Man in the Empty Suit (13 page)

“Wait here,” he said. “Let’s see if we can’t bust it down.”

I whispered to Lily, “Did you see any fire axes or tools in the halls? Was there anything they might use?” She looked at me, her eyes blank and fearful. She might not even have understood the question. I glanced around the room. Behind us was the partly covered window, its thick butcher paper held on with brittle masking tape. I tried the window latch. Years of rust bit into my fingers. I searched the room in growing desperation, and near the foot of the table I spotted a long screwdriver. A gift from Screwdriver. I held it before me like a dagger, pointed at the door.

“What are you going to do?” Lily’s eyes locked on the screwdriver.

I couldn’t attack children, not even if I was in danger. Besides, if I were really going to use a weapon against them, I had the pistol in my pocket. Instead I turned back toward the window, worked the tip of the screwdriver beneath the latch, and started to pry at it, levering it back and forth. The old metal began to give almost immediately, but it was twisted in upon itself enough to keep the window locked shut. “Chances are they won’t get in here anyway.”

At that the door shuddered beneath a heavy blow. I hoped Lily wouldn’t sense my fear as I scanned the window for another way out. Dust and old paint flecks floated in the low shaft of light spilling through the gap of the window cover. A second blow shook the door, a crack appearing from top to bottom. Quiet counting leaked from the other side, a hushed
one and two
, and with
three
the third crashing blow came.

Hoping the paper was thick enough to keep the glass from raining down on us, I stabbed the screwdriver through the
middle of the pane like a needle into a blister. The window shattered with a jingling crash, and the voices in the hallway stopped. I stepped back and brought my foot up to kick out the remaining glass, and the paper and the tape fell, a soft chiming off the side of the building.

Another crash against the door, and another. They’d heard the glass, and it had motivated them. I grabbed Lily’s hand.

“Ready?” I asked, even though it was more command than question. She had no choice, nor did I. I leaned out the window and hauled myself onto the rusted fire escape. When I was fully outside, Lily followed. It creaked under our weight. Past the abandoned buildings to the east, the sun leaked through a strip between clouds. I looked up and then down. Beneath us the fire escape had rusted away and come off the building. Too far to drop; we had to go up.

We climbed.

Up close, the walls of the hotel were worse than I’d imagined. Acid rain and the slow, gentle impact of debris left the stones porous, like coral or a sponge. I pulled Lily closer to the rusted rail of the escape ladder. Beneath us the window bubbled with faces, all mine, of various ages, and their shouts climbed after us. Most of them were too scared to venture onto the fire escape. The two who did, in their early teens, all legs and awkward elbows, made the entire structure creak and settle. A bolt somewhere burst with a loud snap, and the ladder shifted beneath me. Lily, climbing ahead of me, looked down. “Oh, God,” she said.

The teens on the ladder beneath us were armed. Each carried the pistol, my pistol, the one the Inventor had used to hit me, and they all aimed theirs up. A hand from the
window—older, I thought—grabbed the nearest and shook him. Both teens stood back and gazed up at us. The scaffold moaned and began to shift again, and I knew we had only moments of climbing before it freed itself from the building.

“One more floor,” I called up to Lily. She didn’t respond. Hazarding another look below, I saw teens crowding the third-floor platform, fearful of climbing but unaware that they were in danger of collapsing it under their growing weight. The eldest held the others back, as if afraid he might be responsible for their loss. I realized that in fact he was, as was I. I took my own pistol from my pocket and lowered it, aimed at the street far below them, far away from any of them, and fired a single shot. It had the desired effect. The children—for they were just children—fell over one another to get to the window. I wondered for a second after the Body—what might they think. I knew they’d treat him with respect, but only out of fear. He would seem ancient to them and his connection to them tangential at best. I thought of their crowded rooms, their confused plans, the collisions of memories conflicting with new events. Each of them was alone. Each of them fought to be heard in a chorus. I pictured them clogging the doorway, filling the hall, and looking at one another, panic on their faces, worry in their hearts about what a dead body meant to them. How could they return home to a normal life after this? Untethered from one another because they’d been brought here, no longer even tethered to their own days and lives, no longer able to deal with the realities of their childhood after seeing what they’d seen here. They would go back to being children, planted in their normal routines, but they would know of this place and this time, know of the Body, of
me, of Lily, and it would taint them and their days. Each of them would think it right to return here again and again, to continue to change events, to muddy their life and memories. A cold realization closed around my heart. I was no different.

The scaffold jolted, and another bolt broke. A red dust speckled down on us. Lily coughed. She looked at me, her eyes dark. “It’s letting go.”

“Get to a window,” I said.

She climbed the steps to the next platform, and I followed. The scaffold groaned. Outside a window black with old newsprint, mildewed to unreadable, we held hands, and I removed the screwdriver from my pocket. For a moment I hesitated. In the window’s imperfect reflection, I couldn’t see how bad I felt. I saw only a man and woman, dressed for a party, holding hands. In the reflection my suit still inspired awe. What if we didn’t need to face any of the troubles I foresaw? The Body might be avoided if I simply hid, ran away, and never returned, ever, to the hotel. My youth might be wasted poring over every room of the hotel looking for me, but that could last only so long. An army of me would eventually limp home in retreat. Lily and I could go anywhere; we had limitless options.

I thought all this in the time I studied a blessed reflection of myself and Lily, and then the scaffold began to separate from the building and I brought the screwdriver into the glass, pierced it with a nearly perfect wound.

“Kick it in.” Lily cried.

