Ryan Jahn - Low Life

He stepped on. The doors closed. The figure was still outside.

The train started moving, rolling along the tracks.

The figure stood on the platform outside and watched him as the train rolled away.

He rode the train – past Highland Park and Chinatown – to the end of the line. All the doors opened. A voice over a loudspeaker said everyone had to get off. The train was now out of service. He stepped onto a platform. Amtrak and Metro-Link trains were stopped at other platforms. People were standing and sitting with luggage piled beside them.

For a moment Simon considered getting on one of those trains, a train that led out of town, away from all of this. It was a great urge, but he suspected that whatever this was, whatever was going on, it couldn’t be remedied geographically. Walk the mile: he had to see this to the end, whatever it was.

He took the stairs down into Union Station.

It was nearly empty inside. A janitor was pushing a dust mop back and forth across the red and black concrete. His face was skeletal, cheekbones large and jutting, hollows in his cheeks like he was sucking them in, eyes like two black holes, mouth droopy on the left side and a little bit of drool hanging there.

Simon knew he was being paranoid, but he couldn’t help but feel that the man was watching him as he walked by. He didn’t turn his head as Simon passed, but his eyes seemed to follow him.

After looking at a map of the various train routes, Simon made his way down two sets of escalators to the subway, walking beneath a concrete ceiling that looked like it was dripping sewage through several cracks, brownish-yellow stalactites clinging on up there as liquid ran down them and splashed to the ground beneath. Orange cones blocked off the corridor beneath the worst of the drippage. The Red Line would take him to within a quarter mile of the Filboyd Apartments. Then he could walk the rest of the way.

He didn’t know where else to go.

Whoever was following him knew where Shackleford lived, but he might not know where Simon’s apartment was. He might, of course – but he might not. And he needed to get a grip on what was happening here, to wrap his mind around it.

The Volvo was parked on the street in front of the Filboyd Apartments. It was empty and dark, the doors locked. It just sat there being a car and Simon stood looking at it as if he expected it to do otherwise.

‘Well, take him.’

He spun around. The sidewalk was empty. He was sure, though, that he’d heard Helmut Müller’s thin voice. It still echoed in his mind.

He pushed his way through the front doors and walked up the narrow flight of stairs toward his apartment. As he walked up he saw someone’s back, and then a pair of legs and feet at the top of the stairs. The shoes were old suede, slick with age. The sport coat the man was wearing was brown corduroy with leather elbow patches. The hair was gray. He was spray-painting something onto the wall opposite the stairs. There was a hissing sound coming from his direction.

‘Hey!’

Simon ran up the last several steps.

The man in the corduroy coat finished painting quickly and darted left, out of Simon’s sight.

When he reached the top of the stairs he turned left and looked down the corridor. A brown blur vanished around the corner. Simon ran after it, past his apartment, down the leopard-spotted carpet. He could smell roasting beef coming from an apartment that opened into the corridor. He turned left again, not knowing what was just around the corner.

As soon as he did, something hit him on the forehead – two fists clenched together and brought down like a hammer – knocking him to the ground. The floor rushed up and hit him in the backside. The ceiling spun. He heard an involuntary grunt escape him, pushed out by the fall.

And then he was being trampled on. He turned over onto his belly, got onto his hands and knees, and then pushed himself up onto his feet. He looked back down the corridor, in the direction from which he’d just run. It was empty.

He thought he could hear the man thudding down steps.

His heart was pounding in his chest. He walked back through the corridor and looked into the dark stairwell.

Halfway down lay a lump on one of the steps. The stairwell was so dark, he couldn’t tell what it was. He walked down and picked it up. It was a shoe. He recognized it, the old suede, the broken and tied-together shoelaces. He’d left these shoes back in Pasadena this morning, along with his car and the corduroy coat the man had been wearing. He carried the shoe back upstairs.

On the wall opposite the stairwell, on a patch of fresh white paint (Leonard must have just had it done earlier today), the graffito said

Simon touched the paint and looked at his finger. It was black, like he’d just been booked down at the police station. He wiped it off on the wall, smearing an ‘s’ above the lettering.

He stared at it for a long time.

He was inside his apartment and twisting the deadbolt home before he realized that the door had been repaired. He unlocked the door, opened it, looked out into the empty corridor, then closed it and listened to it latch. He locked it again. He slid the chain into place. Had it still been broken when he came back earlier to get Francine? He couldn’t remember. He remembered taking out his keys and unlocking the door. He remembered that. But he couldn’t remember whether he’d stuck a key into the doorknob or a padlock. Could Leonard have had it done today while someone was here painting the corridor wall? It was possible, he supposed, but then wouldn’t there be screw holes in the wood of the door? Certainly Leonard wouldn’t have replaced—

He turned his back to the door and leaned against it.

He tossed the suede shoe onto the coffee table.

Vertigo swept over him. The world tilted sideways. He grabbed onto the wall to keep himself upright. Once the feeling passed, he looked around the room.

It was empty but for him and the furniture – his old couch, his coffee table.

Someone upstairs flushed a toilet and the pipes in the walls let out a sad cry. He could hear someone’s radio playing, the sounds of traffic coming into the building through the paper-thin windows; someone with a deep voice boomed laughter.

‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Is anybody here?’

He searched the apartment and found it empty and got a bottle of whiskey from the kitchen and sat down on the couch. Tonight was no night to bother with glasses. He twisted off the top and drank directly from the bottle. It was harsh and strong and good. There was half a bottle left and he wanted to down it all but he knew he couldn’t allow himself to do that. He needed his mind working. He already felt confused and afraid as it was and drinking more would only make it worse. It would make him feel better but it would make it worse in the long run. He took another swig, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, wiped at the corners of his mouth with thumb and index finger, rolled what he found there together between them, flicked it to the floor, and set the bottle down on the coffee table.

He wanted to go to sleep, but he couldn’t – not here.

That man might be back, or somebody else might, and he’d be defenseless in his sleep.

He had come here to get away, but he’d gotten away from nothing. Until he worked this thing out he could stay neither here nor at the house in Pasadena. He would have to get a motel room. That man might be back at any moment.

He got to his feet and headed for the door.

His keys were gone. He had found the door unlocked or he would have noticed when he got here. At some point in the day someone must have taken them from his pocket. That explained how his car had gotten here. Whoever took his keys – the man who was wearing his clothes – had driven it here.