The Elevator Man

A Story by Deen

The story of a delusional elevator man obsessed with his own idea of success. Absurdist allegory for capitalistic ennui.

Elevator Man, The Professional
An absurdist allegory for capitalistic ennui

The competence or skill of a professional. That is professionalism. Throughout my life I prided myself on holding that idea close to my heart like the very bones that surround it, shielding the sturdy muscle from the chaos of an apathetic world. I believed so wholeheartedly in the ideal of professionalism that I could not even allow myself to witness an act of unprofessionalism for fear of falling into a grotesque cycle of sordid acquiescence that would rob me of my own acuity for recognizing true professionalism at work. I fell victim to one of the major pitfalls of an adherence to any rigid doctrine, that being that I missed out on many of life's simple pleasures.
I did not watch college sports because they were not professional, I plugged my ears to certain avant-garde musicians because they didn't use professional studios to produce their albums. I spat at street vendors who had the audacity to approach me with menus from their fetid little food trucks. I even wrote a forty-page dissertation delineating the dangers of amateur boxing. During these long years of frenetic devotion to professionalism, though I felt completely justified in my belief, I slowly grew despondent and cruel as is inevitable when confronted so regularly with the object of one’s malice. Rarely, however, does one’s hair begin with streaks of gray, so to speak and I, dear reader, am no different.
My story takes place in Hamilton, a small city in western Montana nestled in between two mountain ranges within the Bitterroot Valley. I chose this city because of its close proximity to the Bitterroot Mountains, named after the Bitterroot flower which was discovered by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, arguably one of the most famously professional expeditions in American history. This is where I made my home, among the sloping alabaster pastures peppered with Douglas fir trees and tortuous dirt roads that unraveled towards distant snow-covered mountains. Here it was as if the sun never set but rather bowed its head in somnolent tranquility.
The town was quaint back then, and most people who lived there felt, as I did, that this is where they were meant to be, comfortably sequestered from the manic, ever vibrating world that surrounded us, a world so steeped in unprofessional people and practices that it seemed liable to fall right out of space at any given moment. I spent many years there seeking professionalism in others and exploring it within myself. And what, you ask, was my outlet for exploration? I was a professional elevator operator, and I was the best.
I worked in the tallest building in the city, a decadent hotel called Dulcinea del Toboso that stretched towards the stars at a staggering four stories high, meeting the low hanging clouds with an intrepid kiss. I knew that I was known around town as the most impressive elevator operator to ever wear the customary purple corduroy vest and matching fiddler cap, and people from all over Montana would come to Dulcinea just to have me carry them into the sky like a proud mother lifting her newborn baby above her head in ecstasy. This is how I spent every waking moment of every day, in pure elation, pushing the elevator lever forward with a brilliant dexterity and poise, causing a chain reaction of gears and pulleys that inspired the elevator to climb to the heavens, taking me with it as it's humble servant.
Sometimes the people that came to see me faced the elevator doors in a silent awe, too astonished to look at me or make conversation. Sometimes they talked a bit, grinning at each other or in my direction, hardly able to contain their excitement, though doing a good job at it, as the mighty contraption carried them to their floor. Every now and then a woman would enter, nervously preparing herself to engage with me by tending to her makeup while looking at the mirrored doors, only to succumb to her nerves and leave without a word. In every case they left the elevator exhausted from their jubilation, so much so that they could only say, “thank you, sir” or sometimes nothing at all, dropping a dollar or two into my purple little tip bucket. Their satisfaction was enough for me though, and I rarely kept the tips. It was enough to see them exit the elevator knowing that they just experienced the smoothest ride of their lives. I almost envied them in their delight as a great conductor envies his audience for the joy and ease of experiencing his music without the anguish of having to create it. But what of my anguish?
