Man in the Empty Suit

by Sean Ferrell

  “That will make you follow me,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s important that you meet me and that you follow me.” She sounded like she was reciting a mantra.

  “Why would your kissing me make me follow?” I sounded more accusing than I meant to. I saw a veil fall between us in her eyes.

  “Because you’ve never been with anyone like me. That’s what you’ll say.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” My denial did nothing to dispel the truth of her comment. “Who invited you anyway?”

  “No one yet.” Her lips continued to move after these words. She was still speaking, in a whisper I couldn’t understand. She stopped and tilted her head. For a moment she looked like one of the parrots tattooed on her shoulder, black eye watching me. Then her gaze fell on my lapel. “Your clock. Wrong time.” The color drained from her face, and I could practically hear her bird heart fluttering to escape her chest.

  I stood and held out my hand. “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t answer, just turned and walked from the room. The echo of her voice—“Wrong time, wrong time”—followed her out the door.

  I trailed her down the hall, watching her avoid rips in the carpet and squeaky floorboards as if she’d walked these halls for years.

  She approached the elevator, and I was about to sputter that she shouldn’t waste her time when she pulled open the grate and climbed in. She didn’t slam the door in my face, though this may be due to the door’s catching on a frayed edge of carpet. I smiled at her, kicked the door free of the carpet, and yanked it shut behind me. We both faced forward, toward the gate, and she cleared her throat.

  “Can you press the button, please?”

  I pressed the button, stammered an apology, and the elevator, which was apparently working again, began its creaky descent. The buttons in front of me wavered in and out of focus, and I wondered what might be wrong with them—something with the electricity, perhaps. Then I remembered the bottle of whiskey I’d just finished. The meatballs from earlier had cushioned its fall, but now it was settling into me and finding its way to my head.

  The elevator clicked past four and three easily enough. Halfway between the second and first floors, it gave a whine and a shudder. The floor pitched forward as if we’d caught on something, and she fell into my back. We both hit the gate, me first, hard, and my hand slipped through a gap and slapped the slowly moving shaft wall. It was smooth and gray, and little cobwebs hung across its surface, clung to my hand and sleeve, dragged along behind my fingers. She pressed into my back. We hung against the gate like two bats, and the elevator shook again and stopped. The woman had righted herself and apologized for falling into me.

  “I think we’ve got greater worries,” I said.

  We were stuck between floors. Light poured in through the one-foot gap at our feet and threw our ankles’ shadows against the rear wall. Above a thick slab of concrete was the darkness of the second floor. Music and voices leaked upward from the first.

  The woman squatted down into her heels, peered through the gap, and called for help. There was no answer.

  She looked at me. “How are we going to get out of here?”

  I burped a semisolid, wet, and sour burp, swallowed what I could, and coughed on the rest. When I could breathe again, I said, “How should I know?”

  “You must have some recollection of our getting stuck in here.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She stared at me as if realizing for the first moment that she was alone in an elevator with a man-shaped bag of feces. “Isn’t that a roomful of younger yous we’re listening to right now?”

  “Oh, that.” I waved a hand, and much of my torso followed it. Finishing that bottle had been a big mistake. “No. Things haven’t been going according to memory tonight. Not for me. But even if I do remember this in a year, I’ll have to let it happen.”

  “Why?”

  “Rule number three.”

  She smiled. She hadn’t smiled since the moment in the room when she thought I was someone older. “You and your rules.”

  “You know my rules?” I didn’t tell people my rules. I didn’t tell people much of anything about me, assuming I even spoke to them at all.

  “I know of them.”

  “Ah.” This was a rather vague response, but as the car was swirling around me, it was all I could manage.

  “So what do we do?”

  I’d been in odd situations with women before, but this situation reverberated in a way that made me uncomfortable. I sat on the floor. The elevator hung at a nauseous angle.

  The woman stared down at me, one hand against a wall. “I asked you, what do we do?”

  I shut my eyes. The elevator stopped spinning briefly. I thought we might get away with staying there for a while, that she might understand that I needed to be still, to hide from everyone else. I don’t know why I had this fantasy—delusion, really—that she cared about my needs at all. She burst that impression by muttering, “I don’t want to die in this elevator.”

  I opened my eyes. “What does that mean?”

  “What?”

  “Die in this elevator? Who are you, by the way? I can’t keep thinking of you as just ‘the Woman.’ ”

  “The Woman?”

  I waved a hand in the air to dispel her anger. She shook her head and looked up toward the ceiling, as if remembering something unpleasant. Her voice, sad and resigned, came from far away. “I’m Lily.”

  “Lily. Nice to meet you.” I held out a hand, and she turned toward me just as I stole a glance at her breasts. Her green eyes pinned me against the wall. “How did you get here, Lily?”

  She stopped to consider her own words. “I received an invitation.”

  “Impossible. There are no invitations.”

  “Not from you.”

  I waited for her to continue. She didn’t. She understood me in a way that made me afraid. She knew I was weak and scared. She didn’t like it but accepted it nonetheless. I wondered when I would find her and how I would convince her to follow me to the party. Would she be familiar with me as an old man? Did I really have to wait that long, if I made it that long?

