The Intuitionist (20 page)

Lila Mae picks up empty plates from the tables of her coworkers. No one recognizes her.

It’s time. Rick Raymond taps the microphone and the men stir from their scuttlebutt and applaud. From more than one man’s oily lips issues that whistle one only hears in crowds. Rick Raymond says into his mike, “Welcome to the Funicular Follies, inspectors!” His words are obscured by the roar. “Settle down, gentlemen, the fun’s about to start. You guys having a good time
tonight?” More roar, a shattered glass or two. “Well hang on to your hats, because this opening act is sure to give you even more
lift!
” The snare drum is only too eager to abet this pun. “May I present to you, fresh from a two-week sellout tour of Australia, the Great Luigi!”

There are shouts of gratitude and amazement from the assembled, heads turn to seek out Chancre at his table near the stage. It’s Chancre’s doing, after all, no one doubts that. The Great Luigi begins his number, something from some opera or whatnot, they can’t understand the words anyway—more important than the song is the man’s appearance, the signal Chancre is sending the week before the election. The famous tenor is an international sensation. He’s sung for heads of state, diplomats, dictators of small countries with enormous mineral wealth, and here he is at the annual function of the Department of Elevator Inspectors. This is Johnny Shush’s gift to Chancre; the mobster can’t be here tonight, not with the increasing attention of the Feds to his sundry operations, but he can send an emissary from his underworld kingdom, demonstrate his influence, and by extension, Chancre’s. More than one person here tries to figure out what the mob has on the Great Luigi (wears a dress?) but then doubles back: no point thinking about Johnny Shush’s business. Chancre makes a great show of mouthing the words with the tenor even though it’s obvious from a cursory inspection that he’s never heard note one of this song before. Appearance is everything. The Great Luigi lifts his head to address a dusty chandelier: this is no grand theater. He had to prepare his number in a supply room off the kitchen, next to a stack of canned peas. The long white tails of his tuxedo drag unenthusiastically. When the last note recedes, Chancre’s out of his seat rousing a standing ovation from his troops. The tenor nods curtly, clicks his heels and is out of here as fast as his spindly legs allow.

Rick Raymond leaps into the breach. “Talk about feeling small. What a talent, eh my friends? This next act will have a
tough time following that up. Did someone say up? Cause that’s where these girls will take you. Let’s hear a loud elevator-inspector welcome for United Elevator’s Safety Girls!” There is no need to ask these men for applause, for they swat their hands together in rapacious glee, and hoot and growl for good measure. This is the fifth appearance of the Safety Girls, and every one has been a triumph of lower impulse. It is not clear what the Safety Girls do in between this night and the annual elevator trade show. Perhaps they practice their kicks and steps, their inviting smiles. This attraction, too, has another meaning: Chancre endorses United in their ad campaign. Chancre could have gone with Arbo, or American, but he went with United, and they are grateful.

Rick Raymond and the Moon-Rays help out with an energetic rendition of a song from a movie musical that was popular a few years back. The twenty Safety Girls, in their short and tight crimson outfits, contribute their fit bodies and off-key voices. They’ve changed the lyrics. Instead of the familiar “All I want is Lady Luck,” the elevator inspectors are rewarded with “All I want’s to get you up.”

Lila Mae thinks, her dues are paying for this.

He left her a note telling her to come, so she did. The note read,
See you at the Funicular Follies. I have a surprise for you. N
. The note is hidden in her shoe right now, slightly lumped from dried sweat.

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.”