Speaker 1: The elevator doors ripped open in a child's bedroom filled
the hallway. I stepped out and saw the wooden truck
with my initial scuffed on its side. Suspicion tightened my
hands around the recorder in my pocket, and I held
the truck like evidence. The central problem was immediate. The
car had not stopped at numbered four. It had stopped
on a remembered room. Amase Hell always stood at the
threshold watching me hold a toy she did not know.
I needed to know whether this was a freakquiring error
or something that chose people. I am even mercer. I
live in the twelfth floor in apartment two hundred nine.
Go to the same office job I have had for
three years, and I keep a thread by messenger bag
with a plastic keeekout in the front pocket. I walk
into the elevator most mornings, pressed twelve and get twelve
to night. At nine point twenty, serving the elevator delivered
a bedroom I had not seen in this building. I
put the truck on my palm and checked the wallpaper.
Cheap floor or paper peeled around a round outlet aglow
in the dark, starts stick a half torn from the
ceiling those details belonged to her room. I slept in
once long enough to remember the outlet's brown circle. That
memory pushed me toward the doorway a mess. Call away, Vaughan,
are you all right? Her voice had the flat, tired
patience of some one who has lived in the same
hallway for twenty years. She pressed her night robe close
with one hand. What the hell is this? It's not
I started and stopped because I could not fit words
to what I had just seen. I moved the truck
across the threshold, like checking a wound. I said, this room,
I remember it. Thou arrived in a different shape. When
Leo from maintenance thumped down the stairwell two minutes later
and asked me. He called me for a st of car.
There was no time for explanations. The elevator doors clicked
close behind me, and the light and the small bedroom
flicked off. For a heartbeat, a different door chimed up
and down the hall. An edge of the ordinary had
already cracked. We walked back to the lobby because Leo
wanted to check the control panel first. I ran my
thumb along the elevators at a scene while the car
hummed like a machine doing what it had been told
so many times in the lobby. Leo jabbed at the
common muttered electrical could be a relay old building, even
wiring loves to die award. I watched him say the word,
and saw him choose a simple explanation to hand to
the night manager. I could not accept simple. Tonight Jamil
orders from security arrived with a flash height and an
apologetic face. He set his light on the floor and
played video back from the whole camera. We crowded around
the monitor the footiture. The elevator door was sliding open,
a sliver of bedroom spilling out, and me walking toward it.
Then the tape jumped three frames and the corridor was empty.
Leo's warren paused the recorder. Jomf fumbled with the controls,
his fingers shaking even though his voice was steady. That's
a blip, camera's glitch. He repeated the building line, but
the blank frames wore a physical absence and external event.
The tapes get pushed us from theory into an evidence trail.
We returned to the elevator and Leo pried at the
plastic fistplit over the buttons. His bulk leaned into a
space that smelled of elevator oil and old carpet cleaner.
When he popped the panel loose, there were photographs scratched
and embedded underneath the plastic, like someone had set small
pictures between the lays and sounded the panel smooth. One
photo had a white circle around a face and a
black line through it. Another showed a yard sale table
and a woman I recognized from the Tent four laundry room.
My breath tightened. I said that one and pointed to
a small school picture of a boy with a crooked
caloc The face could have been mine. Mis Callaway moved
close and said, that's my nephew. He used to play
with trucks like that. She took off her glasses and
wiped her cheeks without crying. Her action was a small
human attempt to steady the world. LEO, we can call
building management. Shut the car down, order attack. In the morning,
Jammel muttered, we should log this. Some one can get hurt.
Their recommendations read like rules. I kept thinking about pictures
under the plastic and how the car had chosen a
specific room. I tested the car because not testing felt
like surrender. I pushed the panel back in place, just
enough to let the button sit, but not lock them.
I told mees call Away, think of a place you remember,
something simple, She frowned. My street, the corner bakery by
the post office. My sister lived there. I closed my
eyes and focused on the smell of sugar and yease
from that bakery. I concentrated on the bel ab of
the bakery door that always jingled sharp. The car made
a low mechanical breath in A button that had been
dull suddenly glowed fray in amber for the first time.
Mass Callaway whispered, it lit up, even it lit up.
That was the experimental choice, humanable against the cause response.
The elevator doors opened onto a corridor that smelt like
fire and warm bread, but looked wrong. The wallpaper and
the corridor wall matched the bedroom wallpapper from earlier mess
Calloway reached out with her hand and touched the wall
by the threshold, like it might be solid and real.
Her fingers came away with the dusting of plaster. She
laughed once, as short sound that had the edge of disbelief.
It's my street, she said, quick and tiny with hope.
I said, don't go to farms, halloway. My voice came
out strangled. She shook me off with a polite irritation,
and stepped forward the card and closed it. Waited. The
wedding felt like assessment. Then the hallway disappear and the
elevator opened into a space that was not a room,
but a blot of black well light stopped in the doorway.
That was the moment my fear changed from suspicion into
the sharp edge of panic. I lunged and grad my's
colorway by the sleeve. She startle pulled back. Even what
are you doing, she said, I hand hit mine like
the sound of small animal. I pulled again and held
the metal rail under her finger scrape. The car hummed
deeper and lower, and the scene where the doors met
widened like a mouth preparing to close. Leo shoved his
weight against the panel and yelled hold on. He shoved
with the muscle of someone used to dragging broken things
back into place. For three heart beats, none of us moved,
but hands on cloth and screaming motor JOm Will yelled
grab her feet and rushed forward. We had a rapid
back and forth of coordinated force. Leopuld even tie the
bag a jaw will wedge under her. Each line was short,
sharp and functional. The Cark's hail the first shold offered
a pressure like vacuum at a train door. Then it contracted,
and the hole we pushed back with a sting that
tasted like metal in the tongue. The scene pinched a mess.
Callaway's robe hem and then released with the lawn horrible creek.
Leo cursed, and Lawrence no Jamal twisted her wrist. Something
on the far edge of the dock reached, not hands
so much as the surface that saw fabric. I felt
the fibers of Mese Cowway's sleeve slipped through my fingers,
slicken thin, like wet paper. I let go because was
sudden and violent, and I could not hold against it.
The cast land the door shut, the lights inside the
elevator went bright as if nothing had happened, and a
control panel registered a single four. We did not have.
The car came back down. I stumbled into the lobby alone.
The monitor in the security room showed an empty frame
where MEM's Colorway had stood. John Mills stowed until his
jowl worked. It's like she never existed in that shot,
he said, Leo was stared at the embedded faut grass
and said we should call the copse. This is above me.
