Fiction by jonny diamond

ON RETURNING HOME
A January in suburban Toronto is very cold. But crossing the sodium-lit tundra of the Georgian Court Arms parking lot at 1:30 am for the first time in three years to see your parents (who you don’t really like) makes it feel colder. The Georgian Court Arms is in no way “Georgian,” nor is there a “court,” nor are there any “arms” (with the obvious exception of the 515 limbs of its 258 residents). It is however, a monument to the many ways in which concrete was poured circa 1968; it is also like a 19th-century exhibition of the many ways in which people can fail. This is the home I come back to, though it is not really my home: it is the apartment complex my parents moved into the year after I left. I have walked 44 minutes from the train station. I may die if I remain outside, so I enter the building. 

FAILURE ISN’T AS EASY AS IT LOOKS
The lobby is split-level, the lower of which has two chairs, a couch, an end table, a lamp, two immaculate and oversized faux-jade ashtrays, and a painting of a buck and a doe and a tree—it is a space no one crosses or uses or looks at. It reminds me of the deck of the Kirk-era Starship Enterprise. I hurry past to the pair of elevators, hoping for the one on the left. When it arrives, there is a note inside, hanging above the buttons. “See you tomorrow!” The exclamation point makes it feel like a youthful threat. Five. Oh. Seven. The elevator smells like takeout, or burnt-out electronics. Or perhaps it’s me. Everything in the building is used, stolen, borrowed, fake or in the process of overheating. The original eggshell wallpaper below the intermittent light fixtures in the hall has aged to a much more edible tapioca. The door of number five-oh-five still has a giant red Christmas bow attached diagonally from the upper left-hand down to the lower right. I am stalling. Five. Oh. Seven. I don’t want to be home. Or wherever this is.

A NOTE FROM WHERE I’M COMING FROM
Before I enter my parents’ apartment, you should know that two days prior to this moment I was in a medium-security prison. My crime was petty and lazy, the details of which are immaterial to this narrative. My eight months in prison were violent and dull, and if I learned anything it is that cruelty dominates that subset of ecstasy in which hate and spite battle for the soul. I read that in a book while I was in prison. My cellmate’s name was Kelsey Butts, which probably led to his life of crime. He hated his name.      

AT HOME ON BIKINI ATOLL
I can hear my father snoring from the hallway. It is very dark and very hot after I close the door behind me. The blinking lights of the VCR look like a distant ship entering the harbor and I almost fall on my face with disorientation, but the familiar glowing crack beneath the bathroom door allows me to get my bearings. Maybe now is also a good time to tell you I haven’t seen my parents in three and a half years and they think I’ve been consulting for a mining company in Tunisia. Apparently they have mines in Tunisia, and a need for geologists who speak a bit of French. It’s pretty good as far as fake jobs go. I stretch out on the sofa and turn on the enormous TV. Over the last ten years their screens have grown in proportion to the shrinkage of my parents’ bodies. There is a channel comprised entirely of women in bikinis. It’s not even softcore, but I like it. I masturbate desultorily, have a cigarette on the three-by-four-foot balcony, then back to the sweat-damp couch for sleep.  

IT IS EASY TO LIE TO PEOPLE WHEN THEY NEVER REALLY LISTENED TO YOU
“Oh my GOODNESS!” My mother is a full caps kind of person. My neck is aching from the unusual overnight angle of repose on the powder blue loveseat. “How’ve you BEEN-when did you get IN-what’ve you been DOING-you’ve STOPPED eating?” I tell them both—my silent, smiling father, and my yammering, glaring mother—about how slowly the sun sets into the Mediterranean when you’re standing on a white-sand beach in North Africa (they nod, impressed), about the lovely but difficult French woman from Marseille to whom I was briefly engaged (they shake their heads, sympathetic), about my intentions to hang out a bit at home while I loosen up some funds held over in a risky but exciting Tunisian mining gambit (nothing… pause-). “So what SHOULD WE have for breakfast?”

