Going up to get down

Jack is on his way back to his desk to, as they’ve put it, “have a think about it” and the foyer of the 6th floor is unusually crowded; only one of the lifts is working. On the far wall soldiers firing from behind a blockade, loom from a huge black and white print. Beneath it some journalists are clutched over a folio of photographs, paging, pointing. Jack stands off to one side, staring out of the window across the rooftops of the neighbouring buildings. The faint outline of his face hovers ghostlike over the skyline. He presses down a stray tuft of hair that has sprung up on his crown.



Jack had waited outside the boardroom, watching the IT Director and the woman from HR, heads bent over sheets of paper, making notes. He counted fifteen straight-backed chairs, two potted plants and seven framed front pages of the paper. One read: “Diana is Dead” and another “Does this mean War?” They nodded to one another and then looked up. The director motioned Jack to come in, offered him a coffee, clipped the cup onto the saucer and slid it across the smooth wooden table. He didn’t really like coffee, but he drank it anyway. The director leant forward over the table, elbows apart, fingertips pressed together.

“Now Jack,” he’d said, “I’m sure you can guess what this is about?” He raised one eyebrow and paused. Jack shifted in his chair and tucked his hands beneath his thighs.

“We’re worried about you Jack. We get the impression you’re unhappy. That you’re not happy here at the paper.” They didn’t want to alarm him. Would he like some sugar for his coffee? The matching white jar was pushed in his direction. And the meeting wasn’t about poor performance, more a lack of engagement. “Perhaps failure to thrive?” suggested the HR woman. She smiled and set her pen down next to her notebook.

In his last appraisal, Jack’s manager, described him as a quiet chap who preferred to work alone. Jack had vigorously nodded his agreement. They’d talked about the fact that Jack did not like meetings and preferred to be left to get on with things. Jack explained that in fact, this was one of the main reasons he had become a programmer; no one talked in the computer lab at school. His manager felt that Jack would benefit from working more closely with his colleagues. He had gone on to encourage Jack to be a bit more proactive, a bit more of a team player, a bit more like Jessica. Jessica, with her long blonde ponytail swinging from side to side as she strides round the building; wearing her enthusiasm like a badge. Jack thinks she would do well in palliative care. He imagines her standing at his bedside asking her questions:
“What motivates you Jack?”
“Do you want to talk about it Jack?”

“Jack,” said the IT Director, “This is a people kind of company. We’re all about the intellectual property. We like everyone to get stuck in, we like people to get involved. And Jack, we want to help people to get somewhere. Do you know what I mean?” Jack rubbed his hand across his forehead. He remembered the white calves of the IT Director flashing across the finish line at the company fun-day. He’d been pushing a wheelbarrow with Jessica in it, her legs dangling over the front.

The director poured himself another cup of coffee. “We don’t want you to be,” he glanced up, “unhappy.” Jack had smiled stiffly.

The woman from HR had been wondering whether Jack would like to move on, or perhaps take some time off? She put her hands flat on the surface of the table and tipped her head to the side as she said it. One of her long silver earrings fell against her cheek. Was Jack interested in taking redundancy? It was being offered, did he understand? Not obliged. He could go or stay, as he chose. They really did just want him to be happy. The director stood and extended his hand. The handshake was vigorous. “You have a think about it Jack, you have a little think about it, and then get back to us.”

Outside the lift, a restless woman is muttering to her companion. They disappear round the corner to the stairwell, heels clipping on the polished marble floor. The lift doors open and Jack steps past the journalists to lean against the mirrored back wall. The button console has illuminated numbers for every floor. Jack reaches out and presses “B”.

He still has the first programming book he bought: “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Visual Basic” with it’s enticingly titled opening chapter: “An Introduction to Programming: A Walk on the Wild Side”. He kept the book all through high school and even university. Just last week he took it out of the bottom drawer of his desk and thumbing through “Looping with Do and Until – Around and Around we go” smiled at a blue-biro note from his fourteen-year-old self: “WOW, remember this!”

The lift descends to the basement and the doors open but Jack doesn’t move. He is staring at the familiar white wall where he usually turns left, walks past the PC support team, past the network specialists, down to the corner where the programmers sit. Last week there was a poster on it saying “Wellbeing Classes at Lunch Time: Talk about your troubles with people who care”. Each morning, he puts down his bag, pulls out the chair, sits down, moves the keyboard closer, logs on. For a man who likes to loop with ‘do’ and ‘until’, it’s a comforting pattern. There is a long cold cup of tea waiting for him on his desk.

