Man in the Empty Suit Read Free

into the elevator. The fact that I know how the ride turns out, and the fact that you’re frightened, doesn’t remove that need.”
    “Awful self-centered of you.”
    “And you.” He gave me the smug grin that I knew so well. It was a gift I hated to receive but gave so often.
    At last the elevator shook to a stop. On the other side of thedoor’s dark window, a few flashes of lightning streaked across a bare wall. I looked up at the dial. “We’re at the penthouse.”
    “Let’s have our look.”
    Thunder shook the building. “We get out?” One convention rule I never broke was number seven: Stay below the third floor.
    “We do.” He pulled back the gate and stepped into a dark hallway. He didn’t wait for me, and the elevator door swung shut behind him, leaving me alone.
    I looked at my watch. Still time to kill before my entrance to the ballroom. Following Sober into the suite was probably what delayed me, I thought. More thunder shook the elevator. I dreaded seeing the suite. None of the younger versions of myself who had visited the hotel over the years had ventured above the decayed building’s second floor. There were any number of reasons not to go. The roof obviously leaked, floors were rotten, and walls and ceilings gave way without warning. Sprawling, rust-colored maps had drawn themselves on the ceiling in the entrance, the lobby, the halls. Part of the third floor ran with water an inch deep, which was why I’d made the rule prohibiting further exploration. It was dangerous.
    I opened the door and followed him.
    The penthouse, dark except for lightning, was littered with ghostlike shapes of furniture in sheets. I was surprised by the lack of damage to the room. My older self watched rain pelt the city, his arms crossed, by himself even though I stood behind him, and I wondered if it had really been so important that I come here with him. The moment seemed his alone. I wondered what he might be thinking. In a flash of lightning,I spotted a mark on Sober’s wrist, a tattoo. Another flash confirmed what I worried it was: a parrot, wings stretched in flight.
    I had no plans to deface my body with a picture of a parrot—rats in drag. “Why do I do that?”
    His eyes fell to his own wrist, and a sadness I could almost smell rolled off him. “You’ll know the moment you decide to do it yourself.” He looked up at me, sympathy in his eyes. It was worse than sympathy. It was pity. Pity for my ignorance. I felt a shameful burst of hatred for the superior position he held by having already been me, for his arrogance in pretending he’d victoriously claimed the high ground, for his assumption that aging is earning.
    Sometimes the urge to strike myself was almost too much. I shook my head and pulled out my flask. I would refill it upon my dramatic entrance.
    We haunted the penthouse for a few silent minutes, him watching the horizon, me pulling back sheets to reveal cheap furniture dolled up to look expensive.
    “What are we doing here?” I asked.
    “Enjoying the view, I think,” he said. “We might be a few minutes late, but we already know what sorts of events to expect, right?” He looked at my suit. “You must be ready for the Big Entrance.”
    There was no denying it to him. I blushed in the dark.
    “Don’t worry. You still make it. I’m probably the reason you make it later than you thought you would.”
    “Oh, of course.” I feigned comfort. “I wondered what would occupy me for … what? Another hour?” I watched lights twinkle through the drops of rain on the window.They quivered in the wind. All identical but separate, able to coalesce at an instant of contact. I was reminded of my separate selves downstairs.
    A crash of thunder hit especially close, and Sober shifted in the dark, turned away from me. “You’ll excuse me for a moment. That’s my cue to explore the other rooms.”
    As he disappeared into the dark, I watched neighborhood buildings flash in and out of sight. The