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by James Hynes

  “It’s not as steep as it looks,” he says.

  “Maybe we should take off our shoes,” says Melody. “For better traction.”

  Kevin nods, and without releasing hands, they each use a free hand to bare their feet. Kevin lets his remaining shoe drop and it skids to a stop halfway down the slope. He peels off his socks one-handed and tosses them limply after the shoe. Melody bends at the waist, demurely twisting her knees, and takes off one pump and then the other, placing them neatly side by side next to her, at the edge of the crack. They sit with their bare feet brushing the sloping floor, which, to Kevin’s touch, is feeling warmer than it ought to. Waggling their backsides, they press closer together, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, their hands squeezed together between them. This, thinks Kevin, is the last time I’ll ever touch a woman.

  From behind them comes a rush of heat, as if someone has opened an oven door, and simultaneously they look back to see orange flame sheeting through the smoke along the ceiling, swelling like a tide up and back, up and back, a little closer to the gap with each surge. Kevin and Melody can feel each rising increment of heat on their backs, can feel it tightening the skin of their cheeks and foreheads. They look at each other, and neither of them speaks for a moment.

  “You’re a Christian?” he says.

  She nods.

  “I know a story about this martyred saint, I forget his name.” Kevin had heard this from Father Vince, his mother’s priest. “The Romans roasted him alive over a fire, and just before he died, he said, ‘You can turn me over now, I think I’m done on this side.’ ”

  Melody’s eyes fill with tears. “This isn’t a time to joke.”

  “If not now,” says Kevin, “when?” He nudges her. He’s crying, too.

  “Will you pray with me?” she says.

  What for? thinks Kevin. To whom? And suddenly he’s angry at the God he doesn’t believe in for abandoning them to this, for looking away when they need him, for lying down on the job. Way to go, lord. Nice work, asshole. Thanks for nothing, motherfucker.

  “Why don’t you pray for both of us?” he says.

  Melody tightens her grip on his hand, making it sting almost unbearably, and as the heat from above begins to sting their backs and singe their hair, she closes her eyes and says, “Heavenly Father, please forgive my sins and the sins of this good man here—”

  Actually, I’m not so good, thinks Kevin.

  “—and take us both quickly to Your bosom—”

  A-fucking-men. As quickly as possible. We’re going to burst like water balloons.

  “—and please, dear Lord, look after my family and this man’s family and ease their sorrow and help them know that we reside in Your house now, with You, where there’s no more pain and uncertainty and fear, forever and ever.”

  This is unbearable, thinks Kevin. I’d rather jump than listen to this. But at the same time, he thinks, keep talking. Don’t stop.

  “In Jesus’ name,” says Melody, opening her eyes, “amen.”

  Kevin’s eyes are stinging with tears and smoke. The smoke’s lowering slowly over their heads like a hood, and he can feel the backs of his ears blistering, can feel the heat pounding through his jacket and his shirt and scalding his back. Kevin grips Melody’s hand, and without speaking they scootch over the crack and bump onto the tilted floor below. Right away gravity drags at their ankles, and they slide too fast, their bare feet scuttling like crab legs without purchase.

  “No,” whispers Melody, as if she’s afraid of being overhead, “no no no no no no no.” She grips his hand so tightly that his blood squeezes through their fingers. Their feet are scrabbling like cartoon feet, and the edge of the drop slides irrevocably toward them, but at the last moment Kevin and Melody simultaneously plant their feet and skid painfully to a stop, their momentum almost, but not quite, tipping their center of gravity over the edge. Instead they rock back onto their backsides, squatting barefoot a few inches from the drop like a pair of shoeless peasants. Kevin’s heart is pounding, and he can feel Melody’s pulse, too, through the warm, slick grip of their palms.

  “Know any more jokes?” Melody says breathlessly.

  Kevin starts to laugh, and for a moment he’s afraid he’ll never stop, that he’ll laugh so hard that he’ll rock them over the edge. A scrim of smoke rises from below, dimming the blue sky and obscuring the construction crane and the condo tower with a hole in it and the tiny white faces watching them from windows in the building across the street. Kevin can see past his knees straight down into the street below, and it makes his stomach churn. He sees the little oblongs of fire trucks and ambulances and cop cars, all at irregular angles to each other. He sees dots scurrying between them.

  “Guy falls off the top of a skyscraper,” he manages to say, and Melody catches her breath.

  “No, listen.” Kevin squeezes her hand. “Guy falls off a skyscraper, and halfway down, he passes the window of a guy he knows, and the guy in the window says to him, ‘Hey, Bob, long time no see. How you doing?’ And the guy who’s falling says…”

  “ ‘So far, so good,’ ” says Melody. “Everybody knows that one.”

