Colson Whitehead - The Intuitionist

In her room at the Friendly League Residence, she reads Theoretical Elevators , Volume Two. Reads, The race sleeps in this hectic and disordered century. Grim lids that will not open. Anxious retinas flit to and fro beneath them. They are stirred by dreaming. In this dream of uplift, they understand that they are dreaming the contract of the hallowed verticality, and hope to remember the terms on waking. The race never does, and that is our curse . The human race, she thought formerly. Fulton has a fetish for the royal “we” throughout Theoretical Elevators . But now — who’s “we”?

She is teaching herself how to read.

At the pounding on the door, she closes the book (the pages resist each other, so jealous and protective are they of Lila Mae’s touch). She is expecting Natchez, who is to deliver his update on his search for Fulton’s journal pages (and perhaps more). But it is not his knock, nor his low voice heard now croaking, “Amy, Amy baby, I’m sorry,” that last word trailing away, dripping down the door like spittle. “I’m sorry I did it. Open up and I’ll show you. It’s just that sometimes when I get in that place … it’s so low, so low and I can’t see up out of it.” This incident is over. The man slaps the door with his hand, and she can hear him walk down the hallway, slowly, soft clothes, a bathrobe maybe, sliding on the dirty tile behind him, a tail or a broom.

When Natchez’s knock finally rattles the old door, she does not need to confirm through the peephole. She withdraws the chain, opens up and he’s staring off down the hallway with distaste and — she sees Fulton’s profile there, the lightly angled brow, knob chin. He wears a light blue suit of plain cut, the kind of suit she associates with the men of colored town, a church and wake suit, probably the only one he owns. Out of the House servant uniform. He says, turning to her, “Nice hotel you picked, Lila Mae.”

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” she says.

Natchez plucks nervously at his lapels. “I didn’t bring much up here. I don’t know why I brought this along,” shrugging, looking up at the yellowed ceiling. He prestos a bunch of flowers from behind his back, a splash of violets. “I saw these on the way. I thought you might be needing something for the room, and it looks like I was right.”

No, she can’t remember the last time someone … has anyone ever? She can’t recall at all. She locks the door behind him and surveys her tiny room. Doesn’t take long. “Thank you,” she says. “You can put them on the sill. I haven’t anything to put them in.”

He places his hat, a dusty black homburg, on the sill next to the swaddled violets. Natchez drags the chair away from the table with a long screech, sits. “You could have done better than this. Even my room’s better than this and I didn’t have no money for a decent place. I mean — I didn’t have any money for a decent room.”

“You don’t have to act any way for me, Natchez.” He’s taken the only chair in the room. She struggles with the Murphy bed and glides it to the floor. “We come from the same place,” she adds, sitting on the atoll lumps of the mattress.

He looks nervous, rubs his palms across his knees. “Did you find anything today? I mean when you went downtown.”

Perhaps he really is a bit nervous, Lila Mae thinks. She has never thought of herself as an imposing person (that’s how little self-perception she has), but he is new to the city and maybe that explains it. “I think I know why Pompey went to that building last night,” she says. 366 Eighth Avenue, where the two of them tailed Pompey after he left Pauley’s Social Club. “The building is owned by Ponticello Food — they own a tomato canning factory across the river. I’m pretty sure it’s a Shush front. I have enough to confront him, anyway. With the pictures we took. Maybe I can get him to admit he sabotaged the Briggs stack.”

“I’ll go with you,” Natchez responds. “What time?”

“I don’t need your help — I mean I can do it myself. I work with him. I know him — inside and out. I can handle it.”

“What time? I’m coming with you.” His hands are folded across his chest.

“You have your own errands to do.” His motives are good, but she is no child. “How did it go at the House today? Did you get it?”

“Man, they didn’t think nothing was up. I waited until Mrs. Gravely went out to do her shopping for dinner. Reed and old Lever were out all day. Took all of five minutes to find his notes. For people who think they pretty smart, you think they would keep that drawer locked — it was right in the drawer where you said it would be.” He pulls out the small black camera from his jacket and shakes it in the air. “Once I recognized his handwriting on it, I took the pictures.”

Lila Mae leans forward, excited. “Can I see them?”

Natchez replaces the camera. “I haven’t taken them to the drugstore to get them developed yet. I was going to wait until I got the ones from the Department and the ones from that elevator magazine.”

“Maybe you should develop what you have,” Lila Mae says, “and use different film for Chancre and Lift . That way you won’t lose everything if something happens.”

His face shrinks a little. The red neon of the liquor store sign across the street flashes on his face, off and on. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll take this down tomorrow.”

Did she sound like a scold? Lila Mae thinks. She was only trying to be practical. “Just in case,” she says in soft tones, “is all I’m saying.”

“No, you’re right. I’ll do that.”

“Are you sure they’re in the Department? They might have taken them somewhere.”

“I’ll find them,” Natchez says. “If they’re there, I’ll find them, and if they’re somewhere else, I’ll find where that place is. You worry about what you got to do and I’ll worry about what I got to do.”

“I’ll tell you what — after I talk to Pompey, I’ll go to Lift and try to find where their copies are. That way, we’ll save time.”

He looks cross, Lila Mae thinks. As cross and defiant as she looked when he insisted on coming to Pompey’s with her? He says, “I’ll do it, Lila Mae. That’s the agreement, right? You got enough to do. When I get the film developed, you can help me figure out what my uncle was saying. Okay?”

She wishes she hadn’t tried to tell him what to do. She has been misinterpreted. “Natchez — do you want to get something to eat?”

He frowns. “I’d really like that,” he says, “but I have to get back on the train. I have a long day tomorrow.” He stands and pushes the chair back to where he found it. “I know you one of these modern city gals, Lila Mae, but me, I like to take it slow. You know? It’s just how I was raised. Let’s — let’s go out tomorrow night for real. After we finish our business let’s go out and do it right. No elevators, no black box, no uncle. Just us. We can go out to dinner and then maybe you can take me out to one of these clubs you go to.” Natchez smiles. “I got all this salary from Mr. Reed and it’s just been burning a hole in my pocket.”

“I’d like that,” Lila Mae says.

In the doorway, he quickly kisses her cheek. “Good night, Lila Mae,” he says. “And keep this door locked if you ain’t going to move to a nicer place.”

The modern city girl locks the door behind him.

* * *

“I know what you did,” she tells Pompey. “I know what you did to the Fanny Briggs stack.”

She has been here since this morning, kneading the rubber grooves of the floormat with her shoes. Lila Mae was surprised to learn that Pompey lived only two blocks from her apartment, but in their history they rarely exchanged beyond terse office communiqués (never have Done with that stapler? and The new Board up? been pronounced with such venom). Just two blocks away from her apartment at the Bertram Arms and it could be a different neighborhood. The life here, the ambient cheer of this easy Saturday afternoon: she associates it with her childhood, Southern skies above the myriad taffy pleasures of colored town. On her street she is anonymous; the Caribbean immigrants share a code, a broad and secret choreography she is excluded from. But these are American colored. As the afternoon unfurls outside her car window, each neighbor greets a neighbor, hats are doffed extravagantly, smiles are currency, no strangers. A toddler strays two steps from her mother and almost falls, virgin knees to the pavement, if not for the sure hand of Mr. So-and-So from up the street, who never leaves the street, who always has a redemptive hand or hard candy or arcane wisdom for the children. The mother thanks him, promises a pie. (All nefaria kept behind apartment walls, saved for inside. The neighbors hear everything but do not interfere, squirreling away every curse and blow as gossip for lean hours.)