I did not lie to you, reader, when I said that I was the undisputed greatest and most competent elevator operator ever known, surpassed only by my late father who died from a free fall after testing the elevator he’d just built. He died heroically and taught me everything I know about professionalism. I’m confident in his guidance, but I had a terrible secret that would rock the walls of Dulcinea del Toboso if it were ever to surface. You see, I had mastered lifting the elevator upwards, but I absolutely loathed it’s decent. Ironically enough it was my own intransigent convictions on professionalism that fueled that venomous enmity.
Yes, I know that your cheeks and collar must be damp with tears, not of sadness but fury, however, before you think of me as some sort of deceitful crackpot, let me first offer this as my vindication. The word elevator is derived from the word elevate, meaning to rise. That means that to do anything but rise in an elevator would be fundamentally unprofessional. On the other hand, my followers who came to see me at Dulcinea expected to go down as well as up, perhaps because that was all they knew, and to deny them of that would also be unprofessional. Now you see the horrific position that I was put in daily, the inner turmoil I was subjected to only moments after performing my reason for living. I felt that I was living a lie, because as soon as I was done elevating some jubilant soul to our highest floor and we'd part ways, I with an almost uncontainable laughter and triumph swirling in my chest and her with a quick shuffle out the door as she too suppressed her merriment as not to alarm the other guests, I felt a strong disdain for the person or people who walked in next, waiting to go down to the first floor.
I wanted nothing more than to scream, "Insolent fools! Don't you see that this is not to be done? The staircase, I implore you. Why do you strike me so, to my very soul!” and their listless, sardonic faces would stare, smirking at me with eyes like daggers, asking,
"Well, are you a professional, sir, or not?"
I would quietly acquiesce, lowering them from an effulgent heaven back to the cold, vapid earth. Nothing hurt my heart as much as that descent, and worst of all it showed in my work. I was sloppy. I pulled the lever back towards me to set those wretched gears into motion with haggard pulleys, forcing the contraption to lurch downward. And I lurched along with it as its prisoner. By my hand the descent was sometimes too slow, sometimes violently fast, sometimes trembling throughout as if panicked or jerking like the recoil of a gun. I watched with trepidation as the occupants, their pale faces drained of color, stared at the door as not to witness my shame, or talked to one another in hushed tones, pretending not to be repulsed by the loathsome experience, making note of my purple corduroy vest and matching fiddler cap while thinking me the most unprofessional duffer to ever live. I lost quite a bit of sleep in those days, lying in bed all night thinking about how my admirers must have talked in private about me to one another…
“Did you ride the elevator with that charming Elevator Man?" a sprightly young woman with gentle eyes would her friend at a cocktail party.
"Yes, I did.'' her friend replies, impassively. "And what a disturbing ride it was.”
The young woman would knit her brow for a moment then continued with alacrity and a demure disbelief.
“How could you possibly think that? Oh, it was the most exhilarating, beautiful, magical experience of my life! I felt as if I was being lifted on sparrows’ wings high above the clouds! All by the professional hands of that wonderful Elevator Man.”
Her friend would look at her with a bitter sneer, stretch over the bar top to drop her cigarette in the sink, then slouch back onto her stool.
"It's all in your head.” she’d say, snickering. “That Elevator Man is no professional. A professional fool, perhaps. The whole way down was painfully rocky and far too slow. I thought I would vomit!" she'd take a sip of her Negroni, belch, and while chewing on ice, continue.
“I could hardly wait to get out of that cursed metal prison, and I will NEVER be returning to Dulcinea del Toboso for the rest of my days on this abominable planet. So long, Elevator FOOL!"
The young woman, looking down, would flush a scarlet red as tears added a soft weight to her eyelids.
“Maybe you're right." she'd whisper, her voice quivering. "Maybe it was just my imagination. Maybe I'm the fool." She'd allow only one single tear roll down her cheek before saying in a low, sullen breath…
"Goodbye… my elevator fool.”
I’d fling myself up out of a puddle of sweat, my bed sheets matted against my skin like hot mud as I panted, trying to force that dreadful scene out of my head. My purple fiddler cap lay on the nightstand, and I'd feel not even professional enough to look at it.
