Man in the Empty Suit (3 page)

I yelled, “Listen, I’ll head down the stairs and get help.”

Still no answer.

I looked around the hallway. My eyes had barely adjusted to the dark. Besides the penthouse entrance, there were two doors; I opened the first and reached gingerly into the absolute black depth. It was a service closet. I felt along the wall toward the other door: the stairway. Low light bounced along the walls, reflected from farther down the stairs. Hushed voices echoed and layered over one another into a chorus of whispers.

I called out. “Hello?” Something flickered at my feet. I reached down and found my own multiarmed clock, same as
the one pinned to my lapel. I tried to read it in the dim light. Behind me something in the elevator motor let out a spark and an echoing report like a gunshot.

I returned to the elevator. “Hello?” I called down again. Still no answer. Below, in the shaft, the elevator lights seemed farther away. Something burned. Smoke wafted from the shaft, and the motor’s whine grew louder.

“Is everything all right?” I shouted, pounding on the door. I watched the lights fall away and felt my stomach drop, as if it were I who flew upward rather than my counterpart descending.

I might have shouted a silly threat. I turned back toward the stairway. Whatever low light previously lit the stairs had disappeared. I felt forward with feet and hands and located the top step. Slipping one foot to the edge of each step, I toed my way down the stairs—twelve steps to the landing—negotiated the turn, then counted steps to the next floor. Twelve again. Twelve steps, landing, twelve, landing, and so on. By the fifth floor, I was flying down the steps in the dark, counting out loud to myself as I went. My heart raced, even though I knew I would find nothing at the bottom. This convention had dozens of my selves in attendance. The one who’d deserted me would disappear into the crowd. In the dark, all I had were phosphene trails of elevator lights that dropped away from me toward a single, brilliant point.

At the second floor, excited voices vibrated through the door. I tried the knob and found it locked. I hammered a fist against the gray metal. It opened, and bright hallway lights blinded me. Three silhouettes moved around me, spoke in my voice.

The one nearest me said, “Here you are. I don’t remember it taking you so long to get down those stairs.”

I shielded my eyes. “Takes a while in the dark. Had to memorize the step count.”

“Twelve-landing-twelve.”

This one was older than me, but not by much. Shaved head, plain white dress shirt.

“We’re wasting time reminiscing.” One in a canary yellow sweater glared at me. “Is the elevator here?”

“Yes, it’s here.” This voice was far older. I was able to see now, not well, but enough to know that ahead of me, holding on to the wall for support, was a seventy-year-old man. His hair was white and cut short. He wore a simple black suit and looked like a minister. He was, of course, me. “I’m afraid it’s not good.”

The other three moved away from me and looked through the elevator grate.

“Oh, God,” said the one in the yellow sweater. The other two remained silent. I stayed where I was, unable to think of anything other than what I would say when Sober exited the elevator. He was taking a long time about it.

“Are you all right?” the one in the white shirt asked me.

“I need a drink,” I said. I pulled out my flask and tipped it back. When I lowered it, they were all staring at me. I held it up, almost like an offering, but none of them took it.

I asked, “What the hell is everyone staring at?”

Yellow, a whiff of that same pity that Sober had around him, said, “You haven’t seen this yet.”

I didn’t want to see. I walked toward him.

On the elevator floor lay Sober. His eyes were open, legs
crumpled beneath him and his arms awkwardly twisted. A gash ran across his right temple.

I covered my mouth and felt a jolt run up my spine. I needed to sit down. More important, I needed more drink. Murmurs from the others:

“Oh, God.”

“Open the grate.”

“It’s stuck.”

The one in the white shirt, head shaved and irregular stubble across his chin, pulled a screwdriver from his pocket and worked at the gate’s latch. His eyes looked dulled, as if he could take in only so much and that limit had been reached long ago.

Seventy held out a hand. “He’s dead. We all remember too well.”

“That’s not possible.”

The old man’s rheumy eyes watered at me. “Welcome to the secret club of the convention, boy. Now you know. This is where you die.”

