The Stairs, Chapter 33
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 55
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.
33.
Dr. Argemend and Norman Melk had folded down the cage while we were away and had wrapped it into a smaller canvas bundle. The workers had mostly stopped hurrying back and forth, and some of them were now standing around on the risers or observation platforms. "Milton didn't desert us?" Dr. Argemend said.
"He could still defect," Pythia said. "But he went in, anyway."
"Let's get a good spot, then, before the crowd gets here," Norman Melk said. He led the way further up the path, to a little deck overlooking the model train station. The Electrified Yuletide Garden lay all around us, in twilight shadows, with the lit-up toy subway trains making their looping way up and down and around the darkness of it all.
"Marble City Transit never rests," Maxine said. "Even here."
Out on the avenue, on the far side of the arches, the band was playing "Deck the Halls," loudly and distinctly. A flickering glow, in shifting colors, lit the real Fishhawk Avenue Elevated tracks from below. The crowd cheered when the glow got brighter or the colors changed. Here and there, we could just catch a glimpse of part of a float, covered in flashing bulbs or neon tube lights, going by.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN—" a voice called out through a loudspeaker. It was one of those penetrating announcer voices that would have been loud without a microphone, punching out every syllable. "THE ELECTRO-PARADE HAS NOW ARRIVED AT—THE VERY GATES—OF—YOUR—ELECTRIFIED YULETIDE GARDEN!" The crowd cheered. "AND NOW—SHINTER'S WORLD-RENOWNED DEPARTMENT EMPORIUM—AND—THE MARBLE CITY ELECTRO-POWER COMPANY—WELCOME THE CITIZENS OF MARBLE CITY—TO THE PREMIER—E-LEC-TRI-FIED SPEC-TA-CLE—OF NINETEEN FORTY!" The horns in the band played a fanfare, and the crowd roared even louder.
The announcer's voice fell to a still-penetrating hush. "Enter!" he said. "And prepare to—behold the wonders of the season!" There was a babble and a rush of movement, and people began flowing through all three archways. The band played "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" as the crowd came on, filling the triple walkways, spreading out up the ramps and stairs, filing into the decks and platforms. Their breath made a white cloud snaking above them in the cold air. Ushers in their red, white, and green costumes steered them this way or that when the flow got backed up.
It was 3:48 on my watch. People started filling up the rest of our platform. The model trains around us and the real trains outside kept running brightly through the deepening dusk. "What if this doesn't work?" I asked Maxine.
"Arson," she said. "We burn down the building with the resonator inside. And we kneecap Hartstock with Theo's rock hammer when he comes running out."
"What if the resonator is fireproof?"
"Well, at least we'd get to hit Hartstock with a hammer," she said. "I wonder if he'll keep the bruise if we stop existing?"
"I don't think it will come to that," Norman Melk said. "I hope."
"If Milton does his part," Theo said.
"Wham," Maxine said, swinging an imaginary hammer with a sidearm motion. "Pow."
"GOOD EVENING!" the announcer cried. Now his voice was coming from multiple loudspeakers scattered around the Yuletide Garden. The crowd stopped chattering. "Good evening, citizens of Marble City! Welcome to the Shinter's Electrified Yuletide Garden, an all-new spectacular each and every year, powered by the Marble City Electro-Power Company."
A wash of white light swept across the Garden, from west to east and bottom to top, as tiny bulbs set in the artificial snow lit up one after another and the miniature streetlights came on. For a second, it seemed as bright as day. Then the light faltered and dimmed, turning brownish. The crowd murmured in confusion. The murmuring died out as the light swelled back to brilliant white again.
"That's it," Pythia said. "Hartstock's feeding off the power line now."
I looked over my shoulder, back at the building. I thought I could see a blue glow from the window where Milton had gone.
"Our theme for 1940," said the announcer, "is history meeting the future: The Progress and Expansion of the Four Boroughs of Marble City." Above the entry arch, the words PROGRESS & EXPANSION OF 4 BOROS lit up in red and gold. A spotlight made a rapid circuit around the Garden, too quickly for individual details to register, then settled on a dark patch of water.
"We begin at the mouth of the Portwine River," the announcer said, "in the shadow of Mont Jacques, where small but doughty sailing ships dropped anchor in the harbor, there and then to found a new city—that new city we know as Old Marble now." White-sailed ships came cutting through the water, driven before the breeze of a huge electrical fan.
"We came all this way to do Humanities and Society class again?" Maxine said.
"Humanities and Society sounds fun," Theo said.
