Elevator Pitch

It was her expertise in missing heritability that had earned her an invitation to continue her studies in New York, but it was her vast knowledge about pathogens that might end up keeping her here.

Fanya Petrov did not want to return to Russia.

Fanya Petrov wanted to stay in America.

This was not something she had mentioned to her superiors back home. But she had mentioned it, discreetly, to another professor at Rockefeller who had connections with the State Department. A few days later, a message was relayed to her that her situation was being looked at favorably. If she were to seek asylum in the United States, she would be accepted—provided, of course, she shared everything she knew about Russian research into pathogens.

That was fine with her.

But Fanya Petrov was now very, very anxious. What if her superiors were to learn of her treachery? Would they summon her home before her application for asylum had been approved? Would she be thrown into a car and put on a plane before anyone knew she was missing? And what would happen to her when she got back?

Very, very bad things.

She had become so consumed with worry that when the elevator’s arrival was announced with a resounding ding, it startled her. Fanya sighed with relief and stepped into the empty cab as the doors opened.

She pressed G and watched as the doors closed.

The descent began.

“Please, no stops,” she said under her breath, in Russian. “No stops, no stops, no stops.”

There was a stop.

At the twentieth floor.

No.

Every time the elevator stopped, or there was a knock at the door, or someone dropped by to see her at her office at Rockefeller, Fanya feared it would be someone from the FSB, Putin’s modern version of the KGB.

So when the door parted and there was no one standing there who looked like a Russian thug, Fanya felt momentarily relieved. But relief was soon supplanted by irritation when she saw that it was the same father and son who had delayed her on her last trip down this elevator. Her heart sank. Please let them have remembered everything, she thought.

The father glanced to see that G had already been pressed. As the doors started to close, he looked down at his son and asked, “You got your homework?”

The kid, suddenly panicked, said, “Shit.”

American children, Fanya thought. So foul-mouthed.

The doors only had four more inches to go to close. But the father’s arm went up with the speed of a lightning bolt, his hand angled vertically, sliding into the rapidly narrowing space. The rubber extenders bounced off both sides of his wrist and the door retracted.

“Please,” Fanya said. “I am in a hurry.”

He caught her eye and nodded. Fanya took that to mean that both father and son would get off, retrieve the forgotten homework, and catch another elevator.

But that was not the father’s plan.

He said to the boy, “You hold the elevator. I’ll go. It’s on the kitchen table, right?”

The boy nodded and put his finger on the Hold button.

Fanya sighed audibly, but the father didn’t hear it because he was already running down the hall, keys in hand.

The boy looked sheepishly at the scientist. “Sorry.”

Fanya said nothing. She crossed her arms and leaned up against the back wall of the car. Down the hall, she saw the man slip into the apartment.

Five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds.

Fanya felt her anxiety growing. She did not like to be in any one place for a long period of time. She felt exposed, vulnerable.

The apartments in this building were not huge. How long could it take for the man to run in, grab something off the kitchen table, and come back out?

“Remembering homework is your responsibility,” Fanya said sternly. “If you forget, you forget. The teacher gives you a zero. Next time, you remember.”

The boy just looked at her. But suddenly his eyes went wide. He said to Fanya, “Can you hold the button?”

“What?”

“Just hold it!”

She stepped forward and replaced his finger with hers on the button. The boy slipped off his backpack, dropped it to the floor, and knelt down to undo the zipper. He rifled through some papers inside and said, “Here it is.”

Yet another sigh from Fanya.

The boy got up and stood in the open doorway. “Dad!” he shouted down the hall. “I found it!”

No response.

This time, he screamed, “Daaad!”

The father’s head poked out the doorway. “What?”

“I found it!”

The dad stepped out into the hall.

Fanya, somehow thinking they were finally all on their way, let her finger slide off the button.

The doors began to close.

“Hey!” the kid said.

But he was less courageous than his father and did not insert his arm into the opening to stop the doors’ progress. And Fanya wasn’t about to do it.

