Misfit Romance (For Valentine's Day. Duh)

It is V-Day. A short story is in order. First, some musical accompaniment:

Alright. Here we go.

On weekday afternoons at 4:15, Susan Moretto's life transformed. At this precise time, Monday through Friday, Susan took her government-mandated 15-minute break and tiptoed to the emergency exit stairwell, where in a great cathartic release, she would sing. From her strategic location on the fifth floor, Susan enjoyed excellent acoustics, as the empty stairwell acted like a gigantic echoing microphone. Susan sang songs about love, loss, adventure, death, destiny... pretty much anything there was to sing about. Susan's singing would continue unbroken for 15 minutes, at the end of which Susan would abruptly stop, step out of the stairwell, and return to her desk.

None of Susan's co-workers at the accounting firm where she worked were aware of her strange habit. They assumed she took the stairs down to the first-floor coffee shop in defiance of the sedentary accounting lifestyle. Had someone told them Susan utilized the stairwell for musical outbursts, they would think there was some sort of mix-up, as it would be impossible that their Susan- shy, polite, reserved Susan- would do such a thing. This staircase, as I am sure you can surmise, was quite sound resistant.

There is one exception to this soundproofing, and it applied to a corner office of the ninth floor of the building. The office belonged to a Mr. Jake Messersmith, Vice President of Information Technology for a prominent media company. Through some strange architectural anomaly, Jake had a ventilation duct that was attached to the emergency exit stairwell. Certainly now you can imagine that Jake Messersmith's life also transformed every weekday afternoon at 4:15. Jake actually made special preparations for the event by promptly closing his office door at 4:14, propping his feet up on his desk, and closing his eyes. Like clockwork, the singing would commence, and the music overtook him. For a luxurious 15 minutes every week day, Jake was completely removed from his little corner office and all its obligations. The voice took him to a world where he was free again- breathing each breath with a sense of wonder and beholding the world as the wonderful place he knew it really was.

For both Jake and Susan, these fleeting musical interludes came to be an utter necessity. While they both loved their careers and enjoyed moderate levels of success and independence, their lives lacked real meaning. The hardworking professionals could not seem to find their particular place in the world, and their lives, while bustling and busy, had no purpose. This left each feeling lonely and incomplete. Only these afternoon breaks freed them from this incurable sorrow that undercut their long days at the office. This relief was pure ecstasy.

~~~

One early summer's day, Jake decided to take a risk. On his way to work in the morning, he purchased a bouquet of yellow tulips. Once in the confines of his office, he separated out all of the flowers. To each stem, he affixed a note, which read as follows:

We need to meet
-Jake

At 3:45pm, Jake Messersmith placed a flower in front of every door in the stairwell. Surely, he reasoned, the mysterious stairwell woman would have to come across one of his notes. At 3:56, he returned to his office, sat down at his desk, and waited in a state of excited, nervous anticipation. 19 minutes later, Susan stood up from her desk and strode to the stairwell. Only Dr. Percey Spencer, upon discovering the microwave oven, would understand precisely how Susan felt at this moment. Just as he realized he unwittingly cooked a candy bar in his pocket with the magnetron he was testing, Susan, at this precise moment, realized she had caught someone's attention with her afternoon accounting breaks.

Susan squatted down, eyed the tulip, and ever so carefully, picked it up. Six times, she read the attached note. Then she walked to the stairwell's rail and looked over the edge. Below her, at every door, lay an identical tulip with an attached note. Horrified that someone might come across these unique transmissions and return to the stairwell in search of their intended recipient, Susan resolved herself to pick up every last flower. "Must destroy the evidence..." she thought.

In a state of near-panic, Susan scrambled up to the top of the staircase, then ran, rolled, and fell down from landing to landing, snatching up tulips as she proceeded. Jake, through his ninth floor corner office air duct, heard evidence of this- or at least an odd "FOOMF FOOMF FOOMF" (the sound of Susan's diminutive frame falling from step to step) sound that would not be expected from someone who has just been gifted flowers. Concerned by this unforeseen development, and also curious about the sound, Jake dashed to the stairway and opened the door just as Susan cleared the landing two floors below.

Susan heard the echo of a door opening as Jake entered, and nearly blew a fuse as she doubled her speed of controlled falling and flower collection. Sensing Susan's downward movement, and seeing that the flower at his doorway had been taken, Jake began to make his way down the steps, first at a normal pace, then faster. Before long, Susan and Jake were rushing down the stairs at breakneck speed, not daring to say anything, but wanting more than anything to hide and seek, respectively.

Susan, much to Jake's disappointment, made it to the bottom floor unseen and burst out through the fire exit directly to the street, causing the building's fire alarm to go off. Not wanting to be blamed for the offense, Jake vacated the building through the lobby. Susan spent the remaining seven minutes of her brake running to her apartment (which was only two blocks away), carefully but quickly arranging the tulips in a vase in her kitchen, then running back to work. She sat down to her desk just seconds before her computer's clock read 4:30, and her co-workers only assumed that the poor girl's shortness of breath was due to a particularly strong espresso followed by a quicker than usual jaunt up the stairs.

