Going down?

Office towers are whisper-quiet factories whose smooth-running innards remain an utter mystery to pedestrians who stroll daily through their shadows.

The elevators of such buildings are astonishing machines, yet we think nothing of being transported 10 or 12 floors in seconds, and give not a second thought to the engineering genius and brawn that hoists us up and down in shiny metal boxes.

Elevators are a rare common ground for the meek and the elite, and make for revealing cross-sections of our commercial lives. Powerful men wearing $3,000 suits ascending to corner offices stand elbow-to-elbow with women paid by the hour to occupy cubicles.

Quick-moving uniformed delivery men stare up at lit numbers that change too slowly, standing beside bored 30-somethings in Dockers counting down to 5 o’clock.

Any room as small as an elevator will make for awkward moments.

Should I hold the elevator for those distant footsteps? Can I resist the temptation to goof to the guy with the flowers: Oh, you shouldn’t have! Or do I opt for the alternative—the tongue-tied silence?

What’s worse than those loud conversations that continue into the elevator as though there weren’t three other people in the same closet-sized space.

… so I said ‘are you kidding me? Of course I’ll have the filet!’ Blah, blah blah. But of course we’ve all done it.

With cell phones pressed to our thick heads we keep gabbing in digital denial as we step aboard. Listen, I’m getting on the elevator, so I may lose you … And of course we always do, every single time.

And if we do acknowledge each other, what do we talk about? Unfortunately, it’s usually our most recent discomfort.

It’s not so much the heat, but the humidity!

I’ve even asked a drenched person next to me, So did you get caught in the rain?

And there’s nothing quite like the packed elevator where no one speaks. A friend of mind used to relish shattering those silences. Rocking back and forth on his heels and staring up at the dinging floor numbers, he’d intone deeply, Nobody say anything.

Elevators are where people from various businesses within office buildings gather. Where I work they mostly wear the uniform of American commerce: skirts, blouses, slacks, ties or the occasional delivery uniform. We pack in tight, and the familiar yet too often nameless faces of the building maintenance crew get a good look at us.

Some investment firms operate in our building, routinely receiving visits from their retired clients who are easy to spot: gray hair; tanned, relaxed faces; comfortable, loose-fitting cotton clothing; slower, less frenzied movement.

But lately I’ve been noticing anxious expressions on some of those visiting faces just as the government has begun pouring $700 billion into an historic bank bailout, and since the stock market has been in freefall. They seem just as tense when they leave, which leads me to think brokers are confirming worst fears.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the first evidence I see of something amiss in the machinery of the American economy is in the elevator, that miraculously efficient workhorse we all share, yet so easily take for granted.