In a El... In a El... In a El...

Oh man. I was just at this German restaurant up the street having lunch, right? And I'm sitting there in this indoor biergarten area, staring down the hallway at all these taxidermied mooseheads on the walls and one table of middle-aged women discussing some community effort they're all in favor of, and for some reason Aerosmith's on the radio. It's "Love In An Elevator."

It's getting close to the end of the song, and Steven Tyler starts repeating himself pretty badly. It's that whole "one more time now" rock thing, but he just keeps doing it. Over and over again. And I notice that each repetition sounds exactly like the one before it, to the point where I'm straining to hear the speakers, trying to detect some shift in key or tempo or volume or something, some variation on, "Love in an elevator... living it up when I'm going down..."

Nothing's changing. There's ordinarily an interesting little trumpet overtone thrown in there somewhere, but not this time. I look up at the motionless mooseheads and the circular conversation of the community-minded luncheoneers and realize that time itself has frozen.

I'm damned to an eternity of Aerosmith, watching the same five women poring over the same dessert menu, as the same afternoon sun stands still in the same afternoon sky, glinting off the glass eye of a disembodied moosehead. My arms move across the tablecloth below, and my thoughts race, growing in the awareness of being trapped in a looping moment with no idea of how to escape, just endless millenia to wonder why this moment, why here, why now, why Aerosmith?

Penny walks across my field of vision and sits down in front of me. I stare at her intently, waiting for her to say something, watching for signs of alignment with the space/time continuum.

"Sorry it took so long in the bathroom," she says. "I had to walk to the other end of the restaurant."

"That's okay," I sigh. "I'm just glad to have you back."

In the intercom overhead, Steve finally fades out, howling the finale at last. "...Living it up while I'm going daaah-ow... uh-ow, uh-ow, uh-ow... ooh-ow, oun..."