The hall shrank to a circle of light only as big as a watch face, and I went deaf for a moment. The others waited.

“How can he be dead?”

Seventy cleared his throat, shifted his cane from hand to hand. “That’s the problem. How. We don’t—”

“Don’t say you don’t know. I’ll just come back early and watch the corners, the penthouse. We were in the penthouse.”

Screwdriver finally popped the latch. “We know where you were. We’ve watched it. He gets in the elevator, alone and alive.”

Yellow, still leaning on the wall, eyes ricocheting back and
forth, barely withheld a laugh. “You watched it? When? I never watched anything.”

“Since past you, obviously.” Seventy studied my face. “We’ve tried watching the elevator, the penthouse. Each time he just climbs in, no problems. It’s down here we find him dead. Short of getting into the elevator with him, we don’t know what to do, and if we do that.…”

I nodded. I’d learned the hard way about the uselessness of interrupting past events.

I said, “So you all … all the Elders.…”

Seventy nodded. “Everyone older than you knows. And we’re all fucking stumped.”

Screwdriver started to lift the Body. “And it’s up to you.”

“What?” I decided I hadn’t heard him right.

Seventy waved a hand. “Put that body down. We haven’t shown him everything yet.” He smiled sadly at me. “Listen. It’s on you now. You’ve got to look into this.”

“Why me?”

“Because he’s your next visit here. We haven’t been able to figure this out. And if you don’t.…”

We all looked down at the Body. His beard looked more unruly than I recalled, and his face was dirtier than I could imagine myself becoming. He looked haggard and used up in a way that he hadn’t when he’d been Sober.

Seventy nodded. “We’ll help. But this is, at a certain point.…”

“My problem.” I nodded back.

Screwdriver said to Seventy, “Do you want to show him?”

Yellow scowled. “Show him what?”

Seventy nodded. “Yeah, go ahead.”

As Yellow and I waited in confusion, Screwdriver knelt beside the Body and pulled back his shirt. A deep purple-black bruise beneath his ribs stared at me. Wide splatters of blackish blood dried around it.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Seventy yawned. “Hematoma. He may have fallen or been pushed. Beaten. Returned to the elevator, somehow, while it descended. The gash on his temple is a ruse. Someone tried to play us for fools.”

I pointed at the bruise but didn’t know what to say about it. It seemed to grow as I looked at it. My hand dropped. “One of us is trying to fool us?”

Seventy nodded. “Either we’re fools for thinking they meant to trick us or he, whoever he is, is for thinking it would work.”

Yellow said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yes it does,” Screwdriver said, standing again, hands in pockets and eyes on the Body. “But it will take you about six months to realize it.”

Yellow’s eyes sparked, then clouded over. “You would know.” This was the ultimate Youngster putdown, often taking the place of an ill-advised “fuck you.”

Screwdriver grinned hollowly. “Show some respect.” His eyes never left the Body.

We stood in a loose ring near the elevator door and watched the Body as if he might sit up and tell us what had happened. His expensive vest looked more wrinkled than I’d remembered, his clothes more ill-fitting than dapper. He seemed poorly dressed, in fact. The single light of the elevator began to spark and blink. I heard water trickle from somewhere
above the car, probably from a leak at the top of the shaft. Decay blossoms without our efforts. The electrical short emitted an insect buzz and a smoky copper smell. Seventy and Screwdriver looked at me and smiled. I tried hard not to show emotion at the convention—both Elders and Youngsters interpreted emotion as weakness—but these two smiled without hesitation, and I feared and admired it.

Seventy, eyes hectic in the strobing light, said, “I don’t envy your pursuit. If you fail, I’ll never know, as I just won’t be. But you’ll know, because you’ll end up lying here in this filthy elevator.”

I REMEMBER BREAKING
my nose. I’d come to the party a few weeks early, not yet thirty-seven but needing to wipe the late Tang dynasty from memory. I wandered the Boltzmann that year in a misty haze I’d carried from ninth-century China, where I’d been having a ruinous affair with a poet. I could still smell Chang’an on my silk robes, still hear the chatter of its full streets, merchants and servants debating the value of porcelain and grain.

