Elevator Operator

Ever since they could remember, best buds Jes and Daniel had the cliché dream to hop in their car with a single suitcase directly after high-school graduation and move to New York City. They’d live just about anywhere: a shared room or a shoebox in any borough. They only cared about being together, and being able to pay the rent.

In June of their senior year, the pair checked Zillow, Apartments.com and StreetEasy daily, to no avail. Their naïveté was slowly crushed by the reality of the situation: there was a housing crisis. New York City was unaffordable to everyone except the finance bros and big shots it catered to. Gone were the days depicted in movies where rent was $200 a month, artists teemed the city like rats, and a couple of high-school grads could do a little good natured maturing without mortgaging a limb or getting two full time jobs.

After they threw their graduation caps in the air, the pair hopped in Jes’s Toyota Corolla to go to - not the city like they’d dreamed, but - the local diner for celebratory milk shakes. That summer, Jes began working for his father’s auto detailing business, and Daniel moved up to a management position at Super Shoes. Or, as he nicknamed it, Stupid Shoes.

Daniel still browsed the rental landscape in NYC in the back courtyard of the shoe store. One sticky day, standing between an exhaust pipe and a dumpster during a 15 minute smoke break he took once every hour (despite not being a smoker), he came across a listing.

“I don’t understand why we didn’t see this before,” Daniel swung by Jes’s Dad’s garage immediately after his shift ended. Jes’s pants poking out from underneath a minivan were the only part of his body that were visible.

“It says it’s been on Zillow for three years,” he said to the faded gray Carhartts. “I must have changed the filters or something, because it just popped up. But get this,” Daniel pulled out his phone to bring up the listing. “Two bed, one bath, right in BedStuy — at…wait for it…$1200 a month. Including utilities!”

“Man, that’s a scam.” Jes’s resonant nasal tone piped up from under the vehicle. He continued working, without bothering to entertain Daniel. Even a single room in a four bedroom apartment wasn’t priced that low these days, especially not in Brooklyn.

“Maybe…” Daniel replied, “but I messaged them. And they said we could come in for a tour tomorrow morning. They didn’t ask for money or anything.”

Daniel kicked Jes’s leg. “Come on dude. Let’s just go see it. Scam or not, let’s have a fun day in the city! Who knows, maybe it’ll be a real listing and we’ll get the place. You won’t have to be covered in grease for the rest of your life.”

Jes slid out quickly and looked up at his friend. “I like my job. Not all of us are stuck looking at people’s bunions all day.”

“Okay, okay. I hate my life. Alright?” Daniel threw up his hands. “It was supposed to be me and you getting into shenanigans in the city! I’m sorry I haven’t traded in that dream to be a manager at Stupid Shoes.”

Daniel slumped on a shop stool and kept muttering, more to himself than to Jes. “I’m not ready to throw in the towel. I feel like I left my entire youth behind the day summer started…all I do is go to work and go home. There’s nothing else to do in this dumb town. I just thought there would be more than this after graduation.”

Jes saw how down and stuck Daniel was, and sighed. He got up, and, wiping his hands on a rag, acquiesced. “All right. I’ll take the day off tomorrow…We can tour the apartment. But you’re paying for gas.”

Daniel beamed. “Deal.”

***

The building was historic - and not in an elegant way. It was a 19th century wooden townhouse that leaned so far to the left it looked like it could topple over. The paint, which looked like it was once bright blue, flaked off of every board, and had dulled to a gray. The apartment stood out, because on either side of it were two modern, freshly renovated edifices with balconies and clean faux brick.

“See, I told you. They’re not coming.” Jes exclaimed after the pair had stood outside for over 15 minutes. “Let’s go get breakfast.”

Daniel had gotten his hopes up. His chin dropped. Right when the pair were about to turn around, the front door creaked, and out came a person in what looked like a cloak. It was the realtor, who was over six feet and extremely lanky. Their face was pale, painted with heavy black around their eyes and a bright red lip.

