lie to me → s.d.

.02 | frantic imaginations

          "All these new techno-hooz-its are getting out of hand," said the old widow Mrs. Platz in the elevator. "I remember the days when big buildings like this were left unlocked for residents to come and go as they please. Now it's all different cards for the front door, the garage gate - for goodness' sake, your own apartment."

          Thirty-four-year-old Theodora Thatcher absentmindedly bobbed her head in some kind of response, eyes glued to the small space where the doors met. If she looked hard enough, peered in just the right place between the rubber bumpers, she could see the flashes of floors passing by. She wished with, she thought, most of her will that she lived on one of the lower floors.

          The Ivy Tower apartment building's elevator was a tinted steel grey on the inside, with a mat covering the scuffed tile floor a few inches off center to the left. Nobody, even the doorman that practically lived in the lobby, bothered to fix it. Flyers for past events and HOA meetings clung pitifully to the glass-covered board on the back wall. They advertised notices for rolling blackouts - not uncommon in this leg of New Orleans - and events like building-wide 'garage sales' and spring cleaning. Theodora had never once attended any of them. She either hid away in her own apartment or slunk around the perimeters to her car like a cat caught in a back alley.

          The elevator came to a halt on its journey at the fifteenth floor, and an automated voice announced their destination, as if they themselves were unable to remember just where they lived. "You see, that's just it." Mrs. Platz took Theodora's arm, as was customary, and they began to shuffle through the colorless, never-ending hallway. The abstract pictures hanging on the walls were copies of the same print, all the way down. "Back in my day, we didn't have any robots telling us what to do or where to go. We had free will then."

          "Yes, ma'am," she said politely. Everyone who was anyone in the building knew Mrs. Platz wasn't playing with quite the full deck she used to have, but after her only son died of an overdose last year, nobody could bare to brush her fantasies off like they used to. "This is your stop," she added when they reached 15C. "You need help getting in or anything?"

          The old woman wagged a dismissive hand and shooed her off. Fumbling with her keys in trembling, age-spotted hands, she emitted something like a harrumph. "I'm not one hundred yet, Miss Dora. I'm no liability." She glanced over her thin shoulder before she stepped inside. "You know you really should wear something warmer in this weather," she said and gestured to her work polo. "Plus, men don't take to women with all that ink and muscle. You look far too much like a punk for what a dear you are."

          Theodora wasn't sure what to make of the offhanded insult wrapped in the gift paper of a compliment. So, all she said was, "Yes, ma'am." When the door to 15C shut and locked, she grumbled a few murmurs beneath her breath and started to pace further down the hallway. Her dreads, adorned with gold and silver braiding cuffs, swung like a half-masted flag behind her as she walked, as if her hair itself was as exhausted as she was.

          18C greeted her like a cold embrace, one that she didn't bother giving back as she plucked the key from the metal tangle of them on her ring. The inside of the apartment was a clash of color and near-dull earth tones, the screwed-up result of two different personalities living with one another.

          "You forgot the mail again," said Theodora to the man on the couch.

          His head didn't lift from the laser-focus he had on lacing his shoes, his short swirl of blond hair looking nearly bleached in the lamplight. "I've been on a roll today," he said as some form of apology - or excuse. He rose and grabbed his bag from the counter where she had just let her purse fall, then leaned down to give her a shallow kiss. "That editor I told you about, Lindbergh, he wants to meet me for dinner tonight and go over the manuscript."