She found the note under her door this morning after a Tuesday of anxious and aimless cogitation. No work, no house, she spent the majority of the day in the downstairs parlor, in the hollow of a large leather chair. Rereading Fulton, immersed in the grimoires. From time to time Mrs. Gravely offered her a snack, from time to time Natchez would nod or smile in the doorway and continue on to his chores. Mr. Reed and Lever were out on some business, but Natchez still went through the elaborations of secrecy. She found it endearing, boyish, and she waited for him to visit her last night. He did not. She found a note under her door this morning.
The House parlor contained in its sturdy shelves the entire corpus of Intuitionist lore, from the recent pamphlets smuggled out of distant Romania to the hopeful minutes of the Intuitionist societies in countries yet unblessed by the wonder of vertical transport. It all flowed from the books she held in her lap, Volumes One and Two of Theoretical Elevators, and it all meant something differently now. Fulton’s nigresence whispered from the binding of the House’s signed first editions, tinting the disciples’ words, reconnoting them. Only she could see it, this shadow. She had learned to read and there was no one she could tell. She understood that the library would be empty if these scholars knew Fulton was colored. No one would have worshipped him, his books probably would never have been published at all, or would exist under a different name, the name of the plagiarizing white man Fulton had been fool enough to share his theories with. She read the words in her lap, horizontal thinking in a vertical world is the race’s curse, and hated him. She had been misled. What she had taken for pure truth had been revealed as merely filial agreement. And thus no longer pure. Blood agrees, it cannot help but agree, and how can you get any perspective on that? Blood is destiny in this land, and she did not choose Intuitionism, as she formerly believed. It chose her.
She ate by herself at the dinner hour, at the head of a long mahogany table attended by empty chairs. Natchez served her a thin brown broth, then pink lamb and a yellow paste of vegetable matter she did not recognize. Natchez did not speak beyond the parameters of his duty, communicated their understanding instead through laden glances. He acts as if this is a spy game, she thought. He did not come last night. He slipped a note under her door asking her to come to the Funicular Follies.
She did not have a plan, which is unlike her. She stared at the distinguished white awning of the Winthrop Hotel, watched the doormen in their red coats ingratiate themselves with the arrivals and departures, fingers nimble on the brims of their black caps. She cannot afford to be seen by her colleagues, not after her three days of unexplained absence. She cased the building. From the modest forty stories and staid, circumspect ornamentation of the facade, she estimated the age of the Winthrop Hotel at thirty years, figured the elevators for reliable Arbo Regals, the late models with the oak interiors and brass handrails. Elevator operators, one sure hand on the wheel. She discovered the service entrance in the alley on the north side of the building.
A thin man with a slight, pouting face looked up from his clipboard and informed her, “You’re late.” He quickly hustled over to her, grabbed her arm. She allowed him to touch her, she allowed herself to be led down the hallway, past walls of the alienating gray made famous in prisons and schools across this country. They rounded a corner, and another, the man walking swiftly as if, she thought, afraid of these tight quarters, the tottering linens and stacks of dishes. They stopped at a black door whose chipped edges revealed strata of old paint of many colors and years. He said, “You’ll find your uniform in here,” adding after a sure appraisal, “We should have your size.” Her hand darted for the doorknob and the man turned on his heel. He said, “Tell the agency that seven o’clock means seven o’clock and that if they don’t get their act together,” he searched for the right threat as he trotted away, “we’ll be forced to take our business elsewhere.”
The Winthrop Hotel did indeed have her size, previously worn by her menial double as she ripped off sheets, scrubbed toilets, avoiding eye contact with the people she served. It was the first time in months she had worn a dress. She felt exposed around her ankles, and as she shook her shoulders to force the black dress into comfort, she touched her neck to adjust her tie and found white lace instead. Her suit hung on a rack with the coats and day clothes of the rest of the help. Their clothes were sensible and betrayed the cumulative rough caresses of untold ablutions in basins and tubs, patient scrubbing. Her jacket was flat on the hanger but still seemed to retain her shape, thanks to all those sharp angles. She wasn’t wearing proper shoes but did not concern herself. She thought, they won’t be looking at her shoes. They won’t be looking at me at all.
