The Intuitionist

by Colson Whitehead

  He has worked here for twenty years, driving the control lever into its seven slots, opening and closing the doors to the floors. Studied engineering at the colored college downstate, saw North: the big cities he knew were coming, the citadels pushed from the planet’s guts like volcanoes and mountains to take the sky. He knew the next step, had a beautiful woman and a child sleeping in that woman. In magazines he’d read about the new field of elevator inspection, and it seemed like a good opportunity for a man like him, an industrious fellow like himself. The secretary handed him a package when he walked in the door. He returned it to her thin white hands and informed her he was here for an interview. Wasn’t a messenger boy. When he stood before the man’s desk, the professor glanced up from his papers for only a moment, the time in which it takes to say, “We don’t accept colored gentlemen,” not meeting Marvin’s eyes and returning quickly to his paperwork.

  Old man Huntley was hiring, or so the newspaper said. He needed some colored boys to run his elevators.

  “Third Floor,” he says to the rabid pack behind him, “Boys’ Clothes, Sporting Goods and Boys’ Shoes,” and a flurry of multicolored hats gushes out to his left. It’s not a race. Sometimes he wonders what would happen if he shoved the lever as they ran out of his cab, but knows that Number Two will not move, neither up nor down, when the doors are open. They’re not built that way.

  He wanted to be close to elevators so he took the position at Huntley’s. Saw North vanish until the only North was the top of the road as it dipped over the hill.

  The man enters the car on the first floor and declares, “Department of Elevator Inspectors.” He flips open his badge, that gold nova, to the agitated wives, who suddenly see their afternoon assignation get complicated. “Everybody out.” He is authority. The white men in town have their own armor as they walk through the squares and up stone steps, totems of minute affectation their wives have picked out in this very store: silk cravats from France, hand-carved walking sticks from darkest Congo, the odd ascot and plum bowtie. But this man, Marvin sees, is not from here. Look at that gray fedora slashing across his brow, brim bent downward to hide his eyes, casting shadows just where shadows need to be, the sophisticated craftsmanship of his solemn pinstripe suit, cut in a Continental, the skin of his authority. Look at that. He is an elevator inspector down from the capitol to kick their hamlet into shape, taking charge, checking for rust.

  Marvin stands with the visitor in the empty car. Beyond the shaft the people hustle on their angry ant errands, a legion of impulse and need. Marvin wears the same uniform he has worn for too many years now, a red double-breasted lackey’s getup that radiates threads here and there and strains against his burgeoning belly. Old stains that won’t come out. The defects are not visible in the poor light of the cab, so Huntley Jr. says they’re good enough for now. Marvin turns to the officer and says, “She’s a real beauty, this car. I’ve been working with this baby for over twenty years now and she’s never let me down. Sometimes she catches when we pass three—I think there’s something wrong with the selector. And I have to work to make her flush with the landings sometimes—I keep telling them to have the indicator adjusted, but they’re too stingy to get someone in here.”

  “You too,” the inspector says.

  “What?”

  “Get off. The day I need some nigger to tell me how to do my job is the day I quit. Now get off.”

  Marvin Watson vacates his elevator. The elevator inspector slams the door shut behind him, and Marvin hears him struggle with the inside gate. It sticks sometimes. You have to know how to jiggle it. The inspector curses and continues to wrestle with the capricious metal. Marvin considers shouting instructions through the door but thinks better of it. Bobby takes his break about this time. Bobby owes Marvin money and has been ducking him for a while now. Marvin departs for the back stairwell, whistling along to the piped-in music.

  * * *

  Bright day, sparks erupting off car chrome, the fins on the cars in front of her cutting through bright day. It has rained too long, the city slept in mercury light for too long. Umbrellas stand exhausted behind closed closet doors, their dripped rain puddles dry beneath disdained galoshes. The city air is sweet today.

  She is in the city’s car. A few hours ago, before the weary dayshift trudged into work (weary this day especially, following last night’s excess and post-catastatic exhaustion), she intercepted Jimmy’s legs. His legs stuck out from beneath one of the Department sedans. She kicked him lightly and heard his head bang on the undercarriage of the car. He rolled out from beneath the vehicle, his customary Lila Mae smile withering as she told him she needed a car for a few days and that he would have to cover for her. Tough sell in the motor pool this morning. She had never flirted with him before so as not to encourage him and create a situation she had little experience in. But she flirted this morning, cupped his youthful cheek in her bold hand, did not flinch at his rickety teeth (Jimmy has never been to a dentist) or avoid prolonged eye contact. He gave her the key and assured her he would square it with the garage logs. She agreed to be careful with the car, lying to him as usual.

