Man in the Empty Suit (28 page)

I longed to scare them away. I realized I had all the ammunition I needed. “You know, it’s not too many years before you become me.” Their laughter stopped.

I headed for the main stairs. They were rotten and dangerous, and I’d avoided them for years, but this time I toed past soft steps and railings that were only casually attached. I’d hoped to reach the penthouse on them, but on the landing between five and six lay the rubble of what had been the stairs from six to seven. Broken windows leaked. Water slid over splintered wood. A gap too wide to jump yawned before me. I left the stairwell and walked down the empty sixth-floor hallway. The lights were out, and I followed the wall with one hand. I heard whispers, soft-edged words, secrets in the dark. I stopped and held my breath. Parrots, I thought, or the echoes of my own progress. Or, I wondered, was I talking to myself?

I navigated from memory. Just a few paces past the last room, I found the intersection and the door to the rear stairs. It was dark, as it had been for the Suit on his descent from the penthouse. I’d have to hurry to avoid crossing his path. I counted steps as I ran, my chest burning and legs shaking as I reached the penthouse. I continued up to the roof, the last flight ending at the heavy door. I threw my weight against it, the alarm blaring above me, and exited the building onto
a roof empty except for an inch-deep puddle and slanting sheets of rain.

No matter how long I stayed on the roof, it would still be empty. My raft was gone. I gasped for air, still winded from the climb, and swore at myself. Had I mentioned to Seventy where I’d put the raft? How had they found it? Why move it?

“They want me here,” I told no one. “They need me here.” I could almost picture Seventy sending Screwdriver up here, one more task for Screwdriver to carry out. Another roll of thunder and I took hold of the door handle, but a thought froze me and I couldn’t open the door. I was still tethered to an Elder. For someone downstairs my struggles were memory. I cursed myself. I plagued myself.

My arm worked at last, and I yanked the door open. The alarm blasted again, a stuttered bleat as it malfunctioned, and I recalled the alarm at the elevator’s descent that I’d heard as the Suit. He’d go to the stairs soon. I rushed down the steps. I expected to find them dark and deserted, but I heard voices again. I fought to keep my breathing quiet and even. Footsteps in the dark below me. I strained to hear voices through thunder. Before I reached the tenth-floor landing, the voices stopped. I reached for the handrail but found a hand instead.

“You’re late. Get downstairs and act normal.” The voice was mine and older, but I couldn’t tell how much.

“Late for what?”

The hand against my chest. “Just go downstairs. It’s already started.”

I reached into my pocket, possibly to get a gun, I don’t know. I withdrew my hand from the pocket and felt something fall and hit the floor between us.

The Voice repeated himself. “Go. Now.” Before whichever me this was realized who I was, I turned and descended, unseeing but somehow at a step-leaping pace. I’d gone three floors when my voice called from above me.

“Hello?” That would be the Suit, I recalled, the elevator now misbehaving. I realized I’d dropped my timepiece.

I reached the
second floor. No one there. I’d expected the muttering group, the conspiracy. I heard nothing, saw no one. The elevator button was lit. Before I could consider what it meant, I heard the grind of metal on metal. A rush of air smelling of oil and rot spilled from the elevator shaft. The floor beneath me shook a little until at last the elevator’s fall stopped and I heard the chatter of cables striking one another. The button stayed lit. I knew what waited inside. I ran down the hall into the nearest open room, closed the door save for a crack. In moments voices came into the hall. They spoke clearly, not whispering.

“It’s here all right,” said one much like my own.

“Of course it is,” said another, older. Probably Seventy, I realized. “As you knew it would be.”

“As we all knew.” Another voice, younger than Seventy. Something hard in its edge made me think it was Screwdriver. “Move out of the way. I’ll get it open.”

I heard metal being worked at, the snapping of forced latches.

The oldest voice said, “Put him right there, on his side.”

The youngest said, “He still looks peaceful. He cleaned up well.”

Seventy’s old voice rattled toward me, as if he were looking in my direction. “He always will. Now, where is he?”

“It’s a longer walk down than you’d think.”

I opened the door a crack and looked at them—Yellow, Seventy, and Screwdriver—as they waited for the Suit to arrive. I tried to remember how long I’d stayed upstairs, how long it had taken me to come down. Where would Lily be right now? Could I find her? For an endless minute, I wondered if I’d become untethered from the Suit, if I’d already changed something and he might never arrive and start the search for the killer. At last his footfalls echoed from of the stairway.

