Sometimes we left our elevator, although not too often. We sat on the sidewalk and listened to tires on the asphalt. There were little stones that the cars crunched on, softly, as though eating peanuts. The street was steep, so the cars had to go slowly. Their engines made a constant humming noise that made the crunching of tires sound even warmer. With our eyes closed, we guessed from which side the car would come. You’d be surprised how hard it is—maybe the sound gets reflected and therefore comes from both sides, I don’t know. Sometimes there is music coming from a neighborhood restaurant. In those cases, we smile at each other: we are lucky to have a beautiful background for our acute tire sounds. It’s like looking at a candle when you have the sun in the background—the sun is much brighter, but for a second you only see the candle because it’s so much closer and so much more yours. We listen to the neighborhood restaurant music the whole time, but when we hear a car approaching, we tune in to the frequency of its tires’ sound and when it’s right in front of us, it fills our eardrums with the softest, brownest, peanut crunching sound in the world.
“Let’s get some apple juice,” Lilitt said and started on his feet.
“Hey, I don’t want any juice,” I said, still sitting on my edge of the grumpy sidewalk. “And I haven’t brought any money.”
“I’ll get you a juice, don’t worry.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“I really don’t want any juice.” I still sat on the sidewalk.
“What’s your problem with a simple box of juice?”
“I just don’t want it! Why do we have to get up from our sidewalk only because you want juice? What if I don’t feel like getting juice right now?”
Lilitt stopped shifting his weight. “That’s what my mom says to my dad all the time. That we do things only when he wants to do them.” I didn’t have anything to say. It’s not like I’d seen his parents argue.
“So you’re saying I’m like my father.” At this moment, Lilitt would have scratched his beard if he had one.
“I’m not saying anything about your father. I’m just saying you want juice and I don’t want juice, but you want us both to go anyway.”
He sat down next to me on the edge of the sidewalk and closed his eyes. I did the same, so that we could listen to some more tires on the asphalt.
We went back to our elevator, and as I waited for him to finish his sentences before passing them to me, I looked at his left hand leaning on his knee and holding his chin. I couldn’t imagine beard growing on that chin, somehow, I don’t know why. And I felt stupefied right there, looking at his focus on the sheet of paper.
My chest was numb, and my hands were numb, and my legs were numb down their entire length. I had to cut this snake venom off before it reached my forehead, that’s why I had to say what was on my mind.
“I feel way too inferior when I’m around you,” I said to Lilitt.
“It’s only because I’m so much smarter,” she said, and her smile sent a joking spark my way.
Lilitt—she. That’s when I realized she was a girl. It didn’t strike me, I just knew it and it didn’t make much of a difference. Lilitt was still Lilitt, she was still finishing her last sentence right there on the sheet in front of me in the dusty, green elevator. The sound of it moving up and down had become our shared song by now. She stretched out her hand to give me her sentences. My hand flew out in front of me, and the sheet sank into my fingers like butter sinking into bread.
Her eyes shuffled around and her lips moved and pressed against each other trying to keep words inside until she finally straightened her back, looked at me, and inhaled.
“Do you want to get some apple juice now?”
“I do feel like drinking a little apple juice now, yeah,” I said and we got up. The elevator was rising to the 28th floor, so we waited for it to hit the top, then pressed 1 and got out once the elevator was ready to open its doors for us at the bottom. I was thinking about the juice. She was so embarrassed to ask again, what else could have I said?!
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