The Last Escalator

After the department store closed, they left one escalator running. It carried nobody to the second floor, where the mannequins stood in their underwear among coils of electrical cable. The security guard said stopping it would cost more than letting it run. I accepted this explanation. It resembled many explanations I had accepted during my working life.

I had come to collect a display cabinet. My sister had bought it at the liquidation sale for the bakery she intended to open. She was waiting outside with a hired van and a man who charged by the hour. I told her the loading entrance was locked. This was true, though I had not tried the handle.

The escalator’s handrail was black and glossy, rubbed smooth by years of palms. I put my hand on it and felt it gently remove itself from me. A woman on the floor above was sweeping broken plaster into a dustpan. She wore the white coat of a perfume-counter assistant.

I asked her where the lifts were.

She pointed behind her without looking up. Then she said they had taken out the motors.

The cabinet was taller than I remembered. Its glass shelves had been wrapped separately in yesterday’s newspaper. Through the print, a photograph of a smiling politician looked as if it had been put on ice. I rang my sister. She said to stay where I was; she would bring the man up the stairs.

While I waited, the woman came over. She pressed her palm against the cabinet’s side. There were pale bands where price labels had protected the veneer.

‘Handbags,’ she said.

‘Bread,’ I told her.

She considered this. Then she pointed out a crack at the back, near the bottom. It would admit flour, she said, and flour would attract things. She had a roll of silver tape in her pocket. She knelt, tore a strip with her teeth, and covered the crack from inside.

I offered to pay her. She shook her head and went back to her sweeping. My sister arrived out of breath. She had removed her coat and tied it around her waist. The hired man tested the cabinet’s weight, looked towards the escalator, and laughed.

We carried it down the stairs, stopping at every landing. I took the upper end. Through the empty frame I could see my sister’s face, squeezed with effort, then the small release when we set it down. She had been talking about this bakery for seven years. I had spent most of those years explaining why it would fail.

At the last landing, the man asked which way to turn it. My sister looked at me. For a moment I thought she was asking something else. Then I shifted my grip and said, Left.

We loaded it into the van. There was still time on the hire, so my sister went back for the shelves. I followed her through the store. The woman had finished sweeping. She stood at the foot of the escalator, holding her dustpan against her hip, watching the steps come out of the floor and flatten again at the top.

My sister called my name from the stairs. I went up to help. The shelves were heavier than they looked, and the newspaper left black marks on the fingers that held them.