6

The room was a candle-lit amber all the while he was awake in it. His desk rested opposite the door against the wall. It was the first thing to see, a simple four draw desk. Two draws on either side and space in the middle to sit. The wooden swivel chair matched and the cushioning decompressed every time he sat.

He unlatched his thin, silver watch and rested it next to an ashtray. He tossed out three solitary cigarette butts. Yesterday’s cigarettes were few despite a typical night, as of recent for him, holding many, many more. Last night has not been the eventful writing day he hoped for. When he wrote he wanted to smoke. His paper pile was unused. It was the leftmost window, of the three in his room, that he spent most of yesterday evening at. The street bordering the St. Germaine was never empty. He had the refuge of the endless passing faces to distract from his recent torments. His love was still making herself seen in his mind’s eye despite not long being laid to rest.

At least three times a day she had interrupted him in the last fortnight. That number only accounted for the daytime. He still very much loved her. She still very much loved him. It was this she came to tell him, much to his lonely, aching dismay. Thoughts for another time, he told himself. His shooing had no bearing on whether she was to appear again.

He unbuttoned his short-sleeved dress shirt, untucking its front tails and let it rest on his made bed. In doing so he made sure to exert and stretch himself little for fear of aggravating his stomach. He had more than suspicions that something was happening to his insides. He lit a cigarette and swept an open letter from his desktop into the upper right hand draw. He locked it and placed the key next to the candle holder. Owing to his own sense of disorder, he had not the spirit to maintain the order he liked. He took a cursory glance at a suit bag, hung from a curtain pole on the second window, that was just beginning to gather dust.

She came again. She was young and she was old. She was both and all to him. It was apt as he had seen her be both. Her eyes were sharp and affectionate and he knew that if he was to look for long enough they would turn to show sorrow – not for herself but for him.

He tensed his fist and regained his nerve. She disappeared.

7

The week curbed and a fresh Monday came. As always, ready to feed, Monday’s liftman didn’t anticipate the efforts of working, but only the opportunity for joy. As mentioned, effort has been bred into his daily way of being for all that was his life now. A fatigue that was welcome, because it was paired with his vice. The pleasure of company and the company of pleasure.

He fit his tan hat onto his head into the spot that made no offence. He strolled in, through the foyer, into the storage facilities to claim the object that signified his arrival. The Monday dayplate. He gathered himself, unlatching the fence, and cinched it open. Some two or three of the pins that attached the diamonds together audibly asked for oiling. He removed Sunday’s leftover panel from the silver lined rectangle marked into the copper floor and made a bitter mental remark that this was not the first, or tenth for that matter, instance this was leftover by the week’s liftman. He wedged it flush upright against the wall where he stood and replaced it with the Monday dayplate.

It was twenty five long minutes before anyone called for him. Too long, he thought. He wanted other company and not the revealing, hurtful kind he afforded himself. He had scored himself a sense of agitation.

The person who called for his services was a fragile man pushing sixty. He required a cane, leant on it heavily, and did not seem to notice how close to breaking it was. Beside his ailments and having the record for longest time to enter the lift, he was unremarkable.

The time it took to enter the lift set Monday’s liftman off-tempo and he couldn’t find his social rhythm. Besides, there was nothing discernible about the old man he could relate himself to. Where to begin? he wondered.

His shoes. Yes, his shoes. Not his finest find but it would do.

“Have those soles seen better days?”

His remark, meant to bring out a chance for the man to talk about himself, seemed to draw out a sadness. A clear miss. It had either made the man insecure of the state of his shoes or something else, perhaps his life.

“I only mean they must have tread somewhere I don’t know the name of!”

As it was, the old man had been nowhere. He hadn’t ventured further than the city that held the St. Germaine besides a single short-lived visit to the countryside to sell the possessions of his late daughter in bulk. People had retorted that he must’ve known the city more familiarly than anyone, but even this wasn’t true; he felt cold toward it and thought the city reciprocated that feeling. These were large insecurities and Monday’s liftman had managed to stumble right onto them.

