Ex-Tabula Rasa

As far as Gimmicks go, it’s Mediocre

In the elevator going down to the coffee place on the second concourse of my building, the door opens on the ground floor and everyone except me gets out. I stare at the businessman waiting for an upward lift, and he pretends not to be upset. As the doors start to close, I hear heavy footsteps running.

He gets the tips of his fingers into the gap between the closing elevator doors. They briefly crush his digits, and then part. He bursts into the lift with me, his expression one of complete panic.

He wears a deerstalker hat and holds a backpack close to him as if it contains dark secrets that must never be revealed. His face is sunken, and strikes me as having the air of a used teabag. If people really do resemble their pets, he must have a sickly basset hound waiting for him at home.

“We’re going down, right?” he asks, his expression and tone similar to someone who is experiencing manned flight for the first time and who has just heard a strange noise coming from the engine. I tell him that we are.

He bends down and starts poking at the buttons. “Which one is for the ‘SC’,” he asks, pushing the button that says ‘SC’ and which is already lit because that’s where I’m going. I tell him it’s already lit and that we’ll be getting off together.

There is a brief pause and his posture changes a little, as if he has just allowed himself to possibly believe this whole thing may actually work out after all.

“Sorry,” he says, looking over at me. “Nervous courier.”

“That’s the worst gimmick I’ve ever heard,” I think as the doors open and he bursts out, running across the food court.