She was behind him, no backpack of her own, just a plastic bag that she said held some Dixie cups and snacks. He didn’t know if she’d brought condoms or not, but he had a pocketful. He’d never gotten anyone pregnant in his life that he knew of, and that was a good thing. At her age, he wasn’t sure if she could even get pregnant. But since he didn’t really know her, there was always the tiny possibility that she was worried about her biological clock, and saw him as a possible sperm donor. I just want my seed spilled where it won’t do anything but lie there, he thought, realizing that the metaphor was a strange one, full of double entendres, and he almost laughed. The thought of disease didn’t worry him at all.
Behind him, she said, “You’re about to put your hand in a bunch of poison ivy.” She was right; the three-pointed leaves quivered in the slight wind from his breath as he drew his hand back from the weak part of the fence. Her voice was quiet, but not a whisper; there didn’t appear to be anyone else around. Careful to avoid the poison ivy, he pulled up on the fence, which bent obligingly up, till they could walk through if they stooped. He led the way, and then held the flap of wire fencing back for her. Once she was through he carefully put the fencing back in place, the way he always had. They stayed silent as they made their way across the parking lot, across asphalt so cracked and uneven it looked like an earthquake had stirred up the dirt underneath.
The night was fine and clear, with sharp, bright stars overhead and the red glow of the city just visible above the trees to the west. The entire vast parking lot could be seen with one turn of the head, and it was clear that they were alone. The only sounds were distant ones: the buzz of an air-conditioning unit outside the closest house; a motorcycle bursting loudly up to speed on Ardmore Boulevard, only two blocks away but remote over a tree-covered rise; firecrackers popping on a concrete driveway. All distant sounds, all benign.
He took her hand then, and looked her in the eye. Now was a critical time; he needed to make sure she continued to think this was fun, a romantic adventure they were sharing, not a sordid episode, which it could easily morph into if it wasn’t handled with careful, experienced hands. He smiled, she smiled back, and he felt himself relax.
“Let’s go up on the platform,” he said in a soft voice. He pointed to the rusty metal steps that began in shadows at the base of the atom smasher, perched on the unlovely rectangle of corrugated steel and concrete.
“It’s really big when you’re right next to it,” she whispered.
“Are you afraid of heights?” he asked.
“Not really. But I’m not a kid anymore, you know? I’m in pretty good shape, but still, all those stairs.”
“They used to be pretty sturdy. Even if they’ve rusted more since I was here last, the metal was really thick. They should still be okay.”
They made their way to the base of the stairs, and he put out a hand to find where the railing started. It was rough with rust, and he waited until his eyes adjusted to the dimness and he could get a better look to see if the metal staircase had deteriorated in the decade since he’d last climbed it. It was too dark to see well, and although he had a flashlight, he didn’t want to use it unless he had to; there was a good chance that it would be seen by neighbors if anyone was near a window. He shook the railing, but it didn’t budge, so he put his foot on the first step. It too felt firm, and now his eyes were darkadapted enough that he could see the sturdy gray outline of the staircase reaching up to the bulge of the dome. He went up two more steps, and then turned and reached his hand down to her. She took it.
There were two platforms: one at the widest part of the inverted pear shape of the atom smasher dome, and a smaller one at the very top, like a widow’s walk. The steps ended halfway to the lower platform, replaced by a ladder; this too seemed in good shape, still firmly attached, and so the rest of the climb to the first platform was no harder than he remembered. After stepping off the ladder, he reached down for her hand and helped her the rest of the way onto the metal floor. Fortunately, it was a solid steel sheet and not grillwork, or he would never have had the success he’d had up here; no sleeping bag would have been thick enough to make it comfortable. The sinking of the sun had cooled the hills, and so they’d each changed clothes since the afternoon; both had on jeans and running shoes and long-sleeved shirts. Hers was black and plain, his was a Steelers jersey.