Days grew into months then years, each heavier than the last as if some dark spirit lay on my chest, getting fatter, and I constantly felt both too professional and not professional enough. It was as if the very water that I drank to sustain my life only made me thirstier, burning the inside of my mouth and throat until raw and untouchable, incapable of convalescence. And so, I continued on in as professional a manner as I knew how though I remain constantly dehydrated.
After quite some time, my boss, Ms. Heathcliff, summoned me to her office, a rare occurrence during my years of service. As I secured the elevator for my absence, I realized that her concern must have been inspired by so many volatile and lugubrious letters of disappointment sent to her by my fans.
I entered her dim lair, head down, with a pensive shuffle, closed the door behind me and stood beside the leather chair, waiting. She was sitting upright and rigid behind her desk reading a stack of papers and marking them each with a quick, lethal flourish of her red pen. It sounded like the crack of a whip as it repeatedly tore through one page and preyed on the next. Her slender face was pale as fog against the ancient burgundy curtains drawn closed behind her, and her dark eyes narrowed as they looked up to examine me, scanning me top to bottom then returning to her paperwork.
"Sit." she said.
I sat.
She stopped her paperwork to examine me further, then setting her pen at a perfect parallel to the neat stack of papers, she said, "Elevator Man Elevator Man. What are we going to do about you, Elevator Man.”
I opened my mouth in answer, but my voice was hoarse as if being suffocated by the darkness that engulfed us both. Her neck tightened as she opened the sleek laptop that sat on her desk, turning it towards me. She watched me as I watched myself on a 4-way split screen. One quadrant showed camera footage of me crying in the elevator, banging on the walls in another, yelling into my hands in the third and drinking scotch while laughing wildly in the fourth. She slammed the laptop closed and tossed it at me feet. My vision blurred.
"You've been elsewhere," she continued, her words calm and sharp. "Yes, you show up on time and perform your tasks, BUT you are elsewhere. Perhaps you're having trouble getting acclimated to the recent influx of new clientele. Perhaps you’re getting a bit of the old wanderlust. Perhaps you need a break..."
"No!" I said, almost yelling. The thought of a break from the elevator sent a cold sweat down my neck.
Ms. Heathcliff didn't jump nor move at my outburst. she just rolled her eyes and pursed her thin lips before continuing in an austere drawl.
"I’ll remind you just this once, Elevator BOY. This position is NOT for the faint of heart. It requires one hundred and fifty percent of your professionalism. I don't need you elsewhere. I need you HERE. So, whatever it is that plagues you, I suggest you overcome it. And quick. I will not tolerate such weakness in my elevator. Now, you WILL take the weekend off, and you WILL return Monday, entirely present."
She looked down, picked up her pen, and returned to her paperwork as if I weren’t there, slashing red gashes on the pages.
“Am I quite clear, Elevator Man?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Yes.” I said, nodding.
Her eyes darted back to mine then back on the paperwork.
“Good. leave me.”
I left.
The evening breeze must’ve taken pity on me enough to carry me home, because I had no memory from the moment I stepped out of Ms. Heathcliff’s office to now in my bed. It’s a twin-size bed, all that is necessary for one. Is that at least professional?
All of Saturday was spent in abject misery locked behind the walls of my second-floor apartment. From above I could hear the skittering steps of the children who lived on the floor above me and it made my dingy, tan walls seem all the drearier. I hadn't taken even one weekend off since beginning my service at Dulcinea del Toboso, and I was unused to hearing the sounds of steps on my ceiling. It seemed so unprofessional of an architect to design such thin walls, incapable of shielding one from the vices of another, and in that realization, I felt even worse, because my very home, all this time, had been a lowland of unprofessionalism. I'm not ashamed to say I wept all day. Wouldn't you? I did not leave bed, so lost and dejected I was in my confusion, and I'm certain I wouldn't have been able to fall asleep if it were not for the inevitable lethargy that bitter tears bring upon the spirit. In my slumber, however, no starlight nor moon light shone through the window, and I slept without rest, without dreams.
