Striding across the lobby, those heels adding about three inches to her height. Stuart figured she was no more than five-two in her stocking feet, but even as small as she was, she had a presence. Chin up, eyes forward. Stuart had checked her out on IMDb, so he knew she was nearly forty. Looked good. Just a year or two older than he was. Imagine walking into Gramercy Tavern with her on his arm.
Yeah, like that was gonna happen.
According to what he’d read online, she’d started in television as a script supervisor in her early twenties and quickly worked her way up. Did a stint at HBO, then Showtime, then got lured away by Cromwell to develop new projects. The way Stuart saw it, she was his ticket to industry-wide acclaim as a hot new screenwriter.
Sherry D’Agostino stood between the two right-hand elevators. There were two other people waiting. A man, sixtyish, in a dark gray suit, your typical Business Guy, and a woman, early twenties, wearing sneakers she’d no doubt change out of once she got to her desk. Secretary, Stuart figured. There was something anonymous and worker bee about Sneaker Girl. He came up behind the three of them, waiting to step into whichever elevator came first. He glanced up at the numbers. A tiny digital readout above each elevator indicated its position. The one on the right was at forty-eight, the one on the left at thirty-one, then thirty.
Going down.
Sherry and the other two shifted slightly to the left set of doors, leaving room for those who would be getting off.
The doors parted and five people disembarked. Once they were out of the way, Sherry, Business Guy, Sneaker Girl, and Stuart got on. Stuart managed to spin around behind Sherry as everyone turned to face front.
The elevator doors closed.
Sherry pressed “33,” Sneaker Girl “34,” and the Business Guy “37.”
When Stuart did not reach over to press one of the many buttons, the man, who was standing closest to the panel, glanced his way, silently offering to press a button for him.
“I’m good,” he said.
The elevator silently began its ascent. Sherry and the other woman looked up to catch the latest news. The elevator was fitted with a small video screen that ran a kind of chyron, a line of headlines moving from right to left.
New York forecast high 64 low 51 mostly sunny.
Stuart moved forward half a step so he was almost rubbing shoulders with Sherry. “How are you today, Ms. D’Agostino?”
She turned her head from reading the screen and said, “Fine, thank—”
And then she saw who he was. Her eyes flickered with fear. Her body leaned away from him, but her feet were rooted to the same spot in the elevator floor.
Stuart held out the FedEx package. “I wanted to give you this. That’s all. I just want you to have it.”
“I told you to stay away from me,” she said, not accepting it.
The man and woman turned their heads.
“It’s cool,” Stuart said, smiling at them. “Everything’s fine.” He kept holding out the package to Sherry. “Take it. You’ll love it.”
“I’m sorry, you have to—”
“Okay, okay, wait. Let me just tell you about it, then. Once you hear what it’s about, I guarantee you’ll want to read it.”
The elevator made a soft whirring noise as it sped past the first twenty floors.
Sherry glanced at the numbers flashing by on the display above the door, then up to the news line. Latest unemployment figures show rate fell 0.2 percent last month. She sighed, her resistance fading.
“You’ve got fifteen seconds,” she said. “If you follow me off, I’ll call security.”
Stuart beamed. “Okay! Right. So you’ve got this guy, he’s like, thirty, and he works—”
“Ten seconds,” she said. “Sum it up in one sentence.”
Stuart suddenly looked panicked. He blinked a couple of times, his mind racing to encapsulate his brilliant script into a phrase, to distill it to its essence.
“Um,” he said.
“Five seconds,” Sherry said, the elevator almost to the thirty-third floor.
“Guy works at a factory that makes clocks but one of them is actually a time machine!” he blurted. He let out a long breath, then took one in.
“That’s it?” she said.
“No!” he said. “There’s more! But to try to explain it in—”
“What the hell?” Sherry said, but not to him.
The elevator had not stopped at her floor. It shot right past thirty-three, and then glided right on by thirty-four.
“Crap,” said Sneaker Girl. “That’s me.”
The two women both reached out to the panel at the same time to press the button for their floors again, their fingers engaged in a brief bit of fencing.
“Sorry,” said Sherry, who’d managed to hit the button for her floor first. She edged out of the way.
US militant group Flyovers prime suspect in Seattle coffee shop bombing that killed two.
As the elevator continued its ascent, Business Guy grimaced and said, “Guess I’ll join the club.” He put his index finger to the “37” button.
“Someone at the top must have pushed for it,” Sneaker Girl said. “It’s going all the way up first.”
She turned out to be right. The elevator did not stop until it reached the fortieth floor.
But the doors did not open.
“God, I fucking hate elevators,” she said.
Stuart did not share her distress. He grinned. The elevator malfunction had bought him a few extra seconds to make his pitch to Sherry. “I know time travel has been done a lot, but this scenario is different. My hero, he doesn’t go way into the past or way into the future. He can only go five minutes one way or the other, so—”
Business Guy said, “I’ll walk back down.” He pressed the button to open the doors, but there was no response.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
Sherry said, “We should call someone.” She pointed to the button marked with the symbol of a phone.
“It’s only been a few seconds,” Stuart said. “It’ll probably sort itself out after a minute or so and—”
With a slight jolt, the elevator started moving again.