“HAVE YOU MET THE ELEVATOR MAN?”
At the dinner table that first night, over shepherd’s pie and non-alcoholic beer, following fourteen minutes of lip-smack and chew over syncopated cutlery percussives, my father sends the following question out over the centerpiece of the table, where I may answer it or not: “So, have you met our new elevator man?”  Well, this is a very strange question, not the least of which because my father uses the word “new” even though we have never had an elevator man. What’s strangest though, is that “we” (the middle-class tenants of a shabby eight-storey apartment building in a not particularly glamorous suburb of Toronto) might actually have an elevator man. There are no elevator men in the suburbs; nor are there doormen, chauffeurs, porters, valets, ladies-in-waiting, wine stewards, or man servants; there are garbage men, delivery men, laundry folders, cocktail waitresses, gas attendants (not many), bus drivers, part-time snow shovelers, and movers. There just aren’t any elevator men in the suburbs. “But yes,” says my father, “there are now.”

GUS THE LIAR
My father tells me the elevator man has been around the building for about six weeks, that he showed up one day and started helping people with their groceries and existential crises. He is middle aged and white. He has a uniform but no nametag. My mother adds that he’s always very well groomed, and smells a little bit like a fancy fashion magazine. Our superintendent, Gus, has been taking credit for getting the Georgian Court fixed up with this top-class extra service; but my father thinks Gus is a liar and a cheat and has no idea who the elevator man is. “No, I haven’t met the elevator man.” But I would very much like to.

THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WAITRESS FOR A WOMAN
There are two elevators. On my way out to the local Italian eatery, which also functions as a local bar, I do not see the elevator man. I could always wait for him in the lobby, but that would seem like cheating. After waiting eight minutes to cross by foot the four-lane road onto which the Georgian Court Arms opens like a whorish Venetian palazzo, I walk through the parking lot to the restaurant. I don’t want to sit at the bar, so I install myself in one of the deep burgundy booths near the back. To satisfy the waitress’ strict enforcement of the rules, I order some garlic bread with my bottle of beer. The waitress, a tall, striking woman with dyed black hair, looks very familiar and I wonder if we went to high school together. In three weeks time, after eleven more lonely visits, nine orders of garlic bread, three orders of calamari, approximately forty-eight bottles of beer, and a high volume of low-quality flirting, I will find out that we did attend high school together, but in the ninth grade my waitress was called Steve, whereas now she goes by Stephanie. But until that intensely awkward future moment, I have a crush on the local waitress, and contemplate a torrid affair involving a lot of free beer and pizza. 

I MEET THE ELEVATOR MAN
I leave a stupidly generous tip for Stephanie-Steve and re-enter the cold suburban night. The beer has left me wobbly and maudlin, like a player piano. When the elevator opens, there is a man standing there in a Rolls-grey uniform with a grey cap. His shoulders are appointed with gold braiding and his pants have crimson piping, just so. His shoes are simple and black, as clearly well cared for as they are well worn. He is of northern European stock, ruddy, angular, blue-eyed. He is unassuming but amiable, asks me my floor, and bids me a courteous good evening. It would seem we do indeed have an elevator man at the Georgian Court Arms. This is remarkable and makes no sense. Though I might be an ex-con, I am not an idiot, and I know something is wrong. I need to occupy my days until the Tunisia money comes free. I decide to investigate.

PREPARATION IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS!
One 8-by-11 hard-spine, lined notebook; 8 Pilot Hi-Lite V5 fine point pens, black; one Dictaphone, requisitioned from my father; two pairs of UV-blocker, aviator-style, mirrored sunglasses, purchased at the local BP gas station for $11.99; rented copies of the following films ($1.99 each, from Randy’s Video), watched at least three times, to develop an effective approach to the gathering of information: “Dial M For Murder”, “The Maltese Falcon”, all of the Thin Man movies  (except for the one with the baby), “The Third Man”, and the Fletch movies (more so because I really enjoy them.)  

