The Losting Corridor
They say it’s where anything lost can be found again.
Who are they? The shady players, the racketeers, anyone who operates in the gray markets has heard that number. Every snitch knows about it. When they get their snitch card they’re issued a dime to drop and the legend of The Losting Corridor. Holocaust Joe himself came down here looking for the forty barrels of rum some West End Avenue boys hijacked off one of his boats. He found them wedged in the incinerator chute, stuck behind all the memories people stuff down there. It has intrigued celebrities. They say John Barrymore showed up one night, sauced to the gills, and tore down the corridor looking for his profile. What he found was empty bottles, hundreds of them stacked to the rafters of a penthouse suite, a lifetime’s worth to refill before his face would once again see a single chisel, a bare centimeter of smooth. So he took a piss on a potted ficus and left.
The Detective beat it out of Wilmy, “Wilmy-Doin’-The-Waltz,” they call him. He had the goods on Wilmy, photos of him and some girl scouts and their cookies. So Wilmy gave it up: go to a building downtown, doesn’t matter which one, and know what you’re looking for. You want the brass elevator that only goes up; just wait, it’ll be there.
If you know what you’re looking for.
So it was, and now here he is, The Detective, riding the big brass elevator, staring at the curvy gold-plated doors like false angel wings. It’s just him and the old colored operator in his oxblood tunic with its big gold buttons and epaulettes. He’s humming an old negro spiritual, adding a refrain of “Lordy, Lordy” every few broken bars. The operator’s right hand is brass. The motor controller’s handle is brass. Both are black-veined, and both are one solid piece of metal. The Detective watches it disappear under the operator’s crisp sleeve cuff and wonders if the ride ever stops for him, wonders until the old man announces, “31st floor, Losting,” and jogs his hand and the handle so the elevator stops.
As the doors part, The Detective thrusts the mahogany butt of his snub-nosed .38 at the operator, like an offering. But the old timer just shakes his head and tips the bladed bill of his cap.
“Might be needin’ that now,” he says.
The Detective nods. “Yeah, you ain’t just bumpin’ your gums there, gramps. I’m here looking for a shooter. Lost him down by the docks.”
The operator whistles like ain’t-that-somethin’.
“Watch the step now.”
So The Detective tucks the heat back inside his trench coat and watches the step, watches his scuffed brown loafers clear it, then watches the brass doors close behind him. He looks down the aging schizophrenic paint along the walls, white fading to blue fading to yellow, all the colors stone washed by wear. The Losting Corridor stretches far and wide between them, miles of rugs painted with millions of lotus flowers and forget-me-nots, and all different doors, all leading to those places where things fall by, those wayside places that live behind couches and under beds, at the bottom of bottles and ditches and dirt ponds, inside the moments when we stopped paying attention, even for just a little while.
The Detective’s eyes are drawn to the ceiling and into the mandalas that blossom down the corridor’s length. The shapes, all shapes, every shape, turned at every angle, are overgrown there like neglected ivy. Their lines are the color of absinthe and the way they fold and flip and pulse makes you think you drank a fifth of the stuff. There’s supposed to be a map in the mandalas, but there’s no red arrow that points to “You Are Here,” so it’s useless. Only Zen Buddhists and the odd Sherpa can read it, anyway.
Hopheads litter the corridor, fiends and snowbirds and jazzmen turned vipers. They’ve built opium dens in the air ducts. They came here looking for the cure, but if they never had it how could they find it again? So they just stayed. They whisper things at The Detective as he walks by, smoke-trailed things hissed around the sticks of tea hanging from their lips.
“Wanna be tall, jack?”
“A dick or a dropper. Only the wise men know, I guess.”
“He’s one gone cat, though. I guarantee.”
The Detective ignores them. There are plenty of other people combing the corridor; people with road maps, people who’ve lost their way, looking for the St. Christopher Suite; weeping mothers and lumpy-throated fathers searching for wayward children. Some will open a door and find their daughter hustling tricks on the boulevard. Others might only find parts of them. It never ends well in any case, none of which The Detective is on this night, so he ignores them too.
