The Shaft (10 page)

    They also tended to complain a lot, she chastized herself. Like old people. She could casually dismiss the vanishment of her obnoxious neighbor, above; why worry the mystery of the windowsill? Dismiss it, and it will be right by sunrise.

    The punk upstairs had probably moved in with a dolly who received her junk mail at a much more private address for sex. Who the devil would want neighbors in three directions overhearing every grant and giggle of good deep penetration, the intimacies of lust-balming? She had noticed the absence of the boy the way a clock is finally noticed when it stops ticking. A girlfriend, that was it. Another bedroom, with fewer eager eavesdroppers. Fine lovemaking, energetic and moist and exhausting. Purgation by perspiration, the benediction of heat and motion and contact…

    Now, stop it! A smile creased her face, softening the weathered look. She was too old to giggle outright.

    All right, fine. The window.

    She had levered it open halfway just last week. It had not always been painted shut. Now there were no gaps, no shadows, no evidence that this window or its partner had ever been opened a millimeter.

    In this building, things always went wrong in the middle of the night.

    Possibly her mind had changed, not the window. It was as it had always been, except now she could not see this. The notion put a prong of fear into her recently satiated stomach. But that word senile…

    
Damn it.

    And damn the building, for cruelly trying to fool her, and damn any God that would harass an old lady this way.

    Outside the wind marshalled like a backswelling ocean wave, then hit the building broadside, sandblasting it with hard pellets of sleet, making the noise of salt sprinkled on tinfoil. Elvie fancied she felt the structure heave, saw the pane before her nose bow inward with the assault. She fetched up a handkerchief. Lace-bordered and monogrammed, she had had it nearly twenty-five years, and it retained the nicotined tint of aged cloth. She used it to buff a spyhole in the icy condensation fogging her side. Beyond was blackness.

    She put her eyes closer to the glass. The frames of her spectacles tapped the surface. It still sounded like glass. The viewport she had wiped in the middle was still utterly dark, admitting vision of nothing Elvie was used to seeing outside -the streetlamps, the plowed mountains of snow, the buried automobiles, hunched-over figures doggedly walking their pets, or the flash-frozen coproliths deposited by those animals, like dark dots of random punctuation on a vast, blank white page. She could not see the houses and buildings across the street, disguised, she knew, in their fimhouse beards of matte white and icicle muttonchop sideburns. She could perceive only blackness. The spyhole rapidly surrendered to the temperature and the pane was reclaimed by frost, an eye cataracting in an instant. It was extremely cold out there tonight.

    Elvie's questing finger sought answers on the surface of the glass. She could panic and break it of course, and freeze by morning. She could lose control, try to find a phone, and summon the building's superintendent - somehow. He was a foreign fellow whose actual name was beyond significance in her memory. He would certainly be eager to remedy the tiresome complaints of an old woman at this hour.

    Or: She could solve these strange portents in her own way, to her personal satisfaction.

    The pane of the sister window reacted identically. It was as though light-impervious black paper had been affixed to the obverse of each window. When she wiped away the frost, all she could see was the reflection of her own face. Her eyes were sunken behind the tiny windows of her bifocals. Elvie Rojas still had all her own teeth. In her image she could precisely deduce the shape of her own skull.

    Across the small room the network movie gave way to the eleven o'clock news. The odor of leftover turkey casserole loitered in the air, which was thick with the warmth of steam heat. And Elvie's windows admitted no view, and refused to open.

    She had tired of standing by the windows. Her own schedule had been disrupted. It was past her bedtime. And now the punk would not be along, come four in the morning. She might not make her early-morning bathroom call on time.

    Elvie sighed, making a sound like the steam heater. Big changes could be so unworthy of note; microscopic things could disrupt the world in which she moved. Life's big mystery. Catholics were satisfied with keeping everything a mystery; faith did not cleave to a desire to solve equations. This aberration had evolved before her own unhindered gaze. It was stimulating and maddening, but now it was not anything that could not wait until morning, and morning's mystery-dispelling light. Even if the apartment itself was working mischief on her, Elvie herself was not possessed. Her mind was her own. Her identity was concrete.

    She turned off her ancient, tube-powered Magnavox and prepared to retire.

    By the time her head met the pillow, her front door was gone. There remained a door-shape, and a knob, but no access, not even threshold cracks. From her bed, especially without her glasses, she would have been able to see no difference.