I felt a reaction in my mouth, NA say, anger
of concrete physical need to make sense. A new emotion arrived, blame.
I blamed myself because I had stepped up first in
the bedroom and I had touched the truck. Blame made
me check my pockets, my bag, the recorder, as if
retrieving an ob could rewind a decision. I sat on
the lobby bentois. They argued about protocol. Jamal, we log it,
we file an incident report. We put the elevator out
of service, Leo. No one wants the elevator down to night.
People will complain to morrow. Management will shut it down quietly.
Their exchange felt like a negotiation over whether a single
disappearance would become a record. At the end of that argument,
liaband panel back and slid the feast blade in. He
kept his hands on the edge and said, softly, however,
did this knew what they were doing? That line changed
my suspicion into a clearer theory. The photographs under the
plastic were not random. Someone or something had put them there.
An unexpected reveal a selective pattern, not an accident. Back
in my apartment, I sat at my small desk and
switched on my recorder. I put the wooden truck beside
the mic and press record. I told the device the
bear bones, my name, the time, what had happened. Speaking
gave me of for the panic. When I said the
word dealt loud, they felt like evidence. I elicited the
sequence step by step because the felt like structure and
saving face. I left pauses long enough that the recorder
would pick up small sounds, my breath, the distant humm
of city traffic, the radiator tapping. I fumbled the plastic
control panel's edge with my restless thumb. The panel was
on my desk because the super had handed it over.
He insisted management would want to review the embedded photographs.
I listened back to the recorded chunk and heard Me's
Calloway's voice and Lea's rough shuts and jams saying there's
nothing on the tape. Hearing it made my next movement
feel less like confession and more like a task. I
flipped the panel face so I could see the photos
pressed beneath the plastic. There were eight small images in total,
a school photo, a grocery shelf, a man holding a fish,
a child at a birthday partied, a woman at bust up.
One had a dark line scored across the cheek. The
image in the top right corner my throat clothes. When
I saw it look like me at nine or ten,
teeth crooked and hair sticking up. I reached forward and
touched the plastic over that photograph. It felt warm against
my finger tips. An emotion shift happened again. The blame
and anger cooled into a steady cold determination. Determination showed
up as a list of things to do. I unplugged
the recorder and taped the panel shut. I wrote down
names from the photos and checked the directory for their apartments.
Mess Callaway's nephew lived in the ten floor. The man
with the fish, home owner in eight hundred three, had
moved out two years ago. The birthday child was listed
in the building's old newsletter. Every entry was concrete names,
theate apartment numbers. The pattern emerged like a map. The
elevator was matching rooms or people to images and answering
to something that picked from memory. I went down the
hall in my socks and knocked on Leo's door. He
opened a crack, saw my face and held the bolt even.
He asked, between suspicion and concern. He said, I need
to camoufootage from the stairwell again, full play back. He
rubbed the back of his neck and said, we already checked.
It's a glitch. Ye, no building systems man, they show
you what they want to show. I told him, please
play it from Tempe to midnight. I need every frame.
He has sated and said, all right, but Jamal will
want to be there. We went together at the monitor.
Jamal rewound and played the tips stuttered at the same moment.
Then the footage resumed with me's color way gone. I
leaned close and pointed to a frame with the night
light in the corridor flicked in an odd rhythm. Pause it,
I said. Jamal froze the image there for a single
frame as he ran across the doorway, a grin like
a scratch across film, not metaphor an actual visual artifact.
My heart beat fast. This became a twist. The video
did not merely skip. It showed an addition, a scene
where something had been attached. Leoswres awfully and said, we
take the car out of service at first light, no rise.
He did not finish because the elevator bed inside the
building chimed three times, a long metallic chime that did
not match any floor. We looked at one another. The
same building sounded it be normal now asserted itself like
a warning. Jamal left for the elevator with his flashlight.
I followed when the door slaid up in this time
they revealed a corridor that matched nothing we had named.
There was no wallpaper I recognized, only a long, narrow
grocery easel stacked with canned goods and a flickering fluorescent light. Overhead.
A child's ceerial box lay on the floor with a
smear of something dark at corner mazcl always absence hung
for esson hum. I stepped forward and picked up the box.
It had a sticker with a date stamped and met
June fourteen, nineteen ninety nine. I kepped that box in
my hand because the day could anchor an investigation. Chamal,
we should barricade it. Leo shook his head and said,
we called it in. We called the manager, and then
he left the sentence loose. Because the building always preferred
to contain things with paperwork. I said, call the manager. Now,
tell them to lock the elevator. My voice did not
sound like a plea. It sounded like a decision. The
two of them argue over protocol and people's convenience. Their
argument gave me the space to do the one thing
I had promised myself. I would do record everything I could.
I put the camera in my back and climbed the
service stairs to the control closet. The closet smelled of
metal and dust. Chamaal followed and watched menial and took
wires together to force a manual of ride. While Leo
stood guard, My hands moved mechanically. Sweat wet the base
of my shirt. I did not trust that the building
would treat what had happened as anything but a weird liability.
The override gave me access to the car's internal speaker
and the ventilation. I listened for changes in pitch for
that lowosun note the elevator had hummed the first night.
The car answered with a faint chime and then silence,
an external event. The chime was a response to my interference.
I returned to my apartment with a panel tate and
the truck on my desk. I recorded a longer statement,
this time, including the names Mass, Colorway, Lea, Romo's Jammel
orders and what each had done. I stopped the tape
and listened. At the end of the recording, a single
image remained in my mind, the photograph and the panel
that had looked like me. I took the panel to
my desk and pried the corner of the plastic where
the photographs lay underneath one slot. I expected a white
rectangle paper card board, something to touch. Instead, there was
an empty space where a photograph had been torn out cleanly,
like a careful removal of My chest tightened. That discovery
required my fear into a new fear. The elevator does
not simply reproduce rooms. It removes things. It takes them
from between layers and leaves nothing. That knowledge forced my
next choice. I boxed a panel, taped it, and mailed
it in a courier envelope to a knockive his friend,
who cataloged municipal oddies. While the package sat on my
kitchen counter, I set the recorder to run. I wanted
a record of my own choices in case I woke
to find my apartment re arranged into another life. I
finished at night by standing at my front door with
the recorder under my chin. I said, in short lines
that could be read back, I do not know if
this is an experiment or resident curse, or a mechanical
air that stole people. I know what I saw, I
know what I touched. If you live in a building
within elevator, do not let it answer to her memory.
