The Intuitionist (6 page)

* * *

Only Chuck knows for sure whether it is his congenitally weak bladder (family lore tells of three aunts and a cousin with the same affliction) or his distaste for Chancre’s unabashed politicking that makes him rise from his leatherette stool and pad over to O’Connor’s scary toilet facilities. Chancre is still spinning out today’s accident into a stump speech on the accomplishments of his four years as Guild—and hence Department—Chair. The election is just around the corner, after all, and Chuck (a clever man, but not precocious about it) knows Chancre’s game. This press conference allows Chancre to reach members of the Elevator Inspectors Guild who no longer work for the city, the “unactives” who have retired from the lonesome life running the streets, have secluded themselves behind the ivy gates of the Institute for Vertical Transport or entered into the private sector, consulting the dolts from United and American and Arbo on what elevators are really about, the secrets the shafts have to tell to those who know how to listen. The men in the Department are Chancre’s, mostly Empiricists, he’s seen to that, but the unactives are a mercurial bunch, tending to cranky, nonpartisan dispositions. And they vote. Anyone who’s a member of the EIG votes every four years on the new Guild Chair, and the Guild Chair automatically becomes the head of the city’s Department of Elevator (and escalator, Chuck adds) Inspectors. Chuck still doesn’t know how
this arrangement between the Guild and the city came about, and when he asks one of the Old Dogs about it, they change the subject and look nervous. Chuck hasn’t been able to find anything on paper about it, not even in the silent archives of the Institute, not a single precedent, but nevertheless: the Guild members elect their Chair, and the Chair gets a nice government job. Chuck supposes that if an incumbent lost his reelection bid, he could conceivably refuse to budge and cling to his cushy leather chair for dear life, but that’s never happened. Chuck can see Chancre doing it, though, and as he walks into the alcove in front of O’Connor’s bathrooms he wonders what would happen then.

She pulls him into the ladies’ room before he knows what happened. The ladies’ room in O’Connor’s was designed to accommodate one person. Two people is cozy, and three is scandalous, but that’s how many are in there now: Chuck, Lila Mae and Piefaced Annie. Piefaced Annie, she of the gravely mug, is passed out on the toilet, as she always is at this time of day. O’Connor’s lone female alcoholic, Piefaced Annie puts in a long day and needs this time to rest up for the long final lap of the day’s drinking. She doesn’t look passed out so much as eerily blissful, almost as if … Lila Mae has already taken her pulse just in case. It was a short scurry from her flimsy hiding place in the bar to the bathrooms; she started when she saw Chuck rise and made it around the corner before he’d even escaped the crowd. In the spirit of decency, Lila Mae pushed Piefaced Annie’s legs together from their aerated generosity.

Chuck is equally disturbed by three things: the ease of his kidnapping, which insults his sense of alertness; the unfamiliarity of being in a ladies’ bathroom, which brings to his mind an unsettling flash of his mother squatting; and the surety that Lila Mae is going to drag him into this deplorable business about the Fanny Briggs building. “Lila Mae,” he says, “I don’t think this is very appropriate.” He can feel the wet sink dampen the backs of his thighs.

“Sorry about this, Chuck,” she replies, “but I have to know what happened today.”

“You haven’t checked in upstairs yet?”

“I wanted to be prepared.”

In the end, it is Piefaced Annie’s resemblance to his mother that upsets Chuck the most. He feels like a dirty little boy, standing in the dank cubicle with her. Compared to that, talking with a fugitive from Departmental justice is small potatoes. He looks up at the yellow water stains on the ceiling and tells Lila Mae, “One of the elevators in the Fanny Briggs stack went into total freefall this afternoon. The Mayor was showing off the place to some guys from the French embassy so they could see how great the city works and whatnot. He presses the call button and boom! the cab crashes down. Luckily there was no one on it.”

For the first time it occurs to Lila Mae that someone might have been hurt. “That’s impossible. Total freefall is a physical impossibility.” She shakes her head.

“That’s what happened,” Chuck reaffirms. He’s still looking up at the ceiling. They can hear some of their colleagues whooping outside the door. “Forty floors.”

“Which one?”

“Number Eleven, I think.”

She remembers Number Eleven distinctly. A little shy, but that’s normal in a new cab. “The entire stack is outfitted with the new Arbo antilocks,” Lila Mae argues. “Plus the standard reg gear. I inspected them myself.”

“Did you see them,” Chuck asks tentatively, “or did you intuit them?”

Lila Mae ignores the slur. “I did my job,” she says.

“Maybe you missed something.”

“I did my job,” Lila Mae says. She hears her voice rising: keep cool. “What did Chancre say?”

“Had the Mayor in his office ever since it happened,” Chuck says, attempting to be helpful. “So I don’t know what the official
story is, but you get the gist from his speech. He’s making it into a political thing because you’re an Intuitionist. And colored, but he’s being clever about it.”

“I heard that bit.”

“Internal Affairs is looking for you.”

“What are the guys saying?”

“What you would expect,” Chuck tells her. Piefaced Annie groans and he shivers.

“Total freefall? You’re sure?” There’s no way. The cables, for one thing.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he says. “Lila Mae, I think you should really go upstairs and talk to the IAB guys. Even if you did miss something—however much you don’t want to admit that possibility—the sooner you go and talk to them, the better it’s going to go. They’re fair. You know that.”

“That would be standard procedure,” Lila Mae muses. “But this isn’t a standard accident.”

“You should really go upstairs, I’m telling you. There’s nothing else you can do in a situation like this.”

“Chuck, look at me.” She’s decided. “You haven’t seen me, okay?”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Tell me you haven’t seen me.”

“I haven’t seen you.”