I awoke at five am, my usual hour, and was surprised to hear the same twirling footsteps on my ceiling like marbles ricocheting against the walls. Even In my sadness I'd had enough. I tore myself out of bed, threw on my big purple robe and fuzzy purple slippers, then left the apartment, slamming the door. I walked to the elevator down the hall, a place I'd never been within this complex as I'd only ever taken the stairs up or down (of course!) to go to work. I had never visited any floor above my own for lack of reason. At this point I was far too depressed and delirious to care.
A sharp pain struck my heart as I pressed the elevator button. It had been on the third floor - my complex had only three floors - and was working its way down to me. "It's probably one of those damned automatic self-lifting elevators." I thought. As the doors opened, to my great surprise, I was met with a very young man sitting beside the operator’s lever. His dull, sunken eyes betrayed an otherwise youthful face, freckled with blemishes and stray whiskers along his narrow chin. Despite his rounded back and emaciated frame he looked no more than seventeen years old.
"Could it be,” I thought, “an elevator...boy?”
He hardly glanced at me as I sidled in.
"Up? down?" he mumbled.
Reader, when I tell you I could not breathe it is no hyperbole! But I recovered some semblance of composure enough to answer the child.
"Up,” I whispered.
He had headphones in and was wearing a yellow sweatsuit with black slippers, wildly unprofessional, but the truly bizarre thing about him was that he sat! I expected the ride up to be a quaking rocket ship, and I braced myself against the wall opposite him, smirking at his arrogance.
"Foolish child," I murmured to myself.
"Huh?" he said, looking at me.
"Oh," I said. "Nothing at all, dear boy."
He shrugged, and while looking down at his phone in one hand, pushed the lever forward with the other. And it began.
To my great surprise there was no lunging, no quake, no falling out of the sky, but a serene lift as if guided by the powerful, benevolent hands of Atlas. I looked at him, around the room, at the lever, dumbfounded.
"How… and from one so young," I thought. “Surely, he would be unable to duplicate this level of prowess during descent.
“Descend,” I demanded with the stamp of my foot. “Show me down.”
The delicate savant looked at me full on, now.
"Dude.... what?" he asked, obviously unaware of his own gift.
"Take me down.” I said, forgetting all decorum. "Show me back down.”
The boy raised his eyebrows and removed one ear bud.
"You want to go down now?” he said, slowly.
I nearly shouted but controlled myself.
"You MUST show me down."
He edged his stool further into the corner away from me, as I was getting a bit sweaty, I suppose, and he pulled the lever to go down. It was astonishing. It was nothing to him, as if it were not the smoothest ride down imaginable, possibly smoother than our ascent! When we arrived on the second floor, I looked at him quickly and he already had an eye on me, though he diverted it immediately after our eyes met. A shy genius. A TRUE professional.
"Okay, have a good one," he said quickly.
"Back up," I shouted in rapture. "To the top! To the sky!"
He looked confused again, but he just closed the doors and carried me up in his arms. When we arrived on three, he said nothing but looked at me with seraphic anticipation, wide eyed. His mouth hung open a bit and now he sweated, too. He must have known what I was going to say next, as his gaunt hands were shaking a bit, nearly overflowing with excitement and expectation was he. I could wait no longer.
"Now back to Earth!" I cheered, teary eyed and raising my head high, lifting my arms.
"Hey, man," he said. "You can have my tips. Just take them, it’s cool."
How strangely the boy spoke. A true artisan!
“I should be paying YOU, you selfless aeronaut.”
He murmured, "what the f..." but in my excitement I accidentally cut him off (stupid!).
"Come now, boy, DESCEND. Descend before my soul unravels!”
He descended.
When we arrived back on the first floor he was standing up, and quite squished in the corner, so bashful he was in his professionalism. I spoke now in a grave, solemn whisper.
"How did you learn to rise and fall all the same, child? How did you come to be so professional? Please, you must tell me."