He pulled a blanket out of his backpack; it was the spare one kept in a box under his bed, so his mother wasn’t likely to miss it, even if she went snooping. He spread the blanket over the metal floor of the platform and then reached into his pack again for the magnum of wine that he’d managed to cadge from the cookout. Dana pulled a handful of cloth handkerchiefs from her plastic grocery bag, whispering an apology that she was a “clean freak” and liked to be able to wipe off her hands. She put the handkerchiefs in her jeans pockets, and then produced two Dixie cups circled with little purple flowers from her plastic bag, separated them, and handed both to Ronnie. He unscrewed the bottle, joking about the fact that there was no cork. He filled a cup and handed it to her. When he had his own, they toasted silently, the cups making no sound as they touched.
“I think we’re safe now,” he said.
She laughed softly. “So what made you think of this place? Do you bring all the women you meet up here?”
He shook his head, taking another sip of the paper-flavored wine. “Only the special ones.” He laughed too, feeling the air brush him, seeing the stars on the carpet of trees in the valley below them that were really the lights of the eastern suburbs, North Versailles and Turtle Creek. The exotic names of the not-very-exotic places that had created him. “The truth is, I haven’t been up here in almost fifteen years. Not since my senior year in high school.”
“Really? I guess I really am special.”
He laughed again, not telling her that he hadn’t been home enough since then for it to become an issue anyway. “Didn’t you ever sneak in here? Maybe climb up to the top on a dare?”
“I don’t take dares,” she said. “Of course I’ve been here. Everyone comes here sooner or later. But not in a long, long time. And even when I was a kid, I believed all the stories about radiation.”
He was about to mention the ghost of Boneless Bernie, but thought better of it. Her hair was still up in that cute bunchy ponytail, and he said, “I’d like to kiss you.”
“I’d like to kiss you too,” she replied. “But not yet.”
He nodded and leaned back, resting against the curved metal behind him.
“Are you sure it’s not still radioactive?” she aked.
“I have no idea,” he said. “But I’m not interested in having kids, so I don’t think it matters much.”
“Still, you don’t want to die young for a dumb reason like that—because you leaned against a building that happened to poison you.”
“I think it’s shielded,” he said, although he didn’t really know. “I can’t believe they’d leave it just sitting here if it was spraying radiation all over the place.”
“Well, they don’t expect people to be up here rolling around in it.” There was a smile in her voice, and he could tell she wasn’t really worried, so he decided to change the subject.
“I’ll tell you about my train wreck if you tell me about yours.”
“What train wreck?”
He poured them each more wine, saying, “Both of us have just moved back in with our parents. I didn’t do it because it made my life more worth living. I did it because I have to. I don’t want to assume the same for you, but the odds are, you’re not back home because it’s your life’s ambition either.”
She laughed again, a lovely soft sound that revealed perfect teeth gleaming in the soft glow from the light on the street on the far side of the building behind them. It radiated around the huge metal structure like a shadow in reverse.
“He lost his medical license,” she said. “Too many kickbacks from a couple of drug companies. A little Medicare fraud.
He’s in Tacoma now. I wasn’t interested in following him.”
“Man, that’s cold,” he said, smiling.
“Not as cold as living in a slum in San Francisco. What about you?”
“A similar story. But morally I didn’t do anything wrong. No offense to your ex.”
“You have my permission to offend him all you want.”
“Thanks. I just lost my job. Downsizing. Fucking economy.” He thought of Gary, then tried not to.
“To the fucking economy,” she said, saying the latter word properly, and they toasted again. A warm breeze made a brown curl dance by her left ear as she added, “So how many girls have you brought up here, exactly?”
He paused, then thought, she’ll laugh, but that’s okay. “Eleven.” He took a deep breath. The air was tinged with sulphur from the one remaining steel mill in Braddock, a few short miles away. He didn’t remember when the mills had filled the landscape and clotted the sky with fire and smoke. But she might, he thought. The notion was startling. He said, “There’s a thing about that. An interesting thing.”
