Mining Car Elevator Cafeteria

I am standing in the lobby of a tall office building.

It is the kind of place you might find in mid-town Manhattan, with fancy marble floors and a dignified reception desk.

I am headed to work and wait for an elevator. There are other people there, milling about and going and coming from work.

Joan Rivers walks up.

She seems to know me. She asks how I am doing.

I explain that I am working on a sit-com with some other writers on the fifth floor.

“You should stop by,” I tell her, “We could always use your advice.”

Joan presses the button of the elevator and chats with me some more about the television show she is working on in the building.

The doors of the elevator suddenly rush open. They close again very quickly.

Joan is puzzled.

"Oh, you don't know?" I ask.

"Just wait," I say.

I push the button on the elevator, carefully watching the floor indicator above it.

Just as the elevator arrives on our floor, I grab Joan and push her in, the doors of the elevator closing quickly behind us. As we begin moving, Joan lands on her butt on the floor of the elevator.

"You have to be quick around here," I say.

Joan talks more about her show as we ride in the elevator.

“The writers are terrible,” she says, complaining about a sketch they made her do.

The elevator has glass sides -- we can see the inside of the elevator shaft going by as we travel from floor to floor.

The elevator stops. Joan steps forward as if she is getting ready to exit the elevator.

"Oh no, it's not ready yet," I say.

The elevator, on some kind of track, flips over on its back, tossing us around. The doors open and we ride through a large cafeteria.

There is a track that runs through the center of the cafeteria, the elevator gliding along like one of those little cars they use to move material in a mine.

There are people getting food and sitting at tables on both sides of us, all around the cafeteria. We watch them through the glass sides of the elevator; we can stand up and almost peer over the sides of the elevator car.

"The food's really good here," I say. “You should try it sometime.”

Then I woke up.