  I fumbled with the elevator’s control panel beside the door but couldn’t even get it open. I gave up and squatted, thought about where I might get sick inconspicuously.

  Lily parroted herself. “How are we going to get out of here?”

  “Seriously, can’t we just rest a bit?”

  “Get the fuck up and help me get this gate open.”

  I stood and brushed myself off. Head swirling, I put one hand against the wall and tugged at the gate with the other. I noticed a clean spot on the tile floor where a powerful cleaning solution had stripped not only the dirt but the polish. Somehow I knew that it had been a bloodstain, cleaned with effort by an Elder. Screwdriver, most likely. He wore an air of shitwork. I sensed Lily’s eyes following mine to the floor, and I looked away. Would she panic if she knew that one of me would die in the car earlier that night?

  I rattled the gate. It made a lot of noise but drew no attention. Conversation from the first floor didn’t stop, and the disco music seemed to grow louder. I rattled the gate again, and Lily put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Let’s get the gate open.”

  She used the spike of her heel to hook the lower latch and wrench it free of the catch. I held the bottom of the gate clear, and she worked at the upper latch, jumping to reach it. She leapt again and again, with a determination I might have never had in my entire life. In a way I didn’t care if I got out of the elevator. In just one heel, she fell into me several times. I ended up keeping a hand on her waist to steady her.

  “I almost got it that time,” she said, face flushed and damp with sweat. She glanced down at my hand. I pulled it away.

  She struck the latch again. It held as if welded shut. Unless someone came to open it for us, we were truly stuck. Lily knelt back down, put her
head into the opening, and shouted. She screamed. She pleaded. The music grew louder.

  “What are they all doing down there? How much time can someone spend with himself?”

  She looked at me as if I should have the answer. After a moment I realized that maybe I should. “It’s a party. I like music. Loud music, apparently.”

  “Has there ever been trouble like this with the elevator before?”

  Before I could answer, there were voices above us. “Hold on. We’ll have you out in a second.” Someone forced open the second-floor door. I looked up past the legs and tried to see the face. The voices that carried down to us included some so high-pitched they must be prepubescent. They made my skin crawl. When would I be so stupid that I would bring children into this?

  The alcohol rushed over me in waves. “Get something under that latch and pop it out.” The elevator seemed to shrink around me, and I wondered if it was conceivable that I had intentionally poisoned myself with the whiskey. I stumbled and fell against the wall.

  Lily grabbed my arm. “You’re not well.”

  “No. I’m fine.” I watched the youthful shadows over her shoulder. “Listen. Do me a favor. Don’t talk to them. All right?”

  “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “They shouldn’t be here. I haven’t figured out how they all got here. Some are too young. I don’t know what they’re capable of.”

  Her hard eyes softened a bit. “Right. Okay. Now, let’s try to get out of here.”

  Who was she? She was handling this better than I was.

  That was when the whiskey had its way with me. As the elevator car turned sideways and darkened in a frenzy of childish hands.

  I WOKE UP being hauled by a dozen struggling pairs of little hands, head hanging, legs swinging, heels catching on steps. Above me, upside down, was Lily, knees flashing as she climbed stairs, a pair of teenagers holding her elbows. I felt a pang of jealousy. I let my eyes close again, catching a last brief glimpse of Lily’s legs in the parade of me.

  Before I passed out for the second time, I heard her say, “If you look up my skirt again, I’ll break your nose.”

  Images of broken noses swam in the darkness before me. It was a reassuring vision, and when I woke for the second time, I found myself struggling to scratch my nose. Something kept my arm pinned. I groaned and opened my eyes.

  I lay on my side with my hands tied behind my back. Whatever I’d been tied with was cutting into my wrists. Lily was pressed against me, back-to-back, and our fingers touched. Some kind of wires bound her wrists. I stopped struggling and silently prayed that the dark room would cease its steady rotation.

  A flash of lightning came through the peeled paper on the window. We were in a hotel room stripped bare to the lath and floorboards. Bits of wood and broken tile covered the floor. Around us a dozen youthful figures of me formed a wide arc. Some seemed as young as seven or eight, crowded together for security or fear. The hushed rattle of conversation among them made me think of birds.

  I cleared my throat. “You’ve all broken a number of the convention rules, you know.” I sounded froggier than I would have liked, but the message still struck home. The Prepubes looked at one another with the concern children show at an adult’s displeasure. “Someone untie me now so we can get back downstairs.”

  A teenager’s voice, deep and cracking, called from near the door, “We’re supposed to keep you here. It won’t be long.”

  Lightning flashed again, and in the brief light I saw the fear in their eyes. They knew that what they were doing was wrong. That was the appeal, what made them do it. I wondered who it was who took their childhoods away from them by inviting them here.

  “Who’s the oldest here?”

  The group parted, and a single teen stood by himself. He was awkward, thin, hands buried deep in his jean pockets as if he was unsure what to do with them. I didn’t remember seeing him at the party before, and I understood why. Pale light from the street caught the glimmer of braces on his teeth, an otherworldly silver smile. It was me when I was eighteen. The year I’d begun my work on the raft.