“What’s that?” He again heard the smile in her voice. I’m going to do it with her, he thought. Right here, like old times. It won’t be right away, but that’s okay. One of the perks of being a grown-up is understanding the joys of delayed gratification.
“The interesting thing is about the girls. Every one of them had things happen to them after they were up here with me.”
“What?” Her voice had a little sharpness to it, maybe of fear, and he realized how badly he’d said it; she didn’t really know him and might think he meant something bad, so he hurried on. “No, no. I mean good things.” He drained the cup and reached for the bottle. “Really good things. Like, they got rich suddenly, or their parents did. Or they got scholarships. Or they got into their first choice college, even if they didn’t expect to.” He looked at her, and she was looking back, but it was difficult to read her face even though his eyes could see pretty well now that they’d spent so much time in the dark. “It was every single time. They each got what they really wanted. One girl really wanted to be a cheerleader, and she got picked two weeks later, against some pretty big odds. Some of them, the good stuff happened a bit later on, but all of them, every single one, has had a great life ever since. So far, anyway. Every single one.”
She was quiet for a moment, and he could feel his heart beating a little fast, and he waited with no idea what her reaction would be. Then she said, “You’re helping me out, is that what you’re saying?” And then she was laughing, and at first he was a little annoyed, even hurt, but then laughed with her as she added, “You’re a good luck charm. That’s so wonderful.”
He put his arm around her shoulders, and she let him. He expected her to lay her head upon his, but instead, she took another drink, draining the Dixie cup, and then held it in front of him. He moved his arm away to give her another refill. The air cooled and began to move more around them, and there were gray clouds appearing here and there in the sky, small ones with rose bellies from the city far below. The ambient light caught her straight white teeth as she grinned at him; then she said, “That’s amazing. Really amazing.”
“I know,” he said, relief clutching him, and he realized how tightly he’d held onto this truth about himself, a truth he’d never shared with anyone, even his wife. Of course, he’d never brought his wife up here. Now that she’d left him the moment the chips were down, he was glad. “I’m relieved that you don’t think I’m nuts. You don’t, do you?” He was feeling the wine now, feeling drunk for the second time that day, and he thought, I’d better slow down if I want everything to work later. He added, “It’s occurred to me that it was lucky for me too, at least it was until recently, and I thought, well, if I’m going to be superstitious, might as well go all the way. Maybe it brought me luck too, by setting me on the right path, or something. And I sure could use being set on the right path again. So maybe we can both get something out of it.” He thought, you’re drunk, stop talking.
She shifted suddenly, startling him. She placed her hand on his shoulder and used it to support herself as she stood up. She rocked a little, and he realized that she was drunk as well. Her hand moved from his shoulder to the side of the atom smasher as she steadied herself. Then she pulled her hand away, looking at the spot where her hand had pressed against the metal as though expecting to see a print in the dim light.
“It’s not radioactive,” he said, although in truth he didn’t know if there was any danger in touching the bare metal. He’d done it so many times in the past he couldn’t imagine there being something poisonous about the place, but he knew nothing about radiation; he knew about sports, for Christ’s sake, about batting averages and hat tricks and careers made by extraordinary feats of strength and coordination, and lost by torn sinews and addiction. Only not anymore. You’re just not that good.
He stood up, steadying himself the same way she had, his hand on the warm curved metal. It’s warm because it’s been sitting in the sun all day, he thought. Not because its atoms are burning up.
“I want to go up,” she said. “All the self-help books I’ve ever read say you have to take risks to get anywhere. You make your own luck. We’ll be lucky for each other. Let’s take a risk. Let’s go up.”
