PUKE

Two caretakers stood in the foyer on the ground floor by the closed lift door when I got back.
‘Morning,’ I said.
‘Someone’s puked in there,’ said the female CT.
I looked at her and said, ‘why can’t they cover it with newspaper when they’re sick in the lift?’
‘Cover it with newspaper?’ she said. ‘Why don’t they clean it up?’
‘I think we should phone their mothers’,’ I said.
‘Phone their mothers’?’ said the male CT, ‘some of them are fifty or more.’
An air of detached resigned despair seemed to emerge and occupy us briefly.
‘It just happened?’ I asked. ‘It wasn’t there when I left earlier.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘what it is, someone opened the coffin hole and puked in there. The lift looked clean but it was beginning to smell that’s when we found it. It’s just in the runners now.’
The lift door opened.
‘You’re always going up,’ said the male CT to the woman we saw stood there with a pushchair and two children.
‘It’s the only way to go,’ she said.
‘What floor you on?’ the male CT asked me as the lift door closed for ascent.
I told him.
‘You go up first then I’ll clean the runners.’
‘Sure you don’t want to do it first?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’ll only flick everywhere.’