You did not choose. I stopped the tape and left
the record of running for a long time to capture
nothing but the radiator and the hiss of the street beyond.
I slid the panel into my bag and went to bed,
fully addressed, because I could not trust sleep to stay
where I put it. Iurs later, I woke to three
sharp knocks at my door. I sat up, the recorder,
lights still blinking on the desk. The knocks came again,
slow and measured. I reached for the door and the
panel in my bag, and when I opened the door,
no one stood in the hallway. On the floor where
a footstep should have been, there was a small smear
of dullst and one wooden truck wheel painted blue, resting
on its side. I closed the door and heard the
building elevator time twice in the distance, a sound landing,
and a whole way like a name. I set the
recorder down and pressed stop. The file ended with the
click of the button and a thin to red of static.
I tapped the names from the photographs into a sheet
and underlined the dates. I send the envelope to the
archivist with a note, do not open except in a
secure room. I wrote that because action feels like safety,
I still feel suspicion every time I pass an elevator.
The suspicion turned into doubt, and then fear, and then
a cold resolve to tell whatever I know. My warning
is concrete. Check the panels, lord for footage, hold a
steady hand when someone steps toward a threshold. The last
sound on my recording to night was the elevator bell,
three notes, then an extra half tone at the end,
like a voice clearing itself. I slid the recorder into
my messenger back, and before I could stop myself, I
pressed the small plastic kieck out against the desk where
my photograph had been displayed in the panel and found
the slot empty. Then a knock came again directly at
the door. The eleve vader shuddered the full reescent strip
above the panel popping twice, and the door slid open
against my shoulder to reveal my mother's kitchen. I stepped
out with a wooden truck from the bedroom, still in
my palm, and suspicion tightened my jaw. This was not
an ordinary stop. I could hear the car beginning side
close behind me, so I shoved my shoulder into the
metal and jammed the doors until they clattered and stayed open.
Don't close, I said, voice low and raw. That demand
started everything. I had that feeling again, suspicion within the
first five seconds of the kitchen. It made me move faster.
The linoleum had the same crescent scuff by the sink
whire I used to kick my feet when I was small.
The calendar on the wall showed a month. I couldn't
place torn across a Tuesday. I reached down and kept
my hand on the truck's flicking paint. The truck was
from Chapter one. I had the toy when the elevator
first opened onto the child's bedroom. I did not plan
to take it into a kitchen, but the toy felt
like proof. It made the stop less private and more dangerous.
My name doesn't matter here. The recorder in my pocket mattered.
I founded the little device on and heard to click
like a life line. I heard steps above me, heels,
and a boxer's shuffle. Some one else had heard the
doors open. The light over the sink stuttered and then steadied.
I said, Liner, Jewels. The name Liner came out like
a demand. The door to the hallway was a seam
of shadow and light. I could not let the elevator
close and swallowed this kitchen before any one else. Lena
Pok's shoes hit the linoleum five seconds later. She kept
her hands on her coat as on mine, and did
not ask cow I got there even she said, what
are you doing with that? Lena's voice is blunt, she
uses facts like tools. That tone made me answer in
short pieces. I held the truck up for her to
see Jewel's more nose behind her, Palm's dusty wearing his
maintenance belt, and an expression that read liability in protocol.
The car opened on my childhood kitchen, I said. The
sentence was short. I kept my shoulders turned toward the
elevators of the doors couldn't jam shut. I heard the
car's ventilation grill whine, as if it were listening. Lena
stepped forward and looked at the truck, at the scuff
under the sink, then at the botom panel reflected in
the elevator's mirror. You shouldn't be bringing things out of
the car, she said. You shouldn't be filming this. My
hands tightened around the phone jewels ganstood the elevator, then
at me. Even give me the recorder, he said. He
put his foot toward the door. We like he wanted
to block my eggs. You can't be tampering with equipment.
You can't be pulling tenants into car stops. He broke
sentences with short, precise commands. His eyes flicked to the
panel when numbers wavered, and the plastic cover over the
buttons had small craze tracks that let a sliver of
paper show underneath, like old photographs pressed beneath clear plastic.
I held the recorder. I let the truck dangle from
two fingers. I felt my hands tremble, and sat the
wooden toy down on the linoleum next to the sink.
Misss Hoggar found my truck in the lobby earlier, I said,
she thought it was hers. The car's been opening on
to rooms that belonged to people. It isn't stopping on
numbered floors. My sentences, where the suspicion shifted into explanation,
were ti. I knew I had to make them shot
so Lena and Juwles couldn't cut me off of protocol.
Lena's mouth flattened. Even that's a building issue, not a story.
You show me a hazard, I called the owner. He
shu me a recording. I throw it away if it
makes tenants panic. She reached for the truck. Her ham
went barely an inch before I snapped and pulled back.
That poll was the first emotional shift. Suspicion changed into anger.
I said, don't touch it. I said it so sharply
that Jewels lifted his hands. We argued with short lines.
Lina listened to me. I said, the car is pulling rooms.
It took my bedroom last week. He brought a child's
toy into the lobbyat Lena. That doesn't prove anything. It does,
I said, he saw the calendar, he saw the scuff,
the panel numbers disappear. Shules leaned in, give me the recorder. No,
I said, and said it twice. We were four people
in the kitchen that did not belong to this building's
floor plan. The colck on the kitchen wall shied a
wrong ir. I moved along the counter, running a finger
over the edge of a chip mug, and watched Lena
take out her keys. I'll call the owner, she said.
We shot the car until he gets here. Shuelels rubbed
his chin and said, I can take it to the
service floor and lock it. I can cut power. The
words cut between them, like policy. I felt an emotional
shift again. Anger softened into desperation. Desperation made me move no.
I said, if you lock it, you will lock whatever
it pulled in their two. My voice went low, and
I used every short sentence like a hammer. We write
it again. I will show you the stops. You will
see the vanishing numbers. Lena's face hardened and jewels draw tightened.
Even you can't keep going back in there. Liner. We
have tenants, we have liability. We need to make a call.
If I don't prove it now, I said, someone else
will be pulled into a room that never existed for them.
People will start disappearing, and you want no word to
tell relatives to look at last line landed. It refrained
the conflict from protocol to risk. Juel stepped forward and
tried to take the truck from the counter. Give me
the recorder, even, he said. Now he hit like a technician,
stating a procedure. I put my palm over the recorder
and felt the click of the red light. I wasn't
going to hand it over. Jewel's hands hovered like a net.
