He stepped into the elevator after the people getting off on the third floor exited. As he was going all the way back to the top floor he worked his way past the small group of well dressed junior executives toward the rear of the well decorated steel box.
That was when he noticed the urinal. There had never been a urinal in the elevator before, he was certain of that. He stared at the porcelain fixture and wondered how the hell it got there. The elevator made three further stops to allow passengers on and off before he could stop himself from staring and wondering and turn around to face the backs of the well dressed junior executives.
His fellow passengers were indifferent to the urinal, spending their time in the elevator either silently staring at the ceiling or their shoes.
The *ding* for the next floor sounded and the number twenty seven on the large elongated panel lit up. The wall of the elevator to his left unexpectedly slid open as if it had always been the doors and all the riders in the elevator had inexplicably been standing perpendicular to them.
He watched as several passengers turned and walked out of the elevator and a few more got on in what looked to him like a well-choreographed exchange. Of the people that boarded the elevator, one, a taciturn-appearing lawyerly type, walked straight towards him, stopped, and executed an Olympic-caliber half spin that placed her right at his side.
She was wearing a bright fuchsia or possibly magenta outfit, perfectly tailored with a hip-hugging short skirt that he thought was inappropriate for office wear.
Turning to his right to avoid the embarrassment of possibly being caught staring at her athletically toned legs, he was startled to see a waterbed in the rear corner of the elevator. He blinked rapidly for a long ten seconds, his jaw slackened, and then he turned toward the taciturn-appearing lawyerly-looking woman and said, "Excuse me, but can you tell me what is in the rear corner of this elevator, to my right?"
The woman bent slightly forward and turned her head toward his right, which nearly engulfed his face in her very large cinnamon-scented afro. She looked at the waterbed as if she was reading the track listing on the back of an early Psychedelic Acid Rock album with the lettering font being the sort that featured distorted and oblique serifs, links, crossbars, terminals, loops and stems on every individual letter, without an evident stationary axis.
"Now that is interesting, Mr Ralston-Blanc" the woman flatly stated. "The old innerspring set seems to have been replaced. I wonder if housekeeping remembered to add the antifungal water conditioner. Algae can be a serious threat to the structural integrity of the vinyl you know."
Such was his surprise, "You know my name?" was the only response Courier Ralston-Blanc could muster.
"Of course I do Mr Ralston-Blanc, we all do." The woman said this with a flourish of her left hand that indicated the other people in the elevator was the 'all" she was referencing.
"Who are you?" he asked, as perplexed as he had been since the time Bonita Fawcett coaxed him into the coat room in elementary school and asked him to pull her hair while she breathed heavily into a paper bag.
"My name is Betjeman Ducette Heggessey, but please, call me Dougie." Her lips, which were coated in a shade of hot pink that somewhat matched her outfit, seemed to move in a side-to-side fashion as she spoke, as if she was also trying to chew a particularly challenging piece of bubblegum at the same time she was introducing herself.
Courier quickly collected himself and extended his right hand in formal greeting. "Dougie, it's nice to meet you - please, call me Calvo. I take it you're familiar with the furnishings of this elevator? I can't say I am even though I've been riding this particular elevator every working day of the week, vacations excepted, for the past decade or so. Is all of this new?"
"Oh no Calvo, it's all been here for some time, at least since the redecorating was done in '14. Personally I liked the old Twall pattern - the bed pillows and duvet with matching wallpaper was tres chic. but then again, I'm an Industrial Engineer, not an Interior Designer."
The floor indicator *ding* sounded out again as the elevator prepared to stop at the forty-fourth floor. The doors opened from in front of where Betjeman and Courier stood, and the passenger departure & boarding dance was repeated.
"Calvo, are you in a hurry to get back to your office?" Dougie asked in a slight whisper. "I'm not, and if you're up to it, I'd really like to try out the waterbed, you know, give it a go."
Looking first at the waterbed in the corner, then at the group of people standing in the elevator with them, then back to Dougie, Courier answered her in a similar whisper. "It's been years since I rode the waves of a waterbed Dougie, and never have I ever done so in a crowded elevator on my way back to my office after a quick lunch. I think this might just be what I need to get over my last stock dip. Sure, let's go for it."
Betjeman and Courier quickly began to undress, handing the clothes they removed to fellow passengers who obligingly folded them neatly and placed them on the small bench near the foot of the waterbed. Matching his and hers pajamas were handed back to each of them, and they both put them on and climbed under the bed covers.
"This waterbed is incredibly warm Calvo, I can feel it right through these flannel jammies. Can you?
"Yes, yes I can - wow, very nice, very nice. This was a great idea Dougie, high-five!"
Betjeman and Courier gently high-fived before Betjeman turned away from Courier in order to allow him to form the major spoon to her minor spoon. She smiled to herself as he wrapped his strong arms around her torso, ever so carefully avoiding her breasts so as to not draw the ire of H.R.
Courier and Betjeman continued to talk in the same whispered tones for nearly a half hour as the elevator continued ferrying nonchalant passengers between floors of the tall office building.
It wasn't until Betjeman said the song playing over the Muzak system took her way back to the early 2000's that he began to think that maybe he was too old to seriously consider being in a long-term relationship with the woman.
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