Elevator Encounter.

It was Monday evening in March several years ago, Saint Patrick’s Day in fact, when I lived at Sage Pointe and had the weirdest encounter at the elevator.  It was the kind of evening that felt like it had already overstayed its welcome with humidity, the sun nearly set below the horizon, and the atmosphere vaguely resentful overall.  The evening just didn’t feel right.  I had some business to attend to on the first floor of my condominium building.  It wasn’t anything dramatic; just a quick look-see on a neighbor’s wreath on the door.  Once that was done, I turned back toward the elevator, ready to ascend to the relative peace of my penthouse suite.

The elevator dinged open with its usual lack of enthusiasm.  Out stepped the dog walker who was a lean, overworked man with the expression of someone who’d long ago stopped pretending to enjoy his job.  He was wrangling two dogs that week: a jittery black and white shih-tzu dogs, one with a Napoleon syndrome and the other who looked like he’d seen too much in life.  They belong to the renter, “Princess,” we all called her.  Anyway, behind the dog walker emerged a disheveled woman who could only be described as a walking cautionary tale.

She was large, loud, and chaotic in every sense.  Her hair was a brittle, bottle-blonde explosion of stringy straw, unbrushed and defying gravity, as if she’d just lost a fight with the town’s stray cat in an electric storm.  Her clothes hung off her like they’d given up trying to flatter her shape, and her arms were crammed full with an assortment of objects: papers, a purse that had seen better decades, and a large bag that looked like it had been repurposed from a deflated beanbag chair.

Before I could step aside, she lunged forward, thrusting her face into mine with the urgency of someone trying to solve a crime in real time.

“146—Eight?  148?  148?” she barked, her breath a cocktail of tobacco, menthol, and desperation.

I blinked.  I had no idea what she was babbling about.  Was it a code?  A unit number?  A cry for help?

“148?” she repeated right in my face, louder this time, as if volume might unlock my comprehension.

“Umm—” I managed, instinctively leaning back, trying to create space between her and my personal bubble, which she had already detonated.

The dog walker, sensing my confusion and her unraveling, stepped in like a reluctant mediator.

“Here,” he said, gesturing down the hallway and beginning to walk, the two mutts trailing behind him like reluctant furry witnesses.  “I’ll help you get there.”

I didn’t wait for the encore.  I slipped into the elevator, pressed the button for my floor, and let the doors close on whatever that was.  The ride up felt like a small victory.  Quiet, controlled, and blessedly devoid of oddball mystery women and their numerical riddles.