What Carries the Steps

Fig steals my screwdriver while I loosen the landing plate.

He is a low, brown dog with the solemn face of a magistrate and the legs of a footstool. The department manager claims he belongs to everyone. In practice, he belongs to the café at noon, the cosmetics counter when it rains, and whichever customer has recently purchased ham.

“Drop it,” I tell him.

Fig backs onto the escalator, screwdriver crosswise in his mouth. The escalator is moving at inspection speed, each metal tread rising with a faint oily sigh. Fig watches them come. He allows three to pass beneath him, then steps neatly onto the next.

“You could lose a toe.”

He looks down at his feet, perhaps counting.

The store has closed, but its smells remain open for business. Ground coffee drifts from the dark café. Near the entrance, the perfume counters give off a blended sweetness like bruised flowers. Somewhere above us a vacuum cleaner bumps patiently against a display stand.

I hold out a piece of cheese from my lunch.

Fig considers the exchange. He rides upward past belts, handbags, and a headless mannequin in a yellow swimming costume. At the top, he steps off, trots around the balustrade, and comes down the other escalator. He still has my screwdriver.

This is why I prefer lifts.

He returns to the lower floor and sits beside my open tool bag. Only then does he surrender the screwdriver, damp at the handle.

I wipe it on my sleeve and go back to the landing plate. The complaint is ordinary: a knocking sound beneath the steps, worse near closing time. Usually it means a coin in the mechanism. Once I found a teaspoon. Nobody could explain how a teaspoon had entered an escalator, though several people offered theories involving children.

Fig sits close enough for his whiskers to touch my knee.

When the plate comes free, warm air rises from below. It smells of dust, machine grease, and wet wool.

Fig begins to wag.

There should be a chain under the landing, with the flattened steps returning along it. I lower my torch.

The chain is there. The rollers are there. The first step folds itself flat and passes into darkness exactly as it should.

Something underneath takes hold of it.

At first I think it is a strip of rag caught in the works. Then the fingers tighten around the metal edge. They are broad fingers, reddened at the knuckles, with a plain gold ring. A second pair receives the step farther down. Those hands are smaller and dark with soil. Beyond them are more, spaced into the black, passing each tread from one grip to the next.

No arms are visible past the cuffs.

One sleeve is white linen. Another is green school wool. Another has pearl buttons, yellowed with age.

The knocking begins. It is only the sound of the steps being handed along.

Fig puts his nose into the opening.

“Back,” I say, quietly now.

A hand rises between the rollers. It is an old woman’s hand, fine-boned and brown-spotted. Around the wrist is a frayed red cord.

Fig makes a sound I have never heard from him. Not a bark, not a whine. It is the small breath a dog gives when a door opens and the person beyond it is beloved.

The hand turns palm upward.

Fig lays his chin in it.

The fingers close gently beneath his jaw. His tail strikes the floor once, twice.

Then the hand lets go and sinks away. The next tread arrives. Beneath it, other fingers wait.

I reach for the stop switch, but Fig places one paw on my wrist.

He is still watching the opening.

Far below, where the chain ought to curve back toward us, something whistles three soft notes. Fig’s ears lift.

All through the sleeping store, the escalators answer.