Jessica had once told Jack, leaning forward palms on her knees, that if she didn’t work here at the newspaper she wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.
“Imagine doing IT at a company where you just sit at your desk all day and don’t go out and chat to people and have discussions about things.”
“Imagine,” said Jack.

The doors begin to close and on their shiny silver surface the two halves of his reflection draw towards one another until there he is, Jack with a line down the middle.

He glances at the console of buttons, reaches out and then drops his arm. The lift must be controlled by a computer. And it would be programmatically impossible to know he’s here. It’s not going to suddenly open its mouth and spit him out like a loose tooth. He looks down at his two shoes, next to one another on the red-brown swirls of the carpet, hooks a lock of hair behind his ear. The silence is so beautiful that he coughs, just the once, to reaffirm it.
The basics of most programs are simple.
If the number seven button is pressed
Then go to the seventh floor
Else wait.

That sort of thing. Handling the more unusual situations, the exceptions, is where it gets complicated.
If the lift is already on three when three is pressed
Then open the doors.
No matter how diligent the programmer is, there will always be unpredicted events, unhandled exceptions, like Jack, that will crop up when you’re least expecting them.
The lift bleeps and begins to rise and he almost laughs out loud. Talk about a walk on the wild side.

A short, rather wide-hipped woman wearing a blue skirt, steps into the lift on the ground floor. She looks at the seven unlit buttons, presses five and then turns to Jack, eyebrows raised questioningly, finger poised. Jack remembers his exacerbated mother, hands on hips, shoulders stooped to glare into the car: “I’m only going to ask you once Jack, are you going to get out and come into the house and have your lunch, or are you going to stay there all day? Which is it going to be?” She jiggled the house keys in one hand, “Mmmmh? Which one Jack?”
The world, it would seem, is not designed for travel without destination.
“Four,” says Jack

The doors open on the fourth floor and when Jack makes no move to exit, the blue skirt swooshes round, and the woman says, smiling, “This is four” and then presses her finger firmly onto the ‘open door’ button. Jack steps hesitantly out. He’s not been on the fourth floor before and has no idea what happens up here. His can feel himself blushing as he pauses uncertainly, feet together. The office spreads out to his left and he is convinced he can hear a settling of silence - like when someone uninvited steps into a conversation. He checks his watch in what he hopes is a purposeful manner, moves the face back and forth across his wrist. The lift doors slide slowly closed behind him. He takes a deep breath, draws his shoulders back and then strides over to the newspaper stand directly opposite the doors, picks up a copy. He unfolds the paper and turns noisily through a few pages. At page 14 he taps an article with his finger, refolds the newspaper, tucks it under his arm and turns on one foot, back towards the lift doors. He presses the down arrow and waits.

When Jack was ten there had been an obsession with choose-your-own adventure books. At the end of each chapter you were required to make a decision and follow the story onto a specified page according to the choice you’d made. “If you think Araya should head west to seek water, turn to page 27 or, if you think Araya should seek shelter in the village, turn to page 81.” He hated the randomness of the choices, you just had to take a chance and pick one. Jack had got stuck in the underwater forest for two whole weeks. Back and forth he went between pages 73 and 36, reading the same paragraphs over and over again.

He gets back into the lift with two young men. They have neat lines pressed into the front of their trousers and the one has little padlocks for cufflinks.
“Floor?”
“Basement” Jack says and puts his hands into his jeans pockets.
“It’s set in a newspaper,” says the one with the padlocks, “That’s why they’re filming it here. Scarlett Johansen is playing a journalist.”
“Playing a hot journalist!” interjects the other.
“She’s working under cover investigating something or other, and then she falls in love with the guy she’s writing about. So it’s like, does she stay being the undercover person and keep the guy and all that, or does she go back to being her boring old self, get the story etcetera?”
“Tell me she shags someone over the editor’s desk.”
“Oh yeah sure, that’s the one they’re filming on Saturday to see if it’s possible to get you to come in on the weekend.” They both laugh.
The lift pings its arrival on the third floor.
“Scarlett Johansen ready yourself, we are coming for you!” says the man with the padlocks, hoicking up his trousers.

The windows of the third floor are blacked out with curtains and huge lamps glare down on the far corner of the room. A microphone on a boom sways above the crowd of onlookers. One man has lifted his chair up onto his desk and is sitting, arms folded, watching. A woman carrying a stack of film cans gets into the lift; the red tape running round their sides says “URGENT: UN-DEVELOPED STOCK”. On top of the cans Jack can see a folded open copy of the script:

INT THE NEWSROOM - DAY
Julia is leaning on Paul’s desk. Her head is in her hands.

