In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

know, it is a sentimental mannerism, he was born here and he went to
school here, but he never lived there and his French is so much better
than his Italian! He swears in Italian, it is so cute. Have you seen him
do this? He looks through his eyebrows like this, oooh." She made the
face and started laughing and coughing, crushing out her half smoked
cigarette.
"Yeah, but he said merde to my computer," Penny said,
chuckling.
"He should 'wash his mouth out with soap,' that one, is this the
correct expression?" Maia howled with laughter as they zigzagged out
into the drizzle.
On their way out they passed a small, hole in the wall shop
crowded with African masks, and inside, half hidden behind a curtain,
was the guy again, arguing with his two suppliers. The streets were
shiny with rain and the market scraps were getting slurped up by
automated bright green trucks. Even the curbs were scrubbed by
machines, helped out by sullen guys in safety green coveralls and
matching plastic brooms: it was definitely Brave New World over here.
Maia wobbled stoically up the hill in her stilettos as the rain
drops got bigger and heavier. After crossing the busy Boulevard St.
Germain and winding around another a corner they stopped at the
small door of a building that slanted steeply back from the street, it was
so old. Maia punched in her code, holding onto the sodden mink
around her shoulders.
A single neon strip zapped at the chiseled limestone walls. An
early Otis prototype, crafted as finely as a harpsichord, sat inside an
iron and brass filigree tube inside the spiral stone staircase. Maia lifted
the curved brass latch and the two of them squeezed into the wood and
glass coffin, Maia ducking and gathering her volumes of hair so none
would get caught en route.
Gears and pulleys churned above and below them, the box
shook, then lifted up, squeaking and swaying up through the dim spiral
staircase, smelling of machine oil, dust, floor wax and bourgeois
banquets with lots of butter and tarragon. The elevator convulsed to a
stop and they got out in the cold neon of the landing, painted in black
lacquer like a sleazy nightclub. A framed poster with the words Mueller
und Voodoo greeted them between two doors, one stainless steel with
a combination lock, the other with carved panels painted with cheap
gold paint. Maia stuck her ornate key in the keyhole of the gold painted
door.
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