to return to Russia.
Fanya Petrov wanted to stay in America.
This was not something she had mentioned to her superiors back home. But she had mentioned it, discreetly, to another professor at Rockefeller who had connections with the State Department. A few days later, a message was relayed to her that her situation was being looked at favorably. If she were to seek asylum in the United States, she would be accepted—provided, of course, she shared everything she knew about Russian research into pathogens.
That was fine with her.
But Fanya Petrov was now very, very anxious. What if her superiors were to learn of her treachery? Would they summon her home before her application for asylum had been approved? Would she be thrown into a car and put on a plane before anyone knew she was missing? And what would happen to her when she got back?
Very, very bad things.
She had become so consumed with worry that when the elevator’s arrival was announced with a resounding ding, it startled her. Fanya sighed with relief and stepped into the empty cab as the doors opened.
She pressed G and watched as the doors closed.
The descent began.
“Please, no stops,” she said under her breath, in Russian. “No stops, no stops, no stops.”
There was a stop.
At the twentieth floor.
No.
Every time the elevator stopped, or there was a knock at the door, or someone dropped by to see her at her office at Rockefeller, Fanya feared it would be someone from the FSB, Putin’s modern version of the KGB.
So when the door parted and there was no one standing there who looked like a Russian thug, Fanya felt momentarily relieved. But relief was soon supplanted by irritation when she saw that it was the same father and son who had delayed her on her last trip down this elevator. Her heart sank. Please let them have remembered everything, she thought.
The father glanced to see that G had already been pressed. As the doors started to close, he looked down at his son and asked, “You got your homework?”
The kid, suddenly panicked, said, “Shit.”
American children, Fanya thought. So foul-mouthed.
The doors only had four more inches to go to close. But the father’s arm went up with the speed of a lightning bolt, his hand angled vertically, sliding into the rapidly narrowing space. The rubber extenders bounced off both sides of his wrist and the door retracted.
“Please,” Fanya said. “I am in a hurry.”
He caught her eye and nodded. Fanya took that to mean that both father and son would get off, retrieve the forgotten homework, and catch another elevator.
But that was not the father’s plan.
He said to the boy, “You hold the elevator. I’ll go. It’s on the kitchen table, right?”
The boy nodded and put his finger on the Hold button.
Fanya sighed audibly, but the father didn’t hear it because he was already running down the hall, keys in hand.
The boy looked sheepishly at the scientist. “Sorry.”
Fanya said nothing. She crossed her arms and leaned up against the back wall of the car. Down the hall, she saw the man slip into the apartment.
Five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds.
Fanya felt her anxiety growing. She did not like to be in any one place for a long period of time. She felt exposed, vulnerable.
The apartments in this building were not huge. How long could it take for the man to run in, grab something off the kitchen table, and come back out?
“Remembering homework is your responsibility,” Fanya said sternly. “If you forget, you forget. The teacher gives you a zero. Next time, you remember.”
The boy just looked at her. But suddenly his eyes went wide. He said to Fanya, “Can you hold the button?”
“What?”
“Just hold it!”
She stepped forward and replaced his finger with hers on the button. The boy slipped off his backpack, dropped it to the floor, and knelt down to undo the zipper. He rifled through some papers inside and said, “Here it is.”
Yet another sigh from Fanya.
The boy got up and stood in the open doorway. “Dad!” he shouted down the hall. “I found it!”
No response.
This time, he screamed, “Daaad!”
The father’s head poked out the doorway. “What?”
“I found it!”
The dad stepped out into the hall.
Fanya, somehow thinking they were finally all on their way, let her finger slide off the button.
The doors began to close.
“Hey!” the kid said.
But he was less courageous than his father and did not insert his arm into the opening to stop the doors’ progress. And Fanya wasn’t about to do it.
She’d had enough.
The father shouted, “Hey! Hang on! Hold the—”
The doors closed. The elevator began to move. The boy looked accusingly at Fanya and said, “You were supposed to hold it.”
She shrugged. “My finger slipped. It is okay. You wait for your dad in the lobby.”
The kid slipped his backpack onto his shoulder and retreated to the corner, which was as far away as he could get from the woman in the tight space.
They traveled three or four floors when the elevator stopped.
This was just not Fanya’s day.
But the doors did not open. The elevator sat there. The readout said they were at the seventeenth floor.
“What is happening?” Fanya asked. She looked accusingly at the boy. “Did your dad stop the elevator?”
The kid shrugged. “How would he do that?”
After fifteen seconds of not moving, Fanya began to pace in the confined area.
It’s them. They know. I’m trapped.
“I have to get to work,” she said. “I have to get out of here. I am giving a lecture. I cannot be late.”
The boy dropped his backpack to the floor again, reached in and pulled out a cell phone and began to tap away.
“What are you doing?” Fanya asked, stopping her pacing.
“Texting my dad.”
“Ask him if he stopped the ele—”
“I’m telling him we’re stuck.” He looked at the phone for several more seconds, then said, “He’s going for help.”
“Oh,” Fanya said. She wanted to ask the boy to ask his father if there were any strange men around. Men who looked out of place. Men with Russian accents. But she decided against it. “Why do you think we are stuck?” she asked the boy.
The kid shrugged.
“Why won’t the doors open?”
“We’re probably between floors,” the boy said.
Fanya looked at him and, for the first time, felt some kinship. They were, after all, in this together. “What is your name?”
“Colin,” he said.
“Hello, Colin. My name is Fanya.”