Things hadn’t ended well. I sought refuge in a crowd of myself. Of course, I found none, no compassion, no support. So I wandered the hotel, not eating, drinking too much, and ignoring the stares of Elders and Youngsters alike.

I should have known that nothing good would come of arriving to the party ahead of time. By early in the evening, I was sick. Youngsters chanted as I vomited in a toilet. I swore at them in Middle Chinese. As I left the lobby restroom,
inebriation still unable to chase away the sound of the Wei River rushing through my head, I tripped over ceramic plates piled imprudently outside the men’s room. I fell forward, smashed my face into a nearby table, and broke my nose. Blood everywhere. I lay down as Elders brought towels and ice. They’d been prepared for my fall but not prepared to stop it.

“Don’t worry about this,” yelled one, crooked Elder voice from the hall. “I can barely remember it.” Then laughter. A loud, braying, drunk laugh.

A subjective year later, I found myself waiting in line at the men’s room. Chang’an was finally fading. Ahead of me several Elders in their fifties talked quietly among themselves. They looked over their shoulders at me, as if I were trying to listen in, which I was, and as if I had no right to know of what they spoke, which I may not have. That’s beside the point. The point is they were acting strange, and conspiratorial, as all the Elders did. From my thirty-eight-year-old perspective, anyone older than forty seemed to be an oddball paranoiac. So I stood behind the gaggle of unhinged fifty-year-olds and watched them sweat bourbon and rye and scoop rice pilaf off of the cheap ceramic plates with their hands. Apparently, at some point in my forties, I would decide to eschew manners.

After fifteen minutes and a muted chant of “flush it, flush it,” drunk Youngsters cleared out of the men’s room. (As I grew older, I realized how much alcohol the Youngsters consumed and how little of their time at the party I really remembered.) One of the three Pilaf Brothers nudged the other two and pointed to the bathroom door. They gathered half-finished plates of pilaf, piled them together, and placed them on the floor by the door. They then began to skulk away, not even
having used the restroom. I realized when I was. In a moment my previous self would exit the restroom and break his nose because the Pilaf Brothers had intentionally left their plates there.

I was left staring at the plates, and at a problem. I had made very deliberate choices while planning this gathering. Much thought had gone into avoiding outside interference, accidental self-interference, catering issues. One of my personal rules was “If it broke before, let it break again.” I didn’t double back upon myself outside the party for the same reason: Complications arise from chasing solutions. If I was meant to trip over the plates, I would. If I didn’t, who knew how it might change things? This created a laid-back attitude among all my selves. None of us were really “in charge” and, for the most part, furniture, utensils, plates, glasses, and the old hotel itself were all abused with impunity. The sack of Carthage, which I’d seen during my travels, had been eerily similar.

My fate rested amid the almond-flavored rice. But breaking my nose had hurt. Really badly. And more than that, the lack of compassion I’d felt at the time had stung deep. I stood inches from the plates that in a moment would cause me great pain. If only I moved them—not far, a half foot would do. What could be the negative consequences? I wondered. How could an unbroken nose be a problem? It hadn’t affected my travels. I hadn’t done anything “because” of my nose, nor had I lost out on anything because of it. It had stopped hurting after ten days, and by the time I was baking bread in the 1960s in a finicky oven in a London flat with sad and lovely Sylvia, I could actually smell the bread. I now had a slight bump in my nose, but more than anything else
what remained of the incident was the knowledge that I had deliberately caused myself the unnecessary pain and hadn’t cared enough to save myself from it.

I could fix it, I decided. I moved the plates back from the doorway with my foot. They left a trail of grease, and I once again questioned my menu choices. I waited. Just as I wondered why I never used the ladies’ room—there weren’t any other guests, after all—my thirty-seven-year-old self stepped from the men’s room and walked past the plates. His left foot tapped one, tipping cold rice pilaf onto the threadbare Persian carpet.