She’d had enough.

The father shouted, “Hey! Hang on! Hold the—”

The doors closed. The elevator began to move. The boy looked accusingly at Fanya and said, “You were supposed to hold it.”

She shrugged. “My finger slipped. It is okay. You wait for your dad in the lobby.”

The kid slipped his backpack onto his shoulder and retreated to the corner, which was as far away as he could get from the woman in the tight space.

They traveled three or four floors when the elevator stopped.

This was just not Fanya’s day.

But the doors did not open. The elevator sat there. The readout said they were at the seventeenth floor.

“What is happening?” Fanya asked. She looked accusingly at the boy. “Did your dad stop the elevator?”

The kid shrugged. “How would he do that?”

After fifteen seconds of not moving, Fanya began to pace in the confined area.

It’s them. They know. I’m trapped.

“I have to get to work,” she said. “I have to get out of here. I am giving a lecture. I cannot be late.”

The boy dropped his backpack to the floor again, reached in and pulled out a cell phone and began to tap away.

“What are you doing?” Fanya asked, stopping her pacing.

“Texting my dad.”

“Ask him if he stopped the ele—”

“I’m telling him we’re stuck.” He looked at the phone for several more seconds, then said, “He’s going for help.”

“Oh,” Fanya said. She wanted to ask the boy to ask his father if there were any strange men around. Men who looked out of place. Men with Russian accents. But she decided against it. “Why do you think we are stuck?” she asked the boy.

The kid shrugged.

“Why won’t the doors open?”

“We’re probably between floors,” the boy said.

Fanya looked at him and, for the first time, felt some kinship. They were, after all, in this together. “What is your name?”

“Colin,” he said.

“Hello, Colin. My name is Fanya.”

“Hi.”

Keep talking to the boy, she told herself. It would help control her paranoia.

“What was your homework on?”

“Fractions,” he said.

“Ah,” she said. “I liked taking fractions when I was a little girl.”

“I hate them.”

Fanya managed an anxious smile. “I think we need to do something to get out of here. We cannot stay in here. It is not good.”

“My dad’ll get somebody.”

“That could take a long time. We need to do something now. Don’t you have to get to school so you can see how well you did on your fractions homework?”

Colin nodded.

“And I have to get to work. So let’s figure this out.” Fanya studied where the doors met, worked a finger into the rubber lining. “I bet we could get these apart.”

“Uh, I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.”

“Maybe we are not between floors,” she said. “Maybe the hallway is right there and all we have to do is step off.”

“Maybe,” Colin said uncertainly.

She dug her fingers in and started to pull the door on the right side into the open position. The doors did not move.

Fanya said, “You look like a strong boy, even though you are little. You pull from the other side.”

Colin said nothing, but did as he was asked. He got his fingers into the now-larger gap and pulled hard on the left door. Even with both of them pulling, the doors parted only about half an inch.

“Okay, okay, stop,” Fanya said. They both released their grips on the doors and took a step back. “I do not think this is going to work.”

And then, as if by magic, the doors parted. Fanya and the boy stepped back, startled.

“Well,” Fanya said.

The woman and the boy were faced with a concrete block wall, and an opening.

From the floor of the car, and going nearly three feet up, was the gray cement wall of the elevator shaft. Above that, open space. Fanya and Colin were able to stare straight down the seventeenth-floor corridor.

“Success!” she shouted.

Fanya felt relieved not only that the doors had opened, but that there were not any men in black suits standing there in the hallway, waiting for her.

“I’m not going through there,” Colin said nervously, backing away farther.

Fanya smiled. “We just have to be quick.”

“No way,” he said.

She smiled sympathetically. “Think of it as a fraction. The doors are how far open?”

The boy looked at her. “Half?”

“Very good. So it is half-open, and half-closed. Half-open is good enough for us to get out. But I will try it first.” She grinned. “I just have to be fast.”