Seventy looked at the others. “Don’t forget, I do the talking.”

I remembered their conversation as it unwound. I remembered it as I remembered so many of the events of the evening, from multiple viewpoints and deepening understanding. I didn’t need to hear them tell the Suit that someone in the building had killed Sober in order to know it wasn’t true. As the Suit I’d killed the Drunk. Had they cleaned the corpse and planted it here? The dead man was me a few hours from now, at the evening’s end. Seventy’s lies rolled out as I listened from the door. If I was untethered from them, they wouldn’t remember I was there. I worried that I was still tethered to one or more of them. They’d tricked me before. They could trick me again. None of them moved toward the door, none of them looked at it. Was I that good a liar?

They knew I would shoot Lily. They knew I wasn’t a team player. They were toying with my death, their own survival, and Lily’s life. I cursed them for taking my raft. They were running this for something, some benefit. I couldn’t see what. I could only clumsily chase after it, like a blind and wounded animal. I would look for Lily. Maybe I could get her out of the building. She would enter the ballroom. I’d look for her there.

I forced a window open, and rain fell in. I spotted the fire escape ten feet to my left and climbed out to it. I looked up. Hours from now Lily and the Suit would break the top loose, letting it crash into the alley. I lowered the escape ladder and climbed down, soaked from wet to wetter. Lightning lit my way to the side entrance again. I made sure to stagger in and fell without meaning to. Some Elders reached out to me to help me up, hesitant to touch me. I avoided eye contact.

I slurred out a thank-you, made a show of brushing visible and invisible dirt from my pants and jacket. They stood back, let me shuffle past into the lobby. I bumped more than a few selves as I ran. I noted that some cleared away before I arrived and remembered doing so myself. The Drunk’s run through the lobby was a favorite memory, and at the last moment I recalled what made it so memorable—the leap over the dessert cart. A Youngster saw me coming and stepped aside to reveal a rusting cart loaded with a punch bowl and pastries. By that time I was already airborne. The tip of my foot knocked a brownie from a plate, but otherwise I cleared the cart easily. I landed and ran on without stopping to accept the roar of applause. I was haunted by and haunting my past.

I bumbled along the wall, shoving chairs aside and receiving an odd mix of annoyed glares and averted eyes. The Youngsters hated me, which I could understand, as I was their unpleasant-smelling future. No one wants to think his future stinks or, worse, deserves to stink. What confused me were the responses of the Elders. I had imagined at first that there must be embarrassment behind the Elders’ lack of concern for the Drunk, but what I felt wasn’t embarrassment. It was impatience. They shook their heads and whispered.

I reached the bar and passed by to go through the door where Lily would enter. Beyond it was the empty hallway and several locked doors. I scouted from one end to the other, even as far as the deserted kitchen, but saw no signs of her. I hadn’t had a drink for a long time and didn’t want one, but I needed to appear to be both drunk and sloppy. I returned to the bar and took a seat. One of the Bar Brats leaned toward me, sweet vermouth on his breath.

He scrunched up his nose when I said, “Pour me a whiskey. Something cheap.”

“Cheap?”

“I want to get drunk, but I don’t want to enjoy it.”

When he set the drink in front of me, I stared at him until he looked away. I poured it onto my sleeves and the front of my jacket. I poured some into my hand and wiped it in my hair.

The Bar Brats assaulted one another with seltzer bottles and unpeeled bananas, the elder two especially harsh toward the youngest, who didn’t yet know the order of punch lines. I tapped my knuckles against the bar for their attention, pointed at my mostly empty glass, and turned it over to indicate I needed more. A small bit of whiskey spilled from the glass and pooled. The youngest Brat pointed at the puddle. “Uh-oh,” he said, voice mockingly grave. “Liquor spill.”

I soaked it up with my sleeve. “Don’t you mean ‘Lick her spiel’?” I immediately regretted having provided him with his terrible joke.

His face cracked, and he laughed.

I would stay here, I decided. Lily would arrive, and I’d try to speak with her. Behind me rose whispers; I turned around.

The Suit entered the ballroom.

