Original Stories Fan Fiction / Realism Fan Fiction ❯ 13th Floor ❯ Bonjour Maison Samedi! ( Chapter 1 )

[Primeval man] could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast …Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods ... Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained. At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way. He said: 'I have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.'

—Aristophanes, Plato's Symposium

 

“Remind me again why you didn't hire movers,” said Maria in a pained tone as she lifted another cardboard box, labeled “DVDs.”

“Because we are strong, capable, independent, young women,” replied Lynn with fierce determination in her voice as she cradled another two heavy boxes in her arms with more strength than her small frame showed.

“Speak for your self,” Maria said sluggishly as she dropped the box on the floor and plopped down on the sofa. Her butterscotch face, framed by bouncy, soft, dark brown curls which cut off just below her shoulders, shone with sweat, and her almond-shaped, chocolate brown eyes were struggling to stay open.

“Hey, aren't you supposed to be helping me?” asked Lynn in an accusing tone as she set the boxes down, putting her hands on her hips.

“Sorry, sister, but I'm with her on this one,” said Anna, casually throwing herself next to Maria onto the sofa. She carelessly kicked her house slippers off to put her feet up on the coffee table, and she allowed her mouth to hang slightly open as she spread her arms wide to rest on the backboard of the couch.

“Oh, come on,” said Lynn, pouting.

“Get that good-for-nothin' boyfriend of yours to help you,” said Anna teasingly as she threw her head back to rest on her arm. The motion had a whiplash effect, sending a ripple down her long, flowing river of dyed blonde, waist-length hair.

“Hey, don't talk that way about Stephan,” said Lynn with mock anger, crossing her arms. “He said he had to be somewhere on business today.”

“That's what he always says,” Maria nonchalantly threw in.

“I can't believe you're still buying his junk,” said Anna with true disdain.

“Well, I suppose we should talk about this a bit,” said Lynn slowly and thoughtfully.

“You suppose?” Anna asked skeptically.

“Okay, okay,” said Lynn, surrendering, putting her hands in the air, “he's a little unreliable! I admit it!”

“A little?” asked Maria in the same tone Anna had used.

“Okay, a lot,” said Lynn dropping her hands and avoiding Maria and Anna's eyes.

“Why are you still with that loser then?” asked Anna seriously.

“Because he's so sweet, and remember how he helped me out so much back then,” Lynn tried to convince her friends.

“Fine, we'll buy that for now,” said Anna, narrowing her deep-set, green eyes.

“But I think you've more than paid off your debt to him,” said Maria, her voice dripping in concern, and her eyes shining with worry.

“I owe him my life,” said Lynn simply, only the slightest hint of sadness showing through her happy-go-lucky mask. “Well, anyway, let's try and finish moving these boxes,” she said with renewed fire, trying to shake the serious mood.

“Sorry, girl, but I have to go,” said Anna sincerely, “'cause we're having a health inspection at the restaurant. I gotta make sure those buttheads cleaning the place do a good job.”

“Oh,” said Lynn slightly disappointed. “Well, I wouldn't want you to have to close Annie's down,” she finished jokingly.

“Are you sure?” asked Anna. “Annie's is the cleanest restaurant in town. If it got any more sterile, doctors could perform open-heart surgery there,” she said with more than a hint of pride.

“I'll be fine,” said Lynn reassuringly.

“Alright,” said Anna as she headed for the door reluctantly, “if you say so.”

“Make sure to get rid of the dead rat behind the refrigerator,” chimed in Maria as Anna slipped through the door. Maria and Lynn heard a laugh come from the other side of the door Anna had gone through.

A few moments after Anna left, the light mood began to shift. Lynn took a deep, cleansing breath and stood up. It wasn't Anna's fault that she had a thriving business she needed to take care of, Lynn thought. She wanted the best for her friend, but most of all, she wanted her friend to be happy. Lynn knew that Annie's was one of the important things in Anna's life. Even when they had first met, everyone knew that Anna wanted to be a restaurant owner. She remembered the small 7th grader, a brunette back then, telling her, in a Mississippi accent that she had eventually lost, that she wanted to someday make the best steak in the New York area. Lynn didn't think it was fair to take her friend's dream away just because she needed help moving a couple of old boxes. Even if some of those old boxes were really, really heavy. She turned towards Maria, putting her false smile back on, knowing that if she didn't, Maria would be extremely worried. In fact, Maria would've seen through Lynn's bad acting immediately if she were not, at the moment, completely lost in thought, thinking about her own problems. There were just too many things to deal with and so little time to do it, she thought.

Lynn asked, “So, you ready to get back to work?”

“Sorry, I can't,” Maria replied. “I've got a parent teacher conference today. Things have been seriously messed up since mom got sick.”

“Oh, I see,” said Lynn, trying not to sound too dejected while her shoulders sagged. It wasn't Maria's fault she had a sick mother in the hospital and a younger sister in junior high who needed to be taken care of, Lynn tried to convince herself.

“You know what,” she began regaining some pep, “I'll walk you out. We might even be able to catch Anna.”

“You sure,” asked Maria, not wanting her friend to overwork herself.

