buttons began popping and pinging and ricocheting around. Fern and Howard squatted down and balled up, but they couldn’t help but look back at what they were leaving behind. Four faces had collected there at the hatch: Mrs. Drudger, Mr. Drudger, the Bone and Dorathea—the paralyzed look of their shocked faces floating in an open square that grew smaller and smaller until Fern and Howard couldn’t see them at all.
2
ELEVATORS APLENTY
FERN AND HOWARD WERE ON A REAL BUCKING bronco of an elevator. They careened madly through tunnels, around sharp corners and down chutes. The elevator dipped, spiraled and, once, looped. Fern’s stomach looped right along, and Howard screamed like a wounded goat. They twisted, dawdled, then zipped, looped, zigged and, immediately thereafter, zagged. (There’s a word for that but I’m too excited to think of it right now.)
Fern and Howard would sometimes try to get on their feet and surf, but mostly they were tossed and rolling on the floor, flattened against one pane of glass or another. Howard looked pale—prevomit pale. Fern was breathless and bruised.
The elevator was taking them deeper underground, and because it was glass, they could see everything flying past at great speed. It was shooting around roots and basements and gopher homes and square-bottomed swimming pools and lakes, close enough to the lakes to see the fish on the other side of their glass elevator. Fern didn’t like to look at the fish, though. They reminded her too much of the menacing goldfish in the painting. She hoped she wouldn’t see that fish again.
The elevator operator, his vest held together by one straining button and its suffering thread, never lost his balance. He never so much as bobbled. He sat on his chair, next to the panel of unmarked buttons—only one lit—and wore an expression of abject boredom. He tapped his foot lightly to the plinky music piped in through a speaker.
This was maddening to Howard. He glared at the elevator operator whenever he could, desperate for an explanation. When they hit a straightaway, he caught his breath and asked as many questions as he could fire off: “Where are we? How can this elevator exist in Dorathea’s house and Mrs. Hershbaum’s apartment building and by that lake? Don’t people catch on—regular people? Where’d this elevator come from? Who manufactured it? How long has this elevator been in operation? And why don’t you fall off your stool?”
Fern had only one question to add. It was the one she’d had the first time she saw the glass elevator. “Does this thing fly, by any chance?”
This caught the elevator operator’s attention. He rearranged his black cap, patted it, then fiddled with his one remaining shiny button. “A History Lesson on the Anybody Elevator System. You have come to the right man!”
In precise detail and with great love and joy and a little nanny-nanny-know-it-all in his tone, he launched into an explanation. It went something like this:
“A ways back, a kid name Artie borrowed Charlie and the Glass Elevator from the library. Though he’d loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , this sequel didn’t suit him. Artie thought it was a strange book that seemed like it was really about something else, but if you didn’t know what that something else was, you were in trouble—an inside joke of a book. (May I interrupt to say I assure you that this book is about what it’s about and not something else. So don’t go wasting your time looking.) Artie liked the glass elevator, though, and he decided he was going to shake it out. It took fourteen days. He figured out how it worked, shook it back in very politely, and then designed glass elevators using a bit of hypnosis, transformation, and concentration. A great engineer! One of the best!” You could tellby the way he told the story that Artie was the elevator operator’s hero as a kid. “He convinced Shirley Hurlman of Hurlman and Sisters to manufacture them in a
2
ELEVATORS APLENTY
FERN AND HOWARD WERE ON A REAL BUCKING bronco of an elevator. They careened madly through tunnels, around sharp corners and down chutes. The elevator dipped, spiraled and, once, looped. Fern’s stomach looped right along, and Howard screamed like a wounded goat. They twisted, dawdled, then zipped, looped, zigged and, immediately thereafter, zagged. (There’s a word for that but I’m too excited to think of it right now.)
Fern and Howard would sometimes try to get on their feet and surf, but mostly they were tossed and rolling on the floor, flattened against one pane of glass or another. Howard looked pale—prevomit pale. Fern was breathless and bruised.
The elevator was taking them deeper underground, and because it was glass, they could see everything flying past at great speed. It was shooting around roots and basements and gopher homes and square-bottomed swimming pools and lakes, close enough to the lakes to see the fish on the other side of their glass elevator. Fern didn’t like to look at the fish, though. They reminded her too much of the menacing goldfish in the painting. She hoped she wouldn’t see that fish again.
The elevator operator, his vest held together by one straining button and its suffering thread, never lost his balance. He never so much as bobbled. He sat on his chair, next to the panel of unmarked buttons—only one lit—and wore an expression of abject boredom. He tapped his foot lightly to the plinky music piped in through a speaker.
This was maddening to Howard. He glared at the elevator operator whenever he could, desperate for an explanation. When they hit a straightaway, he caught his breath and asked as many questions as he could fire off: “Where are we? How can this elevator exist in Dorathea’s house and Mrs. Hershbaum’s apartment building and by that lake? Don’t people catch on—regular people? Where’d this elevator come from? Who manufactured it? How long has this elevator been in operation? And why don’t you fall off your stool?”
Fern had only one question to add. It was the one she’d had the first time she saw the glass elevator. “Does this thing fly, by any chance?”
This caught the elevator operator’s attention. He rearranged his black cap, patted it, then fiddled with his one remaining shiny button. “A History Lesson on the Anybody Elevator System. You have come to the right man!”
In precise detail and with great love and joy and a little nanny-nanny-know-it-all in his tone, he launched into an explanation. It went something like this:
“A ways back, a kid name Artie borrowed Charlie and the Glass Elevator from the library. Though he’d loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , this sequel didn’t suit him. Artie thought it was a strange book that seemed like it was really about something else, but if you didn’t know what that something else was, you were in trouble—an inside joke of a book. (May I interrupt to say I assure you that this book is about what it’s about and not something else. So don’t go wasting your time looking.) Artie liked the glass elevator, though, and he decided he was going to shake it out. It took fourteen days. He figured out how it worked, shook it back in very politely, and then designed glass elevators using a bit of hypnosis, transformation, and concentration. A great engineer! One of the best!” You could tellby the way he told the story that Artie was the elevator operator’s hero as a kid. “He convinced Shirley Hurlman of Hurlman and Sisters to manufacture them in a
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