“Can I help you?” said the footman. Richard had been told to fuck off and die with more warmth and good humor.
“Down Street,” said Lamia, imperiously.
“This way,” sighed the footman. “If you’ll wipe your feet.”
They walked through an impressive lobby. Then they waited while the footman lit each of the candles on a candelabra. They went down some impressive, richly carpeted stairs. They went down a flight of less impressive, less richly carpeted stairs. They went down a flight of entirely unimpressive stairs carpeted in a threadbare brown sacking, and, finally, they went down a flight of drab wooden stairs with no carpet on them at all.
At the bottom of those stairs was an antique service elevator, with a sign on it. The sign said:
OUT OF ORDER
The footman ignored the sign and pulled open the wire outer door with a metallic thud. Lamia thanked him, politely, and stepped into the elevator. The others followed. The footman turned his back on them. Richard watched him through the wire mesh, clutching his candelabra, going back up the wooden stairs. There was a short row of black buttons on the wall of the elevator. Lamia pressed the bottom-most button. The metal lattice door closed automatically, with a bang. A motor engaged, and the elevator began, slowly, creakily, to descend. The four of them stood packed in the elevator. Richard realized that he could smell each of the women in the elevator with him: Door smelled mostly of curry; Hunter smelled, not unpleasantly, of sweat, in a way that made him think of great cats in cages at zoos; while Lamia smelled, intoxicatingly, of honeysuckle and lily of the valley and musk.
The elevator continued to descend. Richard was sweating, in a clammy cold sweat, and digging his fingernails deep into his palms. In the most conversational tones he could muster, he said, “Now would be a very bad time to discover that one was claustrophobic, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Door.
“Then I won’t,” said Richard. And they went down.
Finally, there was a jerk, and a clunk, and a ratcheting noise, and the elevator stopped. Hunter pulled open the door, looked about, and then stepped out onto a narrow ledge.
Richard looked out of the open elevator door. They were hanging in the air, at the top of something that reminded Richard of a painting he had once seen of the Tower of Babel, or rather of how the Tower of Babel might have looked were it inside out. It was an enormous and ornate spiral path, carved out of rock, which went down and down around a central well. Lights flickered dimly, here and there in the walls, beside the paths, and, far, far below them, tiny fires were burning. It was at the top of the central well, a few thousand feet above solid ground, that the elevator was hanging. It swayed a little.
Richard took a deep breath and followed the others onto the wooden ledge. Then, although he knew it was a bad idea, he looked down. There was nothing but a wooden board between him and the rock floor, thousands of feet below. There was a long plank stretched between the ledge on which they stood and the top of the rocky path, twenty feet away. “And I suppose,” he said, with a great deal less insouciance than he imagined, “this wouldn’t be a good time to point out that I’m really bad at heights.”
“It’s safe,” said Lamia. “Or it was the last time I was here. Watch.” She walked across the board, a rustle of black velvet. She could have balanced a dozen books on her head and never dropped one. When she reached the stone path at the side, she stopped, and turned, and smiled at them encouragingly. Hunter followed her across, then turned, and waited beside her on the edge.
“See?” said Door. She reached out a hand, squeezed Richard’s arm. “It’s fine.” Richard nodded, and swallowed. Fine. Door walked across. She did not seem to be enjoying herself; but she crossed, nonetheless. The three women waited for Richard, who stood there. Richard noticed after a while that he did not seem to be starting to walk across the wooden plank, despite the “walk!” commands he was sending to his legs.
Far above them, a button was pressed: Richard heard the thunk and the distant grinding of an elderly electric motor. The door of the elevator slammed closed behind him, leaving Richard standing, precariously, on a narrow wooden platform, no wider than a plank itself.
“Richard!” shouted Door. “Move!”
The elevator began to ascend. Richard stepped off the shaking platform, and onto the wooden board; then his legs turned to jelly beneath him, and he found himself on all fours on the plank, holding on for dear life. There was a tiny, rational part of his mind that wondered about the elevator: who had called it back up, and why? The rest of his mind, however, was engaged in telling all his limbs to clutch the plank rigidly, and in screaming, at the top of its mental voice, “I don’t want to die.” Richard closed his eyes as tightly as he could, certain that if he opened them, and saw the rock wall below him, he would simply let go of the plank, and fall, and fall, and—