Excerpt
From Flashes Of Me
by Cynthia Sax
“I think we’re on
the quiet floor,” I observe. No one else is talking.
Camille’s walk is
defiant. “We’ll change that.” She pauses in front of the stairwell. “Stairs?”
“Ummm . . .”
I thought the human resources lady said something about the stairwells being
for emergency use only, but I hadn’t been paying close attention to her
monotonous spiel. I was too worried about not being chosen. “Sure.”
We clomp down the
stairs, our heels ringing against the concrete. The supremely clean and
brightly lit stairwell smells of stinky socks, the stale air making me dizzy.
Camille appears unaffected by the stench. As we descend, she sings happily, her
song choices being a collection of increasingly vulgar hip-hop songs.
We reach the second
floor and Camille tugs on the door. It doesn’t open. She scans her passcard
over a small black security box. The light remains red. “Shit on a stick.” She
scans it again. Nothing happens. “Unbelievable,” she fumes.
“Let me try.” I
wave my passcard over the sensor. The light remains red and Camille curses. Her
vocabulary makes me blush and, as I’m a native New Yorker, that’s an impressive
feat for her to accomplish. “We’ll try the ground floor,” I suggest.
We trudge down to
the ground floor. This door is locked also. Camille tries her passcard. It
doesn’t work, prompting another stream of colorful language from my new friend.
I try my passcard. It’s as useless as Camille’s.
“We’re stuck.” I
state the obvious, slapping the metal door, ignoring Camille’s ranting. “Do you
have a phone?”
“Do I look like I
have a phone?” Camille pivots in a circle, her arms outstretched. “Besides
we’re in freakin’ Fort Knox.” She pats one of the walls. “These babies must be
shielded to hell and back.”
“The doors are
thick also.” I slap the metal door again, my palm stinging with the impact.
“Hey.” I gaze upward. “They have cameras.” I point at the black lens positioned
above us. “Security must be monitoring the stairwells.” I wave my arms at the
camera. “They’ll send help.”
“If they’re real
cameras, they’ll send help,” Camille scoffs. “Didn’t you hear about that girl
in Westwood? She was trapped in a stairwell for four whole days. That stairwell
had cameras too: fake cameras, installed to discourage thieves. She ate her
fingernails down to bloody nubs.”
“Four days,” I
repeat, staring up at the camera. It looks real, but I guess that’s the point.
Fake-looking cameras wouldn’t fool thieves. “We could pull the fire alarm.”
“If we do that,
we’ll get ourselves fired.” Camille shakes her head. “They’ll evacuate the
building and we’ll look like dumb asses. Oh.” Her face becomes animated. “I
could pick the lock.”
I stare at her.
“Can you do that?”
“I’ve picked locks
before.” She beams, acting as though this is a skill to be admired. “Let me
have a look.” Camille shoves me out of the way. She examines the door, rattling
the handle and poking her fingernail into the lock. “Do you have a piece of
wire?”
The only piece of
wire I have is attached to my bra. “Wait a second.” I unbutton my blazer for the
second time today, unhook my bra, and pull it through the armholes. Jiggling
the underwire, I try to poke it through the fabric. “I need scissors.”
“If we had
scissors, I could jimmy the door open.” Camille eyes the lock. “And our
problems would be solved.”
“You scare me.” I
bite my bra, tearing the lace, and slide the wire out of the cup. “Here’s your
pick, as I believe you criminals call it.”
“A few minor
misdemeanors does not make one a criminal,” Camille mutters, taking the wire
from me.
“Actually, I
believe it does.” I sit down on the steps, the concrete cool under my ass.
“I freed
information.” Camille straightens the wire and inserts the end into the lock.
“This is America. Freeing information shouldn’t be a misdemeanor.”
“Sure, sure, tell
it to the judge.” I watch her work, hoping to learn something.
Minutes pass. I
don’t know anything about picking locks, but I do know how to read people and
Camille is struggling with her assigned task, her curses growing louder and
more colorful.
“Are you sure you’ve
done this before?” I lean back on the stairs, spinning my bra around the tip of
my right index finger. This is much more interesting than shredding paper.
“I’m not
deliberately screwing the pooch,” Camille snaps. “This is a high-end lock.”
“Thank you,” a deep voice drawls, the low tones originating from behind me. “We try our best.”
“Thank you,” a deep voice drawls, the low tones originating from behind me. “We try our best.”
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