KNEEL FOR NO ONE: Once A Servant, Now A Billoniare

The coffee hit him square on the chest before the apology ever left her mouth.

It scalded through his white work shirt in the time it took him to gasp. He pressed his notepad against the wet fabric more from shock than any practical reason, and the stack of files he'd been carrying fanned across the corridor floor like a deck of dropped cards.

"Watch where you're going!"

He bent slowly, gathering the papers one by one. The woman who had collided with him stood over him without bending. Her heels were the kind that cost more than his monthly salary and she wore them like weapons.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Elias said. His voice was level. He had trained it to be.

"You should be." She adjusted her blazer. "These are new shoes."

He looked at her shoes. They were spotless. The coffee had gone entirely on him.

"Yes, ma'am."

"And learn to use the service corridor. That's what it's there for."

She walked away and she didn't look back once.

Elias gathered the last of the papers, rose to his full height which was considerable, and stood alone in the corridor of the forty-second floor of Prescott Capital Group. The building's air conditioning hummed overhead. From the glass wall behind him the city sprawled thirty stories below, silver and indifferent.

He was thirty-two years old. He had a degree in Economics from the state university that sat in a drawer at home because it had never once opened a door for him here. He had worked at Prescott Capital for six years as a facilities coordinator, which was the title the company had given to the man who kept the building running and whose name nobody used unless something was broken.

He tucked the files under his arm and walked to the service corridor.

"She complained," Kevin said, barely looking up from his station.

Elias set the files on the counter. "Who did?"

"The woman from the forty-second floor. Landis. Helena Landis." Kevin's voice carried the tone of a man delivering bad news he was privately enjoying. "Said you bumped into her. Said you were rude about it."

"I apologised."

"She said you were rude," Kevin repeated, with emphasis, as if the distinction needed underlining. 

Elias looked at him. Kevin Marsh was the facilities manager, which meant he sat at a desk and managed the people who actually did the managing. He was a small man who wore large suits and spoke loudest in rooms where nobody was likely to disagree with him.

"I'll speak to her," Elias said.

"You won't." Kevin shuffled a paper that didn't need shuffling. "Doris from HR will handle it. You'll get a written note in your file. This is the second one this quarter." He paused for effect. "One more and we revisit your contract status."

Elias said nothing for three full seconds.

"She spilled her coffee on me," he said.

"I wasn't there, Elias."

"No," Elias agreed. "You weren't."

He picked up his clipboard and walked out before Kevin could find another sentence to punish him with.

Outside the building at half past five, the evening traffic moved in slow mechanical streams.

Elias stood on the pavement waiting for the crosswalk signal, his damp shirt cold now against his chest, and his phone buzzed with a message from his younger sister, Cora.

Mama's procedure was moved to Friday. Doctor says she needs the deposit before Wednesday or they can't hold the slot.

He stared at the message for longer than necessary.

Then he typed back: I'll handle it.

He stared at those three words after he'd sent them. He always sent those three words. Cora always replied the same way.

Her reply came quickly: You always say that.

He put the phone in his pocket and crossed the street.

The deposit was four hundred thousand naira. He had forty-seven thousand in his account. The math was not complicated. It was just cruel.

He took the long route home. He needed the time between the world and his front door.

The apartment was on the third floor of a building that had working electricity four days out of seven and a landlord who appeared precisely on the first of every month with the energy of a man who had never missed a payment in his life and expected the same enthusiasm from others.

Mrs. Briggs from the ground floor was standing at the base of the staircase when Elias came in.

She was sixty-three and the kind of woman who had seen enough of life to call it exactly what it was.

"That man came again," she said, meaning the landlord's representative. "I told him you were at work. He left a note."

"Thank you, Mrs. Briggs."

"Third time this month, Elias."

"Yes." He started up the stairs.

"Your mother doing any better?"

He paused on the second step. "She's holding on."

Mrs. Briggs nodded slowly. "I'll put some soup outside your door later. You look like a man who hasn't eaten since morning."

She wasn't wrong about that either.

He went upstairs and sat on the edge of his bed in the flat that smelled of old walls and effort.

The landlord's note was a single page with a highlighted amount. He folded it without reading it and placed it beside the previous two on the kitchen table.

His phone rang. It was not a number he recognised.

He answered.

"Is this Elias Cole?" A man's voice. Professional. Measured. The voice of someone who spoke for a living.

"Yes."

"My name is Solomon Briggs." A pause. "Not the woman downstairs. Different family entirely. I represent an estate and I've been looking for you for some time." Another pause, deliberate this time. "I wonder if you might be available to meet tomorrow morning. There are some matters regarding your father that require your immediate attention."

Elias went very still.

"My father," he said carefully, "died when I was four."

"Yes," Solomon Briggs said. "That's precisely what we need to discuss."