Danger on the thirteenth floor!

Often as a child, I would imagine the framework and hours of labor
entailed to erect such a prodigious edifice as my stepfather's place
of work. I can remember being there for the first time when I was only twelve years old. It was toward the end of summer, and we were getting close to Labor day weekend.

In the late afternoon hours on a Saturday or a Sunday, the building would
be as empty as an abandoned courtyard and as quiet as a summer breeze. Crowds of people passing by get less and less, as cars and trucks diminish, until the street once again reclaims the night. There was nothing now, but the ever slow release of tranquility, emanating from the end of another stressful workweek. There was no more work to be had for anyone who occupied an office here beyond that of the ordinance of an average workweek for all businesses were closed pending a standard two day leave. Everyone was
off in their own direction till Monday, and you could almost hear the quiet peaceful hum of silence. The contentment I found while roaming the dimly lit corridors was a lull of placidity between that of myself and my thoughts.

As I ascended the spiral staircase crafted in marble, I could hardly wait to reach the penthouse on the thirteenth floor. Since it was one large room opposed to twenty little ones, it was simply labeled penthouse suite. This was understandable. What I could not understand though, was how a business owner could profit in this day and age by appeasing the fatuous and swollen headed and not just calling it thirteenth floor. The adjoining building doesn't even have a thirteenth floor, it's labeled fourteenth floor, which proves that even man in all his boastings can be susceptible to silly superstitions laced in fear, carried over from an earlier century. Back in the middle ages if you accidentally belched while walking down the street, they would assume you had a demon and would disembowel you. No one was safe in those days for the world was upheaved in madness. Five hundred years later, people still wish to believe that dark forces hide within numbers. In other words, it's okay to live on the 13th floor, if it says it's the 14th floor? No matter how you look at it, the only thing you're likely to find up there is hogwash and rhetoric.

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If you're going to be frightened of anything, be frightened of the ogres and phantoms that lurk in dark corners of your house; they plan your demise while you're fast asleep and sometimes, you can even hear them stirring. When something falls to the floor at night don't blame the cat, he had nothing with it! Instead, blame those who are responsible if you dare. In my opinion, pretext has no right in a businessman's world for it is tenuous and unjust, so I figure we either use it and use it well, or completely erase it from our number system. *And so I did*

I looked down through the hollow spiral of a turn of the century staircase, with its winding banister that circled itself round and round till my eyes found the first floor landing. When I was fourteen, I was asked by my stepfather if I wanted to help him at the building, and I agreed. With a
dust mop, a broom and a makeshift dustpan from the Ella Fitzgerald era,
I would begin on the twelfth floor and gradually work my way down to
the main lobby. Ramon would mop the floors on the other side where
the freight elevator was, so we wouldn't actually see each other until we were both done. Be careful he would say to me, "you fuck up, I lose my job." If we were there really late, he would teach me how to operate the manual elevators. A back and forth brass controller with a wooden knob. On a busy weekday, you could hear strange sounds coming from inside the wall if you happened to be ascending or descending that particular staircase. No, it wasn't a ghost shivering about in our timeframe. Neither was it a rat scurrying down its ravaged partition. It was simply an envelope tickling the old bronze mail chute as it fluttered rapidly in making its descent to the basement.

Occasionally, toward the holidays one or two people from each floor
would come in and work until three and then leave, but on Sunday the building was always barren. Every now and then, I would open the mail slot on each office door to get a glimpse of the inside. Upon doing so,
a gentle whiff of the strange air would often escape to greet my nostrils.
Isn't it odd, I thought, the things we do out of boredom? In one room,
was the smell of fine leather coats hanging. In yet another was the nauseating smell of cigarette smoke. In one profoundly dim room, I breathed in slowly the most enchanting perfume, which had to it such
an aesthetic charm I sighed, while in one of the end rooms, the acrid smell of funeral flowers permeated the thin air. This led me to believe there was somebody dead in there, and I immediately took the white marble staircase down to the next level!

