volume 8
Dead Men Tell No Tales
by Cynthia Alden Smith
I've quit smoking cigarettes four times; the last time was the one that stuck. The first time I tried non-smoking on for size, I found it didn't fit. The second time I gritted my teeth on New Year's Day and managed not to smoke for almost an entire week. The third time I used the patch and told everyone I knew that I was quitting. My office was supportive and my husband, a heavy smoker, was impressed by my resolve. I was so surrounded by positive reinforcement that I just couldn't bear to tell anyone when I started up again two months later. I decided to lie.
My husband smoked almost two packs a day so he never smelled the lingering stink of tobacco on my clothes nor noticed when a few of his cigarettes went missing. I was careful to smoke with the car windows open and to keep my extinguished butts out of the ashtray. I almost got a ticket for throwing a butt out the window. When the cop pulled me over, I was as nervous as if I'd been caught with a kilo of dope. How could I ever explain that ticket to my husband? The officer gave me a lecture about littering and fire safety but let me off with a warning. After that, I checked my rear view window before discretely dropping a butt on the pavement.
During the week, I'd sneak out after dinner to the alley in back – behind the fence a few doors down and I was in the clear. If asked where I'd been, I'd vaguely wave my hand and say, “Oh, I was out in the yard.” On the weekends, while he stayed inside watching the game, I'd invent errands to run, or chores to complete and gently but firmly refuse offers of help.
He was so easy to deceive that I became bolder. I tucked loose cigarettes around the house like Easter eggs, so one was always close at hand if I had an opportunity to steal outside. At night, I'd go downstairs and smoke a nightcap on the utility porch behind the kitchen. Once, he came down looking for me. I could feel my pulse race as I stepped on the butt and wildly fanned the smoke out the door. When he asked, “Do you smell smoke?” I answered in all innocence, “Gee, no, do you?”
It was as much fun as if I'd been carrying on an adulterous affair. I was amazed that he didn't question my continued ability to live with a smoker and not smoke. He was proud of me and he trusted me. Guilt poked at me from time to time, but I pushed it aside. I told myself that it would break his heart to know I had relapsed. I was saving him from pain, I rationalized, so I continued the game.
It was much harder to conceal my smoking at the office. I worked on the twenty-fifth floor of an office tower. Building rules prohibited smoking in offices or hallways. I had to find a safe place outside – but where? The building sat in a large, open plaza. I scurried from one end to the other, looking for a hidden corner. I finally found a spot next to some shrubs at the side of the building, out of sight from the entrance, where I could smoke undisturbed. I was anxious about setting a detectable pattern. Guilt fed a paranoia that somebody might be watching me. I needed alternate spots. Across the courtyard I stumbled upon an empty upper patio bordered by a low wall. By hunkering down below the wall, I remained hidden and smoked covertly, albeit uncomfortably. I had an uneasy feeling that this was an undignified position for an executive in a Nordstrom's suit, but that only fueled my desire to avoid detection.
The problem with smoking outdoors was that twenty-five floors is a long ride down to the lobby. Waiting for the elevator, riding down, smoking a cigarette, then returning to the office took about twenty minutes and I needed at least one cigarette an hour. That was a lot of time out of the office. Although nobody was looking over my shoulder, there were just so many trips to the bathroom or unexplained absences I hoped would pass unnoticed before my disappearances became a topic for the lunch room.
I'm a snoop by nature. I like to know everything about my surroundings. I go into houses under construction after the workers have left. I explore back alleys. I open unlocked doors, poke into closets, look around corners and try to build a mental floor plan of whatever space I'm in. Perhaps I'm looking for an escape route. Perhaps I'm simply nosy. “Would you give me a house tour?” is one of the first things I ask as a guest. It embarrassed my husband when I would wander away from a party to read book spines and study the family photos in the back hallway.
As soon as I starting working in the office tower, I had scoped it out. I surveyed the parking garage and found all the delivery bays, street exits, and stairwells. Next, I located the routing of the fire exits throughout the building and identified the entry points on each floor.
Finding a smoking lair close to my office motivated the exploration. The emergency stairwells were perfect. The stairs were designed for building evacuation and were unused except for the occasional, scheduled fire drill. The doors remained unlocked by law. I could slip into any one of the three stairwells on my floor and smoke a cigarette without being missed. The problem was, for security reasons, the doors automatically locked on the inside when closed.
It was too risky to hold the door ajar – a passing security guard might investigate, or wafting smoke would give my position away. I needed to close the door fully without engaging the lock. I tried scotch taping the latch flat, but it didn't hold. I tried jamming scrunched up notepaper in the door jamb, but the latch sometimes compressed it enough to catch. Finally, I discovered that a folded matchbook was rigid yet thin enough to allow the door to close fully without setting the latch. I felt very clever. I was careful to get the matchbook seated just right, because if the door locked, I found during the unsuccessful trials that twenty-five floors is a long tiresome walk in heels.
Standing in my dim stairwell refuge, furtively pufffing away, I wondered how I would react if a co-worker accidentally opened the door. I imagined it would feel like having the stall door thrown open at the moment of a face-scrunching bowel movement. It was such a humiliating thought that once I'd perfected the matchbook trick, I'd climb up one flight just to make sure I wouldn't be seen.
I felt like a spy, sexy and clandestine like Mrs. Peel of “The Avengers.” I enjoyed the thrill of being where I shouldn't, and the accompanying fear of discovery. I liked getting away with something even if no one but me knew about it. It was my secret identity – the lurking, sneaky shadow in the guise of a respected corporate executive.