Two horizontal bars led from the platform to the bottom of the upper ladder; she grabbed the uppermost of these while stepping onto the lower one, and then she began to work her way left before Ronnie was fully on his feet. “Dana,” he said, using her name for the first time, an image of her tumbling forty or so feet down onto broken asphalt in his unwilling mind, maybe her brains coming out of her ears. She ignored him and moved onto the ladder without losing her grip while Ronnie looked on with growing dismay. Then she started climbing, slowly at first, then more quickly when the ladder turned into steps as it curved toward the top. There were handrails on either side which she touched only lightly, as though she didn’t want to get her hands any dirtier than she had to. When she was partially out of sight, she paused and turned slightly to look down at him, her body only a black silhouette against the pink and gray sky. The wind was blowing harder now, and her hair began to wave at him from the confines of its wild ponytail. “Come on, Ronnie,” she called softly, the wind carrying her voice away from him. “Be my good luck charm.”
And so he grabbed the horizontal rails, grateful that he didn’t have a fear of heights even when sober, although he knew that if he looked down or thought too much about what he was doing, that might change. He crab walked until he reached the ladder, only maybe fifteen feet away, then shifted his weight onto the ladder itself, deeply relieved that it seemed to be solid. It only creaked a little when it took on the weight of his whole body, and so he started to believe that neither of them was going to follow the flight path of Boneless Bernie. Ronnie moved up and up, beyond the point where the ladder curved into steps as it leveled off; the change was disorienting, making it tricky to find his center of balance, but he kept going until at last he was at the top.
The platform at the summit was little more than a crow’s nest with just enough room for two people to stand comfortably. It was protected by a waist-high metal railing, and she was gripping it with both hands, her back to the edge, facing him, so when he was able to stand free of the steps, slightly winded, he was only inches from her. He knew the view was spectacular; when he was young he tended to stay below when he brought company because of the lack of room up here, and even at night the cops could easily see you at the top if they were looking. But he had loved it, he remembered now, had loved creeping up here by himself on the occasional night when he was alone, or with a girl who was particularly daring. He never stayed long, and the climb had always been scary, but it had been worth it.
Dana let go of the railing, put her arms around his waist, and kissed him deeply on the mouth, her tongue caressing his teeth. Then she pulled her tongue out, sucking his into her with a wine-soaked fierceness that arouse
d him in a way he hadn’t known since adolescence.
She pulled back and laughed so softly that the wind carried it away altogether; he couldn’t hear it but could feel it radiating off her; it only made her more magnetic, more hot, more sexually necessary to him.
She said, “This place was my good luck charm too.” He could just make her voice out in the wind that blew the stars around over their heads. “Maybe it wasn’t you, Ronnie. Maybe it was the place itself.” She turned around, pushing her hips against the railing, and he pressed himself into her back, pressed himself in her ass, into the backs of her thighs. “Ronnie, I never thought about it before,” she was saying, “but you were right. Everything good for me started here.” Her body rubbed against his as she turned around, facing him again, and she had a handkerchief in her hand, and all he could think of was a handjob where she needed something to keep herself from getting all sticky. He could smell her warm, Merlotinfused breath as she said into his mouth, “I thought it was just an accident. Bad luck. But it was like a sacrifice or something. It’s been twenty-one years. Is that a significant number?” She laughed and Ronnie tried to understand what she was saying. “Maybe twenty years is the limit,” she continued. “I didn’t mean for anything to happen, but maybe that’s why everything went so well after that. I got everything I wanted.”
And then Ronnie realized that she was talking about Boneless Bernie, and he felt her hands, like pistons on his chest, two blows so hard they hurt, and who would expect a woman to be so strong she could hurt you like that? And then he felt like he was swimming, only it was through air instead of water. He hit something that felt sharp like a gunshot, and then he was free again, falling, and it was like a carnival ride that you know is a terrible mistake as soon as it starts moving, but you can’t get off no matter what, and even through the dark he could see her, so far up, blowing him a kiss, and already wiping down the railing at the top of the giant inverted teardrop, before he met the broken asphalt.
Pittsburgh Noir Page 3