Extreme Vinyl Café Read Online Free Page B

fittings and a brass needle over the door to show which floor you were on.
    He would have taken a ride, but he didn’t have time to waste. They were waiting for him at the hall.
    He went downstairs and fetched the cake from the cooler. It was rather touching: the icing golf course, with the greens and flags, the marzipan golfers and the little buttercream shrubs all around the edge. He carried it carefully over to the counter.
    He wasn’t going to mess this up.
    Okay. He had everything. Wait a minute. No he didn’t. Theaddress for the party was upstairs in his bedroom. He started up the stairs. Then he stopped dead. He shouldn’t leave the cake unattended. The house was so vast; there might be dogs or cats or any number of things wandering around that could get into it. He fetched the cake and started up again. Four floors. Wait a minute—the elevator. He should take the elevator. The elevator would be safer.
    He went in backwards. The brass door accordioned behind him. It was like stepping back in time. To a dimmer time—just before electricity.
    He stood there, in the dimness, the cake safely beside him on the floor. He grabbed the elevator handle and plunged it to the right. Nothing happened.
    He brought the handle back to the centre, opened the door and shut it and tried again. This time there was a bang, and a shudder, and a sudden lurch. Then the elevator started to move. He could almost feel the chains hauling him up, as if there were two or three men at the top of this elevator, and not strong men either, huffing and puffing as they turned some rusty crank.
    “Come on,” said Dave.
    The elevator was moving in small, jerky increments. The shaft seemed to be too loose for the car. There was a lot of wobble.
    And then there was no wobble at all. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing.
    “Are we moving?” said Dave.
    T hey weren’t moving—they being Dave and the cake. Not up, that is. But that didn’t mean there was no movement—therewas still plenty of movement. The little car felt as if it were swinging back and forth, like a bucket on the end of a rope.
    “Hello,” he called.
    “Hello,” he called again. “Anybody? I am trapped in the elevator.”
    There was no reply.
    “Help,” he called. “I am in the elevator.”
    He hit the walls with his hands. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. He sat on the floor. He stood up. He took a deep breath and reached out and put his hand on the door handle. He opened the elevator door.
    He was staring at a wall of plaster lathing. There was a big 3 written on the lathing in red chalk. He felt a wave of claustrophobia. He felt as if he had been buried alive.
    “Help,” he called, again.
    He sat in the corner, with his head in his arms. He realized he might die in here. But really, what did that matter? If he didn’t get the cake to the hall on time, Mary would kill him anyway.
    A n hour went by. The party would be just beginning. Dave was still in the elevator. And he was still hungry. He was wondering whether, when you were starving to death, if you gnawed off and ate your own arm that would count as sustenance. Or if eating your own arm would be a zero-sum game.
    Jean-Claude Van Damme wouldn’t eat off his arm. Jean-Claude Van Damme would haul himself out the emergency door in the ceiling and climb up the cable to safety. Dave glanced up at the ceiling. There was no emergency door. He felt a wave of relief. He would rather die in there than climb up a cable to safety.
    He stared at the cake.
    Surely Mary wouldn’t miss one of those little buttercream shrubs.
    M ary, had, actually, only just missed Dave.
    “Shouldn’t he be here by now?” said Mary to Bert. The guests were beginning to arrive. The party was getting going.
    “He’ll be here,” said Bert, with more hope than conviction. “He is probably sitting in a taxi right now, with the cake in his lap.”
    Morley, who was standing just within earshot, helped herself to a glass of wine. A large one.
    Bert was