Celebrity Sightings That Don’t Compare to Toby’s But Are Still Cool

Our building’s lobby is under construction, and as a result, we are left with only one and a half (there are two, but one is inevitably broken at any given time) coffin-sized elevators for the entire building. So one must fight through clouds of dust and climb around ladders and construction debris, then sprint to catch the working elevator or risk being stuck choking for the next ten minutes.

Coming back from lunch on Friday, my two friends and I scooted around a man wearing an odd suit (one of my friends thought he was German), who was getting directions from the security guard, who sits behind a Brigadoon-style portable table blocking the building entrance. By a miracle of fate, there was a waiting elevator, so we piled on. I was reaching for the button to close the door when my friend, taken over by helpful-retail-clerk mode, as she described it later, began calling to the man, “Sir? Sir? Did you need to go upstairs?” And we waited and waited while he decided. Meanwhile, I was thinking about my friend, who really is a much nicer person than I am: “this is the difference between you and me, I would let him get the next damn elevator.”

Finally, the man decided that, yes, he needed to go upstairs, and he crammed in with us (kind of close to me, I thought, but it was a small elevator). On the way up, my friend solicitously conversed with him about how elevators in our building are at a premium, hence we help each other.

Of course, the whole time, I didn’t bother to look at him, other than to note that he was tall, had a dorky suit, and stood too close to me. My friends, however, confirmed that it was this guy, who’s played bit parts in a lot of movies, most frequently, it seems, The Cop. Damn, I missed it again.