ALPHA POINT (OR) THE FIRST SIGHTING: DON HEBER
Don Heber is as close to a friend as my father has. Don Heber was a car mechanic. Don Heber gave that up to pursue a country music career. Don Heber is Scottish. Don Heber’s pants are too tight and his hat is too big. Don Heber was the first one in the whole building to meet the Elevator Man. He says he didn’t even blink, didn’t even hesitate when the Elevator Man asked him “what floor would you like sir?” Don Heber says he replied with aplomb (my word, not his) and said with his most upper-crust inflection “Seventh floor my good man, and make it snappy.” It is fairly clear to me now, that Don Heber’s immediate and wholehearted acceptance of a strange man in a strange uniform as our new “elevator man” is precisely what led to the collective psychosis of the Georgian Court Arms. If Don Heber had quickly stepped back and said “What the Hell are you doing in here you pervert?” I’m fairly sure that none of this would’ve happened.

DOESN’T ANYBODY DISLIKE THIS GUY? 
(Georgian Court tenant interviews, floors 1-4) 
Derek Wasik, age 33, apartment 215: “I pretty normally take the stairs, but one time I had one of my special models with me [reconstructions of Confederation-era tall ships] so it was pretty fragile you know, so I took the elevator and he seemed to know a lot about tall ships.  Unlike most of the people who live in this building.” Margaret Hubbler, age 61, apartment 306: “The Elevator Man is very friendly to me and always calls me Maggie and smiles. Normally I would find that a bit too pushy, but he just seems to have a way about him.” Jim Kiplits, age 48, apartment 502: “I think this building has been in decline for many years. I’ve been here since I was 22 and I’m glad something is going in a different direction from the crap heap.” 

INTERVIEW WITH A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL
No matter how clean-cut he is, it is a complicated undertaking for an unemployed man of twenty-six to conduct a relatively private interview with a 13-year-old girl. The following is a reconstructed monologue of three spontaneous and brief interactions with Michelle Bankhurst, apartment 618. “He’s cool for an old man. He looks like someone from a movie. He doesn’t talk to you like you’re totally a stupid little kid. One afternoon he let me hang around in the elevator before my mom got home. I don’t like going home when it’s just Larry sitting on the couch watching TV. So I talked to the elevator man for a little while, about going to university and stuff. He was nice to me. But he’s never weird like everybody else in this building.” Though it’s painful for me to admit, I’m sure she thinks I’m weird too.

DOESN’T ANYBODY DISLIKE THIS GUY? II
(Georgian Court tenant interviews, floors 5-8)
Jody Bankhurst, age 31, apartment 618: “It was strange at first. I think it’s kind of nice sometimes to be by yourself in the elevator. But I guess Michelle (daughter, age 13) really gets a kick out of it, so any time she looks up to an adult I’m pretty happy.” Miriam Fogelman, age 49, apartment 707: “Well, he’s just a perfect gentlemen. My great-uncle Milton used to have an elevator man in Toronto, when times were good, but he was never very friendly and I think he honestly sometimes felt that he thought he was better than us. Imagine! We were the customers! No, our new elevator man is lovely.” Peter Greene, age 16, apartment 901: “He let me light a cigarette once, even though we were only at the fourth floor. He even took a drag. Pretty alright for an adult in uniform and everything.”     

A NOTE ON THE TIMES WE LIVE IN (specifically, when this story takes place)
Talking to all those people has been tiring, so I spend a few days on the powder blue loveseat thinking it all over. Everybody thinks he’s great. He is special friends with a 13-year-old girl. I can only shake my head because as we all know by now, at this point at the opening of the 21st century, a strange old man can’t be friends with a young girl. This isn’t France! Or the past! I haven’t taken any initiative to talk to the elevator man himself, I don’t think I’m ready. I need to keep gathering preparatory material. I will attempt to determine exactly where he came from.  