Then let me cut power to the car. We isolate
the system. You can't just cut power, Liner, the emergency
brake could lock people in their voices being pawned. The
require back and forth argument came Lina and Jewels, trading
three to six short lines that revealed their priorities. Lina,
this is about residence, I said, not paperwork. Residents are
covered by the owner. Lina shot back, we call him
and wait waiting risk people. Jules cutting power risks trap tenants.
So what, Jewels you'd rather rehide? Lina? Would you rather
apologize after some one disappears? I said? The exchange was tight,
angry and short. Jewels made a move toward the stair
of vestibule. He am taking the car to the service floor.
If you stop me, al cohol security, He moved like
he intended to be the one in control. Lina turned
to me, I Van, stay out of the car. Stay
out of the cab if you go back, and I
will have no choice. She no choice the way a
manager says protocol. She did not know what the car
could do. She only knew what the building allowed. I
went back in any way. The doors closed like a hand.
The pennel hummed, The numbers on the plate flashed, and
a single button gowed faintly where a photograph showed a
plastic covered face. I put my fingers on that button
and felt a hum crawl under my skin, like an expectation.
I pressed her without thinking of the number, and the
car moved. This next stop came sudden. The doors opened
onto a narrow grocery aisle stacked with cereal boxes and
a chip priced tack that read nineteen nine cents. Misss
Hargrove stood frozen between two carts, looking like she had
walked out of a photograph. She stared at me with
unfocussed look. Her lips parted and closed with that sound.
Lena's hand went to my elbow. Missus Hargrove, Lina, Dorothy,
are you all right. Missus Hargrove blinked and took a
swow step away from the cereal boxes. My catch, she said,
My cat is She was goun mid sentence. One breath later,
the floor's fluorescent flickered, and she left no sound. A
torn photograph fluttered to the linoleum where she had stood.
I bent to pick it up and saw my names
scrolled on the back in a hand I did not recognize.
For a second, I thought I had misread it. But
the ink was clear, even the eyesell smelled like paper
and dust. My chest tightened. That vanish was a jolt
that turned my desperation into panic. LENI yanked the photograph
from my fingers and held it high. Even where did
this come from? She demanded Jewels. Reached down and felt
the torn edge, then looked at the ceiling. This building
is getting dangerous, he said. He spoke as if he
could file it away in a maintenant report, but his
hand shook. The sudden disappearance of miss Hargrove changed the momentum.
We had a witness vanish and leave evidence that implicated me.
I tried to explain. I didn't put my name on
any one's photograph. I said, I didn't write that the car.
My voice hitched. Liner's eyes noted, even there are people
saying things in the lobby. Tenant saw you carrying a
child's toy. They saw you near the car. This photograph
ties you to some one missing. Her words were short
and they landed like accusations. I felt the second major
emotion shift, panic tipped towards shame. She made my voy smaller.
Missess Hargroff came to the lobby looking for her cat.
I said she stepped into the car because she thought
the cat might be on another floor. The car opened
on an aisle and she walked out, and then then
she disappeared. Jill's face went flat. She walked out and vanished.
He asked yes, I said yes, and there is a
photo with my name on the back. I let the
fact sit. Facts of weight. Lina called the owner's number
with fingers that did not stop moving jewels. We can
isolate the cab on the service floor. I can drop
it into maintenance and lock it with the brakes. We
do it now. Lena held the phone and pressed it
against her jaw. The owner wants to know what I'm
telling him, she said, I tell Hyinton and so leaving
toys in the lobby. I tell him a woman vanished.
He's going to protect himself in the building. Her tone
was business like. She was thinking about payroll and lawsuits.
I felt exposed. I forced my way back into the
cab because the only thing I had left was proof.
Ride with me, I said, see the apartment, stop ops,
see the numbers vanish. Lena's face went tight with a
different calculation. Jewels stepped back, hands raised in a technician surrender.
Even if you go in there and not coming, Jewels,
I won't be the one to open doors if you
stop pulling people in. Lena looked at Jewels, then at me.
She closed her eyes for a heartbeat and then opened them. Fine,
one ride, Jewels, stay on the panel. Her voice sad,
one ride the way someone signs a contract they plan
to break. The car moved the panel, blood static, and
the numbers on it dissolved like sheep ink. The doors
opened into an apartment that had photos glued to the
walls and a missing person fly out with my face
in the corner, and the data had no memory of
I stepped out, and the smell of bold cabbage hit me.
Like a fact. The flyer was pinned or corkboard, and
someone had written please for help in heavy black marker.
Even Lina, she stood in the doorway. What small is
that your place? I tried to look at the photos
without letting my hand shake. I recognized the couch stain
with the same shape as one from a childhood living room.
I recognized a chip mug with a lipsticker, and that
wasn't mine. But the flyer bore a date and a
police case number that should not have been attached to me.
My chest constricted. Then anger rose, anger at the idea
that the elevator could re write too belonged to which room?
This is not your apartment, duels, He was shouting over
the harm This is a fabrication, the panels corrupting metadata
or something. His technical language fell apart of the edge.
Who put your face on this missing flyer? Liner demanded.
I walked to the cork board and pulled the fly down.
The paper tore at the corner, and my palm left
a smudge of dust. I read the date. I did
not remember any of it. The confrontation erupted. You lied
to me, Lyner. You had started with a bedroom you
had records. I do have records, I said, I have
a recorder, and I have a toy, and Missess Hargrove disappeared.
Leana's eyes narrowed. Records or storers. She asked, your version
puts our tenants at risk. Jewels lammed his palm on
the service panel and static made the room Breathe stop
talking and decide, He said, we either lock it and
call the owner, or we let the car continue and
we document everything. The back and forth quick and sharp.
Liner wanted cover, Jewels wanted besieger. I wanted the truth.
Then the panel hiccuped and numbs melted. One by one.
The digits that marked floors unraveled like tape. The car
began to close around us. Liner seized my arm and
pulled me back into the cab. She no more, no
more evidence. We go back down and we contain this.
Jewel shook his head and said it won't say it
contained if we don't cut power. Liner shoved the recorder
into my hand and whisper, tell me what you recorded,
Tell me now. Even her whisper at the steel edge
of some one who had lived in a building long
enough to need to be practical. I fumbled with the
recorder and spoken to it, my voice rough. This is
even mercer. The car is opening on places that belong
to people. I was in a child's bedroom, a kitchen,
a grocery aisle. Missss Harger vanished, there is a flier
with my face. Do not let the owner hide this.
If you find this recording, keep it safe. I kept
the sentences clipped. Lena's eyes were on my face the
whole time. Jeles didn't look at me. He watched the panel.