    The slats of the floorboarding melted together, fusing to a smooth and uninterrupted surface. Hairline cracks etched themselves vertically on the east wall.

    Behind their old drapes, the front windows faded out entirely, leaving black rectangles denser than lead shielding.

    The steam radiator hissed and flicked as it shut down. It never provided sufficient warmth. Without street light, from outside, it was totally dark.

    Elvie, her identity intact, consumed what oxygen remained in the now airtight room in the even, measured respirations of untroubled sleep.

    

    

    Jonathan had composed a legit stage review for his own life.

    A pleasant, if trivial, rep company production of a minor effort by a deservedly obscure playwright who failed to engage a popular audience in his own lifetime. Technical aspects, though unabashedly amateur, seem promising. The drama fills adequately… but fails to nourish. It is all too emotionally uninvolving, spiceless, and would play as well to an empty theatre - a work whose very safety is offensive during times when risk-taking is
de rigueur
. Two stars.

    
You are the star of your own life
, his mother had informed him, what seemed like centuries ago.
But what if your life was a play nobody cared to watch?

    
So what? C'mon, kiddo - dazzle me.

    On the shelf at eye-level was a wind-up pterodactyl skeleton, one of Bash's little 'Welcome to Hell' gifts. At his desk, Jonathan had been paring his cuticles with an X-Acto knife. By now he had drawn blood twice. He let the knife roll down to the retention border at the bottom of the layout table, which was a solid four-by-three surface of opaque plastic illuminated from beneath. Two long strips of compugraphics galley proof were taped to the table, blue with Jonathan's handwritten tweaks and corrections. He twisted the windup knob on the prehistoric proto-birdie and set it to climbing the slope of the table. Its rubber wheels slipped on the smooth white plastic. One skeletal wing flapped slowly; its opposite was lame, the tab that operated it stuck in a rib strut. Jonathan removed the wing and trimmed the tab with the X-Acto, but the prognosis was not optimistic. He thought of pterodactyl remains, of ghost dinosaurs recently reborn from a glacier and fighting to negotiate the icy incline. No go.

    Bash had a faultless taste for toys and owned all the best ones. He was still the caretaker of a lot of the fallout from his childhood - a Robot Commando with most of its projectiles, a James Bond Attache Case (missing the exploding codebook), a set of
Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
and a whole first string lineup of vending machine Rat Finks. To Jonathan, Bash's most intriguing trifle was a snow globe, the kind filled with water that simulated a blizzard when you shook it. The scene within was a miniature cemetery: Tiny gray headstones jutted from a hillock in painted plastic with part of a rotten picket fence at the rear. When you looked straight down from above, you saw the little graves were open, all occupied by little corpses, their skulls showing jeweled eyes, their cerements clutched about their bones like the clothes of dead pirates. Snug in their tiny graves, they formed a microcosmic necropolis. When the snow settled, the graves were evenly filled again, their tenants concealed.

    Bash still had his Magic 8-Ball. Flip it and a mystic answer would bob to the surface of the circular window on the bottom. It is Not Certain. Outlook Good. When Jonathan had owned one, and asked it about meaningful things in his life, he had usually gotten the dreaded Ask Again Later. But Bash, predictably, had grown bored with this bargain hocus pocus. Too tepid, too conventional. In the layout room of Rapid O'Graphics he had designed and glued together his own tetrahedron of answers. With the resources of the shop and his own fine touch it was simple for him to dismantle the Magic 8-Ball, substitute his innovation, refill the glass globe with water, and deftly reassemble the sphere. After Bash's meddling, it was constructed better than it had been off the shelf. And here came Jonathan to Chicago, picking up Bash's Magic 8-Ball off the shelf, utterly sans clue, fearing
Ask Again Later
after all these years.

    Bash had taken a bathroom break. Jonathan asked it, sotto voce, whether things would ever get straightened out between him and Amanda. The reply bobbed forth.

    
Fuck You, Asshole.

    Bash cruised past to monitor the handicapped pterodactyl's climb. It was hopeless, backsliding.

    'Yo, bro, how it be?' Big hands clamped Jonathan's shoulders. It was a proprietory sort of gesture he had come to quietly appreciate. Almost like being adopted.

