He was, in all places, in a lobby.
And it was the simple act of entering an elevator, a move he had moved so many times, and in his usual style he was head's down, probably staring at the phone until the dead-air of the elevator impacted it and he just happened to glance at the doors now closing Get Smart-style in front of him.
He thought he saw her.
It was an imperfect stare. A glance. Askew. A blurred shot but he could tell...in the way you can see somebody on the horizon and know them...he knew. The gray boring doors closed.
Inadvertently he had already leaned forward...moving towards her...led by his head (his dumb pulsating brain) closely followed by his rapidly racing heart (cue Trish Yearwood song "It was like a lighted match, had been tossed into my soul, it was like a dam had broken in my heart")...but his feet stayed still. And as he realized that he simply smiled.
He had borrowed her for a time.
It had been a moment in time. It had been Hailey's comet. A 500-year event. A 100-year flood. He had put up some defenses...he had built some concrete and steel. Maybe pointed sticks.
He had found a billion pieces of blown-up bridges. He had perhaps every once in awhile found a few pieces that fit together. As an experiment he might have put more than a few together. It resembled a poorly built bridge. Maybe one person could stand on it...definitely not two.
A broken bridge. As that elevator door shut the bridge broke anew. A glance. Askew.
Her curious walk, the tilt of her. He felt the thud of a footprint across his chest.
The lights of floors being crossed lit briefly the tiny thin line between the elevator doors...like tiny suns that appeared and disappeared rapidly. Her briefest of borrowed interludes into his dark planet...she rose and set so very quickly. She couldn't stay to sunset, she left in a brief sunrise.
A glance. Askew. A chance. Renewed. To burn fast as a fast-burn match. Burning the fingertips of a him that had once touched the hot torch of her.
The elevator paused...letting others off, leaving him alone. In a book Wonka's elevator once tore through the roof and hovered high above. His climbed and reached the top. It opened to a elevator lobby. Empty.
He remembered seeing a piece of her...a glance. Askew. At least that is how he hoped to remember it.
The doors closed. Gray and boring. He smiled at the broken, borrowed and blurry memory that slowly twisted in his mind, a child's toy spinning and losing its energy...ebbing to a slow collapse until it was picked up to be played with again.
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