  She is not on the clock. She is not working now and is driving aimlessly on the most famous street in the world and is quite pleased with herself. Lila Mae has never taken a day off in her three years with the Department and is discovering that the city is different on weekday afternoons. That there is a secret scofflaw city within the known city, afternoons without a thought in their heads. City workers with orange uniforms repair this street, tending to broken macadam. The potholes have a new meaning this day, do not injure this city car and summon forth reams of paperwork but share with the wheels a secret. A secret that is rough and more intimate for it. She drives and looks at the storefronts, the shopkeepers’ entreaties, but her eyes never stray above street level. Because that is not her job today. She need not concern herself with that different city today.

  She stops at a phone booth identical to the dozens she has passed on her drive today. There is no reason she chose this one. She just felt like stopping. The booth is empty, save for a piece of paper lying on the metal sill beneath the phone. Lila Mae takes it into her hand and erases the creases. It is a drawing of a stick figure with a large round head that has no features except for a smile. She watches the people through the sooted panes. They walk slower than they do when she reports to work and when she leaves work, and differently still from weekend strolling. They are the tin men and rag dolls who wake after hours in the toy store. She counts to ten slowly and takes ten deep breaths. He answers. Today she finds that ridiculous quiver in his voice sweet. “It’s Lila Mae,” she says.

  Chuck starts whispering and she can see him turning away from the Pit to hide the receiver. “Where have you been?” he whines. “Things are going crazy around here.”

  “I’ve been around.”

  “Everyone’s been asking where you are. Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine, Chuck.”

  “This place is a madhouse!” He remembers and lowers his voice again. “Last night at the Follies—”

  “I know Chuck. I heard.”

  “He’s in the hospital. His leg is broken.”

  “He’ll live.” Through the window the sleepy citizens progress up the sidewalk in trances.

  “That’s not the point. You don’t understand. The scuttlebutt says it was Lever who sabotaged the elevator, that they were paying Chancre back for Fanny Briggs. A crash for a crash. Wade even suggested that you might have done it.”

  “Chuck, I need you to do something.”

  He sucks his teeth and is silent for a moment. Then he says, “You should really come into the office. I’ve talked to this guy in IAB who’s covering Fanny Briggs and he wants to hear your side of the story. I think he’ll listen to you. I think if you just talked to him—”

  “That’s why I’m calling, Chuck. What did he say about the crash?”

  “That it was fishy and that you were probably
set up to take the fall. He doesn’t have much to go on. Look, you can tell him you’ve been really sick. Or that you were afraid to come in because of what the papers have been saying. He’ll listen.”

  “Chuck, I want you to get close to him. I need to know what else he’s got and what Forensics has to say.”

  “Where are you? Is that a fire engine?”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I can, Chuck, to see what you have for me. Take care.”

  Lila Mae closes the door of the phone booth slowly, bewitched by the different laws of this afternoon. Even the fire engine, just now out of sight, seems rushless and enervated, fighting through an aqueous lethargy. She starts the car. Drives.

  The imp found her an hour after Chancre’s mishap. She’d departed the Winthrop Hotel the way she came, through the service entrance after retrieving her suit from the changing room. After blocks of running (a sight: a maid who has witnessed her master’s murder, or murdered her master) she leaned against the glass window of an Automat. Inside the late-night denizens, the midnight refuse, slouched over java and racing forms, tuna on stale rye and their doomed itineraries. No one looked at anyone else in this crumbling sanctuary: that would risk the perfection of their isolation, their one last comfort in this concrete city. She changed back into her suit in the women’s room. She deposited her coins in the coffee machine, in the pastry machine for an arid Danish. She sat at an empty table and read the placard on the metal stand: WE CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOR ONLY TEN CENTS A DAY. It was the imp. She laughed. She laughed at Chancre’s fat ass as it lolled in agony on the stage. Laughed at the drunken rallying of her colleagues as they rushed to help their leader, the foolishness of the Intuitionist campaign and Mr. Reed’s Continental affectations. She laughed because Fulton was colored and no one knew and now she had an ally. Her laughter ceased at the thought of Natchez, resolving into a steady grin. The thought of him and their secret.

  A groggy Mrs. Gravely (her face smeared with a nighttime beauty cream in a way that reminded Lila Mae of Hambone and Mr. Gizzard) let her into the House and she collected her things. On the dresser, a soft pyramid, was another note from Natchez. Hope you enjoyed yourself, he wrote, and included a phone number. She introduced the note to its older brother in a wallet nook. Lila Mae lit out of Intuitionist House.

  Her place was as she left it: raped. She pulled her suitcase from under the bed and packed again, this time for a much longer stay. She did not know when she would be back. After last night, there was no telling when the Shush boys would be back to enforce Chancre’s threat. She lingered in the doorway. She thought she had forgotten something. Hadn’t. She did not possess any lucky rabbit’s feet or childhood dolls to ward off the monsters of the adult world. Just clothes. Then it hit her—she retrieved her copies of Theoretical Elevators. She locked the door. It was only three flights to the street and she felt reasonable again once she stepped into the morning light. She tried to remember when Jimmy reported to work.