I raised a foot and attacked the window. The scaffold’s complaints sounded human. The ancient metal beneath us sagged, abandoned its rigid shape. It twisted like rope. We
gripped the railings to stay upright as the floor curved like a lolling tongue. Finally the glass gave, and I threw Lily into the opening just as the scaffold let go. I fell forward to grab the window edge. Glass bit into my arm, and a bar of metal caught me across the back as it fell to the ground below. I screamed, or tried, and held on, Lily gripping my arm. Beneath me the shriek rising from the collapsing scaffold ended, and we were washed in silence. Both of us labored at hard, uneven breaths.

“Help me up,” I said.

We pulled me into the room.

THIS ROOM WAS
just as the others—lousy with dust and plaster grit. Lily and I lay for a minute on broken glass. Too tired to move, I watched the rise and fall of her chest. As her breath slowed, so did mine, and we climbed to our feet, picked glass from our skin and clothes.

“They’ll know where we are,” she said.

We left the room, headed away from the stairwell toward the end of the hotel. A noise behind us made me turn, certain it was Youngsters already bursting from the stairs. There was nothing there, some dust settling from the ceiling, the building exhaling.

Lily led me through the halls. It occurred to me that I should ask what she knew of the hotel, what it was that made her run so assuredly. Just then I saw another batch of graffiti:
Dumb waiters tell no tales →→
. The arrows pointed around a corner to what looked like a dead end, a cluster of three doors.

“Hurry,” Lily said.

I glanced behind us again. We’d made a number of turns, and I couldn’t remember how to get back. “What are we doing here?”

A noise skidded up the hallway after us. It was a little boy’s voice, calling that he’d heard something. At that moment, as an adult, I understood the boy’s panic. I reached for Lily.

“They’re coming,” I said.

She tugged at the rusted latch of the small half door mounted on the wall beside us—a dumbwaiter. “Give me your screwdriver.”

I handed it to her, and she worked at the latch until at last it snapped open. The dumbwaiter car was not there, but the ropes that held it were. She wrapped my hand around them. “Climb down to three.”

“How will I know what floor I’m on?”

She hesitated. “You’re right. Go to the bottom. We’ll start from the ground floor.”

I took the rope in numb fingers and towed myself through the small doorway. It was like crawling into a vertical coffin, and I worried that if the rope snapped, I would twist in the cramped shaft and tie myself into a knot of flesh and bone. I held the ropes tight and tried to lower myself down. When I’d gone a few feet, Lily climbed in after me and drew the door closed, dipping us into darkness.

The shaft was cold and wet. Mildew clouded the air, fighting with the dark for dominance, and I found myself more than willing to slide down great lengths of the rope in near free fall. Water dripped on my face. Lily descended as quickly as I did, catching my head and hands with her heels. At last I landed hard on something solid and hollow.

There was no door in the shaft there. I whispered up to Lily, “I think we’re on the dumbwaiter.”

“Break it.”

I began to stomp on the dumbwaiter and prayed that the sound would not call out to the Youngsters. The old wood splintered with a wet crack, and I fell into the small car. I kicked at the door and then kicked the pieces of the dumbwaiter out onto the dark kitchen floor. I followed them out, snagging myself on the splintered edges of the car, and Lily emerged after me. Dirt and grime streaked up her legs and arms. I knew I was in a similar condition.

“We’re going to have to get to that room.” I heard exhaustion in my voice. My speech slurred even though the alcohol had burned off hours earlier, and my mouth was dry, my tongue clicking against my teeth and lips.

The kitchen had been scrubbed clean whenever the hotel had been vacated. There was no grease, no smoke stains on the ceiling. All the cupboards were closed tight. Other than a thin layer of dust, it was immaculate. I opened a cupboard and found nothing, not even a roach.

Lily tried the faucet. It produced a rivet-gun staccato, but no water came from it. I wouldn’t have drunk the water regardless. “I need something to drink,” she said.

“Let’s see if we can get to the bar.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I lied. “I know. But there’s water there, and ice.” Possibly, I thought. I’d spent much of my first year preparing for this event, traveling back and forth with trays of food, coolers of ice, cases of alcohol and bottled water. I’d estimated how much I would eat and drink, and then I’d doubled that amount and
spent weeks bringing it all to this morning, the morning of the party. I’d done everything myself; not a single Elder had ever appeared to help—but why would one? I already knew that the Inventor had prepared for the party alone, set up the bar, the food tables, napkins, utensils laid out just so. Everyone else showed up later and ate and drank it all, then pissed and shit it away. By this time, this late in the evening, I doubted there was any water left, let alone ice. But she didn’t appear to know that.

We made our way down a hall to the kitchen’s ballroom entrance—double-hinged doors with round windows. The dark ballroom was lit only by a movie playing on the wall. In the light from the projection, I could see two dozen audience members slouching in chairs. The room behind them, where the Youngsters had held their war dance, was empty. Was I really so ignorant as a youth that I wouldn’t leave even one lookout? Apparently.

I leaned against the door, and it moaned open. Lily held back a moment, and I took her hand and gave it a reassuring tug. We stepped into the ballroom. I approached the scattered spectators, who sat in little clusters of two or three. Decades of me, tired and sleeping. I recalled having watched every film projected until the sun rose, but now on the wall played a film I’d never seen. The swinging movie image showed a stairwell full of rubble, the shadow of the cameraman as he staggered toward a window and nearly fell out to the city street below. The image captured me, and I had begun to focus on it when a voice called from behind me.

“You’ll want to get out of here.”

I turned to face Seventy. He held the projector’s remote and paused the film. No one else stirred.

I indicated the others. “Won’t they mind?”

He shook his head. “They’re asleep. Nothing on their minds to keep them awake. Unlike me. What’s happened?”

I told him of the invasion of the Body’s room and our flight.