1920s Lifting Gear

An Uplifting Story by Sandshoe

“You alright this morning, mate?”

He explained.

“We’ll get someone to look after it. Won’t be long”

“How long would that be? Long, the time I mean? How long?”

He remembered he opted for supposing it would be looked after. The answer to his question how long was a retreat of crackling vowels and consonants jumbled in an echo of archaic concrete and metal pipes humming a low tone through the speaker phone in the basement. Even the intercom was a hangover of twenty years.

Not even a pack of cards to play Patience. A gust of sighed air that frightened him for its despair disappeared into the bright light.

He considered the light above him in its exposed recess. When this happened the last time, the week before, the lift had shuddered to its stop and the light went out. He was really frightened then, banging with his right fist on the black for a door he had walked towards with his other arm extended in front of his body, the tips of his fingers stretched until they scraped abruptly on its surface.

Ironic he considered ‘lift’ was the heading on the memo on his desk, yes, inclusive of the carefully dug out (scratched on and doodled) single inverted commas glaring at him yesterday morning when he arrived for work. He didn’t follow up after the short exchange with maintenance. He was late. The bus broke down at the outskirts of the park. Breathing the steady moment as he called overcoming stress, he walked but unsure of the time it might take to negotiate the race barricades dragged across the side streets. He had feigned indifference at the foot of the step of the bus to the exhortations of a feral passerby he should get a life.

How can we tell where and for what reason an incident might lodge in the brain and restore itself in a broken shard he thought. He recalled yesterday again, rounding the corner into the stairwell at the back of his building, the man approaching him from the other side of the rubbish bin and motioning with two upheld fingers, a v-shape towards his lips, his right eyebrow arched.

Not that it was his building. He detested these intrusions of thought. They flickered in intransigent patterns, entirely irrelevant. He shook his head. He walked into the lift that day without thinking about what he was doing yet had vowed to not ride it. Punching the bundy he derided you could say he forgot.

Sound seemed to come even from the opposite direction to the noises that swallowed the retreating voice when maintenance told him wouldn’t be long. He imagined that he supposed.

He shifted his weight and wondered how long had he been standing in the position he assumed. Habit meant he executed a turn as he always did after walking into the lift and pressing the floor button he wanted. He ended facing the door in a stance of readiness to exit. The optimism of that repeated movement seemed foolish.

Habit meant he lifted as well the wrist he always lifted to check the time on his wrist watch. The cuff of his shirt lay perfectly flat where his watch would usually be revealed each morning as the lift ascended to his floor. He didn’t have his watch. He saw in a moment the pin that secured the band on the ceramic tiles of the ground floor men’s rest room. The allergy cream he worried would stain his shirt only smeared a light trace of an oily substance on the cuff seam. He stared at the fabric, making purpose that was useful out of lifting his wrist. Realisation was haunting him he had not considered the pin belonged to his own watch band. He tapped at the sleeve realising his error, re-viewed the shine on the end of the pin against the rough grouting. Panic rolled in a wave from the tip of his toes through his stomach to his throat.

Where the watch might be took precedence over thinking about how long he had been waiting. His eyes watered. Out of a swirl of red colouration and shallow breaths he felt defenceless. He recalled the camera and looked up to the flickering expulsion of red light overhead. Security might not be esconsed in his office, drinking the mug of coffee so large he wondered the man could walk a straight line, least year after year walk the crooked walk keeping him resolutely grabbing at vulnerable juniors. He protected the man by doing nothing. It was out of fear of his own secrets.

In the meeting in the afternoon, Jon interrupted Dave with a flourish of his hand and the retort he didn’t think it was a good thing they lost the account. Dave had snapped it doesn’t matter.

“Of course it matters!” he said aloud, “It bloody matters.”

He returned to the buttons and pushed the alarm. He was having a panic attack, quietly perhaps but nevertheless. He had forgotten the alarm.

If his mother were alive she would call the garment his friend in the new office was wearing a cardie and discuss with him how attractive he had thought him in the pink stretch top flattering the below knee grey skirt. His eyes across the room moved from the match of the sensible slim line flat shoes and simple white-blonde shoulder length wig. He saw close later he had beautiful blue eyes.

How he got the job was easy. He recounted he got sick of the daytime soapies and laughed his endearing guffaw. End of day he got to the stage he had to tape episodes to get the housework done before his ex-wife came home. Started with a girl he went out with. He corrected himself. Woman.

“Twiddled my thumbs at first,” he said, “because her sitting in front of the box episode after episode bored me.”

He sat on the floor of the lift. He sat by shuffling backwards and leaning, sliding his shoulder blades in contact with the wall down its length until his behind touched the floor. Motionless, he squatted with his head bent back, rigid until the desire to sit took over. He stretched one aching leg forward and then the other in a gesture of defeat and collapsed, limp, his head lolling forwards.

“Mr. Leydon?”

The intercom spluttered into a crackle of pattering, scattering sounds like a dozen mice scratching at the glass cage in the research laboratory downstairs. When he worked in the laboratory he took the sweeping reach of broad and comforting stairs with the carved rail firmly in his grasp.

“Mr Leydon? Nobody’s in yet. I can’t get maintenance. I do know the electrician is sick today. Rumour had it he was going to watch the race from home instead of here. Mr Leydon, I’m sorry.”

He raised his head slowly, staying alive he considered and wiped his face with the back of one hand, then with its palm and the other hand, careful, avoiding the stiff cuffs of his sleeves by elevating his forearm. He felt like a cat.

“Mr Leydon?”