“I might have stood still in them for too long. It’s not time that I have plenty of” He said in a quiet, hoarse voice that sounded in an uneven pitch. He took a moment looking at his shoes. The ossified arch to his upper back placed him half the way there.

“You speak like there’s no time left to go about anything. You wouldn’t have the same wealth of experience but there’s an error there, sir. Compare the version of you who sees the sunk loss (if we can call it that) of what has already been and stays standing still to another where you, who has, shall we say sparingly, two to three eights of a life left for searching and wonderment. Say I could change you right now to one, who do you wish for?’ He spoke with theatricality that was unusual but acceptable.

The warmth and familiarity of the liftman’s tone wasn’t exactly earned just yet, but just as he had stumbled onto an insecurity before, he had now fallen into a soft spot. A knack for cutting through was a skill he had picked up across many occasions. The man smiled facing down. Gravity tried its best to well a tear in an eye that had not long since cried. They shared a silent moment of peace.

“Now, think of how all of this looks to me. You, sir, have much to-“

Sunday’s day plate, previously resting, hit the floor in a shattering clang.

Both men were shot with fear, the immediate kind that says you must look, you must see, for something of fatal importance. The metal falling flat on metal let it make all the noise it was capable of. The liftman lost both his words, momentum and confidence. What kind of stupid do you have to be to leave a dayplate in overnight? Perhaps doing your bloody job would leave some room for the rest of us, he hissed internally. The “us” he was referring to was not clear but he maintained a group’s worth of resentment. Bursting, some of this sentiment spilled into his facial expression. The sharp contrast of uplifting, gentle camaraderie with the devilish face of condemnation made the old man withdraw into himself. The heart that was being pulled out had taken two steps back. Monday’s liftman saw this. He was mortified. He had lost his footing and the time he was on-tempo was gone. Had he really come across so serpentine?

He fought to pull himself together into one functioning piece.

“Something to account for next time, huh?”

These words no longer had access to the older man. The progress he had lurched forward was thrown far back. The lift reached the floor, and the older man moved to leave, turned slightly left, blocking the liftman. He inched out in a painful, exposing pace.

The liftman was boiling hot. If he was to avoid the hurtful inner talk that was about to arrive, he would have to resolve this situation. It wasn’t clear whether this situation was fixable. To grow up with his standards taught Monday’s liftman to retroactively replay and alter these situations after the fact. After all, what would remain, if he never saw the man again, was the memory of the event.

The man came through. He was more arched, shrugged, almost coiled under a now totally frozen upper and lower back. The tears that he had to work to extract were instead ready from the outset. He made no comment on the man’s shoes and the old man wasn’t made to recall his poor life. Sunday’s dayplate was never there, or either it was and it never fell, or it fell and he caught it. He hadn’t chosen yet. He toyed with each alternative to see which one fit. To find which alternative was best was to see which one felt the most satisfying. The man shed a tear, and the liftman rested his hand on the man’s back. The physical contact alone accounted for progress in lightening the old man’s soul. He spoke the words as he did before, slightly more fluidly and to slightly more effect. The man, in the end, was still reserved and not totally fixed, but had been considerably influenced. He patted himself on the back for including this titbit of harshness.

This conception would do. His fears and regrets were soothed but sore. All the meanwhile the situation, in the way it had actually unfolded, made a background sound within his mind. Perhaps he hadn’t stuffed it deep enough. That was the border of his protective delusion. Satisfaction and psychic harmony felt much better than the truth. It was odd for him to go to such efforts in altering memories, usually he only softened the edges and lightened the feeling of things that hadn’t come out perfect. Especially in a few sleeps time, the scene would be entirely compatible with his psyche.

Thankfully, Monday did end. There was no little to no recovery for the rest of the day. His interactions were average, if not a bit stunted and awkwardly paced, nothing of the special kind that he liked. Not worth his while. It was better to stop the bleeding than to risk anything, especially with his sense of self only loosely held together.

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