DIALOGUE WITH A VAINGLORIOUS PERJUR 
“So, Superintendent Gus Pinker. What can you tell me about the elevator man?” 
“He’s pretty good right? You like ‘em?” [I nod] “Well it was me that got ‘em here!”
“How and why did you get an eight-floor apartment building in suburban Toronto an elevator man?” 
“Uhhhh, well, you know, I figured it would be good for business and such.” 
“For the apartment business?” 
“Yeah, yes, that. And I know someone at the head office, who owed me a favor.” 
“This apartment has a ‘head office?’ Where is it and what’s the name of the individual who works there who owed you a favor?” 
“Oh well, you know I think it’s moving. It used to be in Toronto, but it’s going out west, to Calgary or Vancouver. And I guess old Gus, my friend, who owed the favor, I guess they laid ‘em off, what with the move and everything. But then he went down to Florida to help out his cousin…” 
“Also named Gus?” 
“What? No, I don’t know, I don’t know what the cousin’s name was.” 
Only during this last sentence, which is actually true, does Gus the Vainglorious Liar lift his red rheumy blue lush’s eyes from the brown-and-white, cracked linoleum floor and look me in the face. Smart of him though, to take credit the moment he realized it was a popular development. Way to go Gus.

BORROWING THE CAR, FOLLOWING THE ELEVATOR MAN
The only thing to do is borrow my father’s car and tail the elevator man after his “shift.” Problems with this plan: my father will not let me borrow the family chariot as I still don’t have my driver’s license and do not know how to drive. This will require stealth and a light touch. Wednesday late will have to do. My parents stay up to watch “Antiques Road Show” (English version), and consequently sleep that much heavier.  I’m out the door in my black turtleneck and black overcoat; notebook in my pocket nestled beside flashlight and map and car keys and letter opener (you never know!). Sitting in the dark in a cold car is worse than being told you’re about to get shivved on the way back in from the yard. The only thing worse would actually be being shivved—or “cranked” as the boys in cellblock D would put it. The elevator man leaves the building at 1 am. He walks at a steady pace, a bit less than what one might call brisk. Oh no! He’s walking this way! I duck below the dash as he passes… and there he goes, right past the car and into the overgrown field behind the apartment. Didn’t think of that. Elevator Man, 1; Me, 0 

CONVERSATION WITH STEPHANIE/STEVE
Ok, well I’m in the car and that’s pretty impressive. What the hell, I’ll go see if there’s a light on at the pizza joint/bar. Obviously, I haven’t yet found out that the interesting and comfortably familiar Stephanie is the same high school acquaintance, Steve, who beat me out for the last spot on the cross-country team in tenth grade. But she smiles warmly as I enter the synthetic olde-lantern glow of the place. “Garlic bread and a Labatt’s?” Perhaps the name of this chapter is misleading. Maybe it should’ve been called “Interaction with Stephanie/Steve,” or possibly, “Brief Interaction with Stephanie/Steve.” Ultimately though, it shall be remembered as “Brief and Unremarkable Interaction with the Waitress, Who So Happens to be Called Stephanie, Despite the Fact She Was Called Steve for the First Twenty Years of Her/His Life.” But the garlic bread was very tasty. (Perhaps in subsequent versions, this chapter will be excised in its entirety, but for the moment I would like people to know that I was trying.)

AT LONG LAST, A NICE CHAT WITH THE ELEVATOR MAN
Fuck it. The next morning, I decide to go talk to the elevator man. I have no covenant of complicity with the other tenants, with him, with Gus or building management. I’m an ex-con! I can do what I damn well please! I put on my best suit, only very slightly dusty after five years of post-graduation ceremony desuetude. The car on the left comes immediately when called. Perfect, we’re alone. We are descending, alone. The perfect opportunity for an incisive, yet civil, interrogation. We descend. Descending. It is the ground floor. We have descended. Damn it! It is cold outside. But. Aha! I’ve forgotten something! Ascending. Speaking. “So are you enjoying your position here?” “Oh yes, it’s nice.” Not nearly incisive enough. “I guess you have a lot of experience with this kind of work?”  “Sure…” “Like where?” “Well, around, Toronto.” “Are there a lot of openings for, uhhh, this kind of work?” “Not so much, really.” Sixth floor. While I rush out to collect my “forgotten item,” the elevator man holds the door open. “Thank you.” Silence. Blurting. “How exactly did you end up at the Georgian Court Arms? If you don’t mind me saying, our little building doesn’t seem like a place that could afford an elevator man.” He is silent a moment in his friendly grey and gold and red uniform. “Well, maybe I’ve had a little choice in the matter… and the tenants seem to appreciate that I’m here. If there’s one thing you learn in this job, it’s that no matter how down or busy or upset people are, a little common kindness from a stranger can go a long way. Have a nice day.” Wow. It’s still very cold outside. I haven’t learned anything, except now I’m filled with a growing melancholy, nostalgic for what probably never happened anyway. My graduation suit isn’t helping either.     

