Chapter 11
A Trip Down the Memory Stairwell
Sakura was toying with her watch when the elevator doors opened. She stepped aside to let the man into the elevator. He was wheeling a caddy stacked high with boxes. He pressed the third floor button. A few seconds passed. The doors opened again and this time, Sakura squeezed herself into a corner as a family joined her in the elevator. Apparently, obesity was hereditary for them. They got off on the fourth floor where there was a gray haired man waiting. He popped in a cigarette and Sakura couldn't breathe – not even to take in a deep enough breath to tell the man it was illegal to smoke in elevators. They hit the sixth floor where a group of giggling girls got onto the elevator. They rode up to the seventh floor, by which time Sakura had a headache.
This has to be the slowest elevator in the world! I'll just take the damn stairs! She thought to herself, almost galloping out of the doors so she would have to hear that horrendous giggling another second, and so she could breathe properly again. So what if I live on the fifteenth floor?
Meanwhile . . .
"Eriol?" Syaoran cried. "What are you doing here?"
"So you found out Sakura lives here too," he said smiling. "It's odd. I called your apartment to see if you wanted to tag along on the visit but I got the machine twenty billion times so I just came without you." Eriol laughed. "Maybe I should have thought you'd have gotten here ahead of me."
"Well, you wasted your time on both accounts," Syaoran said irritably as the elevator doors closed behind Eriol. "She's not here."
"Oh, that's too bad," Eriol said. "You didn't get to see her?" Eriol pressed the down button.
"No."
"I wonder how long it's been since you have."
"Ten years."
"The elephant who never forgets! Did you ever hear from her at all? I heard from Tomoyo that Sakura hasn't had contact from you in a long time."
Syaoran shrugged, trying to make light of his guilt, which was again growing in his stomach. "She stopped writing about eight years ago."
"You never wrote to her?"
"Well," Syaoran stuttered. "I mean – it wasn't anything like that – it's just – well I just busy, you see, and – "
"Okay, save it, dude," Eriol said. "But you can obviously understand my skepticism?"
"I can?"
"You guys were hot and heavy for the better part of six years!" Eriol said, as the elevator on their left opened. "I'm just surprised you didn't make more of an effort is all."
Eriol stepped into the elevator as a man with a cigarette got out and he immediately started coughing. "Hey (cough) Syaoran (cough-cough), you going (cough) down? (hacking cough)."
"Uh, no," Syaoran said. "I think I'll take the stairs."
The doors to the elevator shut.
Meanwhile . . .
Sakura was seriously contemplating taking her shoes off. Climbing several flights of stairs in heels isn't very fun. At least they aren't stilettos, she thought. The sandals she was wearing were comfortable enough for walking in general, but not for going up who knows how many flights of stairs. She had lost her balance twice already.
She passed a sign with a big painted number 14 on it and saw one of the janitors mopping the tiled stairs.
"Be careful, miss," he said. "The sixteenth and fifteenth floor stairs haven't quite dried yet."
"Good to know," Sakura said, nodding, and continuing her progress up the stairs much more carefully.
Meanwhile . . .
Syaoran opened the doors that lead to the stairwell. His shoe slipped and immediately he fell . . . and then tumbled down the stairs.
A/N: Can anybody get the title now? Get it? He trips! And I couldn't call it Memory Lane, now could I? Corny, yeah, I know. Anyway . . . review!