He looked at the door to see if anyone else was coming, surely to protect his secret, and he said nothing as he stood glued to his corner.
“You can trust me, boy,” I said, dripping in sweat as I inched closer to him, my eyes red from weeping. “We are brothers, you and I.”
“Help!” he yelled at me, imploring me to help him to trust in me as one who will keep such secrets.
I took out my name tag with the Dulcinea del Toboso logo on it and threw it at his chest. He let out a high-pitched squeal and fell to the floor when it hit him. Beneath my name on the tag read “Elevator Man.”
"You see!” I demanded. “We are the same. Now Please, you must tell me. You must, sir! I beg you! How do you control this mechanical portal." I stamped my foot once more and the boy jumped.
"I don’t know!” he cried. “I just do what my boss tells me to! Come on, man, they barely pay me, so I don’t think about it I just do it! I don’t have anything, I can’t get fired right now, man, please let me go! I just do what my boss says!"
The boy was red, snotty and crying as I stood over him, so taken with passion in my well-being I supposed he was. I raised my hands to my head in astonishment, and he flinched, the meek little prodigy.
"So, despite the existential horror before you, despite your own fear and hopelessness and contempt and pride, you have mastered this great machine not by conquering some inner turmoil that plagues you but by letting go altogether, submitting completely to the command of your boss, mind body and soul. Because... yes, because true professionalism is sacrifice!”
I felt that my head was going to explode with the weight of his ancient wisdom.
“I understand now,” I said, hugging the boy tight while he screamed in celebration.
“I thought that we were responsible for the elevator, you, me, my father before me, that we were in control of its rise and fall, but I know now that this is false. I am solely the will of my superior, who’s professionalism far exceeds my own, giving me the freedom to act, not to fear, not to resent, not to think. Do what you are told without question or animosity even if it corrodes the soul, for that will not last. What lies beneath that corrosion is mastery! Freedom.
I dropped my head into my hands and wept violently, shaking the elevator as I fell to the floor. The boy, compassionate enough to give me this space alone, hurried out the door and ran off, nearly stumbling. I was overcome with relief and confidence. My smiling face beamed with pride as I looked at my reflection in the mirrored elevator doors. Every inch of my body glowed with a radiant color, with the exception of one small lock of gray hair.

Epilogue
The Elevator man returned to his room sometime later. He wanted nothing more than to get back to work. While turning his key in the lock he paused, smiling. He smiled for a long time, a tired smile, a gentle smile, one of hope, one that we’ve all felt at one point or another, as if to say, “finally. Something good.” He hadn’t smiled like that in a long time, and if you were to have walked by him in that moment, in his favorite purple robe and his only slippers, you might’ve thought him the kindest face you’d ever seen.
He opened his door, and in the darkness, he noticed a blinking red light. It was his telephone’s answering machine. “One missed call,” it said. He pressed play.
“Elevator Man,” said a monotone voice.
“My God. Ms. Heathcliff?” he thought.
“Yes, this is your boss, as I’m sure you’ve enough wit to deduce. I won’t waste both of our time by drawing this out. It will be less painful for you, and that is my special gift to you, Elevator M... whatever your name is. You’re Fired. If you must weep then weep for yourself, because you’ve only yourself to blame. The regional manager of Dulcinea del Toboso is visiting tomorrow, and I simply cannot allow such unprofessional behavior to be put on display by one of my subordinates. When YOU look unprofessional, I look unprofessional, and I’ve never been unprofessional a day in my life. So, that’s that. But I’m feeling generous this evening, so I’ll give you a piece of advice, one that was given to me when just a child. Consider it your severance package: The elevator is only a box, nothing more. You must live for that box. You move when it moves. You break when it breaks. Do what you like inside that box, but do not leave and do not make a fuss. And make no mistake, you may operate that box, but you do not control it. Now, accept that and you may one day reach my level of professionalism. But I doubt it.
*click*
*Pop*
The Elevator Man