    He waved the X-Acto toward the copy sheets. 'This is done; I'm just dicking around. It'll be ready to fly out of here in five minutes. Ten at the outside.'

    'No sweat. Most everybody's taken off; it's close enough to El Quitto Time. Wanna hear some office gossip?'

    Jonathan's eyes stayed with the windup robot, hopeful. Then the copy. Never Bash. He steeled himself. The wrong answer was going to bob up. 'Shoot.'

    'Capra says to Charcoal; 'Y'know Charcoal, I've been nursemaiding cripples for so long it physically pains me to see competent work done so fast.' He holds up an ad dummy. 'I am in pain,' he says.

    'Charcoal looks at him and says: 'We'll do our best to keep you from hurting, oh bossman.' Then Capra, like, petrifies. And says: 'You'd better do your dumdest to make sure I get regular pain as good as this dummy, Chare, Or guess who's gonna get your pay rises next quarter, hm?' And they both laugh. But Charcoal doesn't look all that amused, and Capra doesn't look like he's joking. And guess whose work they were talking about. Go on, guess.'

    'Your ownself, naturally.' Jonathan swiveled on the drafting stool and met Bash's eyes. 'The Big Bwana of layout.'

    'Nope. Guess again.' Bash was beaming. He really was like a great big daddy bear.

    Jonathan lost a bit of color. He could not spare it. 'Seriously?'

    'Serious as a heart attack, my man. The boss is impressed. That ad was for Krueger's magazine. Krueger was impressed. He phoned Capra. Can you add or do I have to spell it out for you?'

    'He said, gleefully mixing his metaphors.' Most of Jonathan's ripostes were funny only to him. 'Jesus - you're not kidding. He was that…?' An ember of pride stoked up in his breast. Of course he had been trying to dazzle them, but consciously, quietly, he thought unobtrusively. Recall modesty. Try not to gloat. 'What about Charcoal? Isn't he going to be pissed? Am I going to be the recipient of sullen glares from afar?'

    'Nah. No skin off his dick. His sinecure at Rapid O'Graphics is a given,
mas o menos
. He worked his way up the ranks, too. Every so often, new blood's a fireball, and all the happy dancers suddenly remember that they're supposed to be on their toes. It's good for business. Last time it happened was when yours truly signed on. Nobody got shitcanned because of my illustrious presence. I told you you'd dig it here.'

    

    

    Rapid O'Graphics was headquartered in a five-bedroomed house on Saffron Way, two blocks distant from Oakwood's northeast corner, bordered by Russet Run to the north and Elmwood Park to the east. Capra had gutted the backyard garage to make a carport for his employees. Heavy snowfall had collapsed the structure two weeks back, burying Capra's Baby Beemer and forcing all and sundry to park on Saffron Way, battling the implacable wet white stuff and the lunatic, unreliable plowing schedules. Jonathan's first task as the new hired hand was shoveling out parked berths on the street. Bash had shrugged. That was life's great pageant in all its tawdry tackiness.

    Capra owned and resided in the house next door. It had been sheer bad luck that his BMW was not in his own treelined drive on the day of the cave-in. The Rapid O'Graphics house did not thrust a business nose outward to deface this residential avenue; it joyed in blending in. The downstairs kitchen was a disaster area of each employee's favored work beverage. There was a restaurant coffeemaker with three hot pots - normal, decaf, and hot water for one of twenty teas. There was a fridge full of soft drinks and a case or two of Freixneif for the frequent after-hours toasts and the odd birthday. There was a freezer the size of casket stocked with Weight Watchers entries and pizzas and a host of microwavable munchies. Nobody at Rapid O'Graphics 'took lunch.' The plastic eateries within striking distance all served Denny's style vomit on a plate, and who the hell wanted to tough it out back in the White Nightmare?

    Upstairs, three bedrooms were crowded with slanted drafting benches, files, and unboxed supplies on steel component racks. Downstairs was a darkroom with a revolving blackout door, plus, a roomful of typesetting and photo reduction gear. Capra was clearing floor space for a monstrous Xerox machine on which he'd just closed a thief s deal. The living room was sofa-grouped into a comfy general-purpose staff meeting area, relaxation zone and slouch-a-rama. An offset press had been set up in a utility room formerly used for gardening storage until Capra weatherproofed it and moved in space heaters.