The man with the rubber boots stepped into the elevator behind me, but I didn’t see him at first. I smelled him though–the pungent odor of smoke and cheap wine and life on the street without soap. We were alone as we moved upward, and when I finally glanced over I saw the boots, black and dirty and much too large. A frayed and tattered trench coat fell to his knees. Under it, layers of foul clothing bunched around his midsection, so that he appeared stocky, almost fat. But it wasn’t from being well fed; in the wintertime in D.C., the street people wear everything they own, or so it seems.
He was black and aging–his beard and hair were half-gray and hadn’t been washed or cut in years. He looked straight ahead through thick sunglasses, thoroughly ignoring me, and making me wonder for a second why, exacdy, I was inspecting him.
He didn’t belong. It was not his building, not his elevator, not a place he could afford. The lawyers on all eight floors worked for my firm at hourly rates that still seemed obscene to me, even after seven years.
Just another street bum in from the cold. Happened all the time in downtown Washington.
But we had security guards to deal with the riffraff.
We stopped at six, and I noticed for the first time that he had not pushed a button, had not selected a floor. He was following me. I made a quick exit, and as I stepped into the splendid marble foyer of Drake & Sweeney. I glanced over my shoulder just long enough to see him standing in the elevator, looking at nothing, still ignoring me.
