My thoughts were drifting. Time to finally call it a day and head on home after yet another exhausting twelve-hour day. I stood, stretched and turned to peer out of my office window there on the twenty-third floor. I could make out the traffic signals at intersections below, which stayed on flashing yellow throughout the night - a lame gesture at managing the few remaining cars that would be prowling the city after dark. A city that abandons its soul to the emptiness of the towering office blocks that by day house the thousands upon thousands of white collar workers who flock into its centre and make up the pumping, beating heart of the entire state.
I pulled on my coat thinking how with no downtown we would have none of those suburbs beckoning in the distance, no fancy tract homes lined row after row with their comforting uniformity and driveways parading all the smart cars - trophies of their residents’ imagined social standing or financial prowess. I undid my shirt collar and loosened my tie, bent over my desk and turned off my computer screen, watching the tiny dot of light in the middle of the screen fade away. Never mind that more than a few of those cars are owned by the very corporations that enslave us all to this lifestyle of working flat out to reach the pinnacle of our careers and excel beyond all peers, enjoying the apparent esteem that goes with it. I switched off the buzzing office lights at the wall switch. I switched myself off too. Enough thinking for today. I just wanted to be home, enjoy a couple of cold beers, relax by watching some mindless TV, and chill after one helluva tough day.
I walked over to the elevator and considered how this working late shit enables us to graduate our kids from Payless Shoe Source, to Mervyns, Macy’s and then to Gap for Kids. I cast my weary mind to when that ultimate corporate goal is finally achieved by working above and beyond the call of regular corporate duty, my future kids will at last be welcomed at Ralph Lauren, where a personal shopper will lead me and Junior straight to the kiddies’ section, where the scent of a fully loaded Titanium American Express will provide the sales clerk with a heady rush of excitement as the hint of their next commission becomes palpable and that new Lexus, just like the one my neighbours two doors down (that I still have never met) bought last year, becomes more and more of a reality.
I jangled my car keys in my trouser pocket. I have this nervous habit of fiddling about with them whenever out walking alone. They are my kind of Swiss cowbell; a roving sonar announcing my presence. I once saw on Discovery how Swiss farmers can take stock of their cattle even in the darkness of night, for as the herds graze high upon lofty Alpine pastures, a lone herdsman is able to recognise minute, subtle differences in tone between the beasts’ individual bells, after which he can rest at night having taken account of each and every one of them.
To gain access to the underground car park I swiped my corporate ID card with its digitalized fingerprint, pin number and microchip in the gizmo next to the elevator, which raced to my floor forcing warm, dusty air through the gaps around the frame of its sliding doors. A hiss announced its arrival. The doors glided apart revealing plush golden carpet, which is changed every couple of weeks to keep the thing looking pristine and maintain that all-important air of corporate opulence. The air was heavy with peach-scented deodorizer. The walls are of panelled light oak with not a hint of scratched graffiti like you find in the piss-stinking elevators at our local malls. Polished brass handrails finish off the look. Soft Jazz FM played Kenny Gee or something innocuous through the speakers and as I pressed the button for Parking Lower Level Three the comforting sexy female voice breathed ‘Thank you, going down’ through a speaker hidden behind the control panel.
I have developed a clear image of who this woman is whose voice they used for the elevator announcements. She should be singing cool jazz in an old smoke-filled speakeasy in downtown Chicago rather than greeting the nameless faces travelling up and down between floors every day of the week. She's about thirty, tall, slim and curvy with a tumble of rich curly red hair cascading half way down her elegant back, beautiful blue eyes focused on the ever increasing bulge of my genitalia and smooth, delicate hands glowing warm in anticipation of… ‘Lower Level Three. Have a great evening,’ she whispered. I adjusted myself as I stepped out into the parking garage and headed to my car.
So that’s how the jangling of my car keys begins! I shove my hand in my pocket pretending I’m trying to retrieve my keys rather than walk around with a throbbing hard-on.
Boom!
It was a clumping, hard thud that came out of nowhere. Close. Behind me. A noise that didn’t belong. Because I’d never heard it before my nerves were slow in coming up with the right reaction. Yes, it made me jump and yes, it set my heart racing with my pulse relocating to my inner ear. But not until after a couple of nanoseconds, during which time my brain had carried the unfamiliar sound and vibrations around my various memory banks for identification and an indication as to how it should make the rest of my body react.
I turned pretty sharp to look over my right shoulder, focussed my weary eyes and caught the final flash moments of a bulky body, dressed in black, bouncing backwards from what had shortly before been a sliding glass door, feet off the ground, arms outstretched, head flung back, engulfed in a sparkling cloud of shattered glass.
Some of the glass made it to the concrete floor before he did, as if preparing a bejewelled mat to break his fall, some accompanied him at the same rate as his descent like an airborne escort, and a few larger pieces which had hurtled upwards upon impact were only now heading south to rejoin the rest, rotating in the sticky evening air. I guessed this wasn’t reinforced glass I was watching as there was no exquisite tinkling as the shattered gems rained down. It sounded more like when I once accidentally emptied a bag of frozen peas over the ceramic kitchen floor. Only that night I hadn’t flung a huge side of beef down on top of them like I was witnessing now.
