The Custodian

The Gasper Tower is a magnet for suicides – but is it a curse, or just a side effect of being a tall building? The skeptical new night janitor is poised to find out.

Photo by Dan Smedley on Unsplash

The top floor is cursed, Yanira told me in her whispery English as she pressed a rosary into my hand. More jumpers than any other building in the city. And they always seem to find a way into the Tower, even at night. Especially at night.

Yanira’s rosary stays in my junk drawer at home, but I’ve already outlasted the janitor who came before me. She witnessed a man leap to his death during her second week on the job, after she forgot to lock one of the doors. Two nights later, she followed him down.

Stress and a trauma response, said Betsy from HR.

The curse, said Yanira.

Most nights on the top floor of the Gasper Tower are monotonous and solitary – sweeping and mopping the intricate tiled floors, scrubbing the gilt arches and angles of the art deco designs, cleaning and sanitizing the upscale toilets.

Tonight is different. My ears prick up at the slightest sound – the hiss of plumbing, the creak of the building’s old bones, the faint beep of a car horn from the street below. The hairs on the back of my neck are raised, my body tense and tight.

I am rubbing an oak table with orange-scented wood shine when I hear it – a footstep in the stairwell. I duck into the women’s restroom and crack the door open, just enough to peek through.

A man slips through the stairwell door. A young man, his expensive suit rumpled and reeking of a crowded bar. He scans the room, a bemused, enthralled expression on his face. Then he inches toward the balcony.

From my hiding place, I see a pale yellow light flash as the lamp on the balcony flickers.

Those lamps haven’t worked for decades.

The man drifts toward the lamp, and I think of summer nights and the moths that hovered around my grandfather’s RV, circling closer and closer to the dim blue bug light – then the faint electrical zap and the tap tap tap as their bodies dropped to the ground.

It’s Agnes’ doing, Yanira had said in the break room last week. She’s the reason they all jump.

She was the prostitute, right? asked one woman.

I thought she was a palm reader, said another.

She jumped the day they opened this building, said Yanira. And people have been jumping ever since.

You ever think that maybe they just jump because it’s a tall building? I said.

Oh, honey. Yanira patted my hand. Work here long enough, and you’ll see.

I tiptoe from the bathroom and lean around the corner.

He stands in the doorway of the balcony, transfixed by the light that blinks and flickers like an old movie reel.

I creep closer and squint into the yellow glow.

There in the light, so faint they seem a trick of the eyes, I see images, flashes like a frenzy of memories. I see a woman, lithe and buxom as a teenage boy’s fantasy.

My face hot with shame, I avert my eyes from the farce of a woman and look instead at him.

A surge of fury stabs deep within me to see the man’s face, his eyes unable to look away from the phantom woman.

Then the light snuffs out.

The man turns his head, his gaze following something.

His eyes are glassy as they tilt up and look out over the darkened city. There is a shift in the wind, a chill breeze, and the air seems to bend around the curves of a woman, transparent and hovering in the night sky, floating above the street.

The man lifts his arms and grasps at the air. Then, scrambling, hungry, desperate, he clambers onto the railing, onto the ledge.

My stomach clenches, but my feet are still, my hands over my mouth as I watch him reach out over seven hundred and twenty-eight feet of air. Reaching out for something just beyond his grasp.

He takes a step, and the last I see of him is his smile, as if the phantom woman follows him down.

With a sated flash of orange, the lamp brightens, and then settles.

I slide forward, to the balcony and the cool night air, my hand outstretched.

When I rest my hand on the lamp, her yellow light glimmers and blinks, and I see again the faces of those who have too much, who eat away at the world around them and give nothing back.

I hear a scream, faint and distant, as the city discovers another jumper from the old Gasper Tower, and I realize that I am so high above the world that I never heard the slap of his body on the pavement.

Her flickering glow warms my hand, until, at the wail of a siren far below, she winks once more, then vanishes. I let my hand linger for a moment before I pull away.

I smile and tug the crowded keyring from my pocket as I turn and head for the stairwell.

The alley door must be locked again before the police arrive. They must have no reason for gratuitous questions.

This death must be an accident, with no suspicion aimed at me, the top floor janitor. She does not want to have to start over again with someone new.

I must not be as careless as her last custodian.