Thirty-Second Floor

Between the law firm on thirty-one
and the hedge fund on thirty-three,
there’s a floor I manage.

The button’s there.
Most tenants never press it.
Only my badge grants elevator access.
Others reach it by the service stairway,
those few who know where to look.

The space is untouched since 1987.
Dust drifts through emergency lighting.
Desks still hold coffee cups
with rings like tree rings, marking time.
A leather jacket hangs on a chair back.
A cigarette burn scars the reception desk—
back when people smoked indoors,
before Kawabata & Associates folded.

I’m not the only one who visits.
Footprints cross the dust sometimes.
A window cracked open for air.
Once, a lipstick mark on a wine glass
left on the ledge facing city lights.

We don’t meet, we caretakers of silence.
We follow unspoken rules:
disturb nothing but the stillness.
Take nothing. Add nothing.

I’ve brought guests here—
only those who understand.
The ones who get it stand at the windows
watching offices full of people working late,
grasping the luxury of being nowhere, officially.

The ones who ask too many questions
I don’t invite again.

Security knows, of course.
There’s an understanding:
this floor isn’t forgotten,
just waiting.

Sometimes I sit in the reception area,
lights off, listening to the building’s secret sounds:
water moving through pipes,
elevators dreaming up and down their shafts,
the city’s pulse through steel bones.

Tonight, after hours,
I’ll ride the elevator to thirty-two,
step into suspended time,
and practice the elegant art
of disappearing in plain sight—
thirty-two floors above the street,
in the heart of everything.