It was slow going, but just as he reached the first floor, there was a sudden brightening of the shaft as if someone had opened a door above and the dumbwaiter began rising faster. Someone was tugging at it from above, and Archie heard mutterings about how heavy the damn thing seemed to have gotten lately.
There was one last tug from above, and then Archie found himself level with the open door of an apartment on the second floor. A youngish man in a bathrobe, his eyes half-closed, was standing there. There was an odor of burning rubber and over-boiled milk. On the table beside him were a dozen or so baby bottles with smoldering nipples. The table and the stove behind him were spattered with milk. His half-shut eyes opened wide as he saw Archie.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“What the hell are you doing?” Archie echoed.
“Making the baby’s formula. I think I goofed."
“I think you did.” Archie sniffed.
“Have to get rid of the evidence before the frau wakes up,” the young man confided. “Figured I’d ditch it down the old dumbwaiter. Didn’t figure it for a passenger ship. What’s the idea?”
“Bureau of Inspections,” Archie told him. “Testing for weight capacity.”
“At five-thirty in the morning?”
“Civil Service.” Archie shrugged. “Ours is not to question why. Ours is but to do and die.”
“Aren’t you a little young to be in Civil Service?” the bottle-burner asked suspiciously.
“Father-son union,” Archie confided with a wink. “I’m just an apprentice. Have to take the exam to qualify next week. Dad thought it might be good if I got some practical experience first. Figured nobody would be up yet, so he sent me out on this complaint."
“Oh.” The young man didn’t look like he believed Archie, but he didn’t look like he cared, either. “But there’s no room to ditch those damned bottles with you on there,” he complained. “And if I don’t get rid of them soon, the Earth Mother ’ll be up and on me.”
“Just dump ’em in my lap,’ Archie said, eager to continue his journey. “I’ll get rid of them for you.”
“Thanks.” The young man did just that. Just as he was dumping the last of them, there was a tug on the dumbwaiter rope from above. “Hold it,” he called. The rope slackened and he wedged the last of the smelly baby bottles under Archie’s knee. “Okay,” he called. “And,” he added to Archie as the dumbwaiter started upwards, “bon voyage.”
It stopped opposite the open door at the next floor. All Archie saw was the two huge bags of garbage as they were wedged against him. Then the door closed and he was in blackness again, his nostrils submerged in a top- ping of orange peels.
He struggled to get his hands freed from the baby bottles and the garbage so he could grab the ropes to pull himself upward again. The maneuver left him with stale olive oil dribbling down behind his left ear, a jagged Campbell's soup can wedged under one arm, a half-eaten cob of corn under the other, pizza crust crumbling down his shirt-front, and a beer bottle intimately caressing his groin. One of the baby bottles slipped between the dumbwaiter and the wall, crunched a bit, and then slipped through and fell to the bottom of the shaft with a resounding tinkle. Feeling like a pop art exhibit, Archie slowly began pulling himself upward again.
But his troubles weren’t over. Just as he reached the fourth floor, another door to the shaft was opened. This one was on his right side. A rather pretty brunette in an evening gown and makeup that looked stale around the edges took one look and then spoke:
“EEK!” she said.
“Howdy.” Archie returned her greeting.
“EEK!”
“You’re repeating yourself," he pointed out.
“EEK!”
“Now you’re growing positively redundant.”
“Wha—- Wha-— Wha—happened to you?” She finally found her voice.
“Just one of those nights.” Archie picked a banana peel off his left shoulder and dropped it delicately down the dumbwaiter shaft.
“Do-— Do-— Do-—you know what you look like?”
“A kind of tired tossed salad, I imagine,” Archie said with aplomb. “But then you look a little green around the gillworks yourself. Just what have you been up to?”
“Well, I got home from a party, and -”
“After dawn?” Archie was disapproving. “Now that’s no way for a lady to behave. What will people say?”
“What do I care what people say? And what business is it of yours, anyway? You’ve got a nerve telling me what time I should and shouldn’t come home! Who are you to be doing that, anyway? I don’t even know you! You’re just a garbage-covered kid with a lapful of baby bottles who came floating up my dumbwaiter at five-something in the morning!” She was getting hysterical. “You’re getting hysterical,” Archie to d her.
“I am not getting hysterical! I'm not! l’m not! I'm not!”
“You’re not getting hysterical?"
“No! No! No!”
“Oh.” Archie considered it. “Well, you could have fooled me,” he told her after a moment.
“You're a mirage!” the girl decided. “That’s what you are! You’re not really there at all! I just had a little too much champagne tonight and I’m fantasizing! If I close my eyes, you’ll go away!” She closed her eyes. “When I open them again, you'll be gone!” she said positively. She opened them again.
“Surprise!”
“Ooh! This is too much. If you don’t vanish right now, I’m going to call the super and he’ll throw you out!”
“How can he throw me out if I’m only a mirage?” Archie asked reasonably.
“I don’t care how!” Her voice cracked. “It’s after five o’clock in the morning! I haven’t had any sleep! It’s been an awful night! There’s a limit to how much a person can stand!” She grabbed the dumbwaiter rope with trembling hands and gave it a strong tug. The dumbwaiter shot upward, out of sight. “There! Now you’re gone!” she crowed. “Now it’s over!”
“Ships that pass in the night.” Archie’s voice echoed down the shaft. “But you must have a memento of our fleeting meeting.” He selected a cap from a beer bottle and dropped it to her. “Remembrance of things Pabst,” he sighed.
“Schlitz!” she corrected, catchin it.
“Such language!” Archie tutted as he continued pulling the dumbwaiter cart up. A few seconds later it was level with the fifth floor. He was faced with a choice of three doors to the dumbwaiter shaft. All three were closed. He tried each of them. All three were locked.
One of the doors, Archie knew, must lead to the kitchen of the apartment in which Helen Steinberg lived. Which one? Eeenie-meenie-minie-mo. Archie scratched tentatively at mo. Nothing happened. He scratched again. Still nothing. A third time.
Lo! There was a scratching back from the other side of the door. A pause. Archie scratched again. Another pause. The scratching from the other side again.
Not to be sneered at! What sage of our time hasn’t commented on the problems of communication plaguing modern man? Archie was a modern man--or boy, anyway. And Archie had scored a breakthrough. Scratch and scratchback. It was a beginning.
“Hello?” Archie progressed to the whispered linguistic. No answer. Another flurry of scratching.
“Can I see you a minute?” Archie tentatived.
Still only more scratchback.
“I just want a word or two.”
Scratch-scratch.
“This is ridiculous!” Archie decided.
Scratch. Pause. Scratch-scratch. Pause. Then a more significant sound, a deeper scratch, so to speak, a fumbling with the latch of the dumbwaiter door from the other side. A click as the latch was released, and finally the door swung open.