She set her purse on the elevator floor. “I used to be a gymnast in Russia,” she said. “When I was a girl.” She grimaced. “It was a long time ago. But some things you don’t forget. Climbing up three feet should not be so hard.”

Fanya put both hands on the grooved metal strip on the hallway level, hoisted herself up enough to get her knee onto it, then moved her entire body through the opening. She was on her knees in the hallway, her feet hanging over the edge inside the car before she stood triumphantly.

“What are you going to do now?” Colin asked, looking up at her. “Are you going to leave me here?”

Shit. She really couldn’t do that. She’d freed herself, could head to the university, but how would it look? “Visiting Professor Abandons Child in Stuck Elevator.” Would a callous act like that prompt the State Department to reject her request for asylum?

“No,” she said. “I will not do that. I will not leave you here.” She glanced down at the elevator floor. How stupid of her. She’d dropped her purse there. It would have made more sense to have tossed it out onto the hallway floor before making her escape.

“Colin,” she said, pointing. “Toss me my purse. Then we’ll see about getting you out, too.”

As Colin reached down to get it, Fanya dropped back down to her hands and knees to reach in to take it from him.

She leaned forward into the car. Colin picked up the purse and held it out for her. Fanya shifted slightly forward on her knees.

The elevator suddenly moved.

Down.

The roof of the car dropped toward Fanya’s neck. She didn’t have to glance upward to see what was coming. She saw the elevator floor dropping away from her. While physics had never been her area of expertise, she could figure this much out. If the car’s floor was heading down, the car’s ceiling would surely follow.

Without having to think about it, she began to withdraw her head from the elevator. She needed to get her entire body back into the hallway.

She was not quick enough.

The elevator continued on its way to ground level at a normal rate of speed. When the doors opened several seconds later, those who had been waiting—and not very patiently, at that—were greeted by the sight of a near catatonic, wide-eyed Colin, huddling in the corner as far away as possible from Fanya Petrov’s arm and hand, still gripping her purse, and the scientist’s decapitated head.

Twelve

Barbara got to the Morning Star Café on Second Avenue, just above Fiftieth, before her daughter, Arla, got there. She took a booth near the window, facing the street, and said yes to a cup of coffee when the waiter stopped by. Barbara scanned the menu to pass the time, but knew she’d be getting a Virginia ham and cheddar omelette. Arla, she was betting, would have only coffee.

Barbara glanced at the photos on the wall. A lot of famous people had dropped by the Morning Star over the years. There were a couple of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who Barbara was pretty sure had lived in the neighborhood before his death in 2007. She’d seen him once, a couple of blocks north of here, but didn’t say anything, even though she was a fan. You were always seeing somebody famous in New York and were expected to be cool about it.

She’d checked the menu, scanned the walls. Fidgety. Getting out her phone seemed the next logical step. Barbara had mixed feelings about meeting with her daughter this morning. She had reason to believe Arla’d been seeing a therapist lately, although Arla had not come right out and admitted it when Barbara asked. But Barbara knew Arla had a multitude of issues she was struggling to come to terms with. There’d been an eating disorder for a while there, but that seemed to be under control. When Arla was in her midteens, she’d gone through a cutting period, marking her arms with a razor. That one really had Barbara worried, but that, too, had passed.

Barbara was aware that whatever the issue, Arla was inclined to trace it back to her mother. She was, after all, the root of all of Arla’s problems.

Well, fuck, Barbara thought. I was never exactly June Cleaver.

When Barbara found herself pregnant at eighteen, she was already working on a career in journalism. As a kid, inspired by watching reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (she wasn’t old enough to have seen it when it first came on), Barbara wanted to be Mary Richards. She wanted to work in news. And Mary showed how an independent woman could make it, after all.

When she was barely seventeen, she had landed a reporting gig at the Staten Island Advance, winning over the editors by showing up day after day with unsolicited stories about interesting people in the borough. They were good. They saw that the kid could produce. They took her on despite her young age and lack of a journalism degree.