When I finished, Lena's hand closed around the recorder like
she intended to crush it. Shee you destroy this, now,
burn the file, throw the device away. We cannot have
a tenant panic. We cannot avoid get out. I bristled.
You can't make me. I said, I'll upload it if
I have to. Even Lina very close, you will not
upload it. You will not bring the building down on
any tenant. Her voice was not the blunt manager tone.
It was close to pleading. Jewel's face had gone pale. Lina,
if we keep this, we can investigate. If we destroy it,
we bury evidence and someone could keep being pulled into runs.
Lina looked at Jeweles then at me. She put the
recorder in the counter between us and pushed it toward
the stair at alcove. We make a package, she said.
We keep each other safe. We manage this in house.
We tell no one. We tell the owner only if
he agrees to an inspection without tenants being alerted. If
he refuses, we destroy the tape. Her words were quickly
the Gillison's masquerading his care. I stared at the recorder.
The red light on it blinked like a pulse. My
hands were empty except for the memory of pressure. Why
Missess Hargrove had stood. My suspicion had become evidence and
then accusation. I could feel the shame of being suspect
and the anger at being told to silence the only proof.
I met Lena's eyes. If I if I do this,
are you telling me you will look for Missess Hargrove,
I asked. Lena's jaw flexed. I'll make the calls in
the morning, she said, I'll start an internal log. Jewels
will monitor the panel overnight. We will do what we
can behind closed doors. But you burn the file now.
Even this is for everyone's safety. She use everyone's safety
like a lever. Jewels added, if you upload me call
security on you. We write it up, we make a report.
The warning landed with a quiet, mechanical finality. I reach
out and picked up the recorder. Might them have it
over the delete function? My hand shook. A warm, steady
sound filled my ears. The car's hum linus breathed Jewel's
cautious shuffling. I pressed the button to end the file,
and the red light went out. Then Lena came around
the counter end without another wherve. She turned the recorder
over and snapped its casing open with a flat metal key.
She held the circuit board up like proof she had
done it. There. She said, it's unusable. Her tongue was clipped.
I watched her. My chest felt hollow in a literal way.
My pumps holed on the counter. I could not tell
whether relief or dread came next. Lena put the circuit
board into a paper bag and held it out to me.
Take it to the stair alcovanter up into pieces. She said,
burn the pieces in the boiler room if you have to,
but don't keep any copy. I folded and took the back.
I walked with it down the hall toward the stairwell,
where the bulbs were weaker and the smell faintly of oil.
At the stairwell. Lena paused and looked back. Her face
had a resolution that was not kindness. Do you understand why,
she asked? Do you understand that of tenant's panic, some
one could get hurt? I nodded, with short concrete mortionis
Lena's worry gave shape the building. It's rule, its people,
my shame, my anger, and my suspicion condensed into one decision.
I set the bag on the concrete step and opened it.
I tore the circuit board pieces into smaller pieces. I
kept my movements quick and practical, the only language she
seemed to respect. When the pieces were small enough to
throw into the maintenance drain, Lena reached out and considered
the torm photograph in my hand, the one misss Hargrove
had left behind with my name. She did not search
it for finger prints. She folded it and put it
into her pocket like a mark. Do not bring this
up again, she said. I dropped the fragments into the
drain and watched them disappear between grating teeth. The cars
hum moved through the building as if nothing had happened.
Lena closed the stair door behind her with a soft
risen and click. She turned the dead bolt, and then,
without looking at me, left the hall. The final action
of the chapter, Lena pressed the recorder's ruined casing into
her palm and said destroy it now. Her voice was
not a suggestion. I watched her work away. The recorder
sat on the tiled floor between us, an object of
proof in silence. I picked it up clumsily, and then
sat it down again. When the stair door snapped behind her,
I hurried the timber of the building saddle into its
ordinary hum. I held the wooden truck in the torn
photograph and felt the cause memory in the shape of
my hands. I did not upload the file that night.
I walked back to the elevator and let the doors
close without my shoulder, as if admitting I had lost
a fight. The lobby lights buzz. Missus Hargroves Nay mickered
in the stairwell like a fact I couldn't pin down.
I sat on the bench and put the truck on
my lap because it was the only thing that still
fit into a pocket of my life outside the night
seemed ordinary, as if it had no part in our decisions. Inside,
Lena and Jews resumed their routines with the quiet, efficient
gestures of people who had chosen to contain a problem
rather than expose it. I felt suspected and silenced. My
suspicion had moved through anger to a brittle defeat. I
kept thinking of the missing flier with my face on it,
and the line of black marker across the date I
could not remember. Before I climbed the stairs to my apartment,
Lena called after me. Even if anything else happens, you
tell me first, she said, not the internet, not the police.
Mere tone had the weight of a threat and an
offer for Lena. I or I started, then I stopped.
I did not promise to obey her. I did not
promise to bump proof forever. I kept my replace mall
and concrete. I will tell you first. Lena nodded. It
was not a concession, it was a condition. I kept
the wooden truck in my pocket that night, and the
torn photograph jammed between the pages of an old notebook.
The chapter ends with Len a hand in the recorder
back to the stairwell tile, telling me to destroy it
and closing the stair door behind her. So the sound
of it was the final, old, tangible beat. I watched
the door click and felt the finality as a real
physical sound, like co account one too the latch. The
decision had been made in the stairwell. The recorder lay
between us, like evidence and a warning. The building returned
to its hum, and I walked away, holding the proof
I had been told to erase. The elevator door slid open,
and Morrow was gone. Before my feet left the threshold,
I remembered the shoe on the hallway carpet and the
sound of the door's closing against a pocket of living room.
Mare spish and pulled my hands tied around the recorder
in my palm. I shoved the recorder into mirror Hale's
face and said, look. He bent, picked up the child's
left shoe and folded his mouth over the water or
he wouldn't say. My suspicion shaped everything I did next.
I did not wait for the emergency call. I grabbed
mere Hale's elbow and dragged him inside the lobby. We
can't call the police until we know what happened, he said,
But his voice said that hollow delay people get when
they choose to protect the building's records over people's safety.
He pointed to the kerabank above the front desk with
a short, useless gesture. No footage for that camera after midnight.
It's on rotation, he said. His refusal ended like a weight.