One of the side effects of people intent on erasing you from their lives is that sometimes they erase you when it might not be beneficial. It would have been delightful for Lila Mae’s fellows in the Department of Elevator Inspectors to see her leave the ladies’ room, because they could have enjoyed a few furious moments of invective, of throaty howls. No one sees Lila Mae when she departs O’Connor’s and it’s their loss. The newsmen outside headquarters are scrabbling away across the sidewalk like dry leaves in the wind. Midtown is clearing out. No one lives in midtown.

Lila Mae has decided to go home. She needs a night to go over exactly what happened at the Fanny Briggs Memorial Building. She can pretend that she didn’t hear about the accident until tomorrow morning. Plausible. And she has a good face for telling lies. She’s on the subway platform when the problem of the dispatcher occurs to her. Craig told her she had to report to base. The subway arrives: she’ll say she thought it was a paperwork thing that could wait until Monday. That lie could cause her some trouble with IAB, but it’s not totally implausible. Even if they don’t believe her, they can’t discipline her unless she was negligent, and Lila Mae will not allow the possibility that she was negligent. It’s impossible.

When Piefaced Annie shakes off her stupor, she will recall a strange dream about elevators and falling, and will chalk it up to falling off the toilet, which will happen in about an hour.

* * *

From
Theoretical Elevators
, Volume One, by James Fulton:

What else can she say? His statement is friendly, steeped in chummy argot, the intonation jovial, and the man’s face so banal and uncomplicated, so like this country, that Lila Mae almost thinks she knows him. When the man says, “You’re the little lady,” all she thinks to say is, “I guess I am.”

Pause. Jim nods knowingly.

“What the hell are you doing in my apartment?” Lila Mae demands.

“What do you think we’re doing?” John responds. “We’re going over your place looking for evidence.”

Pause. Jim, again, nods knowingly. Actually, it’s more of an involuntary response to getting caught in the act, despite the reassurances of John’s cool act.

“Internal Affairs doesn’t have that kind of authority,” Lila Mae
says curtly, “whether I checked in after my shift or not. Get the hell out of my apartment.” There have never been this many people in her apartment before.

Jim and John take a step closer to Lila Mae. A decent lunge and they would have her.

“So we’re Internal Affairs?” Jim asks. The burgundy residue of Aunt Sally’s preserves glistens on his right forefinger.

“Yes—we’re the watchdogs of the Elevator Inspector Industry,” John seconds.

“Department,” Jim says. He licks the remaining preserves off his finger.

“We’re the watchdogs of the Elevator Inspectors Department,” John says.

“The Department of Elevator Inspectors,” Jim corrects.

John takes advantage of Jim’s distraction to flip his magnifying glass into the air and catch it. Scare her. He makes a sudden fake forward, grinning, but Lila Mae stifles her flight-response. Damned if she’s going to look weak. Her visitors’ absurd wordplay annoys her, perhaps even more than their trespass into her home, her one safe place. She has spent a lot of time trying to find the correct arrangement of things. She never has guests, sure, but there is always the off chance. Sure. “Let me see some identification,” Lila Mae demands. “Now.”

“Let’s show her wink-wink identification,” Jim intones.

“That’ll be all, gentlemen,” a voice behind Lila Mae says. The voice is as smooth as a beach stone. It belongs to a short man in a perfect blue blazer. Pince-nez in this day and age, that’s what the man polishes with a handkerchief as he enters Lila Mae’s apartment, polishing far too diligently for there to actually be any grit on the lenses. He moves with the rapid movements of a pigeon, and his left arm resembles a wing, pressed close to the body as it is, nooking a leather satchel. He places his hand on Lila Mae’s shoulder and it is then that she truly gets scared. She cannot feel
his skin but she knows it is cold. “There’s no reason for you to be harassing this young lady,” he says.

Jim and John look at each other. Throughout the history of their partnership, it’s Jim who takes his cues from his comrade, things as subtle as the tilting of a nostril or the vague tremble in the left knee. Jim is not reading any signals from John, and that’s a first. They’ve never been interrupted before. It’s so embarrassing.

The stranger, this latest stranger inquires, “Do you know who I am?” as he squeezes Lila Mae’s shoulder.

John sighs and answers, “I know your identity, Mr. Reed, and a few biographical details, but can I say I really know you?”

Jim is about to add his usual improv backup to his partner, a dialogic placeholder such as, “Does anyone really know anyone?” or “In the Biblical sense?” but Mr. Reed flicks a hand, dismissing him. Such rubbish. Mr. Reed looks at Lila Mae for the first time. “Miss Watson, did you invite these men into your home?”

Everything is different now, it seems to Lila Mae. Nothing in her apartment appears to have been moved, and yet everything is different. That’s how she feels. She doesn’t feel as if she lives here anymore. Lila Mae looks down at Mr. Reed, for he is a short man, shorter than Lila Mae, and she says, “No, I did not.” She doesn’t live here.

“If I may be so bold …” Mr. Reed begins. His eyes are wide and far apart. Like a pigeon’s. Lila Mae nods. Mr. Reed looks back to Jim and John and says, “Gentlemen, I must insist that you leave this place immediately.”

John shakes his left kneecap in his trousers and Jim places the jar of preserves on the kitchen counter, screwing the top back as he does so. Even though he’s been found out, habit tells him not to leave a trace. “Immediately,” John mimics, trying to save face through his characteristic deadpan sass, which is now halfhearted and at best a face-saving gesture.

“Immediately,” Jim says.

Jim and John head for the dim hallway outside Lila Mae’s
apartment. They keep a safe distance from Lila Mae and the diminutive Mr. Reed. John takes the doorknob into his hand and says, “You want this open or closed?”