The big test came when she first knocked open the swinging doors of the kitchen and shuffled into the banquet room, having been directed to a platter full of miniature pizzas by the kitchen manager, who had greeted her emergence from the changing room with a terse, “Get to it.” This is her first Funicular Follies. She understood that this night was for all the Department but her. She went through the effort of pulling her hair back into a knob on her scalp but in retrospect considers this unnecessary. They do not see her. The colored help brings the food and clears the tables, the white waiters refill the drinks. They ask the white waiters about the action at the cocktail bar, but do not ask the colored help for anything except for what they offer from the hors d’oeuvre tray. Food. They see colored skin and a servant’s uniform. As an inspector she confronts superintendents, building managers, who do not see her until she shows her badge. In the Pit, she toils over paperwork next to these men every day. In here they do not see her. She is the colored help.
Natchez said he had a surprise. Where is his surprise?
She returns with a new fork for Martin Gruber to replace the one he tossed across the room at Sammy Ansen. (She adopted a circuitous route to avoid Pompey’s table: she doesn’t want to press her masquerade, but considers strychnine. He drinks copiously. He is not one of those grabbing at the white cigarette girls’ gams. He knows better than that.) She has wiped off any visible remains of this new fork’s recent trip through the grease and rinds of the garbage pail and envisions the extravagant bacteria metropolis that will thrive in his stomach. Invisible and insidious. Like her. She places the fork next to Gruber’s plate and he doesn’t even look at her, contemplating instead the beckoning recess where one particular Safety Girl’s legs meet.
Rick Raymond says, “I think we all might need a cold shower after that one, eh boys?” The saxophone shrieks suggestively. “Maybe we should shift gears and let you boys cool off. This next act will probably do it for you. Sirs, the Funicular Follies are proud to present on the stage—the return of Mr. Gizzard and Hambone!”
The Moon-Rays start in with some quick ragtime as the two men enter from stage right. The inspectors are going mad. The skinny man wears a white T-shirt and gray trousers. Clothespins hold his suspenders to his pants. The fat man wants to be a dandy, but his green and purple suit is too small for him, exposing his thick ankles and wrists. Their elbows row back and forth in unison and their feet skip ’cross the stage to the music. Their faces are smeared black with burnt cork, and white greasepaint circles their mouths in ridiculous lips. Lila Mae is still, an empty glass in her hand. Underneath the minstrel makeup, she recognizes Big Billy Porter as the fat man and Gordon Wade as the skinny man.
When the applause stops, they quit cavorting and slap their thighs with a flourish. Big Billy Porter (Mr. Gizzard, evidently) says, “Hambone, you ole nigguh, where you git dat nice hat you got on yo head?”
Wade answers, “I got it at dat new hat stoe on Elm Street.”
“Tell me, Hambone, did it cost much?”
“I don know, Mr. Gizzard—de shopkeeper wasn’t dar! Say, you evah hear de one about de fine genimun?”
“What fine genimun dat be?”
“Dis fine genimun is walking home late one night when he come on dis nigguh lying down on de street.”
?
??Do say, Hambone. He drunk?”
“He look lak you on Satday naht, all drunk all over hissef! Now dis fine genimun want to help him out, so he ax de nigguh what was lying dere, ‘Do you live here?’ An de drunk say, ‘Yazzum, suh.’ An de genimun ax de nigguh, ‘Would you like me to help you upstairs?’ An de nigguh say, ‘Yazzum, suh,’ and dey go up in de building. When dey git up to de second floe he ax, ‘Is this your floor?’ ‘Yazzum, suh,’ dat nigguh say. Den de genimun start thinking, I don wanna face dat nigguh’s wife—she liable to throw some hot grits on me fuh bringing her man home drunk lak dat. So he open de first door he see and shove de nigguh through it, den he go back downstairs. But lo and behole, what do he see when he git hissef outside agin?”
“I don know, Hambone—what do he see?”
“When de genimun git hissef back outside, dey anudda nigguh drunk on de street. So he ax dat drunk, ‘Do you live here?’ ‘Yazzum, suh.’ ‘Would you like me to help you upstairs?’ ‘Yazzum, suh.’ So he did take him up de stairs and put him in de same door with dat first nigguh. Den he go back downstairs. And guess what—dey anudda nigguh on de street again! So he walk over tuh him, but befoe he get dere, de nigguh stagga ovah to a policeman and cry, ‘For God sake, suh, potect me from dis white man. He be doing nuttin all naht long but tekkin’ me upstairs an trowing me down de elevator shaft!’ ”
Even though she knows what she will see, she looks over at Pompey. His mouth is cracked open with laughter. He slaps the table and shakes his head.
Billy Bob Porter-as-Mr. Gizzard says, “Hambone, dat’s terrible. I’s regusted!”
“Regusted? Doan you mean dis-gusted, Mr. Gizzard?”
