Page 10 of Lift Me Up

“Oh, you know, I feel wonderful. My luck is perfect; I got the job, and now I’m gonna go get a lottery ticket so I can win tonight’s draw.”

“I know you’re mostly joking about all that, but did you actually get the job?”

I reach for the body wash. That smell of cocoa and shea, and all things soothing to the skin, wafts through the room. I turn to the curtain and respond to her question, “No. I felt like I was on one of those What Would You Do episodes, but it was real life.”

“I’m sorry, Georgie.”

“It’s fine. I’ll figure it out. You know me.”

I can hear Franny’s disgruntled shift on the toilet seat lid, her arms no doubt crossed. “You shouldn’t have to figure it out, G. It was really shitty of him to do what he did, and you know it.”

I do know it… By he, she means Brandon, and what he did was decide that he didn’t want to have to try anymore. He didn’t want to do a life with me anymore, claiming it had become ‘too difficult’ for someone of his age to ‘make such an effort’. If he thought what he was doing was too much effort, I pity the next person he tries to leech on to—use for a good time, a place to stay, and some decent food.

He took a year of my life that I can’t get back… not to mention half of the rent with him. My half has been covered for a while since I’ve been off on medical leave to recover from the latest HS surgery over a year ago, but when I told work that I was ready to come back, they told me they would not be needing me after all. I’m pretty certain the only reason they didn’t want me back was because I had asked for accommodations they didn’t want to make an effort to provide. Again, I am too much of an effort to deal with.

Franny only let me dwell on it for a day before making me tell myself ‘I am enough’ over and over until I believed in it again and got my ass out of bed. Then she helped me spruce up my resume. But job hunting… In a city where all the jobs are taken and most are not disability-accommodating? Let’s just say it has not gone well. I’m still determined, still searching for jobs every day—everywhere I can—stepping out of my comfort zone hoping they will look past all the things that don’t fit and give me a chance to prove them wrong.

I take the longest shower I possibly can. So long that my fingers start to prune and hair becomes too clean; so clean in fact, it becomes a tangly mess that I’ll end up not brushing anyway. I tell Franny about everything before the elevator: the sleeping in and the bad suit, the flare I knew would be trouble the minute things started getting stressful, shitty Tracey and her shitty attitude, the inevitable flare breaking… Then, finally, the elevator. That was a whole other thing entirely.

I don’t know if anything about that experience felt good. Honestly, I really thought I would say ‘I’d wipe my memory of this entire day, given a chance!’, but when I start talking about it, I don’t say that at all. I say how I was petrified, which is true. I talk about how it felt to be manhandled out of the elevator ceiling, and then I show Franny the bruising already blooming on my hips.

“It wasn’t so bad after N called you and asked to stay on the line with me. He made me feel okay about the whole thing, tried to keep me calm through it all, talked to me and went above and beyond—I should send him a card. Where the hell do I even find a ‘thanks for saving me from the elevator’ card? I could make one I guess–”

Franny sits up from where she lays on my bed, interrupting me. “Wait. What do you mean when he called me and asked?”

While standing in front of my full-length mirror, eyeing the bruises, I meet her eyes in the reflection. “He– he said he had to call and get permission to stay on the line talking with me. I would assume for like… service charges or something? I don’t know. He put me on hold, then came back a minute later and he never left until I got out.”

“G, he never called me. Not a second time anyway. He called me to tell me you were stuck in there and then I called all the people I was supposed to call. I never heard from the monitoring station again until I let them know you were out. But I spoke to a different person then. Not him.”

Settling beside her on the bed, I lay back to stare at the ceiling. She copies me, then turns to look at my expression of pure confusion as I ask, “So he never called to get permission? He said it was against their protocol to stay on the line that long, especially talking like we did.”

“No, he never asked me. I’ll have to call and find out how long the call was and what it’ll cost Rivera on the next bill…” Franny fades into building manager mode while my brain is frozen in an infinite loop.

He didn’t call. He didn’t get permission. He said he’s technically not supposed to do what he did and he didn’t call to get permission… and yet he did it anyway? Though my mind races, two questions remain at the forefront: What does all this even mean, and what was it that made him want to stay?

CHAPTER SIX

NOAH

Things to Remember

1. Her voice is light and airy

2. Her hair is almost black

3. Her thighs

4. Her body is perfect

5. She is afraid of elevators

6. Sarcasm

7. She likes my stories

8. She laughs at my jokes

9. Her best friend is Franny