At eight seventeen, Dev recorded a voice message for his sister.
"Last one. Ten minutes."
He deleted it before sending and recorded another.
"Last one. Soon as I can."
The man at the desk pointed past the elevator.
"Service stairs. Just up there."
"Fourteenth floor?"
"Goes quickly."
The lobby smelled of cut flowers. Someone had arranged white branches in a vase taller than Dev's daughter. The elevator opened for a woman holding a bag of groceries, then shut before he could ask.
He took the stairs.
By the fourth floor the soup was burning through the insulated bag against his hip. He changed hands. His phone showed a message from his sister: Mia had her shoes on. His sister needed to leave at eight forty.
On the eighth landing, he stopped to breathe.
The handrail was warm and yielded a little under his palm.
He wiped his hand on his trousers.
At fourteen, he found a blank wall.
The number was screwed into the plaster. There was no door, only an intercom.
He pressed it.
"Delivery. Fourteen-oh-two."
"One more flight."
He climbed to fifteen.
The wall had an intercom in the same place.
"There isn't a door."
"Just above you."
Dev checked the order. Fourteenth floor. He took a photograph of the number fifteen and attached it to a message.
Then he saw the footprint.
It was pressed into the next step, a herringbone sole with a missing triangle at the heel. His right shoe had lost that triangle last winter.
He set his foot beside it.
The print deepened.
Dev backed onto the landing. His heel met something soft. He looked down and saw the impression of a hand beneath the rail: four fingers, a thumb, the chipped crescent of an index fingernail.
He'd chipped his nail closing the van door that morning.
The print filled slowly with a pale, wet material.
He left the food by the intercom and ran down.
Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.
At twelve, the soup bag waited beside the wall.
He kicked it down the next flight. The lid came off one container. Broth splashed across the steps and disappeared into them without leaving a stain.
His phone rang.
"Where are you?" his sister asked.
"Something's wrong with the stairs."
"What?"
He tried the door that should have led to the twelfth-floor corridor. There was only an outline now, as though someone had drawn a door and rubbed it away with a thumb.
"Dev, I have to go."
"Call someone to stay with her."
He heard Mia asking for the phone.
"I can't talk to her right now."
The rail tightened under his hand.
He pulled free and called emergency services.
The dispatcher answered. He gave the building's name twice, then the street number from the delivery order. His voice sounded foolishly loud.
"I'm trapped in the service stairwell."
"Which floor?"
He looked at the number.
"It says twelve. It was fifteen."
"Are you hurt?"
A step rose under his left heel. He lifted his foot, but the surface stretched after it.
"Send someone. Please."
She told him to stay on the line.
Dev wedged the phone into his jacket pocket, speaker on. He bent to pull his shoe free. His knee touched the stair, and the surface cupped it.
Below his hand, an anti-slip strip had peeled at one corner. He caught it with his broken nail and pulled.
Under the black rubber was a mouth.
The lips were pressed into a narrow horizontal seam. They moved when his fingers brushed them. A tooth scraped the underside of the strip.
He let go.
"Sir?" the dispatcher said.
He couldn't make his breath into an answer.
The stairwell smelled of soup and the inside of somebody's coat.
Dev planted his free foot against the wall and pushed. His trapped shoe tore, leaving him briefly hopeful, but the material had reached his ankle. He tried to stand straight. The landing rose against his back.
He turned sideways, throwing out both arms to keep himself wider than a step.
His right elbow found a hollow exactly its size.
"Mia's waiting," he told the voice in his pocket.
The wall pressed him forward.
His knees folded together. Something moved through his hips with the slow pressure of a crowded train, everybody making room for one more person. He kept his mouth open until the underside of the next tread closed it.
For a moment he could see the entire flight through one eye.
Then the man from the lobby came up carrying a roll of black rubber.
Dev moved his eye. Left, right. Left, right.
The man crouched.
From the jacket pocket, the dispatcher was saying help had arrived.
The man's thumb smoothed the rubber over Dev's eye. He worked from the center outward, pressing down the edges with a small roller.
Footsteps came up behind him.
"Someone called from here?"
"We've checked every landing," the man said.
Dev tried to scream. The rubber warmed against his eye.
The footsteps went up, then came down again. Someone tested an ordinary door. A radio crackled. For a while the dispatcher kept speaking.
Later, Mia called from her aunt's phone.
The ringtone reached Dev through his folded chest. He had chosen it so he would know her call even with traffic around him.
A shoe came down on his back.
The new courier felt a vibration through the sole of his shoe. He stopped and took out his own phone.
"Thought that was me," the man muttered.
The shoe lifted, and another took its place.