A MOMENT OF SADNESS, GUILTY AND SELF-PITY (Or:
“First You Drink to Remember/Then You Drink to Forget.”)
I want to get drunk, but I don’t want to see Stephanie/Steve. I walk 26 minutes across town to a bar called the Pit Stop. I walk by the tree from which Shawn DeLisle fell at age 13, breaking his arm and gaining minor celebrity status in the neighborhood for six weeks. I walk by the Dairy Queen picnic table, now covered in ice, upon which I first tasted the tongue of Joanie Brandt, the daring young daughter of the local florist. I walk by the bend in the creek where we found the wet-black body of a dead bloated cat, around which we constructed a briefly entertaining scenario of local occultists. I walk by the elite all-girls private school, a place which strangely never held any interest for us, though looking back I would’ve thought we’d have gone out of our way to gain access to its hallways and bedrooms and international princesses of industry; instead we confined ourselves to convenience store parking lots and the dusty frontier paths of the trailer park and its rough-elbowed, nic-tinted strippers-to-be. The Pit Stop: there is a black-and-white racing flag on the wall and the waitress is blank and sallow, like a wet motel pillow. To keep faith with Stephanie/Steve, I order a different brand of beer. I take a sip, reflect: So it seems the elevator man is as close to a thoughtful individual as generally can be found in the Georgian Court Arms. If he’s making everything up, and Don is making it all up (which he most certainly is), if the elevator man is some crazy person with a grey uniform, so what? So what? This isn’t going very well at all.

AN UNEXPECTED PHONE CALL (A RED HERRING?)
I get home pretty late. I take the stairs up to the sixth floor.  I’m drunk. I throw up on the fourth-floor landing. Shit. What an asshole. I try not to make too much noise but I knock the souvenir stuffed koala bear off the top of the TV and its stupid little beak clatters on the parquet. There is a note pinned to the screen, in the tight spidery hand of my mother, that says “Someone from Tunisia called.” It’s a good thing I already threw up. I’d be a lot happier if it said “Brad, we need to talk.  Your parole officer called. Son, whatever has been going on in your life, we’re here to help, we’re your parents, let’s just sort this situation out.” But no, instead I’m getting phone calls from deep within my own fantasies. There aren’t even any bikini women on the TV tonight. Sucks.

THE TRUTH ABOUT TUNISIA
As you should know by now, there isn’t any mine in Tunisia.Well, there are hundreds of mines in Tunisia, but I haven’t been to any of them. Nor have I been to the country of Tunisia. And I certainly don’t have money tied up there. Am I losing my mind? I hear a key in the door. Turning. My parents have returned from their daily 7:00 am diner breakfast. Coats hanging up. Cursed. “Son, are you up yet? Time to get up.” I hand my mother the note and ask, “Did you speak to them?” She pauses before answering. “Not much, they were hard to understand. And the line clicked a lot, it might have been overseas.” Wait. My mother isn’t an idiot, knows that the north coast of Africa is indeed “overseas.” I ask her a few more questions. Tunisia turns out to be Tony Iszya, a high school tennis coach, interested in hitting a few balls. Not yet then, I have not yet lost my mind.