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Some rooms were dark and daunting, as if way past evening; while others were brightly lit. Cheerful in a sense that they told the true time of day with large windows that welcomed in the sun. The Indian rug company would always smell of curry and spice while the small accounting firms reeked of cigar smoke. Some rooms would have an eerie breeze coursing through them from an old vent shaft perhaps or from a window left partially open, and no matter how bright the sun was shining outside, it was always dark and desolate in the adjacent dry well. Like a kind of invisible barrier separating the day from the soon to be evening hours. It filled me with
a sense of inner peace and nostalgia, to entangle myself in that world.
To become lost in it.

As I gazed ever so serenely through the mind's eye, I could begin to see those wood framed windows surrounding the dry well enclosure from where I lay in my bed. Covered in decades of soot from exhaust fumes and smoke from factories, I wondered if they had ever been washed at all. I then saw a tiny crack in the lower left hand corner on the 9th floor where a Mr. Lewis Hind slammed the window down hard after hearing the stock market had crashed. Was it real? No. Did it matter? No, but It was fun to play the game, and I was beating boredom at the same time. I heard some activity going on in my mother's room and knew she had just finished getting dressed. She then went back into the bathroom as she always did to put on her make up, before going once again, back into that bedroom for her purse. I listened rather intently to the sound of her footsteps as they made their way down the creaky brown carpeted staircase and away into the kitchen area.

On the eighth floor, you will find the oldest company still operating in that building. The black and gold lettering which still embellishes the glass appears to be antediluvian, while the door with its brass doorknob still opens and closes with the greatest of ease. If you're waiting for room 802 folks, you had better look elsewhere. Mr. Schwartz set up shop in 1906, and he never left. He is now 94 years old and assisted by his second wife of 87. One day in the not so distant future there'll be no one left from the previous century, and I will find I, myself have grown old. On the fifth floor, you will find a costume company run by an old Italian man. I cannot remember his name, but whenever he saw me, he always gave me a mask or a gag of some sort. I liked him, he was an exceptionally kind man. This floor could not be accessed for it was locked from the inside, so I would have to look through the glass door and hoped he came out and saw me.

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On the twelfth floor was a tailor shop that always had a spare dress
form wheeled out into the hallway. The business was run by two old
men, Giuseppe and Irving. They were always on each other's back like
an Italian Oscar and a Jewish Felix! On occasion, I would see an unusual piece of chalk in the form of a triangle that had found its way past the door jamb. Since they came in so many different colors, I always thought it was some kind of foreign lozenge! Sometimes they were quiet, usually when they were very busy, but most of the time they would simply throw miscellaneous words at one another and complain!

"Vere did you put the ladies' halters?"
What ladies halters?
"The ones in the crate that came yesterday!!!"
They picked them up while you were out to lunch, you schmuck.
"Nice of you to tell me, and don't call me a schmuck!
You are not Jewish! I am a Jew. I can call you a schmuck,
but you cannot call me a schmuck. . . Understand?"
Okay-okay, cretino.
"Vhat Cretino. Vhat are you calling me?"
It's Italian for putz!

Occasionally, the uneasy sound of a howling wind could be heard coming from way down in the basement and this, I knew was the freight elevator.
I can only tell you that it's an Otis piston elevator with a steel walkway grid design on both the ceiling and the floor. Since it is powered by water and not electricity it makes a very foreboding sound that raises an eyebrow when one is alone. It is operated by pulling a steel cable hand over hand up, or hand under hand down, using thick leather gloves. As you descend past the second floor, a steel ball connected to the cable comes up and barely makes it through this small housing, I call the O-ring. This special device it would appear, has been mounted to run midway down the cab, perpendicular from the ceiling inside the car to prevent or to dampen any vibration caused by the cable or to merely keep the cable running straight. From there the ball has just enough space to come out through a hole in the ceiling, made of hardened steel as well. This tells the operator that he is reaching the basement, and if you are pulling a heavy load, you had better slow down! If you don't pay attention to the cable or if your thumb should accidentally be above the steel ball as it passes through the O-ring at this point. . . A door slammed shut and my thoughts scattered. Mom had left as well and finally, I was alone.

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