One day, on my way downstairs to buy a sandwich for lunch, I detoured into a garage stairwell. I was lighting my cigarette as I climbed to the first landing when I nearly stepped on two shiny black shoes. I jumped back, startled. The shoes were connected to a security guard who apparently had been sitting on the top landing and had leaned back flat for a nap. I was caught! I was caught with a cigarette in hand in flagrant violation of the building code. I mentally flipped through a roster of excuses, trying desperately to come up with something valid. Was I technically still in the garage? Did that matter? If it's okay to smoke in your car, wouldn't it be legal to smoke as you're parking? But what reason did I have to be this far up on a stairwell that leads only to the emergency exit? Verifying the route in case of fire? I could say I was a floor marshall, but then why was I smoking? I had to say something .
I said, “Oh, excuse me! I didn't see you.” He didn't respond.
I stepped closer and heard his radio spitting out intermittent unintelligible messages. I said, a little more loudly, “I'm sorry to disturb you.” He wasn't moving. I hesitated. My stomach clenched around a bad feeling.
I warily put a foot on the first step and leaned way over to look at his face. He was an older man with gray hair, jowly and a little thick in the middle. His mouth was partly open as if in mid-snore. There was a milk moustache of foam below his lower lip and at the corner of his mouth. An icy queasiness washed over me and I knew at that instant he was dead. My brain had instantaneously registered the total lack of movement, the color and condition of the skin, the expression on his face and concluded: Deceased.
I didn't panic, but neither did I know what to do. Should I hold a mirror to his mouth for a possible breath? Listen for a heartbeat? Gauge if the body had cooled? Check for rigor mortis? I knew I should do CPR or something, but it was creepy and because he was sprawled on the stairs, awkward. I'd have to step around him to get close. I flinched at the thought of touching him. Instead, I snuffed out my cigarette and went for help.
There were two big doors across the hallway segregating the garage area from the lower lobby. Once through I quickly scanned for Security. I saw no one in uniform. I trotted up the escalator to the main lobby and strode to the security desk. I said to the young man behind the counter, “I'm pretty sure one of your security guards is dead.”
He looked at me as if he hadn't heard correctly.
I said, “He's in the garage stairwell just above Level B. He's an older guy and I didn't touch him, but I'm certain he's dead.”
The guard smiled and said, “Oh, that's Abe. He's probably just taking a nap.”
“No,” I said. “He's not napping. He's not breathing.”
“I'll send someone to check it out,” he said.
“Really, I mean it. He's dead.” I was firm and insistent. I wasn't agitated or obviously distraught and I don't think he took me seriously. I walked away. I looked back to see if he was doing anything, but he hadn't even picked up the phone.
Had I imagined the guard? Was he just sleeping? How would I explain why I was in that stairwell? Should I turn back and throw a fit? No, I had done what I could. I reported what I found. And while the guy at the desk didn't believe me, I was sure that the guard was fully and truly dead and no hysterics would save him. I continued back down to the deli to buy my sandwich.
As I was returning to the office, lunch in hand, I decided to check on Abe. I expected emergency activity behind the big doors, but all was still. “Wow,” I thought. “They handled that fast.” I went into the stairwell to look around and there he was, Abe the dead security guard, exactly as I'd left him fifteen minutes ago.
“Shit!” I thought. “I should have been hysterical.”
As I stood there, holding my egg salad sandwich wondering what to do next, the stairwell door burst open and men in uniforms swarmed in. I pointed. “He's right up there.”
They were bustling around like a pack of dogs with one bone – pumping on the dead man's chest, barking orders on radios, running in and out of the stairwell, calling for oxygen. They ignored me completely. Exasperated, I said to the man who seemed to be in charge, “I was the one who found him. Do you need to talk to me?”
“We'll call later,” he said. “You should leave.”
“Okay,” I said and handed him my card. “This is my direct line. I'll be in the office all afternoon.”
I was faced with a dilemma. I was dying to tell someone about finding the dead man. It was a great story. But how would I explain to my co-workers why I was in the garage stairwell above the lobby level when I said I was just going to lunch? Was I ready to reveal my secret? I walked outside to a bench in the plaza and ate my sandwich. Would anyone really care why I was in the stairwell, or just be interested in what I found? I finished my egg salad and smoked a cigarette at the side of the building. Why was I carrying on this pretense anyway? I had managed my charade for nearly eight months. I was probably fooling no one, and what difference could it possibly make now to anyone but me? Ego and pride was one explanation for my skulking around. The thrill of the game was another. I was playing an extended version of hide and seek and winning every round. But avoiding detection was a ridiculous accomplishment – it was foolish and juvenile. I had regressed to a teenager sneaking smokes in the girls' room.
I realized I was reluctant to give up the elaborate private universe I'd created. My alternate world was an escape, although I wasn't sure from what. I had concocted my own strict rules and codes of conduct and I didn't want to abandon them. But the disordered real world had intruded with a death.
After a second cigarette I returned to the office and told my assistant, “I may get a call from Building Security. Put it right through.” She looked quizzical. “I found a security guard who had died on the job in the garage stairwell.” I said. “Want to hear about it?”
I told everyone in the office and any friend who would listen my dead guy story. Nobody asked why I was in the stairwell. Building Security called much later that afternoon to ask at what time I had found the guard. They didn't seem interested that fifteen minutes had elapsed between my discovery and any official response and I didn't press the issue. In the next building newsletter, a small item appeared stating that security officer Abraham J. Schoffner, age 62, had died unexpectedly of a stroke.
I started smoking in the open without fanfare. Nobody noticed. I had been using smoking as an excuse to poke around a different, more exciting reality. I hope I never stumble upon another dead man, but that's just part of the thrill. I need to remind myself that I don't always need to escape, that I can shape my own life into a world I'm happy to inhabit, and that next time I can resist the allure of a silly secret.