They stood in the doorway nonchalantly, with a hip popped to the side and arms crossed. The hallway behind them was pitched-black. “Are you here to see apartment 7?” They spoke with no urgency.

“YES!” Daniel perked up immediately. The ennui vibrated off of the clocked realtor, and Daniel cleared his throat. “Uh, I mean, yes.”

The cloaked realtor practically rolled their eyes, “Well, come in.”

“Apartment 7 is on the top level. I’ll take you up in the elevator, because it’s one of the things that sets this building apart from others like it,” Cloak explained as they entered through a dark hallway with broken tiles beneath their feet. “The original owner was in a wheelchair.”

It was quiet, no sounds of life coming from any of the closed doors on the ground units or the floors above them. Cloak pushed the button to summon the old, rickety elevator, and immediately a loud whirring ensued. “It’ll take a minute,” they shouted over the noise.

“Why do you think this place hasn’t been snatched yet?” Jes asked.

“Oh, it’s probably because of the fallen saint,” They were studying their nail buds.

Jes and Daniel shared a glance. “The what?”

Cloak looked away from their nail buds to the boys, annoyed. Then they put their hand down, sighed, and dove into a tale.

“After the original owners of the townhouse passed, the buyers decided to split the building up into apartments. Two on each level. Rumor has it the guy in Apartment 7, the one I’m about to show you, was a saint. He lived here with his small daughter. His wife died in childbirth - it was common those days” Cloak looked up at the dial on top of the elevator, which was taking its sweet time, then continued.

“He was a good saint — pious and moral, or whatever. He helped his community. He worked out of a local church, modeling saintly behavior, giving to those in need, praying for people. You know, Saint things.

“Then his daughter got sick. Probably TB or Hep C or something that would be no biggie these days. But back then it was deadly. After his daughter died, the Saint totally spiraled. Drinking, drugs, sex, gambling, the whole gamut. And God was not pleased. God felt that the Saint needed to be taught a lesson. So one day, when the Saint was staggering home, he got in the elevator to go up to Apartment 7 — where I’m about to take you —“

Jes and Daniel looked at each other. Suddenly it made sense why the apartment had been on the market for so long. Did they want to live in an apartment where some little girl had died, in a building where God punished a Saint? Also, why was the elevator taking so damn long?

Cloak didn’t seem to notice or care about the pair’s sudden nervousness, and kept telling the story.

“The Saint entered the elevator, and it got stuck right below the top floor, where he was due to exit. The lights flickered and he heard the voice of God, who was very angry with him. He had not been fulfilling his Saintly duties. In fact, instead of improving the world, his behaviors were making it worse. So God told the Saint that he would be banished to the elevator until the end of his mortal life.

“Unless - God told him - he could get his act together and change someone’s life for the better, as God put him on Earth to do.”

The whirring sound stopped and it was deadly quiet again. The elevator had halted behind an ivory gate on the ground floor, which Cloak opened before floating into the wooden box. When the boys didn’t budge, Cloak asserted “Are you coming?” And the boys, intimidated, followed them into the lift.

The elevator was tiny, and they were all awkwardly touching limbs in a way that made it feel weird for anyone to make eye contact. The light source was from a single exposed bulb offering a yellow hue. Cloak pressed the button labeled number 4, and the door whined while it inched shut. The whirring ensued.

“For a long time, God thought he made a grave mistake. Rather than teaching the Saint a lesson, banishing him to the elevator seemed to push him into a deeper state of bitterness. He’d harass anyone who came into the elevator. Mean stuff - preying on folk’s insecurities, calling them names, bringing down the mood of the unlucky resident who chose to take the elevator instead of the stairs. If someone waltzed into that elevator joyfully, they’d leave either feeling sorry for themselves, hating everyone else, or feeling doomed about the state of the world somehow. For example, if someone small-talked to the Saint, like, ‘Fine weather we’re having,’ the Saint would not allow them to exit the elevator until they knew it would rain soon enough. If someone walked in feeling confident in their outfit choice, the Saint would point out a small stain on their chest or comment that the colors or fabrics were clashing in some way. And that’s just moderate. He did some truly cruel stuff. He was known to trip people on their way out of the elevator. It was so terribly unpleasant that many people just took the stairs.

