The Stairs, Chapter 20
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 28
THE STAIRS
© Tom Scocca, 2025
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, and events is entirely coincidental, with the exception of the events in Chapters One and Two, which happened more or less as written, on the line between Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts, on Memorial Day weekend in 1999.
20.
"What should we do?" Theo whispered, his bossiness instantly gone. The tapping at the door paused, then began again, a little louder.
I sat there listening to it. I thought about old Norman Melk in the room full of shadows and books, and about the letter he'd left there, before he grew old, waiting for us. I looked at the suddenly worried expression on Theo's face.
I got up, took two quick steps across the room, and yanked the door open.
Just past the threshold, sitting up on its haunches in the dimness of the stairwell, was a black squirrel. One front paw was raised in mid-knock.
The squirrel's huge eyes got even wider for a fraction of a second, then squinted in the sunlight of our bedroom. "Oops," it said. Its forequarters pivoted toward the stairway leading down. "Wrong address," it mumbled.
Without thinking, I stooped and lunged and caught it. My fingers closed around startlingly soft fur. The body beneath was tiny and limber and bony, like a skinny kitten. I squatted there, holding the squirrel in place on the stone floor as gently as I could. "Wait," I said.
The squirrel, luckily, was even more shocked by what I'd done than I was. Its mouth hung open, long bright front teeth glimmering, too confounded even to bite.
"Sorry," I said. "Please. Come in."
The squirrel blinked at me. "'Sorry'?" it said. "That's what you have to say? Glom on to a stranger with your huge idiotic mitts, hold them captive, boss them around. But throw a 'Sorry' in the middle. While you're using your manners-words, how about 'Thank you very much for leaving my tendons intact'? Are you people on this end just incredibly rude, or are you also incredibly stupid?"
"I'm really sorry," I said.
"Are you?" the squirrel said. "I don't notice you letting me go."
"Why are you knocking at our door?" Theo asked.
"Mistake," the squirrel said, squirming in my hands.
"Come in," I said, still holding on. "And tell us about the mistake."
"We have these," Theo said. He held up an acorn.
The squirrel's nose twitched.
"We do?" I said.
"I kept mine," Theo said. "And I got a few more from Dr. Argemend."
"Acorns from Dr. Argemend?" the squirrel said. It wriggled again. "Leggo," it said. "I'll talk."
I let go. The squirrel gave its fur a shake. "Well?" it said.
Theo and I backed into the room, and the squirrel marched in with us. It gazed around slowly, scanning the whole bare room up and down and side to side. "Not too cozy, huh?" it said.
"We used to have furniture," Theo said. "We're getting our stuff back tomorrow."
"Tomorrow..." the squirrel said. "Hm. Could be."
"Could be what?" I said.
"Where's that acorn?" it said. Theo handed the acorn over. The squirrel turned it around in its paws, sniffed at it, and nibbled. "Milton," it said, still chewing.
"I'm Rollo," I said. "This is Theo."
Milton nibbled and chewed some more. I studied him to see if there was any way to tell him from Marta or Pythia. Maybe his ears were a little furrier, but maybe I was fooling myself. We waited.
"So," Milton said at last. "You have the acorns. No furniture, but the acorns. That's something. And you have the apartment. Somehow. Something, somehow." He scratched his ear. "Acorns, plural. Pluralize me." He held out a paw.
"Why wouldn't we have the apartment?" Theo said. "It's our apartment."
"Is it, now?" Milton said. His little shoulders went up and down. "It is. Now." His paw was still out. "Acorn!" he said.
"Not yet," I said. "You were looking for Warren Hartstock, weren't you?"
"Say I was looking for acorns," Milton said.
"Not from us," Theo said.
"I'll take them, though," Milton said. He wiggled the fingers of his paw.
"Hang on," I said. I felt around in the bedcovers on the floor to find the tablet. Maxine needed to be in on this, or we needed Maxine to be in on it.
She answered the video call on the second ring. "What's going on?"
I pointed the camera at Milton. "Hi," Milton said.
"Another one?" Maxine said.
How Maxine could tell Milton was different from Marta or Pythia, I had no idea.
"He knows the guy with the temperature regulator," Theo said.
"Temporal resonator," I said. Theo does not always worry about learning words before he starts using them.
"The whatsit," Milton said. It was neither a question nor an answer.
"He works for Warren Hartstock," I told Maxine.
