his world, as though his very life might grow into the answer to the question I
“Are you all right?”
She gazes over her shoulder at the fountain behind her. “I, uh … I’m a bit surprised I found you.”
“I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know. It’s late. Impulse. Spontaneous and all.”
He’s a man who’s spent half a life meditating on the laws of impulse, only to reject them. “Did you want to go up?” he says.
“Can we? Still?”
He says nothing but motions her to follow. They circle around the corner of the building to a side door he opens with a key from a ring of more keys than she’s ever seen; closing the door behind them, he turns on a light in a concrete stairwell and they make their way through two more doors until they’re inside crossing the dim lobby. He stops for a moment, mulling.
She almost asks, Is something wrong? and then, I’m sorry, it’s so late, this is an imposition — but really her thoughts already have returned to Sara. In her head she keeps seeing Sara listening to that wall outside, then Sara gone and the wall empty. On the other side of the lobby, at a row of elevators, the man unlocks one. Looking around at all the flags she absently wonders how he knows which key goes to which elevator; she says, Do you live here? and he says, In the elevator? and she answers, No — and then realizes Oh, it’s a joke. He makes jokes. I keep a little room
had carried inside me, part of me was glad he was having his nightmares of
with a cot, he explains, although I’m not supposed to, “they don’t know,” nodding at the omnipresent they outside. Seeing him for the third time, after twice at the library, she finally notices he’s good looking. More attuned as she is to the looks of women, she finds the phenomenon of lovely men interesting in the abstract — something she sometimes notices even before straight women, who often are distrustful of and on their guard against lovely men. She has the luxury of being awed by such men; she makes a conscious effort not to look at his hand. How many are there? she asks, and he says what? and she says elevators, and he says a couple hundred, more or less, between the two buildings, counting the freight lifts; he’s not exactly sure. The Emperor of Elevators, she says, and when he doesn’t immediately respond is mortified: was that a slur? she wonders. Is it the Japanese or Chinese who have an emperor?
She’s not sure which he is anyway. She’s thinking frantically when he nods, “The Emperor of Elevators,” with that slight smile; he seems genuinely amused. “It’s an aversion to ground-level,” he elaborates. In the elevator she’s warm in her light coat and almost takes it off, and checks herself: a self-conscious pair we would be, she thinks, me trying not to look at his hand and him trying not to look at my tits; but she does free from her coat her long gold hair that’s been tucked under. “You should be a pilot,” she suggests.
“That would be an aversion to gravity,” he answers, “which is different.” Staring at the ascending numbers above the doors, he says firmly, “The square outside, for instance: I don’t like it.” After they’ve gone seventy or so floors, changing elevators on one of the sky lobbies, she says, “I’m sorry I haven’t had any luck finding what you’re looking for.”
the lake or lost monkeys, because it meant at least he was dreaming and
“It’s all right,” he answers. “I didn’t give you much to work with.”
“I’ve done a search on everything before and up through June ’89, for anything with ‘higher light’ or, in case you misunderstood, ‘higher life.’ You’re sure none of the ones I’ve found is—”
“I’m afraid not.”
“It’s not some sort of hymn, or gospel—”
“No.”
“But you would know if you heard it, right?”
“Yes, I would,” although over the years he’s become not so certain.
“They need to develop a software,” she jokes, “where you can hum it into the computer.”
“I doubt it would help. I’m not much of a singer.” The elevator stops and the doors open. They step out and, overwhelmed, she almost faints: Mega, she mutters to herself, tottering a bit where she stands and reaching for the wall beside her, almost dropping the radio. Before her a quadrant of the world lies in moonlight; she’s convinced she can see the curve of the earth in a white shimmering arc against the black of space. The river far below to the west glitters, and a lunar gale howls somewhere in the night sky beneath them. Looming overhead is a towering transmission mast three or four hundred feet high. “Sorry,” he says, “I should have prepared you. Actually,” he says, “no one ever comes to the
therefore I knew he hadn’t inherited his dreamlessness from me as I must have
top of this one, except for workmen or … that’s why we used the service lift.” About ten feet from them is some bedding, a mattress and a sleeping bag. “Sometimes I even sleep up here when conditions allow. A night like tonight,” looking around him, “you, uh, sleep above your dreams.”
“Is that good?”
“Depends on the dreams.” Thinking a moment, “In my case, it’s good.”
“I’m not going to get blown off, am I?” she says, beginning to walk around a bit, wandering the roof and circling the spire that glows above them. He doesn’t say anything for a while, lets her just walk around in the moonlight as he watches. He’s not in any great rush to take her back down and she’s not in a rush to leave. He’s aware she’s chosen not to ask too much about what he does or how he lives or, for instance, why the song for which he came to her for help is so important; as the rationalist he likes to think he is, generally unconvinced by the existence of intangibles, he probably couldn’t explain, even if he wanted to, his theory that if he could locate and fasten down in some way more permanent than the humming in his head, if he could take apart and reassemble the melody that’s been haunting him for twelve years, inside could be found (since all music is mathematic) the helix of freedom and desire, transcendence and oblivion, even (if he believed in either) god and chaos. And that this would explain his life and the great event that transfixed the world, and its secret the world never knew and that he knows but doesn’t understand. Now being up here with this girl makes him look around anew at what he’s seen many times. His gaze settles on the west river and the blasted gardens of
inherited it from my own mother who couldn ’t even cross the river to come see
smoke beyond and, three thousand miles beyond that, the woman he loves.
For a wild impetuous moment, a man who’s spent half a life meditating the laws of impulse only to reject them thinks about phoning her. It’s not too late, three-hour time difference — but he’s just not ready yet, he tells himself, not having communicated with her for a while other than in letters. So he can’t just pick up the phone and call thoughtlessly unless, of course, thoughtlessly is in fact exactly the way he should call, the only way he’ll ever bring himself to call. Not ready yet, no. Since there’s no changing the fact of her child then there’s only changing the sense of betrayal—beautiful betrayer, killer of my trust—something he thought he got over long ago, something he thought he let go of long ago, only to wake each morning and find it still in his grip or perhaps, more precisely, to find he’s still in its grip. Maybe if you can’t get over it then it’s just not going to get gotten over. It’s been six years now since the boy was born, with the father long out of the picture — he was barely in it except to make a son, which somehow only made her infidelity worse — so you just ought to get over it and if you can’t then it’s not going to get gotten over because she can’t undo it and you can’t expect she would if she could, it’s her child after all.