I shoved the shoe into my coat and found the
scrippled threadbiscolf at the kobo Marr had run through earlier
that evening. I set the scene with small practical moves,
pham flashlight under the panel, the shoe on the floor
between us, like evidence, scarff in my fist. Louise, the
on duty security officer, was on his cigarette break in
the hall when I told him to get on the
car with me. Louise, I said, holding the scarf out
come with me, bring your radio. He looked at mister
Hale and then at me. You want me to ride
that thing? He asked. His voice was flat. It held
Judy in a thread of weariness. Yes, I said, bring
the radio and gloves. If the car answers to memory,
we need an anchor. Loose's face tightened. You read the
one who found her, he asked, Even as saw you
run out. He started, then stopped. I handed him Marraw's
scarf and the wooden truck is still carried in my
pocket from the bedroom stop earlier. He touched the truck
and his jowel loosened with recognition. You kept that, He asked,
keep it, now, hold it when we ride. We move
fast and h Haile unlocked the serface hatch and cleared
his throat, as if forcing a legal objection would reset
the situation. We should call the police, I said, He snapped.
The police will ride it up and say it's a runaway.
Then it becomes a file and we get fined. His
sentences were clipped with procedure. We had some one disappear
last year, he added, softer, as if naming it made
it less likely to happen again. I said nothing, Louise
and I stepped into the car. The elevator smelt like
old metal and floor wax. The fluorescent strip above the
panel buzs low and then pop, once darkening the edge
of the ceiling. Louise held the truck and the scarf
in his hands like a small shrine. I kept my
fingers in the seam of the doors. I felt the
car hesitate along mechanical breath. Then the panel of buttons
cooled under my palm. The buttons were blank, except for
photos under crack plastic, the same thing I'd seen before.
One button was Warren smooth. The car move without a
floor selection. The call light flashed and the chimes sounded
like the beginning of a laugh, but meted in distant.
It stopped, and the doors rolled aside on the hallway.
That wassd in the building, a crump shed living room
from my childhood, the same one Morrow had stepped into
the lobby. The carpet had the cigarette burns my father
had made when he worked nights and fell asleep on
the couch. A wooden truck sat on a coffee table
with my initials gushed into its side. The truck was
still warm, well as his hand had been moments before.
Less His fingers went loose in the scarf. He started
to step out, and then furs eyes locked on a
framed photo ab of the mantel. That is my street.
He said, that house is two blocks from the station.
That's His lips parted and he took another step, as
if memory pulled him forward. I grabbed his wrist and
haled him back. His weight hit me and his knee buckled.
I said, Liz, get a hold of yourself. Louise, look
at me. He blinked, steadying himself with the truck between
his palms. The car did something I hadn't felt before.
They seemed to test us by laying out the room
in blocks of duty and failure. We fought an odd
argument in that cramped space. You should have stayed back,
even miser Hale mudded when he tried to open the
service door from the shaft. If you drug people in here,
they'll blame you for endangering them. Louis's voice was quieter,
the cadence of a man who'd walk the same beats
for years. We have evidence to check. We have the shoe,
we have a hamprint. We go by facts, not rumors.
The argument became a tool. I used it to keep
lose conscious. Louise. Remember the alley on Nines where you
caught the kid with the stolen radio? I said, remember
who you called? I needed to pull a practical memory
into the light. He blinked and returned a small nod.
The car shuddered. His ventilation girl hummed like a throat,
clearing the four esconce strip popped twice. The doors closed
behind us and opened on a different image occurbund sodium
street line, the uniform shapes of offices standing where Louis
had once stood in a patrol memory. His shoulders went
stiff and his breath shortened. He reached for the door handle.
I yanked him back again. Lou I hissed, you step
out and you don't come back. I swear to you,
ye don't come back. He hissed back. I then I swear.
But he was arguing with his own muscles. The car
was picking at the places where guilt had set like
rust in him. He moved one more step and then stopped, shaking.
His hands aid wrapped around the truck like a rosary.
We found a seam on under the button panel. It
came loose with a screw driver from my bag. Behind
the plastic were photographs, polaroids taped under the numbers, now
faded and culing. One photo showed a door with a
numberplate that wasn't the stood in a building directory. The
paint on the knob was worn. There was a child
sticker on the frame. I held the picture up with fingers.
This apartment isn't on the board. I said. The image
matched a memory I did once ago of a neighbor
who smiled too much and left without explanation. This, this
was a real place, I added. Loose's face changed. You
found a good number, he said. People don't vanish and
leave their apartments off the list by accident, Not in
this building, not with Haile managing floors. We argued with
mister Hale by the elevator doors. He dug his nails
into the frame and told us the stories he had
long parked in his mouth. All tenants who moved out
without paperwork, farmers who left during the night, men who
never read the notices posted at the mail boxes. The
building eats them, he said once, and then corrected himself. No,
the building arcost them in its own way. I did
not accept metaphors from a man who had keyster in
entire history of forgotten tenants. I needed a plan. Louise
did calculations out loud while rubbing the fabric of marrowscarf
between his fingers. Will write together, he said. You hold
on to her scarf. I hold on to my radio.
If a car answers to memory, the scarf will anchor her,
and a radio will broadcast where we are if it
takes us. We pulled back one by one. No one
steps out alone. We rode the car build It stopped
from our most private histories. It pushed Louise toward his beat,
where I could see the corner Dinah he used to
visit after patrol. It pushed me Hail toward a down
stairs office with a ledger in which he had written
the names of tenants. He devicted each stop, tried the
team like a gauntlet. At once stop, mister Hale reached
automatically for a ledger, and his knuckles went white. I
pulled his hand away. He spat, you don't understand, and
then I understood. He had signed papers that had raised
more than addresses. His throat worked. He kept his hands
where I could see them. A cohesion cracked. At beat five,
Louise froze in the edge of a memory and began
to step out, as if obeying some all rehearse duty.
I grabbed his collar and pulled him back. He fought
me for long, slow second, and then he punched my
shoulder hard enough to make me swear. Let me out,
he said, let me see them, Let me see I failed, Louise,
I said, choking on my breath. We were getting her back.
We agreed, you fight with us, not against us. He quieted,
but he did not break away from the image in
front of him. The car's interior light dinned and brightened,
as if it were mimicking the mood of for ever
it held in the dim I found the small blank
label under appeal photograph where a number should have been.
There was a raw wreckting of glue and torn paper.
I scraped at it with a finger nail beneath a
ghosted name came forward, a name I recognized from a
neighbor who had spoken to me once about moving out
and had never been seen again. The discovery became the
twist that changed everything. The elevator wasn't just rendering memory
from any one present. It was erasing actual floors from
the buildings shared map and embedding them under its control.
