Martin waited miserably for the stench of intestinal gas to reach his nostrils. Always the same. He supposed it was Carruther, but he could never prove it. Not so much as a telltale squeak. But it was Carruther who always led them, and though the other faces changed, Carruther was always among them.
They were seven in the elevator: six men and the young girl who operated it The girl did not participate. She was surely offended, but she never gave a hint of it She possessed a surface detachment that not even Carruther’s crude proposals could pene trate. Much less did she involve herself in the coarse interplay of men. Yet certainly, Martin supposed, they were a torment to her.
And, yes, he was right — there it was, faint at first, almost sweet, then slowly thickening, sickening, crowding up on him—
“Hey! Who fahred thet shot?” cried Carruther, starting it.
“Mart fahred-it!” came the inexorable reply. And then the crush of loud laughter.
“What! Is that Martin fartin’ again?” bellowed another, as their toothy thicklipped howling congealed around him.
“Aw please, Mart! don’t fart!” cried yet another. It would go on until they left the elevator. The elevator was smalclass="underline" their laughter packed it, jammed at the walls. “Have a heart, Mart! don’t part that fart!”
It’s not me, it’s not me, Martin insisted. But only to himself. It was no use. It was fate. Fate and Carruther. (More laughter, more brute jabs.) A couple times he had protested. “Aw, Marty, you’re just modest!” Carruther had thundered. Booming voice, big man. Martin hated him.
One by one, the other men filed out of the elevator at different floors, holding their noses. “Old farty Marty!” they would shout to anyone they met on their way out, and it always got a laugh, up and down the floor. The air cleared slightly each time the door opened.
In the end, Martin was always left alone with the girl who operated the elevator. His floor, the fourteenth, was die top one. When it all began, long ago, he had attempted apologetic glances toward the girl on exiting, but she had always turned her shoulder to him. Maybe she thought he was making a play for her. Finally he was forced to adopt the custom of simply ducking out as quickly as possible. She would in any case assume his guilt
Of course, there was an answer to Carruther. Yes, Martin knew it, had rehearsed it countless times. The only way to meet that man was on his home ground. And he’d do it, too. When the time came.
3
Martin is alone on the elevator with the operator, a young girl. She is neither slender nor plump, but fills charmingly her orchid-colored uniform. Martin greets her in his usual friendly manner and she returns his greeting with a smile. Their eyes meet momentarily. Hers are brown.
When Martin enters the elevator, there are actually several other people crowded in, but as the elevator climbs through the musky old building, the others, singly or in groups, step out Finally, Martin is left alone with the girl who operates the elevator. She grasps the lever, leans against it, and the cage sighs upward. He speaks to her, makes a lighthearted joke about elevators. She laughs and
Alone on the elevator with the girl, Martin thinks: if this elevator should crash, I would sacrifice my life to save her. Her back is straight and subtle. Her orchid uniform skirt is tight, tucks tautly under her blossoming hips, describes a kind of cavity there. Perhaps it is night. Her calves are muscular and strong. She grasps the lever.
The girl and Martin are alone on the elevator, which is rising. He concentrates on her round hips until she is forced to turn and look at him. His gaze coolly courses her belly, her pinched and belted waist, past her taut breasts, meets her excited stare. She breathes deeply, her lips parted. They embrace. Her breasts plunge softly against him. Her mouth is sweet. Martin has forgotten whether the elevator is climbing or not.
4
Perhaps Martin will meet Death on the elevator. Yes, going out for lunch one afternoon. Or to the drugstore for cigarettes. He will press the button in the hall on the fourteenth floor, the doors will open, a dark.smile will beckon. The shaft is deep. It is dark and silent. Martin will recognize Death by His silence. He will not protest.
He will protest! oh God! no matter what the
the sense of emptiness underneath breath lurching out
The shaft is long and narrow. The shaft is dark.
He will not protest.
5
Martin, as always and without so much as reflecting upon it, takes the self-service elevator to the fourteenth floor, where he works. He is early, but only by a few minutes. Five others join him, greetings are exchanged. Though tempted, he is not able to risk the “B,” but presses the “14” instead. Seven years!
As the automatic doors press together and the elevator begins its slow complaining ascent, Martin muses absently on the categories. This small room, so commonplace and so compressed, he observes with a certain melancholic satisfaction, this elevator contains them alclass="underline" space, time, cause, motion, magnitude, class. Left to our own devices, we would probably discover them. The other passengers chatter with self-righteous smiles (after all, they are on time) about the weather, the elections, the work that awaits them today. They stand, apparently motionless, yet moving. Motion: perhaps that’s all there is to it after alL Motion and the medium. Energy and weighted particles. Force and matter. The image grips him purely. Ascent and the passive reorganization of atoms. At the seventh floor, the elevator stops and a woman departs it Only a trace of her perfume remains. Martin alone remarks — to himself, of course — her absence, as the climb begins again. Reduced by one. But the totality of the universe is suffused: each man con tains all of it, loss is inconceivable. Yet, if that is so — and a tremor “shudders coolly through Martin’s body — then the totality is as nothing. Martin gazes around at his four remaining fellow pas sengers, a flush of compassion washing in behind the tremor. One must always be alert to the possibility of action, he reminds himself. But none apparently need him. If he could do the work for them today, give diem the grace of a day’s contemplation…
The elevator halts, suspended and vibrant, at the tenth floor. Two men leave. Two more intermediate stops, and Martin is alone. He has seen them safely through. Although caged as ever in his inexorable melancholy, Martin nonetheless smiles as he steps out of the self-service elevator on the fourteenth floor. “I am pleased to participate,” he announces in full voice. But, as the elevator doors close behind him and he hears the voided descent, he wonders: Wherein now is the elevator’s totality?
6
The cable snaps at the thirteenth floor. There is a moment’s deadly motionlessness — then a sudden breathless plunge! The girl, terrified, turns to Martin. They are alone. Though inside his heart is bursting its chambers in terror, he remains outwardly composed. “I think it is safer lying on your back,” he says. He squats to the floor, but the girl remains transfixed with shock. Her thighs are round and sleek under the orchid skirt, and in the shadowed— “Come,” he says. “You may lie on me. My body will absorb part of the impact” Her hair caresses his cheek, her buttocks press like a sponge into his groin. In love, moved by his sacrifice, she weeps. To calm her, he clasps her heaving abdomen, strokes her soothingly. The elevator whistles as it drops.
7
Martin worked late in the office, clearing up the things that needed to be done before the next day, routine matters, yet part of the uninterrupted necessity that governed his daily life. Not a large office, Martin’s, though he needed no larger, essentially neat except for the modest clutter on top of his desk. The room was equipped only with that desk and a couple chairs, bookcases lining one wall, calendar posted on another. The overhead lamp was off, the only light in the office being provided by the fluorescent lamp on Martin’s desk.