"I am an independent contractor," Milton said. "I have done work for Warren Hartstock."
"Work on the time machine," Maxine said.
"Work on the machine, in time," Milton said. "Acorn."
"Where is it?" I said.
"Acorn."
"You said you'd talk," I said.
"You said acorns. With an S."
Theo reluctantly pulled a second acorn from his pocket and held it out. "If we give you this, you'll tell us where the machine is?"
Milton grabbed it and took a bite. "You won't like what I tell you," he said. He chomped away at the acorn. Little flecks of the outer shell fell to the floorboards. "That's the stuff," he said, still chewing. It came out more like "Thash th' shtuffsh."
"Now," Maxine said. "About the temporal resonator."
Milton kept chewing. I was trying to be patient, or at least to act patient. "Please," I said. "We are trying to find the machine and stop it, before time gets totally frozen. You've worked on it. You said you'd tell us where it is."
Milton licked his paws and wiped down his whiskers. "Did I say that? I'm not sure I said that."
"You took the acorn," Theo said.
"Fair," Milton said. "Implied contract. I was looking for Hartstock. I found you. I suppose we have a deal." His tiny shoulders shrugged again.
"Look," Milton continued. "The whole reason you're bothering me now is that somebody—some human—felt like they had to accomplish something. Get something done. Before all that? There was some amount of connection or entanglement between now and then. How much? Why? We didn't care. We went back and forth, or we didn't. Sometimes it wasn't nut season on one side, but on the other, it was. That was nice, when it happened, but you didn't see us scheming up plans to get more connected to get more nuts out of it."
"That's exactly what you did," Theo said. "You just knocked on the door here looking for acorns."
Milton flicked his ears out to the sides and up again. "We didn't start it," he said. "That's the point. We were not goal-oriented. That's the point. Offered a goal—of, yes, more nuts—some of us did take it, yes. We did cooperate. We respond to the imperatives of the moment. Guilty. But."
"Well?" I said.
"The machine is neither here nor there."
"Where is it?" I asked.
"I told you," Milton said. "It's not. Where. It's in between."
Find previous chapters of The Stairs here.
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★★★★ The morning offered clean white clouds on pretty blue, and mild air laden somehow with a reek like dogshit. Down in Midtown, the smell seemed to be mulch, looking newly topped up in the sidewalk tree beds. Pigeons crowded in to rummage through one mulch bed in particular. At the head of the subway stairs was a fleeting glimpse of the prodigy of sun flooding around and through clouds to be eclipsed by the dark void of a tower. Within three hours all the clouds had blown out to leave clear blue and light-jacket conditions, with plenty of people venturing shirtsleeves. Men in zipper vests stood around by food carts. Faint haze and cooking smoke cast a vague enchantment over the buildings. Mitzvah tanks filled one lane of Sixth Avenue, out of sight in both directions, blocking the box and blaring music as motorcycle cops zoomed along the unmoving line. Uptown, people had a portable speaker playing on the sidewalk as they hung out in a parked sprinter van with its side door open. The long-absent late glow of color was back in the streets, illumination lingering even after the direct sun had passed out of view.
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SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Choice Recipes, by Order of Eastern Star, published circa 192o and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
MOSAIC SANDWICHES
Cut bread in slices one-eighth inch thick, remove crusts and trim into rectangular shapes. Spread lightly with softened butter and cover half the pieces with any desired sweet or savory filling. From the remaining slices cut out a figure with a small vegetable cutter and insert a similar shaped piece cut from brown bread, if white is used for the sandwiches, or vice versa. Press together in pairs.
CALIFORNIA SANDWICHES
Equal quantities of chopped seeded raisins and walnuts. Flavor with a little lemon juice. Spread on graham bread.
BACON SANDWICH FILLING
Have bacon cut very thin, cook until crisp and put between slices of buttered bread while still warm. Wrap in waxed paper.
SAVORY HAM FILLING
One cup finely-chopped ham, one-third cup thick mayonnaise, two sour pickles, finely chopped.
EGG SANDWICH FILLING
Chop the egg whites and put yolks through a sieve, combine and add thick mayonnaise to make a paste. Chopped stuffed olives may be added.
PIMENTO AND CHEESE
One small Neufchatel or breakfast cheese, one pimento, chopped. Moisten with thick mayonnaise.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by these offerings, be sure to send your experience and a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
