EVERY SO OFTEN

‘OUT OF SERVICE,’ scrolled in green lights from right to left through the lift floor indicator window when I got back to the flats carrying a box had new speakers for the computer.
I walked up four flights following the first two a man lives on the second floor. We’d said hello when I held the door for him so he didn’t have to put his shopping down to let himself in.
Through the corridor to the back of the building and the lift said, ‘6.’ I pressed the call button and waited...and waited...and pressed the call button and waited...and waited...and it still said, ‘6.’
‘Fucking hell,’ I said on the way up to the Sixth the door to which had its two lower glass panels missing. There’s a glass thing at the moment, getting smashed or cracked.
A man and a woman were loading the lift on Six so, ‘they must be moving in,’ I thought.
‘If you put all the stuff here,’ I said, pointing at the space to the right of the lift door, ‘then when you’ve got enough load up the lift and take it up and then other people can use it too. And they’re going to want to because the other one’s not working.’
‘We’re moving in,’ said the woman with an accent could be Polish or Russian or Ukrainian or whatever.
The man seemed to be with her looked at me as I spoke to them both.
‘I need to use the lift and I’ve got a long way to go,’ I said. ‘And I’ve already come up six floors. And that’s enough’
‘Can you go with him?’ said the woman to another woman had come to into the scene with a man held a box.
‘You just moving in?’ I said when we were alone.
‘Yes. We’re at the front so we should be using that lift but...’
‘...it’s not working.’
‘Does it break down very much,’ she might’ve said.
‘Every so often.’