Who needed a piece of paper to frame and hang on the wall? You went out, you asked people questions, you observed, you wrote it down. When someone wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to know, you found someone else who would. You kept asking until you got an answer. How tricky was that? You needed to go to school for four years to figure that out?

Barbara threw herself into her work from the very beginning. The proverbial printer’s ink ran through her veins. She was covering murders and gang wars and plane crashes and political scandals when she was no older than first-year journalism students.

She was having the time of her life.

Until she found out she was pregnant.

Getting knocked up was definitely not part of the plan. At first, she was in denial. She couldn’t believe that it had happened. The home pregnancy test had to be wrong. So she did nothing, told no one.

But there comes a point when what you refuse to believe becomes painfully obvious.

So when her tummy began to ever so slightly bulge, she found the courage to find the man who’d gotten her pregnant. He deserved to know, right? Barbara figured there was a chance he’d even want to know. Okay, maybe that was being too hopeful. The guy was going to be shocked, no doubt about it. Especially considering that they hadn’t even known each other until they’d had sex, and hadn’t exactly been a couple since.

They hadn’t even seen each other since.

It had been, Barbara was willing to concede, a night of very bad decisions.

Starting with going to a party at NYU given by a former high school friend who, unlike Barbara, had pursued higher education. More bad decisions followed. She smoked a little too much weed, drank a little too much gin. And then, going over to chat up that older guy in the corner. That was the big one.

He was no longer a student, having gotten his MBA a few years earlier. He’d tagged along with some girl who knew the host of the party.

So why was he all alone in the corner?

A shrug. Some guy was going on about having to leave because he played in a band and they had a late-night gig in SoHo. She left with him.

“The bitch,” Barbara said.

Later, she wasn’t entirely clear how events had progressed. They’d had more to drink. It was possible there’d been a walk. And then they’d ended up in someone’s dorm. On a bed. Barbara remembered some fumbling with a condom, but hadn’t paid all that much attention when the guy said, “Uh-oh.”

In a few weeks, she’d have an idea what had alarmed him.

While some of the events from that night were foggy, Barbara knew there was no one else up for the role of father of her child. Sure, she’d gone to bed with other guys. But the last time she’d had sex before that evening had been a good (or bad, depending on how you looked at it) six months.

Other things she was sure of? What he looked like, and a first name. She asked the friend who’d thrown the party if she knew the guy’s surname. No special reason, she said. Just, you know, wondering.

She found him.

Broke the news.

He said, “I have no idea who you are.”

The way he said it, it almost sounded like he was telling the truth. Barbara refreshed his memory with every detail she could remember.

“Sorry,” the guy said. “Honest to God, I don’t ever remember meeting you. How long ago was this? I don’t even remember being at that party.”

“Yeah, well, we were both kind of flying.”

“Maybe you were,” he said. “Not me.”

Barbara couldn’t decide what to do. Go after him? Demand a blood test?

And of course, there was one other option.

But again, Barbara was paralyzed with indecision, and did nothing. By the time she found the strength to tell her parents, it was too late to end the pregnancy. Barbara’s mother and father—fucking saints, that’s what they were—didn’t judge. Oh sure, they wanted to know about this man, and Barbara told them she’d talked to him, that he refused to accept responsibility, and had moved to Colorado or Wyoming and gone into real estate. It wasn’t worth the time to pursue him, she said.

Okay, they said. These things happen, they said. No sense ranting and raving. What’s done is done. Let’s figure out what to do.

Give the baby up for adoption, Barbara decided. I’m not cut out to be a parent.

Well, okay, sure, that’s a possibility, her mother said. But that is my future grandchild you’re talking about. If you’re absolutely determined that you do not want to raise this child, well, your father and I have still got a few good years left, and we’ve been talking about this, and we’ve agreed that if you’re okay with it, we’ll do it.