  I asked him, “What are we doing here?” My eyes wanted to shut again. In moments of panic, my body’s reaction is to shut down, to find a safety in lack of energy. Lethargy must be a genetic defense. The cells that don’t move don’t get hurt.

  The Inventor ran a hand across the unruly hair that crowned his head. “Just wait a few minutes, okay? He’ll be here soon.”

  “Someone’s got you on the wrong track. You shouldn’t even be here.”

  He looked to the floor. “I belong here more than anyone. I came up with it.”

  His voice was deeper than mine. I wondered about hormones and their effect on the body. Overcompensating for youth with excess maturity.

  I said, “Listen. There’s no need for me to be tied up. And this nice lady doesn’t belong here.”

  He said, “I talk to you while you try to escape, and then we fight, and I knock you down hard and kill you.”

  Some of the children were crying.

  “What?”

  He hesitated. His voice shook when he answered. “You heard me. If you don’t do exactly as I say, I’ll kill you.” Children fluttered nearby. I scanned their faces and saw mixtures of fear, worry, excitement. Nowhere did I see recognition. They thought of me as someone other than themselves. I imagined they saw the same lack of recognition in my eyes.

  “What makes you think you kill me?”

  “I’ve seen it a dozen times.” His hand waved over the group. “Some of them run. A lot of them stay. They’ve all seen what I’ve seen. Only one here hasn’t.”

  He indicated the smallest of the crowd, a six-year-old. He stood nearest the windows, as scared of the dark as he was of me and the others around him. I wondered if he had any concept of what was happening. I wanted to grab him and take him back to the books and puzzles that I knew littered the floor of his room.

  I suddenly remembered being six, playing in my second-floor bedroom in the hundred-year-old house. Outside the window a large spruce grew. Walls painted sky blue, a midnight blue bedspread with stitchwork scars. Me on the floor, on hands and knees, surrounded by toy cars. All of them have a story, in my mind, as they drive under my hand to places I haven’t bothered to give names. I remember lifting the mattress and placing the cars, one at a time, under it. I did this again and again, car after car, until they were all gone, all clustered together under the mattress, not having gone anywhere other than in my imagination. Pretending to have a place to go made it so much easier to get there.

  I imagined now that instead of playing with cars this six-year-old remembers the raft, the nausea that the trip induces, the flash of darkness. Arriving somewhere wet and dark, getting out and running through trees in Central Park, or in deserted alleys downtown, crying while Elders shepherd him through this ruined city. Not old Elders. These elders are only a few years further along than he is, but that’s enough. And I see them take him to a man of eighteen years, the Inventor, for whom this new memory would be wrapping over the old one. I wondered at the older children’s inability to console, to empathize. Before them stood a fearful child, and they did nothing for him, nothing for themselves. Their own version of rule number four. I thought of me breaking my nose.

  Fingers played along the wires that bound my wrists. Lily. “Harsh,” I said to the Inventor. “Scaring a little boy like that.”

  “You won’t distract me.” He didn’t even look at the child. “I remember being him and screaming. I’ll get over it.”

  I clearly wasn’t tethered to this one either. I’d never been that child. “You won’t help his suffering because you suffered? Do you realize that it’s you who’s making him suffer?”

  Lily had the twist of metal undone. I tried to wriggle my wrists without being too obvious. The storm was reaching its peak; it had to be near midnight. Every time the lightning burst through the window, I was certain that one of the dozen children would see her
working on the wire and call out.

  The Inventor said, “You’re arguing about the color of the chips during a losing poker game. It’s happening as it happened, as it is supposed to happen.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Some of the children looked to one another, the glimmer of fear mixed with amazement at the bad word I’d thrown at their leader. “You know I’m right. All of you. You know you didn’t come here as kids. You know you were brought here by someone who had no right.”

  “But that person is you,” the Inventor said, arms wide to include the whole group. “It’s always been you. You know that.”

  “Not me. I never went back.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “I think you did. I know you did. We all do. You went back so that we could do this. So we could stop you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” The fog inside my head refused to lift.

  The Inventor reached into his back pocket and pulled out a gun. I immediately recognized it and moaned.

  Lily gasped. “Jesus.”

  The Inventor stood in a wide gap the others created. He towered over everyone else, his face gone black in the sudden darkness. I pulled hard at my wrists and tried not to wince.

  The Inventor said, “I want to know what happened to your nose.”

  Lily stopped working on my wrists. “What?”

  “He was in a panic. He ran into a bathroom to check his nose in a mirror. Something important happened, and we want to know what. Hurry, she’s almost done with your binds.”

  At that, Lily started working again.

  “Listen to me,” the Inventor went on. “Unless you tell me what is going on, I’m going to have to hit you with this and kill you. I don’t want that.”

  “If you kill me, then you know you’ll be killing yourself.”

  He said nothing. Lily finished with the wire, and my hands fell away from each other. The group of children had already begun to back away. They’d always known the precise moment of my escape and had done nothing to prevent it. They were even more slavish to rule number four than I had been.