JULIA
Look Paul, I understand what you’re trying to say,
but I can’t.

Julia starts to cry.

JULIA
I’m just…. I can’t be that person anymore.

She gets out on ground and as the lift doors open once again in the basement, Jack depresses the close door button with a firm finger. He knows exactly who Scarlett Johansen is. Last Saturday night he rented “Girl with the Pearl Earring” from his local video store. The picture in the film, the model in the picture, the girl being the model, the actress being the girl, him watching the film and now the real woman, Scarlett Johansen, in his building. There’s a looping symmetry to it that appeals – like opening one of those Russian Dolls. And what’s more:

If Miss Johansen is not likely to be the type of woman to take the stairs
And If this is the only operational lift,
Then at some point, during the course of the day, she is going to get in it.
Else? There is no else; Jack is going to be waiting.

On the seventh floor someone steps up to the doors, and then seeing him standing there, takes a surprised step back. This is one of what Jack dubs ‘the turns’ – where the lift reaches one of the extremes of the building, and the expectation that he should alight is all the greater because there is nowhere else to go. He begins to explain that he is actually going back down and gives a small apologetic wave of his hand to cover the missing end of his sentence. After three or four of these incidents he perfects the gesture in lieu of any explanation. It involves a quick flick of the wrist that is both welcoming in a ‘No, no, its ok, get into the lift’ way and also directional in an ‘I’m going up’ or ‘I’m going down’ way. It’s astounding how many people immediately understand what he means. Of course he is not alone; thanks to the broken lift there are lots of other people who are going up to get down.

Two men in mid-conversation get in on the second floor, pausing only briefly. They barely notice Jack. The taller of the two is wearing a pale linen suits, its back lightly crumpled, as if he has been sitting down for too long. He talks rapidly and angrily, pointing at the shorter man’s chest:
“Thing is right, if you don’t do something about it, its cyclic; the whole process, repeats and repeats and repeats.” He stabs the syllables: “In perpetuity.” Jack thinks of a furious bee he’d watched on a bus slamming itself against the window. It would crawl slowly up the glass to the very rim where centimetres from fresh air, it would take flight and drop back down again to the base of the frame, and bang, bang, bang. He watched this loop over and over for the whole length of the bus journey. After he got off, he thought of the bus going round and round its route, with the bee inside going up and down the window. In perpetuity. Although of course the bee would die. Eventually.

The lift gets busier after noon as people head to lunch. Women scratch in their handbags, discussing where they will buy their sandwiches – “Pret or that little independent Turkish place on the corner?” Just after one o’clock it is so full that bodies are pressed uncomfortably against one another, and the doors open to disappointed faces on each floor that sigh and turn on their heels to take the stairs. Jack wedges himself into the back corner, crosses his arms over his chest.. Very few people speak until they’re out, snippets of their conversations drift back. “Suggested that he just give up. Best thing for it really. There’s nothing more I…” and “That’s what she says she wants but, honestly now, do you think it’s ethical?”

And then they are all back again after lunch, and no one comments on the fact that he is still there, though one woman, with a carrier bag of sandwiches, chewing on a soft drink straw, points a finger at him and smiles. She gets out on three.

Jack shifts his weight from one foot to the other, tugs down the hem of his T-Shirt. This could be it. The lights at the far end have been turned off and some of the black curtains pulled open, spilling daylight in. There’s a great heap of cables lying on the floor near the lift, and a woman just out of sight to the left is calling for water. But no one is waiting to get in.
As the doors start to ease closed a woman wearing a headset rushes towards him, her hand stuck out in front of her calling: “Hold the lift, please.” He doesn’t move and she has to repeat it – “Hold the doors!” Jack jabs frantically at the ‘three’. The lift yawn open again and he apologies. She frowns, puts a foot in the door, and beckons off to the right. Two men wheel over a large trolley-like piece of equipment; it has rubber wheels that creak over the metal lip of the lift. Jack is forced to step right back against the smoked-glass mirrors.
“Alright?”
Jack nods.

By four o’clock Jack is desperate to go to the toilet. He stands quietly legs crossed, jaw clenched as long as he can and then bursts out on five, where the bathrooms are directly opposite the lift. He hops as he pees. Two floors below Scarlett could be gliding down to her waiting limousine. He skids back, the bathroom door slamming behind him, leaves a wet fingerprint on the down button. A man waiting adjacent to him glances over and says: “Stairs might be quicker mate.”

Jessica is in the lift.

