Forgot Something
Damn it, I knew I forgot something. I step back into the elevator and press nine.
Somehow, I never noticed that there are no doors on this elevator. It’s fine, really, because I get to see everything on the way back up. On one floor there seems to be a seminar; a woman in a red business suit is pointing to slides and addressing an attentive audience. A couple of floors up, the space between the floors has a little garden growing in a neat grid of green wooden boxes. It’s reassuring how well built this part of the building is, really.
A black, stenciled “10″ slides by. I look to the buttons, and nine is still lit, but the elevator is not stopping. Another of these ones, I guess. Outside is a four meter gap between the elevator and the unfinished concrete hallway marked 13. The elevator bumps into something and swings out to the right, continuing its upward journey with a gentle pendulum sway.
It eventually stops, letting me out on a narrow rough wooden floor suspended in space. Steel girders at the four corners mark the edges of the tower. Off to my right hover three finished houses with small yards; an old Japanese man in monk robes is shouting out the window of the nearest one at a construction worker with a jackhammer. Across the wooden path from the houses a crane clings to the frame of the building, and construction crews bustle around it, completely ignoring me. The nearest solid part of the building is ten stories below.
Suddenly I realize that I’m not standing on wood, but a grey, knit wool. I drop to my knees and grab it with both hands as the wool walkway starts swaying; I try to keep myself upright but adjusting my weight seems to accelerate the swaying. I really just want to get back to my apartment. Enough of this. Really. As I wrestle with the knit, three people walk up and join me to wait for the elevator. ”Hello,” one of them says to me.
“I don’t know how you can live here,” I say.
“You get used to it,” he replies.
“Yeah, but I have acrophobia.” I look down, and my stomach turns.
With a friendly laugh, he says, “I suppose that might complicate things a bit.”
The wool path has settled, and I relax a bit. In fact, relaxing seems to make it more stable. The elevator appears from a hole in the sky above me, and starts sliding down. It looks like it will arrive at our level ten meters out from the walkway.
“How are we supposed to get there?” I ask the others.
“We walk, of course,” one says.
“What? How?” I ask.
“Don’t worry, everything’s been built. You just don’t know it yet.”
The elevator comes to a stop, and the others start towards it as the door opens. I look down, take a deep breath, and follow.