The photograph I pulled free showed an apartment number that
the directory had no recorder, and I knew then that
the car didn't only answer memories, it replaced them. We
had proofn the ham prints mirrored in the lobby wall
and in the scar truck that belonged to a child
who shouldn't have been here any more. Louise looked at
the photo and then at me. You recognized one of
these before he said which one? I told him about
the wooden truck and the mother's kitchen we'd seen earlier.
The kitchen had the chipmug on the top shelf. I
said it belonged to a woman who lived here, who
told me once she kept her son's drawings behind the fridge.
There is no record of the department on the board.
Louise swore softly and kissed the trot between his palms.
We built a plan for retrieval that depended on force,
and Andrew I would ride and force the seam of
the doors with the crowber from the maintenance closet it.
Louis would try to anchor himself with his radio and
keep us grounded to the physical building. Mister Hale would
stay by the shaft in case we were rejected. We
agreed in three short lines, we going together, Louis, we
come back together. We do not split up. Hale added,
if any one looks like they might step, he pulled
them back. Understood. He nodded at me as much as
at was. The car offered a final stop labeled home.
The panel lit a soft, whole fashioned light where the
number should have been. The label read home in cracksticker
letters that smell faintly of a tease of an age.
The doors opened onto the earliest room I could remember,
a narrow bedroom with a crooked poster of a blue train,
a shelf of my father's smatched socks, and a crap
window that had once been stuck open. A younger votion
of my father sat on a bed with a cigarette
between two benfingers. He did not look toward the door.
The room smelled a frying oil. In the afternoon, my
mother left for work and forgot to lock the gate.
The car's pressure increased in my ears. My fingers felt
like they were being squeezed by an unseen hand. I
forced the scene with a crowber. My fingers burned against
the metal, and I could feel the car resist. It
was pressure that translated into the physical, a searing ring
in my ears, as suction across my shoulders in a hot,
metallic taste at the back of my tongue. I reached
it and my hand closed on Maru's golf as she
sat in the small armchair, pale and breathing. I could
see the hole around her eyes, the way her hands trembled.
She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but the
words were swallowed in the room and into wallpaper. I
grabbed Morre and pulled the car tightened like a clamp.
Louise braced his shoulder against the door frame and put
his foot on the threshold. Mister Hale's face was white,
and he yelled, pull Paul. Now we all heaved the scene.
Cut my palm. A crober slept in my tasted metal.
Marra's fingers curled round the truck in my pocket, the
truck that had been my anchor in the first stop,
And for a second I felt connected to the floor
of the lobby by one thread. Then the room yanked
at me in a way that was unexpectedly brutally specific.
A memory that mattered was being taken in exchange. I
felt the name of a teacher, the exact shape of
his crooked glasses, evaporate from my head, as if some
one had scarred it with a cloth. I could no
longer call up the sound of his lesson, or the
way his pocket watch clicked. That beast of my child
had fell away. In the instant I snatched morra at
I knew at the moment my fingers closed on Ea
where the name should have been. My vision tunnel then cleared.
Mara was dragged free, coughing and sputtering. But when I
looked at the coffee table behind us, a wooden truck
was missing an axle, and where the truck had be,
my memory had a hole. Louse stumbled out after us,
bleeding from a cut on his forehead. Hale called up
the chaff ladder and swallowed a chair back into the
lobby with two hands that shook. Mara dropped onto the
lobby carpet and scrabbled for her shoe. She looked at me,
and there was a pause in her eyes I had
not seen before in absence, empty as a shelf where
a picture used to be. She coughed and then smiled
in a way that didn't reach the corners of her mouth. Aydn,
she said, Her voice was small. Do you know where?
Then she stopped, looking blank at the name she could
not find. We had her back, but not hole. There
was a silence after the doors slammed behind us, A
practical flat and as while we tried to breathe and
keep blood from staining the carpet. Louis sat on the bench,
breathing through a broken lip and swore softly. She smells
like the inside of a car that's been closed for years,
he said, as if naming it helped. I checked Mara
for cut, some fun nothing life threatening, only in arrow
hollows under her clavicle. Whether life had been pressed in
Hale called an ambulance because he wanted the paperwork to exist.
He also wanders not to tell everyone what we've seen.
If people panic, they'll start breaking into flows that don't exist,
he said, they'll tear the building apart looking for their pasts.
You don't want that. I looked at Mara and then
at the elevatory doors. She came out different. I said,
we have to tell someone what's under the panel. We
have to catalog the photographs. If the car is erasing places,
it's erasing people too. The paramedics came and took more
upstairs in a garanny. She kept preaching for the scarf
during the ride, fingers clenching and unclenching, because the scarf
seemed to help her locate herself. Louis came with us
to the apartment. While the medics worked, he kept saying
small loud, as if for citing a log would prevent
another loss. Mar She was left at the threshold as
Garff was in the cup. The handprint and the lobby
wallsmere left to right. The panel had a blank label
and the torn photoprin in this department. He named each
detail like a lidany I watched him save them and
realized he used less the way a locksmtheus's keys. Later,
after Morrow was tendered and Murror Hale had signed every
piece of paper the building required, I sat at my
kitchen table and recorded the warning. I held the recorder
tight and spoke in short, clean sentences. This is even mercer.
This is a savivor account. The elevator does not stop
on numbers, stops on lives. It will answer a memory
if you give it one. If you ride anchor yourself
with a thing that belonged to the person you intend
to reach. If someone reaches for you, pull them back.
I tried to put the missing name into the recording,
and my foot closed. The teacher's name sat behind my
tongue like a rung. I could not climb I tried
again to reach for the sound, and it was gone.
I set the recorder down and tapped the photo I
had taken of the panel's head and picture into the file.
I wrote the facts and the times, and the precise
wording mister Hale had used for the camera rotation code.
I added names, I added dates. I signed the tape.
As I sat up straight, my finger tremble. I felt
the hollowness of the memory I had lost as a
physical absence in my chest, a missing label where an
old lesson used to sit. Louise came into my apartment
carrying the wooden truck. He set it on my table
and looked at me. You lost something, he said. You
look for it in your face when you talk. You
don't have the name, and it bothers. He like a splinter.
He touched my shoulder. But you got her back. Mar's here,
she squealed when she sat up on the gurney. She
didn't know a word. Then she said track and grabbed it.
She remembers the truck. He smiled at grim, little smile.
That's something. I listened to the recording before sending it
to the oarcave. My voice was steady, though there were
breasts between sentences that were too loud for comfort. I
included the details that mattered, the shoe, the handprint, the panel, photos,
the blank label, the places where we almost lost people.