“Then one day, as the lore goes, a beautiful young woman moved into the building, and, blissfully unaware, entered the Saint’s elevator. She was so gorgeous and confident that the Saint saw no rhyme or reason to bring her down. He saw no possible outcome to the elevator ride other than a need to make her smile.

“This was the day that God chuckled to himself with pleasure, because he knew that one day the Saint would find his reason to be Good again. And it worked — the Saint became kinder, because he had someone to live for. However, just because he had a reason to be good did not make him Good. As God ordered, he was stuck in the elevator until he changed someone for the better. And the Saint didn’t have much to work with, given that he could not exit the small lift at all.”

The elevator crept up. They were only just past floor two.

“The Saint would look forward to seeing the woman every day, having a conversation with her, however brief. He’d use it as a chance to get to know her better, asking about her childhood, her family, anything that would allow her light to be shed on him. Those few moments with her in the elevator would sustain him until the next day, when he got to see her again. After months like this, the Saint knew what he had to do. She would make him Good again, and he, in turn, would make her the happiest woman in the world. He did not have a ring, given that he could not leave his small cell, but planned to propose nonetheless.

“The Saint was giddy all day at the thought of his plan to pop the question. He’d wait for her to return home at the end of the day, so that there’d be nothing else on her agenda, and the two could spend the evening in engagement bliss. He was going to take her out to the fine restaurant he used to take his daughter to, then for a stroll in the old gardens he used to love. He was going to give her all the Good in the world. He’d be free from his duty as elevator operator, and he’d be hers for ever.

Only that night, the woman did not enter the elevator alone, but with another man, whom she introduced as Jimmy. ‘This is Jimmy,’ she told the Saint, who, as you can imagine, was immediately crushed. His heart sank lower than the elevator shaft, and he felt all of the potential, all the Good seep out of his pores. It was replaced, cell by cell, with that same bitterness and hatred that filled him before. And he let it rip on Jimmy. He made fun of everything from his tiny feet to his hairline before tripping him on the way out of the elevator. The woman was shocked, and she never rode the elevator again.”

Just then, a loud cranking blared and the elevator felt as though it hit something at the top. It bounced up and down aggressively, and the lights flickered. Then it just stopped, right below the entryway to the top floor.

“Oh, crap,” Cloak said.

“What do you mean,” Jes’s voice shook slightly, “’oh crap’?”

“It does this sometimes,” Cloak replied with a sigh.

“Y-you mean we’re stuck?” Daniel asked.

“That’s one way to put it, yeah.” Cloak replied. They sank their long torso down and sat cross legged. “It may be a while. This elevator sorta has a mind of its own.”

Jes and Daniel, very freaked out now, lowered themselves down to a seat as well. This Zillow ad was a murder scheme, Daniel thought to himself.

“So yeah, God’s whole plan for the Saint didn’t really work. In fact, the Saint became even meaner than before. No one knows what happened to him. Some people say he found a way to be Good and leave the elevator in the end. Other people say he took his last breath trapped in here, a bitter, evil man. Some residents think he even haunts the elevator from Hell.”

The elevator began to sputter and jerked up and down a bit more, before finally reaching the top floor. The wooden door to the elevator dragged itself open, and Cloak, ever so slowly, unsealed the ivory gate on the other side of it. The boys, pale and shaking, followed Cloak into the hallway.

“Are you ready to see the apartment now?”

The boys looked at each other. They immediately took off in a sprint down the stairs and back out onto the streets of BedStuy.