At the end of a corridor, she pulled a heavy fire door open and turned to give him a bawdy wink, to run her tonguetip across her lips, as though she had read his mind and his weakness; and he determined not to look at her as she climbed the stairs ahead of him, and looked instead at the steel treads set into the concrete. He lost track of the number of flights they climbed. It winded him; and when he helped her push another fire door open, he tried to conceal his laboring lungs and to seem as fresh as she.
These corridors were a pale yellow, like weak winter sunlight, and at last they came to a small elevator standing open. The flourescence inside was harsh and there was a sharp minty odor, as though it had recently been scrubbed with some cheap, strong antiseptic. It accelerated upward with silent velocity that hollowed his belly and made his knees bend slightly. It opened automatically on a narrower, dingy, old-fashioned corridor. She reached into the elevator as before; and when the door hissed shut and she turned to speak, he said, “I know. There’ll be other ways down.”
“That isn’t what I was going to say.”
“I’m sorry. What were you going to say?”
“I can’t say it now. You spoiled it.”
Again he followed her. These corridors were set at odd angles. The room doors were shiny dark with old coats of varnish. The room numbers were not removed and they were of tarnished brass, fluted and curly and ornate. AU the rooms were in the 4000 series, but they were not in any reasonable order, 4100 and something across from or next door to 4800 and something.
She stopped very abruptly; and as he came up upon her, he heard what she had heard — the gritty sound of latch and bolt — and then, twenty feet ahead of them, an old couple, dressed for winter, came out of one of the rooms, complaining at each other, fussing, asking if he or she had forgotten this or that, dropping small packages and picking them up.
Just before the old couple turned and noticed them, Mrs. Dorn hooked her arm around his waist and forced him into a slow walk. He put his arm, interlocked, around her, and she reached up with her free hand, placed it against his cheek, chuckled in a furry way, turned her mouth up to the awkward kiss while walking, so that as they passed the couple, he heard tsks and clucks of their disapproval “Darling, darling,” she murmured. “Dave, darling.”
Behind them he heard the old man’s voice, without making out the words. There was a harsh resonance to it and then it cracked into a high quaver and then went deep again.
He smiled inside himself, thinking it sounded exactly like Ricky trying to manage his fourteen-year-old voice as it alternately squeaked and rumbled. The finger tips of the arm that was around her waist touched the top of the pocket on the left side of the gray shift, and with sneaky and daring inspiration, he slid his hand down into the pocket, bending his knees inconspicuously to lower himself just enough, the palm of his hand against round, warm thigh under fabric, and with his finger tips he touched the cylinder of yellow chalk and then the thin edge of metal. With the metal held against the nail of his index finger by the pad of his middle finger, he drew it out of the deep pocket and worked it into the palm of his hand.
She stopped and turned and leaned against the corridor wall and, with her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, looked up at him, still mocking him, saying, “You’re just not very bright, Dave, darling.”
The old people were gone, around a distant comer of the old hallway. Suddenly, he realized that she had cleverly kept them from seeing his face, so that they would be unable to identify him later. And with a sense of disbelief, he realized she had called him by his name.
“You could have told me how much you knew about this,” he said.
“It’s better for you to guess, dear. Look at what you took.”
He opened his palm and saw the miniature gold tag. Name, rank, serial number, blood type O, meaning zero, meaning blood type nothing. The shock was enormous. He was suddenly afraid he might cry like a child and shame himself in front of her. “How did you... How could Leo have...”
“Leo? Don’t be silly. I had it all along. There were always two, you know. Don’t you remember that, even? No, keep it, dear. If I have to have it back, you can always give it to me. Without any fuss. Promise?”
“Sure, but if you could just tell me...”
“I can show you, Dave. Come along.”
She paused at the next turning and bit her lip and, standing beside her, he saw that the floor itself dipped down in a gentle curve and lifted again at another place in the distance, where it turned again. It was swaying slightly, the whole corridor, like the bridges primitive peoples wove across deep swift rivers. She told him to walk carefully and stay close to the corridor wall. She motioned to him to stop and they were, he saw, on either side of a double door. It was room 4242. If she knew the rest of it, she would know the right number. It had been so placed that half of it was on each door, so that each was labeled 42. Even though she knew, he did not want her to watch what had to be done, watch the task assigned him; but before he could ask her to go away, to give him the key and go away, go back and wait for him around the comer, out of sight, she put a bright red key in the lock and the double doors opened inward.
Inward, but outward. They opened onto the nothing of a dizzy height, making a vent for a cold wind that came husking down the hallway behind him and pushed him a long clumsy stride to stand on the very brink. Far, far, far below, the bug shapes of city cars and trucks moved very slowly, as when seen from an aircraft. He teetered, toes over the edge, and slowly fought back the sickness and the terror, knowing he could not let her see that he suddenly realized how cynically and savagely they had tricked him. He adjusted himself to the slight sway of the corridor and rode it easily, smiling and casual for her benefit, aware of how narrowly she was watching him.
Then came a deep and powerful thud, more vibration than sound. It came welling up from below and it danced the swaying corridor, nearly toppling him out. It came again and again and again. He learned to ride the new motion. The girl whimpered. He looked far down, almost directly down, and said, “It’s nothing. Your friends have come to work. They’ve got some kind of a derrick thing down there and they’re swinging one of those big cannon balls against the foundation.”
He stepped back with care and reached and took her hand. Her hand was cold and hesitant. He led her past the open and windy space and back to where, once again, the structure was solid underfoot, trembling almost imperceptibly to each subsonic thud. She pulled her hand free and, after walking slowly, looking at the room numbers, chose one, and opened the door, motioning him to come in. The room was in semidarkness, gray light outlining the window. She closed the door and he heard her sigh.
Reaction made him feel weak and sick. He saw the shape of the bed and moved to it and sat on the edge of it. She came to him and pushed at his shoulder and he lay back, grateful that she understood. He swung his legs on to the bed and she went to the foot and unlaced his shoes and took them off.
“We’d better not make very much noise,” she whispered.