At first Barbara thought, no way. But as that child grew inside her, she started to come around to her mother’s way of thinking. This could work. The world was changing. Alternative parenting options were in vogue. Sure, some people might look down their collective noses at Barbara, but when had she ever cared what anybody else thought?

She knew her mother was betting that when the baby arrived, Barbara would have a change of heart. She’d see that infant and decide to raise the child herself, even if there was no father’s name to put on the birth certificate.

That whole mother-child bond would kick in.

Arla arrived.

The bond did not kick in.

Barbara was tormented that it did not. She was consumed with guilt that she did not want to raise this little girl. Did she love her? Of course, without question. But if there was a mothering gene, Barbara feared she did not have it.

So Barbara’s parents honored their pledge and took Arla into their home. Barbara remained conflicted about how things had turned out. She felt less guilty that she had not given Arla up to strangers, that she was with family. But every time Barbara went home and saw her mother and father so fully engaged with Arla, the guilt bubbled back to the surface. It was an ache that never went away.

Every time she saw Arla, she was reminded of her abdication of responsibility. In those moments, she wondered whether adoption would have been the better choice. Out of sight, out of mind.

She hated herself for even thinking it.

Every week, Barbara sent a good chunk of her paycheck to her parents. She visited most weeks. She did love Arla. She loved her more than anyone or anything else in the world. No one pretended Barbara was not her mother. Arla was not raised to believe Barbara was the aunt who dropped by. No, Barbara was Mom. Barbara’s parents were Grampa and Gramma.

No lies. No attempts to deceive. At least not on that score.

It all seemed to work out.

And when Arla was twelve, Grampa died. Liver cancer. Barbara’s mother carried on alone. Barbara still came by, but as Arla moved into her teens and became the kind of hellion so many teenage girls turned into for a period of time, Barbara had to admit, deep down, that she was relieved to be spared the daily turmoil.

Thirteen months ago, Barbara’s mother passed on. Heart attack.

“This is how I see it,” Arla had told Barbara the last time they’d sat down together. “You leaving me with them is what drove them to an early grave. I was a bitch and a half, no doubt about it, but I should have been your bitch and a half, not theirs.”

“I can’t rewrite history,” Barbara had said.

“Yeah, but you don’t have a problem writing about others who’ve made a mess of theirs,” she’d countered. “Bad things people have done, mistakes they’ve made, that’s your whole shtick. But looking in the mirror, that’s not so easy.”

Barbara hadn’t known what to say. The truth was always difficult to argue.

They’d had a serious argument six months earlier. Arla wanted to go out west, try to find her father. Barbara did everything to discourage her, and offered no clues that would help her track him down. “The man’s not worth finding,” she said. Arla was furious.

Barbara said something she wished she hadn’t. “Maybe you’d have been happier if I’d given you up for adoption and you’d been raised by strangers.”

“You’re the stranger,” Arla shot back. “Always have been.”

And then Arla had gone in for the kill. “I have this friend who’s getting married, and she says her mother’s driving her crazy, wanting to be involved in every single detail about the wedding, and my friend’s like, God, I can’t take it anymore, and I said to her, hey, at least she’s interested.”

So there was every reason to feel unsettled about meeting with Arla this morning. What was Barbara to blame for now? What repressed maternal memory—or lack thereof—had Arla gone over with her therapist this week?

She’d said she had news.

Jesus, maybe it’s about her father.

So far as Barbara knew, Arla had abandoned her idea of heading out west to look for him. Maybe she’d changed her mind.

Arla still was not here—being habitually late to meetings with her was, Barbara figured, a minor act of vengeance—so Barbara scrolled through her Twitter feed. Barbara was almost never without the phone in her hand. The advent of technology had made it nearly impossible for Barbara to be alone with her own thoughts. If she wasn’t writing, or reading, or having a conversation with someone, she was on the phone.

She followed political leaders and countless pundits and various media outlets and even bulletins from the NYPD. And no one had to know that she also followed someone who tweeted, every single day, cute puppy pics.