“Oh my God, Jack,” she says, eyes widening with delight, “Where the hell have you been? Did you have your meeting? Peter’s going mental.” She gestures on either side of her head with two rotating fingers. “He called the director and everything to find out what time you finished the meeting and where you were.” She is standing in his spot and so he’s stopped just inside the closing doors. On the back wall behind her, he can see the curious effect of too many mirrors in such a small space, the reflection of Jessica over and over, diminishing.

“Jack, are you ok?” she rubs the side of her nose, “That guy from the Arts Desk called again. He’s getting some sort of error message, wants you to call him back. I wrote it all down. It’s on your desk.” Jack watches her mouth opening and closing. “Are you going back to your desk now? What are you doing up here? Hey, did you know that Scarlett Johansen is filming on third?”
“Are you getting off?” says a woman on the 7th floor.
“Yes,” says Jessica.
“No,” says Jack.

She turns and waves goodbye.

This time when the doors open on the third floor there’s a group of people huddled around the lift, facing Jack. He untucks his hands from behind his back and crosses them firmly over his chest. One woman has a clipboard propped on her hip, next to her a tall man is swinging a roll of thick, silver tape around one finger. Standing in the middle, is the real Scarlett Johansen. She is lifting her sunglasses up towards her face, and for a very, very brief instant, he catches her eye over the top of the huge fly-lenses.

An assistant gets into the lift and walks towards Jack. She touches his arm and says in a honeyed American accent “Excuse me sir, I wonder if you could do us just the biggest favour? Miss Johansen, and,” she indicates the group of people waiting at the lift with a quick round circular motion over her shoulder, “well, there’s quite a few of us. Would you mind?” The doors begin to close and her arm darts out, a manicured red nail depresses the open button. She smiles at Jack: “Thanks so much, really, thanks.” The grip on his forearm tightens and he is directed out of the lift.

On the other side of the now deserted floor a man is rolling up a cable, wrapping it over his hooked thumb and down around his elbow, pausing to yank as the plug-end catches somewhere amongst the debris. The scene reminds Jack of the opening sequence of his all-time-favourite computer game, ‘Space Quest’: in which the character he plays, emerges from a lift to survey the spaceship, devastated by an explosion. Jack picks his way between some desks to reach the window; down below he can see a sleek black car waiting alongside the pavement. Progression to the next stage of the game requires a careful search through the mangled equipment and fallen aliens, typing in commands such as “Look in cupboard” or “Take rope ”. It took Jack weeks of careful logical deduction to work out the correct sequence in which to perform these actions, to find all the little objects he needed to unlock the way to next level.

From a table littered with tissues and ear buds, he picks up a small plastic box of brown eye shadow and rubs his finger onto silky surface of the colour. He flattens out a tissue with is palm, makes a fingerprint on it and is about to continue through the remaining fingers on his hand when he spots a small gold case. He clicks open the clasp and rolls the lipstick inside around with one finger before clicking it closed. The outside of the case is engraved “To SJ, My Darling”.
Jack takes the stairs two at time, swings round the banister on each level, the soles of his shoes clapping onto the linoleum floors. He leaps the last few steps, fringe flopping over his eyes and bursts through the foyer and revolving door. The entourage are gathered on the pavement alongside the black car. He calls out, “Miss Johansen, Miss Johansen,” waves with one hand and in the other upturned palm, holds out the lipstick case. Scarlett lifts her glasses and squints at him. With a gentle sweep of one hand she parts the group and walks back towards Jack, head tilted slightly to one side, her lips parted. He holds the lipstick case with two fingers, arm stretched out towards her like he is feeding an animal with sharp teeth. She turns the case over in her hand, looks back at Jack almost shyly and says, “Thank you.” She turns and begins to walk back to the waiting car.

“Can I ask you something?” Jack bursts out and she stops, looks at him over one shoulder.
“This is a, uh, a, a bit weird,” he begins. She adjusts the strap of her handbag, and then puts on her glasses and begins to walk away again. Jack has to raise his voice slightly: “I was just wondering whether you think it’s better to be yourself or to be, uh, someone else. To be what other people think you should be?” He hears the swish of the revolving door turning out someone else behind him, she looks back at him over one shoulder.
“Like is it better to be Scarlett or, uh, is it better to be Julia?”
“Julia? My character?”
Jack nods, hands hanging limply at his sides.
Scarlett pulls the glasses down onto the tip of her nose. “Julia isn’t real. Of course it’s better to be real than someone you’re not.”

Jack watches until the car pulls out and disappears off into the London traffic. He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans for the security pass that will let him back into the building and realises that he has left it on his desk.