  The afternoon light is withdrawing from the sky, and the wind rushing through the open window of the city’s green sedan murmurs autumn again. Lila Mae’s eyes stray above street level for the first time today. She parks beneath the sturdy square of the hotel’s sign. She’s a good mile up the Island from her apartment. Deep in the colored city (yet another city in this city, always one more city). The manager looks up from his desk. She says, “I need a room.”

  * * *

  Little Pompey, that polyp, struts up the avenue with a newspaper tucked under his arm. He stops in a stationery store and purchases what appears to be a foil packet of chewing gum. He counts his change slowly and returns to the street. Past the foamy white light of Harry’s Shave and Haircut, the stammering red and green neon of the Belmont Cafeteria. The office buildings burp their charges out onto the pavement and the scurrying bodies make it difficult to keep Pompey in their line of sight. Natchez asks, “Are you sure it’s him?”

  Lila Mae’s eyes dart between the road and Pompey like a metronome. Slowly, to keep her concentration, she tells the man in the passenger seat, “If he didn’t do it, he’s plugged in enough to know who did. Who else would they send? I’m sure they had a good laugh about it. Like we were dogs fighting in a pit.” She thinks, but doesn’t say, look what they did to your uncle. Twisted his mind so that he would deny who he was.

  “What if he turns down the next street?” Natchez asks. “It’s one-way.”

  “Then you’ll have to follow him on foot until I can get into position on the next avenue. He knows me, but he doesn’t know you.”

  Pompey does not turn down the street. He continues north, chewing pink gum.

  They have come to an agreement, Lila Mae and Natchez. They will help each other out: Natchez doing what he can to help Lila Mae find out who sabotaged Number Eleven, Lila Mae lending her elevator expertise to Natchez’s quest for his uncle’s black box. She never learned what Mr. Reed’s new leads on the box were since he froze her out of the operation, so they will make do with what information they can get. “Which means the pages from Fulton’s journal,” Natchez offered on the phone, just before she was going to say the same thing. They’ll have to figure out what they can after they obtain copies of the Fulton pages possessed by Reed, Chancre and Lift. The hope is that if they collate the pages, Lila Mae’s facility with Fulton’s thought will force the writings to confess, give up who has the blueprint. And with regard to Lila Mae’s redemption: here they are on stakeout. Trailing their main suspect.

  “Tell me about your town,” she says, from nowhere, her eyes still on Pompey.

  “Why don’t you tell me about your town?” Natchez responds. “Or leastwise why you moved up here.”

  Lila Mae’s small hands tighten on the steering wheel and she wonders again if the news of Fanny Briggs has reached her parents yet, the probability of it making the papers down there. If the other elevator operators in Huntley’s trade in this kind of gossip, and if he has heard that way, the phone in the hallway outside her apartment ringing and her not there to talk to him. She says dully, “You don’t want to hear about that. It’s not very interesting.”

  “I do.”

  Lila Mae breathes silently through her nose. She eases the sedan past a double-parked ambulance. “I moved up here because here is where the elevators are. The real elevators.” She points up at the jutting structures surrounding the car, the dour edifices. “Midtown is all old growth. Downtown they have high-rises that are a hundred stories tall. And elevators that match them every step of the way.” Conveniently reminded now of something she wanted to ask him. Reroute the conversation. “What made you think of pulling that stunt at the Follies?”

  “I wanted to give them a warning, I guess. Of what I’m gonna do to them.” He turns his knees toward her in the seat and leans into the crack between the seat and the door. “I wanted to get back at them. For what they did to my uncle that messed up his head. For what they did to you.” Her eyes keep on the street, she feels his eyes on her. “You didn’t have to leave the House, you know,” he says. “I thought you would have realized I wanted you to take credit for it so you could get back in with Mr. Reed and them.”

  “I don’t want to be in their good graces.”

  “But they still your bosses, right? Even if they did go to your house. You have to put up with them.”

  She shakes her head. Pompey extricates his shoe from a tentacle of newspaper that’s just attacked him. “I just want to clear my name—and for you to get what belongs to you. How did you know what to do to the elevator? To make it fall like that.”

  Natchez laughs. “Pretty simple compared to what machines they got up in buildings today. Did you like it?”

  “You know I liked it, Natchez.”

  He bangs the dashboard with the flat of his hand, smiles wide. “Had to learn a lot about elevators in the last few weeks. More than I want to know. Don’t know how you can do your job like you do, to tell you the truth.”

  “They grow on you. Like p
eople. You never know who you’re going to get to like.” Stop right there, Lila Mae. “Then they pop up one day and you like them.” This isn’t characteristic of her at all. “You get to know them and you like them more each time.”

  “Like you and me, Lila Mae?” To the nervous twitch of her eyebrows, he says, “That’s okay. You keep driving. When I first saw you I thought you one of them uppity Northern girls. All about what you can do for them and how much do you have in your pocket and all that. But you’re not like—”