I got into the elevator going to the 97th floor, and pressed my button. I noticed that the 113th floor was pressed, but also the 73rd; there were two other people in the elevator, a man and a woman. Perhaps I could guess who would get out first, and see if one would get out before me, the other after.

But something caught my eye as I turned around; that was that the woman had a gun pointed at the back of the man. She had her hand hidden around behind his jacket, but nonetheless he knew that gun was sticking in there and now I knew it too. I'm not sure how I saw it; it was very quick, as I was shuffling toward the corner where as you know everyone gets as far as possible from each other to endure a ride in a trapped space. They obviously were an exception; they were right up against each other, side by side, and not giving each other much space at all.

It was winter, so we all had coats on. I had a winter jacket over my suit and I took it off hoping to make enough movement and noise to make them shift around so I could perhaps see the gun better, or get some clue as to what was really going on. They didn't say a word, and the elevator set out on its sweeping journey up to the next floor, which would be the 73rd.

It stopped suddenly at the 49th and it shook as it stopped. She mumbled something in his ear which I interpreted to be "don't move!" or something like that. Maybe she thought he'd bold quickly while the door was open and someone was entering. At the 49th a Rastafarian entered. He was tall and had long dreadlocks, and a kind of tie-dyed shirt. He took one look at the serious couple, probably not knowing that one had her gun in the other's back, and laughed. I smiled too. He seemed to be trying to tell them they are taking life too seriously. I agreed with him. Here I had my suit, my briefcase, my business on the 97th floor, yet I felt these two were way too serious. Deadly serious, you might say.

The Rastafarian guy took out a huge joint-kind of spliff and lit it. It was huge, it was messy, and little embers from it fell on the carpet of the elevator making me think he was going to catch the place on fire. I smiled again in the corner, knowing full well this woman had her gun in this guy's back so it was a holdup, you might say, yet I felt this development might break what could be a stalemate of some kind. He took a deep toke of it and put it right in front of the man's nose, and then, though both the man and the woman gave a terse close-lipped kind of no, he just held it there in front of them, rather than removing it, or bringing it over to me. I would have taken it, probably, just to cut the ice in the elevator, but I was kind of in the corner, having done my dance of getting as far as I could from everyone. His was the opposite: he wanted them to loosen up, help him smoke this big thing. It dropped its sparks on the elevator floor. It stood in his hand, burning slowly and filling the place up with smoke. Neither the man nor the woman made a single move.

I studied their hands for a minute. One of the woman's hands was hidden, holding the gun in his back; I knew that. The other wore a glove and carried a New York Times. It was rolled up like you might roll it if you were to try to stuff it in a mailbox or throw it up on someone's porch; I knew this because I used to be a paperboy, back in the days when people read the news. The man had a shoebox in his hand; it was closed. I couldn't tell if it was heavy enough to require both his hands to hold it, but he was using both of them, and perhaps that was why he couldn't grab the spliff. Could he simply put the box in one hand? I couldn't tell. In any case he didn't; he didn't move.

Now the elevator stopped at the 73rd floor and I tried to remember if the Rastafarian guy had pressed any button; I didn't think so. In any case he made an unusual move. He took another quick drag from his spliff, turned around and pressed the "door open" button to hold the door open, once it was open, then blue an enormous thick smoke ring around the woman; that smoke just kind of danced around her head like some kind of halo and then just settled in around her shoulders. Then he left, exiting the elevator quickly before we noticed or could stop him. He took the lit spliff with him.

I was trying to figure this out. It seemed to me the 73 button was pressed before he got on, which meant that he left randomly because it was there, or because he knew the man and woman, knew whose room was on the 73rd, and was going there as if he shared it. Why did he blow that smoke ring around her? She shrugged as if to get rid of it, but couldn't, because she had to keep her hand lodged in his back; she didn't know, yet, that I knew all about the gun.

At around the hundredth floor, the elevator got stuck. It shook and made a horrible noise, and stopped going. I was actually afraid we'd plunge a hundred floors to our death, me and this incommunicative couple.

"Press the alarm button," she told him; he was much closer to it than I was.

"You do it," he said. He wasn't going to make it easy for her, or give the appearance that she could order him around.

I actually made a move for the alarm button, but he had taken the opportunity of confusion to reach around quickly and hit her hand that was holding the gun. She lifted the gun quickly to get away from his hand, but at the same time it went off, and the bullet lodged into the panel of the elevator. The elevator made a strange kind of sizzling sound, and then much to my surprise, it started going again. Wherever the bullet went, it caused the elevator to run again.

Meanwhile the man and woman were struggling with each other; she still had the gun. She was unusually strong to fire, keep holding the gun, and resist his grabbing arms as he tried to get it from her; he was unable too, and I think she even used the gun to hit his hand at one point.

"Listen, you two," I said, "I'm a professional marriage counsellor." THis was a blatant lie, but they both laughed, in spite of being in a life-or-death struggle over a loaded gun. "Perhaps it would help if you told me the whole story from the beginning."

"We're shooting a movie," said the woman. "On the tower at the top. These buttons are pressed just to give us time to reset, reset the gun, reset the camera, that kind of thing. Come on upstairs and join us if you want. That guy you saw...he's in charge of the entertainment."

It was my floor, and I got off. If I went up there, I'd take the stairs.