THE STAIRS

The Stairs, Chapter 34

Indignity Vol. 6, No. 57

Photo illustration by Joe MacLeod. Moon: NASA.

THE STAIRS

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.

34.

A minute or so later, the lights of little Old Marble came back on. The narrator and the spotlight had moved on to the south and west—"the broad and deep quarries along the Scooptoe River, from whose shining white depths Marble City would build its name and its fame, and the foundation on which the industrial and cargo strength of New Marble would be unshakably set." The little stevedores toted their burdens; little quarry workers set off scarlet blasts of explosives. Reindeer danced across the sky, for good measure.

"Now Shoreburg's dark," Theo said. He was right; the ballpark and the leaping cod were lost in gloom again.

"Perfect," Pythia said. "Keep the Electro-Power boys jumping."

Light and darkness kept hopscotching around the Yuletide Garden. As the announcer held forth on the grid plan of West Marble—"the rational metropolis, shaped for a century of growth and connection"—Shoreburg lit up once more, but the stevedores of New Marble froze in place. More men in coveralls were hurrying around, as the suited men fumed.

My watch said 4:15. I looked up and around. A faint crescent moon had risen in the east, over Eagle Avenue. In the east? I turned west. The brighter crescent moon, horns pointing the opposite direction, still stood above the Fishhawk Avenue tracks. The old prickly feeling of alarm surged from my hands up my arms till it made a rushing sound in my ears that drowned out the announcer's voice. "Maxine," I said. "Theo."

They looked up and saw what I was seeing. "That's our moon," I said. My voice was hoarse.

"It appears Hartstock is pulling the time frames into full alignment," Norman Melk said. "The resonator is working."

"Of course it is," Milton's voice said, from a holly bush beside the deck. "It just needed a professional touch." It sounded like he had something in his mouth.

He peeped into view, and Pythia sprinted through our feet to where he was. He definitely had something in his mouth.

"Is...that...an...acorn?" she said, taut with fury. "Did you get Hartstock to pay you?"

Milton flinched back and held up a paw in self-defense. With his other front paw, he rummaged in his cheek. "Wthgoo fingkum?" he said.

"What?" Pythia said. Her tail was bristling like a cat's.

Milton's paw came away clutching something. "I said, what do you think I am?" he said. He dropped a wet and shiny object on the planks. "There's the master fuse cap," he said, working his jaw up and down to stretch it. "The wiring goes right past it now."

Pythia inspected it. "Will Hartstock notice it's gone?" she said.

"I doubt it," Milton said. "Especially since his master voltage meter is now calibrated 40 percent too low."

The band struck up a jaunty tune, mezzo forte, a jingle I'd heard on the radio. "And through these last hundred years," the announcer said, "from its birth as a humble yet comprehensive dry-goods store to its flourishing as one of this great nation's, if not the world's, proudest palaces of commerce—a palace where you, the customer, are the monarch—through these hundred years, and into the next century beyond, Marble City has brought, and will keep on bringing, its needs and desires, the dreams of its buyers, to...Shinter's!"

The crowd applauded as light flowed up the butter-colored walls of a model of the Departmentorium, standing taller than scale above the model streets of West Marble. More lights flowed up the butter-colored immensity of the actual store overlooking it all. A sign between two pine trees, the size of a small billboard, lit up to spell out *S*H*I*N*T*E*R*'*S* in moving letters.

"Is that the same building they have in the toy department, or did they make an extra one?" Theo whispered.

"It's hard to tell," Maxine whispered back. "I think it might be bigger."

The band played the Shinter's jingle again, more loudly. The toy blimp swooped low over the model store, and came up trailing a net full of brightly wrapped presents. Three little hot-air balloons followed behind it, and scooped up present-loads of their own. Up by mini-Shoreburg, the carousel and Ferris wheel were turning. Speedboats cut through the harbor of Old Marble.

There was a quaking in the holly beside us, and Marta climbed out. Her eyes were bright, and she was panting a little. "They built this thing to be completely failsafe," she said. "But I think we're getting somewhere." A whole stretch of bulb-lit snowy ground, between Shoreburg and West Marble, went dark and then lit up again.

"The Electro-Power crew keeps pumping more power into it," Pythia said. "We just have to make sure Hartstock gets it."

"Wait till they try to light the tree," Marta said.

