Getting off the elevator, he looked at the empty lobby, people already having left for the evening, rushed in their exit, and he walked slowly. Looking at all the inlaid marble, art deco elevator doors, and fine wood moldings, he realized with a clarity "I am working in the city." Not a suburban office building, with only a few stories, parking close by, and a detached sense of being. The city. In a tall building, even though most of the people who worked in it have left, there is still life in it. You can even have a moment of privacy in a many story high lobby atrium.

Being an older building, and connected to other buildings, the lobbies and hallways were different. The elevators he walked out of were built in a time right before the depression, with lots of mahogany, art deco engravings in the polished stainless steel doors, wall lights of sharp angles, an unabashed testament to luxury, to art. Slowly, with an innocence of wonder, an attention to all of what surrounded him, he walked down the lobby, looking in the closed shop windows. The newspaper stand man turned away, closing his cash register for the evening. The cleaning people had still not arrived, and he savored this rare and unusual moment.

It was late in the year, a chill in the air visible through the etched windows in the steam rising from grates, and on the day before a long weekend, his office had closed early, yet he stayed behind to work. Though he had plans to catch up on many things, he found himself staring out his window, pensive in thought and closed up his office without having done what his plans has requested of him.

So different than the usual mad rushes of people of which he was another face, people who hurried throughout the building, intent on their daily tasks, phones cluched hard to their ears, the worry and stress eating into their lives. They hurried from the street to the elevators, morning coffee and bagels in one hand, leather planners in the other, tapping their feet impatiently as they waited for the doors to open. At lunch, the lobby fills again, with the same people, this time with cell phones and a sandwich, heading outside if it is a sunny day, with one eye on attractive members of the opposite sex, otherwise intent on quickly eating, and trying to catch clients on their cell phones.

He laughed out loud at the thought of all the lunch hours he spent in the same manner, sitting in front of this building, eating his token sandwich, facing the sun, trying in vain to catch the eye of a woman doing the same things as he was. How many of them, he asked himself, would even notice the way that someone, long since dead had laid tile two stories above their heads, in such a way that made you seek the pattern in them, but only if you craned your head upwards, and focused on the details?

He felt at home there, alone in the lobby, a part of, yet in some manners detached and removed from the core of the being of that building. Somehow he felt as if he understood more of his own purpose there, understanding that quiet moment, appreciating it for what was worth, and knowing that he would go back to his role on the next workday, but would walk a little slower, and maybe see what other patterns in the ceilings he could find, and he gave a quiet salute as he left, shutting the door quietly, as not to disturb the peace he felt within.