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was so close she could almost see the dollars in her bank account. And boy did she want those dollars. They’d put her closer to her ultimate goal, and this was the year that everything was going to turn around for her. It was all about steady and constant focus. Working the students as hard as she could and as hard as she worked herself. This David fellow seemed like the kind of guy who could handle her vision.
    “I have a task for you,” she said.
    “Sure. Anything.”
    “Come with me.” She got up out of her chair and flattened the creases in her pencil skirt.
    David followed her.
    “Where are you taking me?” he asked in a joking voice as they walked through two double doors out into the receiving area. “I’ve never seen this part of the building before.”
    “The freight elevator,” Nadine said.
    “There’s a freight elevator?”
    “Are you surprised?”
    “I had no idea.”
    “It’s an old building. It’s been renovated a lot, but there’s still this old storage space down in the basement.”
    “Whoa.”
    “Yeah, and your task for the next few days will be to clear it out and get all of the stock down there priced and onto the shelves.”
    “Okay.”
    She pressed the button with the downward pointing arrow. It lit up. A few seconds later, there was a rumbling sound of the elevator reaching their floor. The elevator doors opened from a horizontal crack down the middle. They stepped in. Nadine yanked on a rope at the top that pulled the top half of the door down and the bottom half up. David looked intently at the process.
    “Have you ever been in a freight elevator before?” she asked.
    “No.”
    “Then you’re in for a treat. Pretty weird in here, huh?” Nadine didn’t ordinarily make small talk with the students but then again, she rarely put herself in a situation wherein small talk seemed appropriate. Usually, she merely delegated from her desk and got back to work. This task required a little more of her.
    Instead of buttons on the inside, there was a lever that she held down. She set it to ‘Basement’. There was another rumble and they were off.
    “Whoa. Neat,” David uttered. He sounded excited, as though he was on some kind of strange ride at an amusement park.
    Just then another rumbling came and some bouncing then it felt like their downward motion had stopped. The floor of the elevator lift bobbed up and down a little then it was still.
    “Don’t worry,” Nadine said. “This thing never gets stuck.”
    “I’m not worried,” David said.
    Nadine had reassured him as a form of projection. She was the one who feared small, enclosed spaces. She hadn’t liked them ever since she was a child. One time she got stuck in her grandfather’s tool shed out behind his shop. Another time, her brother locked her in the furnace closet and went out to play and several hours passed before anyone came home. In the end, it was her father who found her, balling her eyes out, in wet pants that had dried again, but smelled bad. Her brother was punished, but not enough in Nadine’s view. She still secretly resented him for scarring her for life.
    “It’s okay,” Nadine said. “We’ll get out.”
    “Of course we will,” David replied.
    “I just need to pull on this rope here,” she said, trying to open the doors. We might be between floors and we might need to crawl out, but it’ll be better than waiting for someone to come.
    She heaved with all her might but nothing happened.
    “It’s supposed to open no matter where we are,” she protested.
    David grabbed the rope from her. “Here,” he said. “Let me.”
    He pulled hard—the sweat on his brow indicated it was as hard as he could—but nothing seemed to budge.
    “Press the emergency button,” Nadine said.
    David pushed it and it lit up. “Oh good,” he said. “It works. We’ll be out of here in no time.”
    Nadine searched her pockets. “I knew I should have brought my cell phone.” She shook her head, making it