“Dis gusted, dat gusted, I be all dat. Say, Hambone, what’s say you and I tell dese good folks bout de ole man who go tuh see de doctuh?”
“Mr. Gizzard, dat sound lak a perfect idea! I be the ninedy-year-ole man and you be de doctuh. Hello doctuh!”
“What’s the matter with you, young man?”
“I ain’t young, so yuh can keep yo bedside matter. I gots me a bad problem.”
“Well what is it?”
“Well doctuh, ever-time I go to visit dat woman uh mine, de first … is good, real good … At de end of de secon, I have tuf rest at least for ten minutes … I can get up de third, but it take me such a long time dat I sweat and get shaky … And de fourth be almost impossible!… Sometime I think I bout to die on de spot!”
“Well, nigger, how dare you, at your age, talk about making love three, four or even two times?”
“What can I do, doctuh? I got no choice—de dam building got no elevator and she lives on de fourth floor!”
“Hambone, dat’s too much fuh me! We better be on our way befoe my gut fall out. You wan I should tell you bout de man in de elevator befoe we go?”
“What man in what elevator, Mr. Gizzard?”
“Dey dis man in an elevator all by hissef, Hambone. De car stop and in step dis beautiful lady wit de long hair and de nice eyes. Two floes later she reach over an push de Stop button. She takes off all her clothes and say to de man what was in dere, ‘MAKE ME FEEL LAK A WOMAN!’ So de man, he take off all a his clothes, throw dem on top of de woman’s clothes and say, ‘Okay, do the laundry!’ ”
“Mr. Gizzard, I do believe I hear dat wife a yo’s callin yo name.”
“Well, come along, Hambone. It’s dinnuh time and dat chicken she fried ain’t goan las long!”
They receive a standing ovation for this. Wade throws his cap out into the audience and two inspectors wrestle over it. The kitchen door swings shut on Lila Mae’s back. In the kitchen, the other colored workers do not speak on what they have just seen. They stack dirty plates in the plastic tray next to the dishwasher, nibble at leftover shrimp. Lila Mae does not mention it either, telling herself it is because she does not know the silent women she has been working with, whom she has not talked to all evening for her concentration on the Follies. She tricks herself that that is why she does not mention what she has seen, tells herself it is because she is undercover and speaking to them might trip her up, a dozen other reasons. She thinks the other women are so beaten that they cannot speak of the incident, when all of them, Lila Mae included, are silent for the same reason: because this is the world they have been born into, and there is no changing that. Through the porthole in the door, Lila Mae sees Pompey rub laughter-tears from his eyes, lean against Bobby Fundle to steady himself. See, he’s laughing so hard he can hardly steady himself.
Lila Mae reenters the banquet room with a glass pitcher of water.
At the Internal Affairs table, Arbergast looks up quickly. Something bothers him about the woman who just refilled his water glass. His ears stand up, angle back.
The boys are out of it at this point. Chuck, for example, passed out long ago, and his head rests on his white plate. Pink fingers grope at ties, loosen ties, unbutton the top buttons of strangling shirts. Rick Raymond treads valiantly in this dead pool of lassitude, says, “I know you boys are hungry, but we have one more act before we wheel out the troughs. May I present, gentle inspectors, without further ado, the man who made tonight possible: the Chair of the Department of Elevator Inspectors, Mr. Frank Chancre!” Groggy heads swivel toward the Big Man’s table. But he’s not there. They see his lieutenants, his protégés, sitting there to show the assembled who’s in favor, which of their number have gained entree into the Chair’s good graces, but no Chancre. The lights overhead click out except for the ones up front on the stage. The drummer, as his kind are wont to do, beats with anticipation.
Lila Mae refills water glasses.
Rick Raymond bites his nails.
Internal Affairs Inspector Arbergast leaves his seat.
In the shadows at the side of the stage, the figures of men can be observed straining. Ropes levitate from the stage, the light catches their fine hairs, describes movement right. Slowly extricated from the murky left is Chancre, standing on a wooden platform. His costume is familiar to all present from the engravings of the 1853 Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations: the clothes Otis wore when he delivered unto the world its first Safety Elevator. He is standing on a replica of that renowned contraption, his hands cocked against his hips, just as they are in the advertisements for the United Elevator Co. The men at the side of the stage grunt the elevator across by painful inches, to better spool excitement. Lila Mae can’t believe he has the gall. To even compare himself to Otis, to sully their imaginations of that great day with his corpulent horror. She would have liked to see Mr. Reed’s reaction to this scene, but after a few rounds of handshaking at the beginning of the event, Mr. Reed and the tireless candidate departed the Follies. She would have liked to see their faces.