The guy landed flat upon the carpet of glass, his heels hitting the ground at the same time as his butt and the back of his head. There was no bounce. His hands twitched for the slightest of moments and then the last few shards rained down upon him covering him in what resembled a flash hailstorm. Only the pieces didn’t melt.
He was no more than twenty feet away. At first I didn’t move. Someone else would follow behind looking for him, somehow making sense of it all. Apart from my heart beating, the only thing I could hear was the rattling of a diesel engine from a car driving round on one of the upper levels. A fluorescent strip-light flickered above the guy as he lay there, bathing him in a silver, metallic glare.
I don’t know anything about first aid and I’ve never been the kind of guy who would dive into a pool to rescue anybody. I’d put a toe in the water first to make sure it wasn’t too cold, or maybe yell that they should hold on while I go dial 911. Same with this guy. I just walked over to his body, lying there motionless on a bed of dull crystals, his eyes open but full of glass and a triangular shard bearing a blue sticker saying ‘Automatic Door’ dug, thinnest corner first, deep into the side of his neck. I remember mumbling ‘Jesus Christ’ or at least I think I do. It sounds the kind of thing I would have said. Or should have.
There was no one else around. By day the parking garage is swarming with downtown office workers, but in the evening it, like the city, is usually deserted. He didn’t seem to be breathing. No rise and fall of his chest. He must have been going some to hit that door so hard and do so much damage to both himself and it. I didn’t dare stoop down. I listened for distant footsteps.
I didn’t know what I should do. It wasn’t how I thought I’d react in a moment like this. Like what? How often do we rehearse seeing a guy getting totalled by slamming into a glass door? I decided I should leave him there. He was dead for Chrissakes! How did I know that without feeling for a pulse or yelling ‘hey buddy, you okay?’ or shining a flashlight (and who carries one of those damn things?) into his eyes? Well, anyone that still, with half a windowpane buried in their neck, and eyes full of glass turning wet and red, like Campari oozing through crushed ice, is pretty much lacking in the living department by my book. And hell! It’s not like I had anything to do with it. I was just walking to my car one minute and then BANG! There we both were. Or in his case, now departed.
And depart is what I would do. Someone must know the guy. Someone must miss him. He’d be late for something and someone who he means something to would come looking for him, tracing his well-trodden path, or looking for his last whereabouts. I felt sorry for the guy, sure; and that really must have hurt slamming into the door like that. A ruby red puddle of blood began congealing around his head. But what could I do? I was out of there.
I turned to begin walking towards my car. Just as I did so I noticed something white clenched in his left hand. Curiosity got the better of me. I turned back round to face the guy and knelt down by his side. Careful not to step in the pool of blood and mess up my new shoes (Bloomingdales) and in turn my car’s floormats, which I’d had to pay Mercedes three hundred bucks for as a so-called luxury add-on.
I reached across to take this piece of paper out of his hand. Maybe it would have a phone number or name on it, which would help shed some light on exactly who was now turning a weird shade of grey on the concrete in front of me. As I began prising the paper from his cool, stiffening fingers I almost shit myself as from somewhere inside his jacket a cell-phone began ringing to the tune of the French ‘Reveille’ anthem. My first inclination was to dig inside the guy’s clothing, locate the phone and tell whoever was calling to get on over and deal with their dead buddy. But what if by touching the body, tampering with the evidence, interfering with the DNA, I would somehow be incriminating myself? There were no security cameras any place I could see. No one else was around. As I thought about whether or not to rummage around for his phone the problem was solved when the muffled, tinny fanfare finally stopped.
I snatched the crumpled paper and stood up as I opened it. It was a parking lot ticket, which was franked with today’s date and the word PAID in smudged green lettering across it. Nothing else. No phone numbers, no names, and no message of any kind. I reached into my trouser pocket and located my keys again and made my car give a soft, welcoming toot-toot on the horn as I pressed the remote on my key-ring and deactivated the alarm. I walked over to my car, removed the sheet of paper under the wiper advertising some fancy valet car wash that’s opened up around the corner, ripping every sucker off by thirty bucks just to wash their car and vacuum the mats. Beats me why the place is jam-packed most of the time.
I got in, started the engine and opened the window. The air gets kind of stuffy with the car parked there all day. I drove up two levels to the exit and tried using the dead guy’s ticket instead of swiping my credit card. It worked too! I thought you only had like fifteen minutes to get out of there after the ticket had been bought or it would be null and void. But here the barrier lifted, and I drove out onto the deserted San Lorenzo Boulevard with its tall palms swaying in the moonlight. I lit a cigarette and figured that, having just saved forty bucks in parking, I would stop and pick up beer and pizza on the way home. After such a long day it was the least I could do.
SAKI
RAYMOND CARVER
RUPERT THOMSON
TOBY LITT
