. A little.”
***
Mr. Cavendish ends up being carried away on a stretcher forty-five minutes later, still in the throes of a claustrophobia-induced panic attack. After the elevator stopped, I had to call the building superintendent to come free us, and it took a while.
The paramedics carry Mr. Cavendish into an ambulance and perform a few basic checks. Meanwhile, I sag on a bench outside the building, tilt my face up to the sun, and close my eyes for a second.
A click to my right makes me blink and turn toward the source of the noise. The teenage daughter of the Wicked Witch of the West Office has sat down beside me and is holding a pale pink Polaroid camera in her hands.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hey,” she says back, and, jerking her chin toward the now-departing ambulance, she asks, “Did Mom do that?”
“Why? People often leave her office on a stretcher?”
The daughter flashes me a wide, wicked-but-candid grin that I could imagine mirrored on her mother’s face if the woman ever smiled.
“Only the male kind,” she says.
I shake my head and smile back. “You don’t seem as prejudiced against my gender. Tegan, is it?”
She nods, then shrugs. “I’d better go. We’re supposed to have lunch together, and I don’t want to be late or Mom will go ballistic.”
That gives me pause. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Today’s a half-day. The teachers hold this meeting once a year on how to be better at their jobs.”
“That sounds like a great initiative.”
“It sucks. The great project usually adds up to two weeks full of stupid, newfangled teaching methods that don’t work and will be dropped in no time. But, hey, I got to skip Calculus, so I’m not complaining.”
“Really?” I laugh. “What was the weirdest thing they made you do?”
Tegan’s lips curl up. “Last year, Mrs. Robison decided we should all cosplay Shakespeare to get us more involved… But, like, not just in class. In real life. Bunch of teenagers walking around dressed in 15th century clothes… Didn’t last long, let me tell you.” She shrugs and stands up. “I gotta go now.”
“I’ll walk in with you,” I say, getting up from the bench. Can’t buy lunch if I don’t have my wallet, which I inconveniently left on my desk upstairs.
In the lobby, I eye the elevator suspiciously. After spending nearly an hour locked in that cage, I’m not keen on repeating the experience. No matter how “fixed” the superintendent claims the elevator now is.
So, with a friendly nod, I leave Tegan in front of the grate doors, saying, “I’ll take the stairs.”
She waves goodbye, showing more friendliness in her pinkie than the sum of her mother’s entire being.
In my office, I find my laptop still open on my session notes. Right. In all the excitement, I’d nearly forgotten about the Newmans. I’d better finish the notes before I take my lunch break.
Unfortunately, as I sit at the desk, my brain refuses to concentrate on the Newmans. It keeps going back to the woman next door and her daughter.
Tegan must be fifteen or sixteen—which, unless her mother has an excellent plastic surgeon, means Medusa must’ve had her when she was a teen. Eighteen, nineteen at max.
I wonder if there’s a father in the picture. From the brief interaction
