Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Volume 1

Chapter 26.1: 1994, Ruiz

"Elevator, elevator."

Ambrose was singing to try to get over his claustrophobia.

"Elevator, elevator. This elevator is big as a hall, big as an aircraft carrier."

I stared at his closed eyes, his trembling body. I held his hand and joined in on his singing.

"This is not an elevator at all, it's a grand hall, an aircraft carrier."

But it wasn't true. We were in what had to be the smallest elevator in the world: the elevator of the Empire State Building. People must have been smaller when they built it or something. The people jammed around us weren't looking at each other, except for the tourists who were looking everywhere. I coughed and people tried to get away but they couldn't. They looked at me like I had a disease. In reality, I was trying to get over the flu, but they didn't have to know that.

Why were we in the elevator of the Empire State Building on a cold December day? Simple. It was Ambrose's birthday, and this was a tradition of ours. Though terrified of small spaces, Ambrose adored heights and this was the perfect way for him to be very high up, the perfect present. He said it made him feel like he was flying, like he was free.

"Almost there," I assured him.

"Almost there, almost there," he sang in repeat of me. His trembling seemed to increase so I increased my grip on his hand.

Ding!

The doors opened and around us people flooded out of the elevator like refugees. A few had terrified faces like Ambrose. I pulled Ambrose out of the elevator and on to the observation deck like a blind person and when he opened his hazel eyes they blinked a few times in the Winter sunlight.

Already our hair was whipping about in the high up wind, and he started to smile in a knowing way. "This is what the wind feels like when you're flying," he said, the same thing he said every year it seemed.

"Look what I have," I grinned, so proud, holding up two corn dogs by their sticks. His face brightened ever more. Ambrose loved corn dogs, especially from street vendors.

"So that's what that smell was! Where did you hide them?" he reached out for one and immediately stuck it in his mouth, biting off a big chunk. I handed him a mustard packet and he eagerly took it.

"In my coat," I beamed, so happy to see him happy.

"A likely place," he said, squirting half of the mustard packet on the ground and then aiming it at his corn dog. Someone immediately stepped in the mustard mess on the ground but they didn't notice. It was crowded for such a freezing day.

I took a bite of my corn dog and he took my other hand and we started to walk around the deck like children.

"You got any pennies?" he asked, leaning towards the protective diamond shaped barriers and peering down. "Look at all of those pennies on the suicide catchers. I bet they make a lot of money with those pennies."

"Are you sure they ever collect them? There's so many," I said, looking where he was looking.

"Hmm, I don't know," he smiled, thinking joyfully.

Pretty soon we had two empty sticks from our corn dogs and not really any place to put them. "Oh, there's a trash can," I pointed with my stick. The trash can was far away.

"Look out below!"

My head snapped towards Ambrose as he flicked his stick through the diamond barrier towards the street. "Ambrose!" I scolded. He was grinning towards the direction of the street and my heart blipped in a squeeze. I sighed and just smiled with him.