it all.
‘You could always just ask your friend-slash-acquaintance-slash-colleague who he was meeting,’ Gabe suggested with a glint in his eye.
Lou didn’t respond directly to that. ‘Right, I’d better run. Things to see, people to do, and both at the same time, would you believe,’ he winked. ‘Thanks for your help, Gabe.’ He slipped a ten-euro note into Gabe’s cup.
‘Cheers, man,’ Gabe beamed, immediately grabbing it from the cup and tucking it into his pocket. He tapped his finger. ‘Can’t let them know, remember?’
‘Right,’ Lou agreed.
But, at the exact same time, didn’t agree at all.
‘Going up?’
There was a universal grunt and nodding of heads from inside the crammed elevator as the enquiring gentleman on the second floor looked at sleepy faces with hope. All but Lou responded, that was, for Lou was too preoccupied with studying the gentleman’s shoes, which stepped over the narrow gap that led to the cold black drop below, and into the confined space. Brown brogues shuffled around one hundred and eighty degrees, in order to face the front. Lou was looking for red soles and black shoes. Alfred had arrived early and had lunch with black shoes. Black shoes left the office with red soles. If he could find out who owned the red soles, then he’d know who she worked with, and then he’d know who Alfred was secretly meeting. This process made more sense to Lou than simply asking Alfred, which said a lot about the nature of Alfred’s honesty. This, he thought about at the exact same time as sharing the uncomfortable silence that only an elevator of strangers could bring.
‘What floor do you want?’ a muffled voice came from the corner of the elevator, where a man was well-hidden – possibly squashed – and, as the only person with access to the buttons, was forced to deal with the responsibility of commandeering the elevator stops.
‘Thirteen, please,’ the new arrival said.
There were a few sighs and one person tutted.
‘There is no thirteenth floor,’ the body-less man replied.
The elevator doors closed and it ascended quickly.
‘You’d better be quick,’ the body-less man urged.
‘Em …’ The man fumbled in his briefcase for his schedule.
‘You either want the twelfth floor or the fourteenth floor,’ the muffled voice offered. ‘There’s no thirteen.’
‘Surely he needs to get off on the fourteenth floor,’ somebody else offered. ‘The fourteenth floor is technically the thirteenth floor.’
‘Do you want me to press fourteen?’ the voice asked a little more tetchily.
‘Em …’ The man continued to fumble with papers.
Lou couldn’t concentrate on the unusual conversation in the usually quiet elevator, as he was preoccupied with studying the shoes around him. Lots of black shoes. Some with detail, some scuffed, some polished, some slip-ons, some untied. No obvious red soles. He noticed the feet around him beginning to twitch and shift from foot to foot. One pair moved away from him ever so slightly. His head shot up immediately as the elevator pinged.
‘Going up?’ the young woman asked.
There was a more helpful chorus of male yeses this time.
She stepped in front of Lou and he checked out her shoes while the men around him checked out other areas of her body in that heavy silence that only women feel in an elevator of men. The elevator moved up again. Six … seven … eight …
Finally, the man with the brown brogues emerged from his briefcase empty-handed, and with an air of defeat announced, ‘Patterson Developments.’
Lou pondered the confusion with irritation. It had been his suggestion that there be no number thirteen on the elevator panel, but of course there was a thirteenth floor. There wasn’t a gap with nothing before getting to the fourteenth floor; the fourteenth didn’t hover on some invisible bricks. The fourteenth was the thirteenth, and his offices were on the thirteenth. But it was known as the fourteenth. Why it confused everybody, he had no idea: it was as clear as day to him. He exited on the fourteenth and stepped out, his feet sinking into the spongy plush carpet.
‘Good morning, Mr Suffern.’ His secretary greeted him without looking up from her papers.
He stopped at her desk and looked at her with a puzzled expression. ‘Alison, call me Lou, like you always do, please.’
‘Of course, Mr Suffern,’ she said perkily, refusing to look him in the eye.
While Alison moved about, Lou tried to get a glimpse of the soles of her shoes. He was still standing at her desk when she returned and once again refused to meet his eye as she sat down and began typing. As inconspicuously as possible, he bent down to tie his shoelaces and peeked through the gap in her desk.
She frowned and crossed her long legs. ‘Is everything okay, Mr Suffern?’
‘Call me Lou,’ he repeated, still puzzled.
‘No,’ she said rather moodily and looked away. She grabbed the diary from her desk. ‘Shall we go through today’s appointments?’ She stood and made her way around the desk.
Tight silk blouse, tight skirt, his eyes scanned her body before getting to her shoes.
‘How high are they?’
‘Why?’
‘Are they one hundred and twenty millimetres?’
‘I’ve no idea. Who measures heels in millimetres?’
‘I don’t know. Some people. Gabe,’ he smiled, following her as they made their way into his office, trying to get a glimpse of her soles.
‘Who the hell is Gabe?’ she muttered.
‘Gabe is a homeless man,’ he laughed.
As she turned around to question him, she caught him with his head tilted, studying her. ‘You’re looking at me the same way you look at the art on these walls,’ she said smartly.
Modern impressionism. He’d never been a fan of it. Regularly throughout the days he’d find himself stopping to stare at the blobs of nothing that covered the walls of the corridors of these offices. Splashes and lines scraped into the canvas that somebody considered something, and which could easily be hung upside down or back to front with nobody being any the wiser. He’d contemplate the money that had been spent on them too – and then he’d compare them to the pictures lining his refrigerator door at home; home art by his daughter Lucy. And as he’d tilt his head from
