The Stairs, Chapter 36
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 60
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.
36.
"Waste of perfectly good sabotage, if you ask me," Pythia said. We were all looking behind us at the glow of the Electrified Yuletide Garden as the Fishhawk Avenue Elevated pulled away from the station.
The car was empty except for us. Norman Melk was sitting behind me and Theo, and Maxine was in front. Pythia had barely bothered hiding on the walk to the station, as we'd passed through the Electro-Parade floats being disassembled, and now she was perched on the seat back.
"Wasn't blowing up the resonator enough?" Maxine said.
"We didn't really blow it up," I said. "The building was fine. So was Warren Hartstock, it looked like." We'd seen Hartstock at a distance, dazed and in handcuffs, with a squad of police, Shinter's security guards, and some especially savage-looking men in Electro-Power uniforms bringing him out the side door of the building.
"Either way, I don't think he can recover the resonator," Norman Melk said. "And the squirrels seem to have soured on his project."
"Letting humans clog up our byways was a terrible idea," Pythia said. "Not even Milton would do it again." We'd left Milton with Dr. Argemend, back in the Yuletide Garden.
"I'd have thought you would get along better," Theo said. "As, you know, squirrels. Who talk."
Pythia swished her tail. "Human stuff," she said. "It's not very interesting, squirrel to squirrel. Can she fight? That's the sort of thing we care about. Does he remember where he cached the nuts? Or: Do they have a sense of humor?"
"Squirrels care about a sense of humor?" Maxine said.
"With respect," Pythia said, "our sense of humor is not like yours. Broadly. There may be some overlap."
The train stopped at a station at 65th Street, then went on again. Windows were dark in office buildings, and lamps were lit in apartments. A gray cat in a windowsill, perched between green gingham curtains, watched us roll by. Nobody was talking now. We stopped at another station—53rd Street—and continued.
In the rumbling calm of the train, I felt very, very tired. We'd been up the whole middle of the night. We'd done it. The panic and alarm of dealing with the resonator were over. Now we just had to—
Get home! But we were still shut out of the apartment! I was wide awake now. "Professor Melk!" I said.
"Norman, please," he said.
"Norman, how are we going to get home, when we get home?" I asked. "I mean, when we get to the stairs? We closed the door!"
"It's a serious problem," he said, nodding. "I'm still working on a solution."
"We only have an hour!" Maxine said. "Or two! Or less?"
"It's true, your time is limited," Norman Melk said. The train started braking again. "That's why I've made arrangements to get you straight back to the apartment building from here." The train doors opened. A sign on the platform said 44th Street. "Let's go," he said.
After the train, the platform was dark and painfully cold. Norman led us down the zigzagging metal stairway to the street, with Pythia leaping from railing to railing.
"Good work, kids," Pythia said, as we reached the bottom. "Especially smashing the bulb. Proud to have seen you reach your potential."
"You're leaving now?" Theo asked.
"Got something that needs doing," she said. "I'll see you later."
"You will?" I said.
"Maybe," she said. She jumped to one of the elevated track beams and disappeared into the shadows.
"This way," Norman Melk said. He guided us up the block, to the corner of 43rd Street. A dark, tentlike shape stood halfway out of the light from a streetlamp there. As we got closer, I could make out wheels and a green canopy. A snorting noise and the scrape of a hoof came from the shadows.
"The subway tunnels seemed too fraught with harmonic potential," Norman Melk said. "It felt more prudent to hire you a ride of your own.”
"Good evening, Alvin" he added, addressing someone else.
A lanky teenager in a floppy cap stepped around the side of the cart, into the light. "Evening, doc," he said. "This the cargo we're waiting on?"
"Here they are," Norman Melk said. "Carter Street and Willis Boulevard, please. Drive gently, if you would." He fished a folded stack of money out of his coat pocket and handed it to the teenager.
Alvin indicated a half-ladder by the rear wheel. "Up here," he said. The tire was made of wood and metal, I noticed.
"What about you?" Theo asked Norman Melk.
"I believe this is about as far as it's safe for me to go," Norman Melk said. "I should stay well clear of the university and Old Marble tonight."
"Why?" I said.
"We've set the time frames moving out of resonance," he said. "It would be unwise to do anything that might ruin the clean separation. Thank you for everything you've done." He shook our hands as we each climbed the ladder—Theo, then Maxine, then me. "It has been a great honor," he said.
