Self Storage

A Serial: Episode 5

5.

Eventually, all the available hallways were filled with images; there was hardly any wall space left. And yet the paintings kept appearing.

It was about this time that the messengers stopped arriving with his pay envelope, and K. started to open units he felt sure had been abandoned. The signs of abandonment were subtle: heavy dust on the latch; a rusty lock; hinges that showed no sign of having been separated recently. But the surest indication, K. found, was a lack of trash - paintings, specifically. While he could never be sure from which particular unit a given painting had come, K. felt confident that the paintings were not carried far within the building. A painting left at the end of an aisle was, he believed, almost certainly from that aisle, or at most one or two aisles away.

After a period of finding no trash in a given area, K. began more detailed examinations, such as placing bits of paper on latches, or tracing a line of chalk before doorways, to see if they were eventually disturbed. In time, K. became adept at detecting any sign of life that had made its way lately through a space. And he grew even better at the contrary: sensing a lack of life, not only in the present but projected backwards.

An abandoned unit presented this lifeless sensation from the outside; but from the inside, behind the closed door, K. could sometimes feel something else - lives embodied in objects. In the end, it was the contrast between these two - the abandoned exterior and the occupied interior - that determined which units K. would open. He thought of it as a ratio: the greater the difference in life, the more likely K. was to cut the lock.

Would an empty unit, visited regularly, possess this same ratio? K. worried about the potential miscalculation; but reasoned that in this case, the owner may not resent or even notice the intrusion, since there would be nothing inside to take.

The first unit K. opened - with camping supplies that had helpfully sustained him - he converted into a place to keep the additional paintings that kept appearing in the halls. The camping equipment had been neatly stored on racks, which K. was able to repurpose for smaller, easel works. But there were a couple of larger images that had surfaced recently, which would not fit in any kind of rack; indeed, they were too big to hang in any of the hallways, even if there were still space on the walls. These he decided to hang in the unit itself.

The paintings inside this unit could not serve as signs, as they were invisible to K. on his daily rounds. Nevertheless, K. found that knowing they were in a particular unit changed his sense of that part of the building. His sensations of occupation and abandonment - flipping back and forth like alternating current - stopped when he entered this hallway, which felt steady, or static. Was it because he himself was now occupying one of its spaces? he wondered. Or was it because that space no longer presented a binary choice, or a ratio, but was in a sense both wholly occupied and wholly abandoned - layered one over the other like the two times told by the clock.

It was in that very hallway that K. was startled one day by two young men - boys, perhaps, judging by their body language and constant nudging and pushing of one another. But if these were boys they had men’s faces: lined, careworn faces mismatched to their open-mouthed expressions.

K. never addressed the patrons he ran across - it was so rare in any case - because he felt they were there for private reasons, and as a representative of the facility he should act in a manner commensurate with that trust. His habit (one could hardly call it a habit, he had so little occasion to practice it, but it had been thoroughly worked out in advance) was to make his eyes available, though without seeking contact. If contact were made, he would acknowledge it directly and then avert his gaze, not in a manner that communicated actual aversion of course, but simply that he needed his eyes again to help direct him on his path. Above all, he decided, he would refrain from casual pleasantries like those he had heard his landlady use so often. “How are you?” seemed ridiculous in any case, given the anonymous nature of the storage business. “Nice weather” was equally inappropriate, since they would almost certainly be indoors, and largely in the dark. Other introductory phrases he rejected because they seemed to require a second exchange: a banal introductory remark such as, “Hello, I am the caretaker of this facility,” or a cheerful business inanity like, “Always glad to see the customers happy!” were gambits that might not lead directly to an exit. Safest, K. decided, was to say nothing, and follow the path of his eyes.

This time, the inanities came pouring out of the two men, however. “You are the caretaker!” said one, a bit taller than his compatriot, although the difference in height seemed to happen at the floor, since above the waist he was actually quite compact. His eyes stared at two points on either side of K.’s head, missing his form entirely. A cap was pushed back on his forehead, which like his body was quite short but sat above an elongated face punctuated by an open jaw, extending it even further down toward his gangly legs. His voice was loud, certainly much louder than necessary in the cavernous area of the building they found themselves in. And its echo was shrill, as if only the most grating tones managed to find the walls around them, the more mellow ones falling in a heap at K.’s feet.

K. looked to the other, not with surprise so much as curiosity. “You are the caretaker!” he said in turn, though with a different emphasis. This one was squat in the legs, but with a huge barrel chest that eventually swelled nearly to the height of his companion. His head was rounder than would allow for a cap. He had no hair, but this lent him the air of a baby more than an old man. Ears stuck out from this childish head at odd angles, which seemed to change as he rotated toward his companion to repeat, in a more concise variation: “The caretaker!”

“I am indeed, gentlemen,” said K., maintaining the formality he felt appropriate. He said nothing further, in the hope that this exchange would go only one round. Eyes back to the path, he leaned forward and was about to take his next step when both men slid in front of him, like doors closing together. They were surprisingly adroit in this maneuver, K. noticed, as if out of long habit.

“Don’t you want to know our names?” said the taller one, sounding hurt. “We know yours!” added the shorter one, for which he received a swift kick in the shin from his companion. This was returned with a punch in the arm. Which led to a shoving match between the two so violent, K. was forced to step backwards, rather than ahead as he had planned. The scuffling subsided.

“Thank you for your kindness,” said K, trying to diffuse what he judged was becoming a difficult situation. “However, please be assured your anonymity is safe with me, as a professional representative of this self-storage facility.”

The two stared at K., the tall one’s eyes drifting further apart, the short one’s ears waving forward and back like feelers. A silent moment passed between the three, bonding them together in the atmosphere of the building. Dust disturbed by the pair’s scuffling began to settle back onto horizontal surfaces: latches, the tops of paintings, the toes of their shoes.

“So you know us?” said the tall one at last, pushing some of the floating dust toward K. with his breath. “Anonymous is what we are supposed to be, but you knew that too.”

“I bet he doesn’t know your real name, Art,” said the short one. The tall one punched him in the stomach. “That is my real name!” he said. “Just like yours is Jerry.”

Jerry returned the punch, but to the jaw. “Jeremiah!” he said in a strangled voice. “Arthur!” said Art, throwing Jerry to the dusty floor. The two rolled past K., who stepped aside and decided to pursue the original plan, averting his eyes and continuing his path.