I saw her in the elevator

(At work, 4:38 pm, Wednesday, September 13, 2006)- I clinched a future lunch date at 4:05 this afternoon. Starting from this morning: I walked up a dreary, rainy September street looking, in vain, for that special woman to ask out. The harder I looked, the more deserted and alien the street seemed to get. I arrived at my building, and resolved to chill out. I got into an elevator car alone. Then, at the 2nd or 3rd floor, a spiffily-dressed brunette got on. She seemed shy, was quiet but perceptibly breathing. I was nervous before I even knew it. Absent-mindedly, after she told me that she was headed for nine(my floor), I asked her what floor she was going to. "I'm going to nine," she said pleasantly, ignoring my goof-up. Then I thought: Wait a minute, is THIS the opportunity I've been waiting for? She was looking downward. Then she looked upward and cocked her head in my direction (probably looking for a sign), and I froze. Ugh!! The rationalization thread in my brain went into warp drive-"her face is nice, but maybe sort of not quite what I'm looking for"- yes, it was that pathetic, because most guys would agree she's quite a pretty gal. While my lips became super-glued, what felt like 40 floors passed by. She half-looked-up and said, "Have a nice day", and then crossed my path to exit the elevator.
All the rest of the morning, my mind was spinning. I resolved to track down her location. I was 99% certain what half of the floor she was on, since I'd never seen her over at mine (intuition assured me that she actually did work SOMEWHERE on my floor). Around 10:30 AM, I made a "filtered water run" over to the North side of the 9th Floor. By chance, when I finished filling my sport bottle, I turned around and saw her walking past. Using stealth, I tracked her to her cube, made mental notes, then circled back toward 9th Floor South. Then, naturally, I stayed catatonically glued to my desk for the next 4 or 5 hours. At around 3:15, I stopped kicking myself for blowing it on the elevator, and made over to the corridor nearest her cubicle. I quickly saw that there was some old codger in front of her cube talking shop with her. Groan. I walked back over to her cube again at 3:46, to find she was (gasp!) away. Back AGAIN at my desk for a bit, I decided to make a "vending machine run" (the machines being in close proximity to the girl's desk) at 4:05. I got over there, and from there it's a bit fuzzy in my head. I said 'hi', or maybe said something about us having seen each other on the elevator that morning. I mumbled something about her going out with me for lunch soon. Her hand reached out to meet mine, and I haltingly grabbed on to her fingertips. She smiled graciously and said she would like to go out for lunch sometime soon. She added that she needed to finish up a work-related letter, so we parted ways fairly quickly. The sequence of events is lost to me: I was tripping over my words badly at that point. If the word-stumbling could be visually approximated, it would resemble an old Evel Knievel reel, one where Evel clears the pile of junked cars, but fails to land his bike in a smooth and stylish fashion, resulting in a multiple-quintuple man/bike somersault, and culminating in a lovely concrete barrier collision. But, hey, the girl said "yes"!