All around us, more little blackouts were coming and going, as the lights got brighter around them. The blimp flew by again, twice as fast as it had before. "Look at the trains," Theo said. The model Fishhawk Elevated was zooming along its rails now, headlights dazzlingly bright. The carousel and Ferris wheel spun faster and faster. On the infield dirt of Shroe Field, baserunners sprinted in a furious loop

"Ladies AND GENtleMEN," the announcer said, the loudspeakers swelling and fading as he spoke. "The TIME YOU have been AWAITing has come"—his pace and intonation never faltered—"as WE BRING the spark of THE SEAson to the ElecTRIFIED YULEtide Garden ChristMAS FIR!" Luminous cherubs, airborne on wires, closed in on the dark tree from eight points of the compass. "Merrily, VERILY," the announcer said "let THERE—BE light!"

I flinched. The cherubs dived into the fir tree without braking. Light bulbs started coming on, in every color, spiraling out and up from the points of impact. Fan-blown tinsel fluttered and flashed in the newly kindled glow of electric lanterns hanging on the boughs. The band played "Silent Night" at a volume that shook the planks of the deck.

The tree was lit from top to bottom. It stayed lit. Spread out around it, under the horns of both moons, was electrical chaos: a spontaneous barrage from Fort Muntjac, speedboats bumping into warships, candy canes whirling till they looked like bullseyes. Teddy bears bashed tin drums so fast the beats became a single droning sound. Flickering letters sped across the *S*H*I*N*T*E*R*'*S* sign: *S*H*I*R*T*...*S*T*R*E*S*S*...*I*N*E*R*T*...

Marta swore. "It's still holding," she said.

"They wired it up even better than we thought," Pythia said.

"What can we do?" I asked.

"We definitely cut the blackout-protecting loop on the tree lights," Marta said. "It's all or nothing. We need to knock out a bulb."

"Who's going to do that now?" I asked.

"Well, not Barney," Marta said. "Poor guy." A model train rocketed through the station without stopping. In the too-bright lights of the second car, I could just glimpse the silhouette of a squirrel, frozen in terror.

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Find previous chapters of The Stairs here.

SIDE PIECES DEP'T.

AT FLAMING HYDRA, there's a Very Special, very paywalled, Fourth of July Holiday Mr. Wrong column.

How did things get so far? This guy, the President of the United States of America (POTUS) is stealing with both hands and getting people killed all over the planet, and yeah, America has been killing people all over the planet and here at home for most of its 250 years, and then before that, when it wasn’t even America yet. It’s facts, it’s history! They are trying to suppress it, and the creeps in the driver’s seat right now really are pulling the wires out of whatever good things this country has managed to accomplish. There’s some good things! There were some good things!

WEATHER REVIEWS

A patch of sky, divided between a top two-thirds or so of blue and a bottom one-third or so of translucent white. There are overlapping undulations along the boundary between the two, so the division is definite but not entirely distinct.

New York City, July 1, 2026

★ Turning off the air conditioner long enough to hear a work call summoned a creeping warm dampness at once. The heat was in the stairwell—or rather, some of the heat was. What lay outside the front door, in fullness, was something else, something that clung to bare legs like skinny-cut pants. Toward the sun, the sky was colorless. The normal uphill walk had the chest straining by the halfway point. Someone had combed away a dog's fluffy insulating undercoat and left big clumps of it on the grass. The Park was as empty as on a cold winter day. Beyond the people who had dogs to walk, one toddler toddled ahead of a stroller; one game of spikeball played out in one patch of shade; one person sat on a blanket under a broad hat in shelter of the edge of the trees; one sunbather sat out in the open. The lawn looked like the diagram in a chemistry textbook showing what happens to the molecules after a solid has turned into a gas. Sweat was not just rising but flowing. By the gate out of the Park, a raccoon's tail trailed like a pennant from the narrowed mouth of a trash barrel. Then the raccoon emerged, hauling out a single-use plastic bag full of trash and dragging it into the shrubbery, spilling out an empty plastic bottle as it went.

SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.

WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of the final sandwich 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.

Anchovy Sandwiches

Wash 6 or 8 anchovies, cut off their heads and fins, take out the backbones, and divide each fish in two, from the shoulder to the tail. Cut an equal number of thin slices of brown bread and butter; put between 2 slices alternate layers of hard-boiled eggs, mustard, and cress cut small, and the fillets of the anchovies; press the slices closely together, and with a sharp knife cut them into neat squares. Place them on a dish covered with a napkin, and garnish with parsley. If not wanted immediately, cover them with a napkin wrung out of cold water to keep them moist.

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.