I'd described, the retrieval and the trade that cost me
a piece of my past. I closed with a line
that steered away from instruction and toward the concrete. If
you find a photo under the panel, take it out.
If you find a blank label, don't press it. If
some one's steps grabbed them by the collar, and do
not let go. I pressed stop, and my hands were
wet there. Hale offered a final practical piece of advice
before he left the lobby the night file an incident report.
He said, put everything in writing. If this is a
fault in the car, we can keep people from riding
until management's insurance shows up. If it's not, we'll have
a paper trail when someone sues. He meant, the paperwork
in the way an ann means offense. I understood that
as much as I understood away the car had cost
me a name. I walked the elevator threshold with the
truck in my pocket and the scarf tied to my belt.
Marris sat on a bench hugging a blanket and traced
the stitches along its hend with two Keffel fingers. She
my name once and then stopped searching for the rest
of a question she could not form. I reached down
and touched her hand. Her fingers were cool. That night,
I signed the recording and archived if a directory label
that included the torn photograph and the plackard number mister
Hale had tried to hide. I sat with Louise and
mister Hale while the paramedics filed their report. We counted names,
We counted dates. We put the wooden truck between us
and the table like a talisman. It had lost an
axle in the struggle, but his initials were still clear.
Before leaving me, Hale whispered, we will seal the panel
for to night. He taped a strip of duck tape
across the edge of the control panel and added a
handriton note, do not remove. He looked at me as
he did it and said, keep this quiet for now.
People will panic if they know. I wanted to argue.
I wanted to make the story public, but I ad
more in the back of my head, uncertain and whole
enough to breathe. I had Louise, with a fresh bruise
on his arm, and a radio full of static that
might catch the CAUs transmissions. I had meh Hale, who
stubborn and guilty, would rather paper over the building's winds
than invite a mobbed pray at Oldwood. I left the
lobby with the truck in my pocket and the recorder
backed up to two drives. At home, I played the
tape back and listened to the steady grain of my
own voice. The record closed with the sound of a
pentapping paper in may Hale's keys jangling. I reached for
the teacher's name again and failed. I sat with the
holt in my head and cataloged everything I could still
see about the man. The way he kept his tile loose,
the small scuff on his left shoe, the sound of
coins in his hand. Details I could point to, not
the name that had been scraped away. I wrote them
down in a line no book, and numbered them on
the last page of the note book. I left a
short concrete beat a knock at my apartment door. I
heard it as a single shop wrap, not the tentative
three knocks people used to be polite, but a hard
tap used by member keys and decisions. I went to
the door and opened it and found mister Hale standing
there holding a thin envelope. He looked at my face
and handed me the envelope. Inside was a single poloid
with the number plate from the panel peeled off and
stuck to its edge on the back some one mare Hayel,
I realized had written a single line for Ricos. The
elevator lights blinked once above us in the building shaft,
and a fluorescent strip hum the something settled back into place.
I put the photo into my file and shut the door.
I did not make any promises out loud. I did
not say we will stop it. We had clawed Morro
back together and paid for it for the memory. I
set the recorder down on the table, and with fingers
that still tremble, I added one final notation to the file.
Names recovered, name lost anchors, used panel photographs, scataloged, blank
label's logged. I wrote the teacher's description again, hoping that
repeated detail might forge the missing name back into being.
The elevator's lights blinked once more. Through the ceiling of
my building. I could hear the distant chime, like a
machine testing its voice. I signed a recording with a
need line even mercer. Then I turned off the recorder,
turned the page in my notebook, and locked the drawer
where I kept the wooden truck. The last sound in
the room was a click of the lock on the
single exhale that came through my chest, like the release
of holding something down for too long. Outside the lobby,
camerabank rotated as mister Hale had said it would. Inside,
the elevator waited with its blank labels and its patchwork photographs.
Marrs left in a hospital bay with the scarf around
her shoulders, thus kept watching whole way and cold into
his station to say he would take leave tomorrow. I
kept the file open and marked the incident as an
active case. I do not have the teacher's name. I
do have a record that the elevator will trade. I
do have a wooden truck missing an axle, and a
woman who will never remember how to ball her son's
favorite suit the way she used to. I have evidence,
and a warning and a hole were once more safe
memory used to live. When I locked the drawer, the
elevator lights flicked once, then went out. I pressed the
recorders stop and up with buttons until the file left
my machine and landed in an archive that would not
be public For a while. I thought about calling the police,
and then I did not. I thought about posting everything online,
and then I did not. I thought about the way
mere Hale had looked at me with that particular tired calculation,
and I understood that we had to keep reckets that
would survive us, that would be found with names attached,
with dates, with places. I left the note on the panel,
do not remove, and I left the truck in my
pocket as a thing that remembered what I had lost.
The final concrete beat was simple and ordinary, a flashlight
under the panel. When company came to inspect the elevator
the next morning, nay Hale sat in his chair and
showed the inspector the duck taped notice. The inspector nodded
and made a note. Outside, a tenant's child tripped and
dropped a plastic toy on the lobby steps. Morrow's shoe
sat on the bench where she had left it. I
watched her sleep at face in a gurney to the
hospital window as the morning light hit her cheek bone
and made a bright line where the skin was whole.
I swallowed and kept my mouth shut. I closed the
file and put it away. I put the recorder in
the drawer with a wooden truck and the torn photograph.
The elevator's light in the shaft blink once more, faint
and indifferent. I wrote the warning I could not say
aloud onto the tape and signed my name. Then I
turned a recorder off. The last thing I did was
locked the drawer and walked back into the living room,
where the wooden truck lay on my table, its initials
still read me scratched into old wood. I put my
hand over the missing axle, and remember the teacher's posture
and his watch in the small scoff on his shoe.
I could not quite name him. I could still reach
him in detail if I searched, but the name itself
stayed gone. I left the apartment with the truck in
my coat pocket. The elevator hump behind me and then
went on with its lists and ledgers. Outside the city
pressed forward with people who would ring elevators without thinking
and step into cars that might answer rondoors. I held
myra scarf in my other hand, like a stitched patch
of evidence, and walked down the steps into street, where
memory fit into a pocket and evidence fit into a file.
The recorder was in my drawer, the tape up loaded,
miserer Hail's note taped over the panel, and a polaroid
waiting in an envelope marked for recos. The elevator lights
blink once more, as if in reply. I did not
look back. I walked away, with the truck in my
pocket and a hole in my head where her name
had lived.