Locking
Up
It’s almost 4:55. Soon I’ll rise from my
desk. Soon I’ll take an elevator up to the ninth floor to lock the stairwell
door that leads both down to the eighth floor and up onto the small ninth floor
where the janitorial staff is located and their equipment is stored, and then
onto the roof through a last door up a small stairwell on the far wall.
My door--the fire door I am required to
lock--is heavy metal painted gray. It has a small window eye level that contains
wires diagonal in a crisscross pattern.
Over the fifty years this state office
building has been here, workers have occasionally used the door to travel down from
the ninth floor to the eighth, or down to the seventh, or even further. The
building’s two elevators are old and slow; you can even tell where elevator
operators used to sit and operate.
I love how the gray paint on my door has
gotten worn away to silver in places, one near the handle, another shoulder
height. It makes my door more human, blessed as it has been by so many hands
and shoulders.
Why do I have this concern for this
particular door? Well, if you were asked five days a week to go up seven
flights to lock a door, five minutes before getting off work, you might also
become attached. I do no check of the stairwell doors on the other floors, from
the first to the eighth. No one else in the whole building is required to lock stairwell
doors.
The outside doors to the building are
locked every night at eight. The elevators are shut down. Is my door locked perhaps
to prevent a sniper from getting on the flat roof? The building does have a
view of the Texas governor's mansion and grounds.
I've been to the few rooms on the small ninth
floor often, as my work at times requires. The only means to the roof is
through this other door up a small flight of stairs across from my ninth-floor
door. That roof door, I have discovered, is never locked. The maintenance
people are careless.
I have pointed out to the higher ups
through memos that the roof door is always unlocked. My words have gotten only
standard, evasive replies.
I got the door closing assignment six
months ago. It was added to my job description after my 2013-year end review. I
did all the paperwork for the review during the time of my divorce, and must
admit that during that stressful time I became somewhat lax in appearance. My
wife, Jadene, would be out in the Austin rock and roll clubs most nights and
usually did not come home. My guess is she was making it with the punk
musicians she talked to after the gigs. She loved punk. Meanwhile, I took care
of our two children Sarah and Gary.
I fell in love with Jadene at college at
the University of Iowa and we married shortly before graduation. I asked her then
what she wished to do with her life. Jadene said she wanted to be a stay at
home housewife like her mother and raise kids.
“Don’t you think you’ll get bored?” I
said. “Don’t you want to play music in a local band for fun at least?”
“Not really. Kids take a lot of attention
to raise right. At home I will get to run the show. I can create an amazing world
for them.”
Every employee of the state must do an
end of the year review. Every employee at the state has a job description on
which to base the review. My own description, as a technical writer, takes up a
page in a large ring notebook full of job descriptions that the head of my unit
keeps in her office. “Come by and look any time,” she tells us.
Job descriptions tell you what you’re
required to do. They show you the description when you’re applying for work and
after you get the job. I am to correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I am
to rewrite awkward and unclear sentences. I am to design collaboratively
documents with graphs and illustrations, using s software program, so the
document can be sent digitally to the printer. Most of what our unit works on
are the bills passed by the Texas House of Representatives during session. Laws
and laws and laws are passed.
Writing is my work, plus closing the door on
the ninth floor at 5:00 PM, as my job description now says. I am instructed to
leave my desk on the second floor at 4:55 and lock the door at 5:00. I thought
once, since my supervisor is also now divorced, she had set this up so we could
get better acquainted. Who has not dreamed of passionate encounters on a
forgotten and half-lit stairwell? I bought myself some weights and started
working out to look better if she happened to want to meet. Ah, but she has
never been anywhere near the door when I went to lock it.
Almost every day, before I go up to the
ninth floor at 4:55, my phone rings. Always it is someone from another cubicle
on my floor, one of my coworkers wanting to have a chat about a document we are
collaborating on. I can't say I am going up to the ninth floor to lock a door,
so I say, "Oh, I’m needed before we close. It's urgent.” I give the
impression I’m a conscientious.
Am I supposed to race up seven flights of
stairs, risking a heart attack? I must do the climb because the elevators are
slow and will stop at many floors. Certainly, they don’t care if the door
doesn’t get locked until 5:10, or do they? Maybe that’s why they have a
security camera mounted on the wall by the ceiling pointed at the door.
At times I think higher ups looked over
the job description and couldn't find a reason to fire me based on the
description, so they decided to get me with the door. But why? I am never late for
work. I’m rarely sick. I’m told my work is excellent. After the divorce, I died
my hair blue for a few months. I was going out to the Austin clubs myself to
meet someone new on nights I could find a babysitter. Women dye their hair all
kinds of colors. What’s wrong with a man doing it?
Ah my door up there, it calls me now and
puts me into a kind of rapture. I will rise and go now. The race up the stairs
strengthens my heart. At times I will lock my door from the ninth-floor side
and then go up the small flight of stairs to the roof door and out onto the
flat asphalt covered roof.
From there I will look out down at the toy
cars and the ant people scrambling around like lost sentences in a bad document.
I will look up at the sky and wonder at the meaning of my life.
Maybe they think one day I’m going to
jump off the roof. I will not deny I have had the urge, a somewhat powerful
urge, but I don’t wish to give my colleagues or boss the satisfaction. No, I
will be a loyal scout and lock my door as told, and I will get my two kids
raised. This job provides middling pay but good health benefits and retirement.
The door is locked, so now I am headed for
home. After feeding Sarah and Gary dinner that they will complain about, after some
TV or video games and putting them to bed, I will drink a bottle of wine. I may
even drink two. Riesling is a bit sweet, but good for the price. I will get out
my old guitar, or plink at the piano, to work on a few songs I’ve written.
Jadene and I, we were music majors in college. We loved making music. She
played the saxophone of all instruments; my main instrument was piano. We felt were
not good enough to be professionals, to be in a band or do side work in Nashville
or Los Angeles.
I
don’t understand the why of the locking of the door. I don’t understand the why
of Jadene leaving. Why didn’t she say something? Maybe it’s because we are
Midwesterners and from the same part of the country. We did not think many words
were necessary because we were so alike and besides, our music did the talking.
Every day I have a different explanation
for where I am in my life. I imagine Jadene wasted a lot of the time now, doing
a lot of drugs. A mutual friend said she lives in the back of a van with the
lead singer of the band Poison Lead.
My
wine, and my sleeping pill -- they are my friends now. They get me to sleep and
get me through.
Chuck
Taylor was published two books of short stories. "Lights of the City:
Stories from Austin," and "It all Flows Away." In his spare time
he likes to canoe the rivers and streams of hill country Texas.
Tags:
Short Fiction