~~~

In the days that followed, Susan did not sing in the emergency exit stairwell. It was not the thought of someone listening to her sing that bothered her; it was the thought that someone had expressed interest in her. Susan would simply not tolerate that- could not tolerate that- because the very thought of being with anyone was excruciating. There was one exception to this cold sentiment of hers: an individual she referred to as "Lobby Man." Susan saw him every morning at the office, holding the lobby door open for the sleep deprived but caffeine-infused employees as they stumbled to work. His gentlemanly conduct coupled with a kindly expression and an indescribably perfect forehead left Susan overwhelmed with affection. No where else in the universe could there be a more perfect creature in her eyes.

Susan made a habit of hanging back every morning and watching him hold the door and smile as people passed into the building. Much as her singing appeared to be a daily escape for the eavesdropping Jake, Lobby Man's kindness was a daily escape for Susan. This man reminded her that there was still gallantry in the world, and also that she was not the only one in the city who felt chipper in the mornings. Seeing him gave her a wonderful rush of hope and joy.

Unlike Jake, however, Susan did not have the courage to reach out to the object of her affection. She could not even pass by him as he held the door open for goodness sake; how on earth could she ever approach him and express her feelings? Susan was quite resigned to the fact that her case was hopeless, but took solace knowing that they did work in the same building and that she could see him every morning (albeit from a safe distance).

Despite her morning pick-me-up of Lobby Man watching, Susan began to feel a strain on her otherwise unadulterated happiness. Without her afternoon singing break, she felt cramped and uninspired. Afternoons became almost insufferable in their unbroken monotony. She found herself counting the minutes until she could go home every evening, but once home, she felt no pleasure in her usual indulgences. Her usual pastimes of cooking, reading, and people watching at the local outdoor cafes seemed to have lost their sparkle.

Jake found himself much in the same condition. Though he was perfectly aware that the mysterious singing meant a lot to him, he had no idea that it meant this much. Life had become dull and uninspiring. It was awful.

Luckily, a sudden twist of fate caused the paths of these miserable people to cross. Jake Messersmith's media company, which regularly ran internal accounting audits, had switched firms after its original hire went bankrupt. Out of convenience, the media company selected Susan's accounting firm as a replacement. This switch to Susan's accounting firm involved a grievous amount of paperwork, and employees from the fifth floor were constantly rushing up to the ninth floor to get signatures and completed forms forms.

Though a marvelous twist of fate, one Thursday morning found Susan working on accounting paperwork for Jake's IT department. After going through several forms, Susan realized that some additional signatures were needed, so she made her way up to the ninth floor and was directed to the corner office. As you might imagine, Susan experienced a terrible shock when she realized that, sitting behind a neatly organized desk, was Lobby Man, a.k.a. Jake Messersmith.

Few ghosts could ever boast to have been as white as poor Susan suddenly turned as she crossed the threshold into Jake's office. Lapsing into crisis autopilot mode, she politely asked him to fill out and sign some forms, attempting, all the while, to not vomit or pass out. As Jake filled out the paper, he could not help but wonder what caused the woman's sickly pallor. Naturally, he began to wonder even more once Susan turned bright red at seeing his completed forms.