I cursed myself for not thinking this through. I was right where the Drunk was supposed to be.

The Entrance took place. I understood his distracted eyes better than even he could. He’d just seen the Body. He’d just been given the task of stopping a killing that had already occurred. I lost track of myself and took a sip of the drink, which was meant to be a prop. Grimacing as he approached, I turned it into a horrible grin and greeted him with a wave. He looked through me, unseeing, and ordered his drink. I watched him through strands of my too-long hair, trying to seem harmless and praying I smelled of alcohol and filth. Disrespect was my camouflage.

Yellow joined the Suit at the bar. I watched condensation fall from their glasses and wondered after Lily. Images of her arrival unwound in my head, and I was stunned at my recall, despite how much the Suit was drinking. She would arrive shortly after Yellow went to fix the skipping record. I looked over my shoulder and saw a group of Elders arguing over a pile of phonograph records, each with a different remembrance of the music’s order. I wondered which, if any of them, was tethered to me. I took Lily’s farewell note from my pocket, read and reread it.
“If it’s dark, I’m gone.”
She was desperate to leave behind everything she’d been, and that also meant me. I knew too much. She didn’t want to be saved. Well, he was just the man to not do it.

Behind me the Fifth Dimension skipped. Repeated suggestions to fly away in a balloon, their panic palpable, filled the room. Yellow stepped over to do whatever it was the Elders did with the record player. As he passed, he tried
hard not to look at me but couldn’t help himself; I saw the same Elder glare, the disappointed expectation I received from the others. After he walked by, I slid two seats closer to the Suit.

I took my glass with me and laid my hand over the mouth, then laid my head down as if on a pillow, as I’d seen Phil do, and as I’d seen myself do six months ago. The Suit pretended not to see me. I remembered pretending. I said, “Not enough women at this thing.”

Gears sometimes turn when we least hope they will. I’d never worked to maintain conversations; as I grew older, I’d trusted that I would say what had been said. This was not a play. I’d learned no lines. But now I wondered how I could free myself enough to keep things from unraveling as I’d remembered them if I couldn’t even keep myself from delivering a script. At least I’d left my worst props behind, the bullets in another building, harmless. I should have thrown them into the sewer months earlier.

Suit laughed at my observation. “I guess that’s the truth.”

I pitied his discomfort. I hated his judgment. “You have no idea what’s coming.”

“Do you?”

“Yes and no.” If I weren’t going to change my lines, I should at least remember my character. I slurred my speech, rolled my eyes. I pointed at the bottle of twelve-year-old scotch that was just within reach. “You’ll want to refill the flask.”

I recalled his biting comment before he said it. “You would know.” I felt his remorse at saying it.

I closed my eyes as he poured the whiskey. The dark behind my eyes reminded me of those nights when Lily would return
and lie with me, take me into her, my arms around her sides, hands looking for cool spots along her ribs, waist, hips. “Wake me when she gets here.”

“What? Who?”

I heard the door beside the bar open and couldn’t help myself—I looked up to see Lily. Beautiful in the tight red dress—I never did find out where she got it. It hugged her figure and revealed just enough of the long tattoo I wished I could forget she had. It made her, for only a moment, someone I didn’t know. Brown hair fell around her face; green eyes ignored the room.

The Suit poured whiskey over his arm and the bar.

The Brats leaped forward. “Liquor spill, liquor spill.” The youngest shouted, “Lick her spiel.” His eyes on mine, smile crumbling when he realized I wouldn’t return amusement at my own joke.

The Suit put the bottle down and leaned back as the Brats swiped white towels at the spill, making a wet situation worse when the bottle tipped. One Brat caught it against his wrist. They squeezed the towels into tumblers, prepared to drink the fresh-squeezed whiskey themselves. The Suit could only watch Lily. I remembered his confusion: She flashed like a beacon, yet no one else saw her. I looked over my shoulder and realized how wrong that was. The Elders were already conspiring. They casually walked to block the Youngsters’ tables, kept them from viewing Lily. Some carried phonograph albums and chose that moment to hold them up before Youngster noses. At the card tables, games suddenly grew loud and boisterous, arguments erupted to draw eyes and ears. Youngsters always loved to watch Elders fighting among themselves. Now
I saw that the Elders only pretended to argue. The conspiracy began long ago.