ANOTHER CHAT WITH THE ELEVATOR MAN
I want to talk more with the elevator man, so I finally just ask him if I can hang out. He says: “That’d be fine.” Two people get on at the third floor, Mr. Durbot and his wife, both very old. I let them pass by into the world. When the door closes the elevator man asks, “What’s your name?” I don’t ask for his in return and he doesn’t offer it. I tell him I liked what he said about a little common kindness. I ask, “Have you ever been stuck in an elevator?” “Twice. One time it only lasted for half an hour, so that was ok, but the other… that must have gone on for nine hours, around the holidays.” “Wow, were you with anyone?” Before he can answer, Ed Brush gets on, fatter than a Honda Civic hatchback. Ed Brush gets off, looks over his shoulder at me as I stay on the elevator. I wave. The elevator man picks up the conversation. “Yup. Luckily she was there babysitting, had a big tin of apple juice, a box of crackers and most importantly, a pack of cards. We played two-handed euchre the whole time. I married her three weeks later. We were together 26 years.” It would seem that if you ask the right questions, the elevator man is happy to talk. He asks me my story. I almost blurt out “which one?” but pull back and initiate the Tunisian gambit. Then, strangely, it stops—not the elevator, my story. I find myself telling the elevator man all about my crime (the sensation of washing a man’s blood from your hands), about prison (they don’t tell you about the noises at night), about my parents (the feeling at a young age that my mother was always waiting for me to finish talking so she could start up again). We get to the first floor again and I’m starting in on the reason I decided to leave college—but the doors open to reveal two police men, ending our conversation.       

THE ACCUSATION WE’VE BEEN EXPECTING
Michelle Bankhurst, age 13. You may recall her as the daughter of Jody. You may also recall she liked to pass the time in the elevator before her mother got home from work. There has been a report filed of inappropriateness. The elevator man has come from nowhere and is now being taken away. The accusation has come from the boyfriend, Larry Mayfair, the man Michelle was avoiding. I go to ask Gus Pinker if he has any details—not surprisingly, he is nowhere to be found. Jody Bankhurst won’t return my calls. Michelle Bankhurst, I hear from Mrs. Brush, is at an aunt’s house. As his head was being cradled against the hard shoulder of the police car, I asked the elevator man if there was anything I could do. He remained silent.

THE ABSOLUTE AND TOTAL HYPOCRISY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES
The building, or specifically the tenants, turn out to be a like a faction of Stalinist pragmatists, the kind who survived. The elevator man’s nascent infamy is in precise proportion to his former popularity. Or maybe, “The Kind of Stalinists who Survived” is just another way of saying “Most of the Human Race?” 

THE SPECIFIC HYPOCRISY OF THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE (Or:
Mass Delusion and Its Withdrawal Period)
(Georgian Court tenant interviews, floors 1-4) Derek Wasik, age 33, apartment 215: “Man, I knew there was something kind of strange about us having a guy to push elevator buttons. And he was always getting into my business too.”  Margaret Hubbler, age 61, apartment 306: “Very familiar, almost pushy.” Jim Kiplits, age 48, apartment 502: “This is exactly what the world is coming to isn’t it? I’ve been in this building for 26 years and nothing like this has happened.  Nothing like it.” [Actually, my research revealed a very small-scale scandal in which three local off-ramp hookers had been sharing room 412, “for professional purposes.”] Miriam Fogelman, age 49, apartment 707: “This kind of thing used to happen only in Toronto. It’s a sad day for this town that such indecencies have showed up down the highway.” Peter Greene, age 16, apartment 801: “I’m just glad he didn’t try any of that weird shit on me. I would’ve kicked his ass.”

ON A BOAT, BOUND FOR TUNISIA
Don’t worry, the Elevator Man didn’t kill himself in his cell, but he sure tried. Which was stupid because his conviction was overturned eight months in. I went to go visit him after he got out, in a very small room in the wrong part of Toronto. There was no elevator, so I took the stairs to the third floor. He didn’t look good, and the room smelled like cabbage. His name turned out to be Paul Stevenson. He was a retired tool-and-die man who’d tried to write a book about the philosophy of the tool-and-die man. But it turned out there was no functional philosophy for tool-and-die men and he sort of went nuts. His family left. He started riding elevators in an old bellhop outfit he’d found at the back of a flophouse closet. I didn’t ask about his wife (the well-stocked babysitter), didn’t want to know. When he asked why I’d come to see him, I said just to say thanks. When he asked why the thanks, I told him I just wanted to get on with my own story. And then I left.

“Notes On An Elevator Man” first appeared in Avery Anthology.