Mark and I were never really friends. We were neighbors and in a way co-workers as we helped maintain the building. I saw him on a daily basis but never knew what he did. But everyday after I had gotten ready, I'd step out of my room, close the door behind me and lock it. And Mark would be standing in the hallway holding two matching plastic buckets.
He'd hand me one of them and the two of us without a word would walk towards the elevator, buckets swinging, and then make an immediate right to take the stairs. The elevator has never worked. Not since I've lived here.
Together we'd walk down the narrow cigarette shoot of steps, the walls were a hard yellow, stained from years of runoff from the roof when the rains poured into this old building. Some people might ask why we lived here, and the answer was simple, rent was free as long as we completed a single task for the building daily.
When we finally got to the first floor, the two of us would look at each other. And every day we would have the same argument. It wasn't loud by any means. Or loose tongued. Mark would say, "It's your turn today." And I'd shake my head, "No I did it yesterday. Today's your day."
The two of us would stand there until one of us decided there was no point in lying. And open the door to the basement floors.
If the rest of the building was derelict and old with age, then the guts of this thing was the exact opposite. The walls were spotless, so clean in fact that they almost shined. The light down here glowed differently too. I don't know how to explain it. But I could see all the weathered old lines on Mark's face, every single pore and deep pocket, even the way the fluid under the dark bags lining his eyes moved as he walked - swishing back and forth as our empty buckets swung.
If the first basement was beautiful, the second one was absolutely luxurious. Tiles crept the floor and the lights were even more vibrant. It didn't matter how many times I scrubbed myself, I'd still look like a dirty rat in floor 2. Mark even worse. But it's not like either of us showered beforehand as we always needed one after we paid our rent. It's the smell mostly, completely beautiful, but the stench that permeated through the walls fused with my hair, skin, and nails. Even after I used the steel wool I kept near the bath, I could still smell it. It's one that I'll never forget. The smell of home.
The third floor was the deepest we needed to go, but a quick look down the stairs revealed many, many more floors below. I had never gone past the 3rd floor, but Mark has. He said it used to be necessary but not anymore.
On the third floor, we might as well have been in the sixteenth chapel. Everything was tall and grand, the ceiling had these small encrusted rocks that formed on the underbelly of the building. But I felt as if they weren't so sparkly and shiny, it would look like cists lining the back of a diseased throat.
There were long hallways and rooms here, but we never went into any of them. Instead we would keep walking, our feet knowing where to go even if they weren't willing. The smell down here was even worse. It ate at me. I know it. The little time we spent down here already made my skin rough to the touch as if I had been sleeping in a bed of sandpaper. I could feel it even when I blinked, the holes it created in my corneas, the feeling in the folds of my eyelids as they slid over my irises, rippling each time they went over the parts that had been eaten away. Each blink no more subtle than running my fingers over ripped panty hose.
