Surfer

by Paul Luikart

Once, I got stuck in an elevator. The lights blinked a couple of times, there was this distant screech, and suddenly we were just hanging there between floors. We all sat down, made room for one another as best we could, and began to wait. One woman, who used to be a 911 operator, said it happens all the time. They were always getting calls from people stuck in elevators. Another guy said it happened to him not once, but twice.

“The first time, I was a security guard at the Smithsonian,” he said, “I was an hour late to my shift. I was supposed to be guarding the Hope diamond.”  

We asked the 911 lady—Evie—about the weirdest call she ever got. 

“Oh, so many,” she said, and told a story about a literal clown car. Real clowns, really stuck in a Volkswagen. They had to use the jaws of life. And Mike, the security guard, shared the Hope diamond wasn’t all that big and a million times a day, people made jokes. Like, “Better keep your eyes on my wife around that thing,” or, “How much do you want for it?” or, “Is it really protected by invisible lasers?”

“What about you?” they asked me, and my life flashed before my eyes. What’d I have? I grew up in a little town with decent parents, went to college after high school, and found a job, the one I have now. It doesn’t require my degree. Mostly just people skills. Pretend to care, laugh when you’re supposed to, steer clear of the drama that wafts through the office like mustard gas.

So, I said the summer after my sophomore year in high school, my cousin and I were surfing in San Diego and he was killed by a shark.

“Omigod,” and “How terrible,” and, “I’m so sorry.” 

“And now I don’t surf anymore,” I said, and that part was true. 

When they, a couple firemen with oversized crowbars, pried back the elevator doors, we saw we were halfway between floors. The top half of one below, and the bottom half of the other at gut level. The firemen pulled us up through the opening at the top. Once we were all out, freed, we shook hands and thank-godded, and thanked the firemen, and dared to go our own ways. 

Evie touched my forearm.

“I don’t do the 911 thing anymore because it got to be too much,” she said, “But I think you’ll surf again. One day. I’ve got a feeling. I really think you will.”

Paul Luikart is the author of the collections Animal Heart (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016), Brief Instructions (Ghostbird Press, 2017), Metropolia (Ghostbird Press, 2021), The Museum of Heartache (Pski’s Porch Publishing, 2021), The Realm of the Dog (J. New Books, 2024), and Mercy (Walnut Street Publishing, 2025.)