He was slender and quiet, with sleepy blue eyes and straight teeth, and he lived in the Preemption apartment building. James worked on Wall Street, as an accountant for Harrow East, a financial juggernaut stock company. At Harrow East and elsewhere during the day, James spoke to almost nobody. At night, though, James talked to Otis, the elevator in the Preemption. He didn’t talk to any elevator operator or any elevator passengers. He talked to the elevator itself. Ever since he’d been little, being silent around others had made sense to James. An only child, he’d grown up in northernMinnesota, in a small town called Morris, where his daily options had been hockey or homework. Ruthlessly shy and in possession of a severe stutter, James had chosen his bedroom and his books over the company of his peers. Throughout his childhood he had a succession of private speech tutors—all men, all American—who failed to unlock James’s thickly crippled tongue. Each tutor lasted around six months and was then sent away.