The cause of the redness, of course, was Susan's recognition of Jake's signature, which was the very one gracing every note attached to the tulips in the stairway. As Susan's face flushed in what ought to go on record as the world's most intense blush, she realized that the very man she was hopelessly in love with was also quite taken with her.

This knowledge was too much for her. Like an unattended wooden plank on a windy day, Susan's stiff body fell back with a magnificent crash and she lay unconscious on Jake's immaculately clean office floor. As any responsible person would do, Jake called an ambulance and the Susan's petrified, unconscious body was rushed off to the hospital.

Upon regaining consciousness, Susan was informed that she had experienced some sort of terrible shock, and that she should spend the rest of the afternoon resting. Susan thanked the doctors for their advice, left the hospital, and returned to work, where she found Jake's signed papers neatly placed on her desk. A quick glance at the clock down the hall informed her that it was precisely 4:12pm in the afternoon. Despite her weakened state, Susan decided it was time to take action. She stood up, and with a resigned stride, walked to the emergency exit stairway.

It would be hard to describe what thoughts flew through Susan's mind in the minutes leading up to 4:15. Aside from a completely understandable rush of fear at the prospect of confronting Lobby Man for the first time ever, Susan felt something she had never felt before. It was a kind of tingling deep in her gut- or not so much of a tingling, but rather a sensation that one of her organs had been filled with helium and was no longer bound by the law of gravity. It was not unpleasant, but it certainly was not familiar, and this novelty made it absolutely impossible for her to think of something to sing.

At 4:14 and 56 seconds, Susan still had no idea of exactly what she was going to do. She felt as though she stood at the edge of a cliff, about to jump off and feel the rush of weightlessness as she fell into an indiscernible abyss. At 4:14 and 59 seconds, her mind went completely blank. At precisely 4:15, however, her lungs opened, and she began to sing.

I am sure you can imagine Jake's surprise at hearing music pouring through his air duct once again. He was still moderately frazzled from the fainting incident in his office earlier that morning, and this new development caused him to rocket up from his seat in complete shock. Taking advantage of the momentum from this sudden movement, Jake flew from his chair and dashed like a madman in the direction of the emergency exit stairwell.

Susan heard the sound of a door several floors above slam open, and she heard the subsequent shuffle and rush of feet as they began to scramble down the flights of stairs, but she did not stop singing, and she did not retreat. Instead, she sang louder. Her voice echoed through the stairwell, and as the sound waves reverberated off the walls, both she and Jake felt a rush of joy- one that had been absent from both their lives for what seemed like a thousand years.

Barely looking where he was going, Jake flew down the stairs, sliding in his low-traction office loafers on each new landing, and gripping onto the railing to pull himself to the next steps. Four flights later, Jake found himself standing face to face with Mysterious Stairway Woman, whom he now realized was also accountant Susan Moretto. Now it was Jake's turn to turn completely white. Everything clicked. Everything made sense.

Susan's song came to an end, and the two stared at each other in silence. Slowly, Jake cracked a smile, and realizing that everything was ok- that this really was happening- Susan grinned too. With a sweeping gesture, Jake suggested they grab an espresso in the first floor cafe, and Susan heartily agreed, for honestly, there was no way she could top the last song with anything else.

In the first floor cafe, the two skipped the formalities of normal introductory social meetings and lapsed right into a heated discussion over the artistic value of mispronounced song lyrics. Judging from the way they spoke with each other, one would suppose Jake and Susan had been together for years. This might seem odd, as the two had only met that morning, and it was a short meeting what with all the fainting, but really, they had been together for a very long time. Every afternoon at 4:15, despite complete anonymity and physical separation, these two strangers had been more connected than most couples could ever hope to be.

Jake and Susan's song and stairway rendezvous, followed by an espresso break and fascinating conversation, repeated the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Once again, the two were blissfully happy, and this time they could share their bliss with someone else. Finally, Jake and Susan felt complete, for they realized that each was the missing puzzle piece that the other had sought.

While their companies eventually moved and the building received new occupants, Jake and Susan did not part ways, and remain together to this day. All that is left of their stairway meetings, however, are two small tulips, one on the ninth floor and and one on the fifth, drawn into onto the banister with company-issued permanent markers.