The elevator is center stage now, wood and divine despite Chancre’s perversion. This is the one that started it all, enabling the metropolis, summoning them into tumultuous modernity. The blueprint of the first elevation. The assembled feel tremors assail their skin. This is where it all comes from, this moment, their solemn mission through the city’s unforgiving and neon boulevards, past the angry facades of tenements and department stores and high-rises and office buildings. Even after years on the street, the gradual numbing of their souls to their dirty work, seeing that magnificent creation gives them all a chill. “Gentlemen,” Chancre begins, “we live in a time of great calamity. Nations clash and a great noise is heard across the land.” Arbergast is a good ways from his seat, almost at the figure who intrigues him. He thinks he knows that woman, that silhouette in the darkened room who does not move. “Babies go to bed hungry. What we took for granted in our youth—safe schools for our children, safe neighborhoods, safe streets—are quickly vanishing, lost in the moral swamp our communities have become. But there is one shining light, one ray of hope in this darkness, one thing that is still safe. And it is because of you gentlemen, because of your good work.” She does not notice his progress toward her, Arbergast sees, she’s transfixed (appalled, actually) like all the rest by Chancre’s
speech. He is almost upon her, his quarry. “Fellow elevator inspectors, this night is yours. It is a dirty and thankless job, and you have performed it above and beyond the call of duty. Sirs, it is because of you that civilians,” he pauses here to withdraw scissors from his jacket and poise them at the rope reprieving his platform from gravity, “can ride vertical conveyance in this glorious metropolis and say, ‘All Safe, Gentlemen, All Safe.’ ” He dangles there, his intonation signaling to the entranced audience that he will repeat Otis’s hallowed declaration once he cuts the rope and is saved by the safety spring. Arbergast grabs the shoulder of the woman, she turns, he sees the face of Lila Mae Watson. He hears a loud crash. He sees Chancre writhing in pain on the stage, grabbing his knee and staring incredulously at his leg, which is splayed out to an unlikely angle. The spring did not bite into the notches along the inside rails, and the Chair of the Department of Elevator Inspectors has fallen. The inspectors are out of their seats and launching toward the stage. Their shouts echo in the room. Chancre screams. Arbergast looks at his hand, which just a moment earlier grasped the black material of a Winthrop Hotel domestic’s uniform. His hand is empty. She’s gone.
* * *
In Huntley’s Department Store the people need and need less once they leave. Arms full, shopping bags’ plastic loops cutting into their palms, bearing gifts: new watches equipped with glow-in-the-dark radium dials so you can know the time even in the dark; cinch belts in all the rediscovered pastels from overseas, hot now, get them while they’re hot; Cuban-heel pumps and alligator purses so coarse and smooth in the light, dizzying tactility; hypnotic suggestion girdles and air rifles and foxtail caps. Exhausting, all that baggage, now is what makes it heavy, all that invisible now-freight at the bottom of the pillage-sacks, next to receipts of purchase and coupons for the next reduced populuxe pleasure. Marvin Watson collapses the metal gate, it always sticks a bit but he knows how to ease it into itself, he knocks down the door arm and shouts, “Second Floor: Ladies Clothes. The Little Miss Shop, Ladies’ Shoes and Linens.” The animals push by him, jostling neighbors and friends and the Mayor’s niece, trampling young children under Cuban-heel pumps to gain the floor, what the floor has arrayed out there. Two thirsty women, politely disheveled, wait to board Marvin’s elevator. They are about to enter the next stage of today’s spree, having finished with the Second Floor; postcoital lassitude writ in their postures, they fan themselves with advertisements, still thirsty for more, for what’s on the higher floors before they must return to home and husbands and children. They want to go higher, and Marvin Watson, elevator attendant of Car Number Two in Huntley’s Department Store, is the man who takes them to the next level. Down, too, if they want to, but only after he’s taken his baby up to the top floor. Sometimes they ask him questions. “Where would I find a toy for my son? He’s six,” and “Where’s the ladies’ room?” Never looking at him. They are in an elevator and thus passengers and must participate in the game, staring straight ahead or up at the waffling arrow of the floor indicator, but never left or right, at the colored man who pulls the control lever. So he only sees their faces when they enter the cab, delighted for a second that their carriage has arrived and then suddenly reminded of the journey itself, rushing into the device so as to turn around and face the only exit as soon as possible. Most of the time he sets them straight, tells them first and fourth floor is where the rest rooms are, but once in a while he lies. Let them find their own way through this labyrinth. This hell of stuff.