“Totally,” said Lynn waving her hand to disregard Maria's concern. “As your best friend, it's my duty to look out for you. Who knows what kind of weirdoes are out there?” She finished with a true smile on her face.

“Sure, sure,” Maria drawled with a lopsided grin, rolling her eyes. She nearly jumped off the couch, placing her hands on her hips in an I'm-ready-for-anything way. “Then let's get going already.”

They linked arms and began to march towards the door. Once they reached it, they bent over to grab their shoes. Lynn tied on her “Adidas” sneakers as Maria slipped on her gold, “Michael Kors” ballet slippers.

Soon, they had slipped through Lynn's apartment door, and the two were making their way down the 13th floor hallway towards the elevator.

They walked mostly in silence until reaching the elevator. It was one of those old-fashioned ones that showed which floor the shaft was at on a clock-like mechanism near the top of the large, slightly rusty door. It took a while for it to arrive after Maria had pressed the down button, and once it did, it made an ear piercing screech, like there was a murder going on in there.

Maria took a small step back, hesitant to step inside the killer elevator while Lynn bravely walked in.

“You coming?” asked Lynn nonchalantly, holding open the elevator door.

“Are you sure it's safe?”

“Should be,” Lynn replied casually. With a few more encouraging words from Lynn, Maria agreed to go inside the dangerous elevator, still rather reluctantly. As the elevator dropped towards the lobby, it made another piercing screech.

The noise stopped by the time they reached the seventh floor, and Maria finally spoke. “I don't think we'll be able to catch up to Anna,” she said softly, looking down at her clasped hands.

“Probably not,” replied Lynn a little louder, staring at the elevator ceiling.

Before Maria could say much more, the doors slid apart to reveal the vast and elegant lobby of Maison Samedi.

Lynn placed her hand in front of the door to prevent it from closing, allowing Maria into the lobby. She was about to follow when Maria placed a hand in front of her, signaling her to stop.

“I'll be fine from here,” she said softly, her eyes finding something extremely interesting by her feet, “and you need to get back to those boxes.” She looked up at last and smiled.

“Oh sure,” said Lynn, feeling unneeded.

Maria took a few steps away from the elevator, towards the lobby's large spinning doors, before turning back towards her friend again to say jokingly, “By the way, you should really do something about those elevators.”

Lynn smiled in return. “I spoke to the landlady about them when I rented the place. She said they were perfectly safe... most of the time,” she trailed off.

Maria rolled her eyes, and headed out the lobby door into the cold, New York, streets.

Lynn dropped her arm to close the elevator door. It wasn't until the door was halfway closed that she noticed a handsome, young man, around her age, running towards the elevator, yelling at her to wait and hold the door open. She normally would've been quick to hold the door open for anyone, but the combination of her bad day and the thought of hard work ahead of her had her head knocked out of the game, and she had an unusually slow reaction to the young man's screamed request. Therefore, she was not able to hold the door open, and he was not fortunate to make it in time either.

Too bad, Lynn thought. She silently pouted, remembering his thick shock of jet black hair, those well-muscled arms, not well concealed by a black hoodie, and that perfect tan, impressive especially for New York City. She shook her head to get rid of those thoughts. What am I thinking?

Lynn rid her mind of the elevator-guy-who-just-so-happened-to-look-like-Taylor-Lautner as she absent-mindedly made her way back to her 13th floor apartment.

A few minutes later, stuck in a malfunctioning elevator in Maison Samedi, a certain young man was wondering what horrible deed he could've possibly done in his childhood or some past life to deserve such awful luck. Tyler had been expecting a very important call from the New York Times to tell him whether or not he had received a position there as a writer. Unfortunately, at his day job at the local Starbucks, he had forgotten his cellular phone. Since he had been counting on receiving the call on that phone, and he hadn't realized he was missing it until he was already halfway home on the subway; he hurried to his apartment to take the call on his home phone. Of course the Times would have left a message, but Tyler had really been hoping to hear the news live. Unfortunately, on his way home, Tyler ran into some…complications, one of them being stuck in a malfunctioning elevator. He had pressed the emergency assistance button near the numbers on the elevator, and the repairman had said that he would need to wait about a half hour before he could make it to his 13th floor apartment. Of course, that would mean missing his phone call, but then again, with his luck, he probably didn't get the position anyway.

The unlucky New Yorker sighed and slumped down in a sitting position, knees pressed to his chest, in the corner of the shaft. He thought of how if he had been a little bit faster, he could've caught the ride up with that pretty girl, he wouldn't have missed that important call, and he wouldn't need some kind of alcoholic beverage at that moment.

When he finally made it to his apartment, he found three messages on his voicemail: one courtesy call from the editor of the New York Times to inform him that he “didn't get the job,” one from his co-worker and best friend, Charlie, to let him know that he had picked up his cell phone from work, and one from his little sister in high school, Kimberly, to tell him that if he didn't ask their mother to let her spend the weekend over, she was going to die from their mother's nagging. He decided to pick up his cell phone from Charlie and call his sister back after he finished off the bottle of tequila in the pantry that he usually reserved for emergencies.