Another Chelsea Elevator Story

                                                            Knoxville
       Slightly hung over, I was going out to the deli one morning to get coffee and muffins.  The elevator was packed with fat Midwestern tourists, and with one tall, thin Japanese hipster girl talking loudly into her cell phone.  I got on, and as I turned to face the front the Japanese girl screamed in my ear: “OH, NO!!!”

What happened?! I thought.  Something with the elevator?  Did I do something?  It took a moment for it to register that she was simply talking on her phone.  “Why did you scream like that?” I asked, shaken, but she ignored me.

A moment later she screamed again: “Oh my God!  Push 4 for me!”  This time she was talking to me.  I pushed 4.  She went on talking over the phone: “I’m going to the Saturday Night Live after-party tonight!”  There was a pause, then: “Johnny Knoxville is my close personal friend!”

Perhaps this impressed the Midwesterners, I don’t know.  I found myself hoping that Johnny Knoxville and his buddies would hold her down and shave her head.  4 came, the door opened, I looked at her with raised eyebrow, but she didn’t get out.  She rode down to the lobby and got off with the rest of us. (Copyright 2006 Ed Hamilton)