Now that the elevator door was open, I smelled something up here in my little slice of heaven that was so out of place it took a moment for me to recognize it: fresh paint. Once it was noted, I filed it. I had other fish to fry.

“This isn't right,” I said. “You know it isn't, Vern.”

He turned his frightening vacant eyes on me. Death in them, a black shape flapping and beckoning just beyond the faded blue. “What isn't right, Mr. Umney?”

“You're supposed to be here, damn it! Right here! Sitting on your stool with Jesus and your wife over your head. Not this!” I reached up, grabbed the card with the picture of the man fishing on the lake, tore it in two, put the pieces together, tore it in four, and then gave them the toss. They fluttered to the faded red rug on the floor of the elevator car like confetti.

“S'posed to be right here,” he repeated, those terrible eyes of his never leaving mine. Beyond us, two men in paint-splattered coveralls had turned to look in our direction.

“That's right.”

“For how long, Mr. Umney? Since you know everything else, you can probably tell me that, can'tcha? How long am I supposed to keep drivin this damned car?”

“Well... forever,” I said, and the word hung between us, another ghost in the cigarette-smokey elevator car. Given a choice of ghosts, I guess I would have picked Bill Tuggle's B. O.. .. but I wasn't given a choice. Instead, I said it again. “Forever, Vern.”

He dragged on his Camel, coughed out smoke and a fine spray of blood, and went on looking at me. “It ain't my place to give the tenants advice, Mr. Umney, but I guess I'll give you some, anyway – it being my last week and all. You might consider seeing a doctor. The kind that shows you ink-pitchers and you say what they look like.”