The show kept going. The winding streets of Old Marble lit up one after another on their way up from the harbor. A flare of green on a miniature quadrangle marked the founding of Marble College. A British warship sailed into the harbor, only to be repelled by a burst of twinkling rockets and cannon fire from the suddenly illuminated Fort Muntjac—"the stalwart defender of our new-won sovereignty," the announcer intoned. The great stepped block of City Hall rose up out of the ground, with tiny mechanical construction workers swarming on it till its triple spires rose to completion. In between historic events, there were angels flying by on wires or candy canes spinning and tumbling, with the Marble City Elevated looping around in the background all the while.
"Our scene shifts up the coast to the north," the announcer said, as the spotlight drifted onto a rocky shore and more little boats bobbing, "where the pioneering cod fisherman Emanuel Shroe staked out a settlement for himself and his family fleet—and where a clerical error met a geographical truth, giving to posterity the incorporated town of Shoreburg." Bright blue fish leaped from the ocean, caught on golden hooks and lines.
"Look," Maxine said, nudging me. Back in the miniature Old Marble, the lights were going out, receding back down to the harbor. The Marble College lawn vanished in the dark again.
Up in the model of Shoreburg, tiny ballplayers were circling the bases in Shroe Field. "This tiny fishing village turned municipal borough had hauled in the greatest team in the whole short-lived Federal League," the announcer said, "and soon enough, under the innovative lights of the Electro-Power Company"—the stadium light towers began shining on cue—"the Trotters proved themselves again as a pillar of the American League."
I nudged Maxine back and pointed. Down by the base of the Christmas tree, a man in coveralls with the Electro-Power Company logo was talking to two upset-looking men in suits. The stouter of the two men pulled a pocket watch out of his vest and frowned at it. The man in coveralls threw up his hands and stalked off.
"I think they've noticed," I said.
Find previous chapters of The Stairs here.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, June 24, 2026
★★★★ The morning was so sunny it was as if the previous days had never happened. The clouds ranged from tiny scraps to mid-sized cumulus with curling white pseudopods. Out on open pavement, the sun was a bit too much. The cross street was still but a breeze seemed to be pointing directly down Broadway. Honeylocust pods, twisting and golden, swayed, and the light jangled in the branches. A boy in a white gi with a yellow belt scootered through the sun along Central Park West. An excited dachshund's claws scritched along the crosswalk. The little remnant willow leaning over the Pool was one continuous form with its own reflection. Children in bicycle helmets waded barefoot at the head of the falls. A big ring of ripples from something unseen spread across the water where it lay like a sheet of mylar.
New York City, June 25, 2026
★★★★★ Gray-haired men were out in shorts on the East Side, and linen was everywhere. The open windows of the electric Uber let in pleasant drafts and also what felt, flicking against the back of an arm and then squishing to pulp between fingers, as if it had been a mosquito. Cool air wriggled along under a canopy of honeylocusts on York Avenue. The temperature felt 10 degrees lower than the listed 84. Enough haze had developed to make the few clouds look blue and distant. Through the afternoon the clouds went from loose and translucent to tighter and sun-occluding to gone entirely, as pedestrians in working concert black advanced on Lincoln Center.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Consolidated Library of Modern Cooking and Household Recipes, Vol. IV, by Christine Terhune Herrick, Editor-In-Chief, author of The Little Dinner, The Chafing-Dish Supper, etc., and associate author with Marion Harland of the National Cook Book, with a list of contributors which includes many of the famous chefs and cooking experts of the United States, published in 1905 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Italian Sandwiches
Beat up the yolk of an egg with nearly a quarter of a pint of cold water, and make with it into a stiff paste a quarter of a pound of flour, into which 2 ounces of good butter have been rubbed, 1 1/2 ounces of sifted sugar, and a little cinnamon. Put this paste on a board and roll it out very thin (it should not be quite a quarter of an inch thick), divide it into strips an inch in width, and from 3 to 4 inches in length. These strips must be first hardened. Put them in a cool, well-ventilated place. In the meantime prepare the following mixture: Beat the whites of 3 eggs to a froth, with 2 ounces of powdered loaf sugar. Blanch and pound 2 ounces of sweet and 12 bitter almonds, mix them with the egg-froth until it is a soft, smooth paste, then spread half the strips of paste with the mixture, and cover with the other half. Bake a pale brown. Time, eighteen minutes to bake.
Irish Sandwiches
Cut the meat in very thin slices from partridges, grouse, or any game that has been roasted, and shred some celery. Lay the meat on delicately thin, fresh toast — it should be crisp, and not tough; strew celery over and season well with tartare sauce. Serve in squares, and on a napkin.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by our continued offerings, be sure to send along a description of your experience and a photo or three to us here: indignity@indignity.net.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