"But we still don't know how to get inside," I said.
"I expect you should try the stairs," he said. He waved goodbye. Alvin, who'd climbed up onto a raised board on the front of the cart, shook the reins, and the horse started walking.
Find previous chapters of The Stairs here.
WEATHER REVIEWS
Taipei, July 16, 2026
★★ Peach streaks on the dawn sky whitened into parallel rows of dissolving contrails, tracing the airport approach. The humidity outside the hotel door was so shocking it took a while walking to grasp that the day was not entirely hot yet. Buildings facing the sun were sharply defined but the unfinished towers to the sunward side stood shrouded in backlit haze. Clouds temporarily protecting the wide-open space by Zhongshan Hall were not enough to draw people away from their seats under the neatly trimmed trees around the plaza's edge. One pigeon perched on Dr. Sun's bronze head and another on his shoe. Inside the hall, the air conditioning was at deep-freeze strength in a layer only eight or 10 feet thick; as the wide, vacant stairs and hallways led up and around the higher floors, the temperature jumped and kept rising, all the way up to the sweatbox of the fourth floor. The 4 o'clock rain was even more perfunctory than before, a stray drop or two on the walk to the subway. The soaking was going the other way instead, with even minor exertions wringing forth a flow of sweat. One small shaggy gray cloud floated low under the late-day partial sheet, looking totally unlike the tidy line of cumulus further off along the mountains. A directionless yellow glow suffused the walk to get dinner, as charcoal-colored clouds gathered in meaningless menace.
Taipei, July 17, 2026
★★★★ The first steps outside found a breeze for once, rather than the usual unyielding wall of heat. The high clouds were chopped into little arcs twisting in various directions, while shreds of fractus of the same color and aspect blew along quickly and low against them. Moires wiggled in sagging mesh around a narrow lot where an excavator was driving an auger into the ground. In short order, the sun had burned away the upper clouds entirely, leaving dense, slightly peaked cumulus puffs drifting slowly on the blue. The breeze at lunchtime had acquired a hair-dryer quality, and the strap of the shoulder bag left a straight-edged sweat shadow on the t-shirt underneath it. The 88th floor of Taipei 101 looked out on a cityscape with silver light gleaming on the piled-up roofs. A hook of dark gray hung down from the clouds over the mountains at something not far from eye level. More pendulous gray bulged down close overhead, while full sun flashed on the river in the distance. A huge wasp landed on the outside of the window. Streaks of rain fell past the glass and mist filled in the spaces between buildings. A patch of sunlit green by the river to the west-southwest stood out against the darkened and faded colors all around. Little round spots of umbrellas flowed along the sidewalks. An enchanted haze spread among the streets in the distance, as the sun scorched up the just-fallen rain in what must have been suffocating up close. The jagged edge where the cloud cover ended crept nearer, and glory rays cut between the buildings, fanning out from the position of the still-covered sun. The light hit buildings three blocks away and the haze became near opaque. The shine reached the western rim of the Taipei Dome, and then the bottom edge of the disc of the sun pushed down into view and became too bright to look at. The city evolved again, into a meticulous but smudged arrangement of building shapes. People crowded two and three deep at the western windows as the sun kept transiting the gap between the clouds and the horizon. The dark clouds held their position now and new rain fell. The sun's shape dissolved amid haze or more faraway clouds, then formed again. In the darkening streets, the single dots of scooter headlights moved and clustered among the double dots of the cars. The sun slipped behind one last layer of cloud, one minute before it was due to reach the horizon. Concrete everywhere turned mauve.
VISUAL CONSCIOUSNESS DEP'T.
Blurry ones
More consciousness at Instagram.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Cookery: Choice Recipes Collected by the Woman's Club of Palo Alto, published in 1903 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Walnut Sandwiches.
Put English walnut meats through the meat grinder and rub to a paste with an equal amount of grated cheese. Spread between thin slices of rye bread.
Peanut Sandwiches.
Cut thin slices from a small round loaf of Boston brown bread and spread with peanut butter. Salt slightly and cover with slices spread with plain butter. Unless slices are very small cut in halves.
Tartare Sandwiches.
Six tablespoonfuls of chopped hard boiled egg, one teaspoonful of chopped capers, one tablespoonful of chopped cucumber pickle. Mix together with mayonnaise.
—Mrs. Fish.
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.