  Kevin shrugs. “I guess.”

  At least it’s a little easier to breathe here. The sheet of fire is still some ways above them, and the smoke is being carried upward through the gap above them. Through the scrim of smoke Kevin can see a helicopter, its rotors sparkling in the sun. It looks like a toy. He’s afraid to move, afraid to make the slightest shift, afraid to even turn and look at Melody. They’re both trembling, and it doesn’t seem to matter how tightly they cling to each other, they shudder like a pair of dry leaves in the wind.

  “I’m sorry,” says Kevin.

  She’s looking at him, but he can’t bear to look back at her.

  “For what?” she says.

  “For everything.” Kevin’s mouth is very dry. He turns to her finally. Stella’s not here, Beth hasn’t spoken to him in ages, who knows where Lynda or the Philosopher’s Daughter are these days, so Melody will have to do. “Will you forgive me?”

  He realizes that he’s left her an opening to bring up God again, but instead she dips her head and nuzzles him. Her hair scrapes his cheek, and she presses his hand to her heart. He takes her chin in his hand and lifts her face. Both their faces are sooty, and where they aren’t sooty, they’re sweating and reddened from the heat. But their eyes are dry, and she looks at him as if she’s known him for years, knows everything about him, all his secrets, good and bad and in between, and loves him anyway.

  “Yes,” she says. “I forgive you.”

  He kisses her. Her lips are salty, and he feels the fingers of her other hand trembling on his cheek. They embrace at the edge, cheek to cheek, and through her singeing hair, Kevin can see the inverted river of fire, filling the space above where they’d been a few moments before. Kevin shuts his eyes and dips his head and whispers hoarsely in her ear, “Are you ready?”

  “No,” she whimpers.

  “There’s no more time.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “It’s all right,” Kevin says. “I’ll do it.”

  She tightens her arms around him. “Don’t let go of me.”

  “I won’t,” Kevin says, and in one sudden movement he presses their joined hands to his chest and jerks his shoulders forward, pitching them over the edge.

  For an instant Kevin thinks, maybe prayer works!, because they just seem to hang there, buffeted by the wind. His eyes open to the whole Google Maps panorama of Austin turning slowly below them—the ant-busy street below, the buildings thrusting up toward them, the hammered verdigris green of the river, the sun-faded hills studded with red roofs—and for a nanosecond his heart swells with the hope of a miracle, that they will soar like angels, wafting hand in hand to the pavement below to land gently on the balls of their feet like the risen dead before the eyes of breathless office workers and astounded first responders. But it’s not a miracle, it’s not a moment of salv
ation, and let’s hope Melody didn’t think her God was rapturing her at the last moment. She’s not an angel—not yet, anyway—and Kevin’s not either, he’s just Wile E. Coyote, and he’s overshot the edge of the cliff to hang there just long enough to make a mournful face and hold up a sign that says HELP! The next instant they’re plummeting into a sixty-mile-per-hour wind, Kevin’s jacket snapping behind him like a cape, his blood-stained tie whipping over his shoulder. Melody’s hair is streaming, her skirt is pressed between her legs, her jacket puffed with wind. The two of them are pinned, no doubt, against the faded blue sheet of Austin’s sky, or against the gashed, rectilinear facade of the burning building, by the lenses of cell phones and news cameramen, witnessed live over cable news networks and the Web, doomed to be replayed endlessly in a loop, YouTubed over and over and over again, the pair of them a tragedy or a rallying cry or a sick joke, stripped of their individuality in the three and a half seconds it takes for them to fall.

  Then their hands are pulled apart and they’re falling separately, from fifty stories up, at a terminal velocity of fifty-five meters per second. Kevin’s got just three seconds to live, and he wants to know a lot of things all at once. Is this going to hurt? Why doesn’t anyone stop this? What did I do to deserve this? Isn’t my life supposed to be flashing before me? Where’s my highlight reel? I want a fucking highlight reel! Turns out I was middle-aged at twenty-five, only I didn’t know it. Where’s Melody now? Did she let go of me or did I let go of her? He’ll never know now, but so what? Everybody dies alone, but at least she’s got a family, she’s got children, someone’s going to miss her. Who’s going to miss me? Nobody I know even knows I’m here, and nobody here knows who I am. Who’s going to remember me? Who’s even going to notice that I’m gone, and how long is it going to take for them to notice, and how long is it going to take for them to figure out where I was when I died?

  The wind is punishing his eyes, but Kevin keeps them open, watching the upturned faces below scattering from his descent. None of them know who I am, I might as well be a 180-pound sandbag as far as they’re concerned. Who will mourn me? Who will write my eulogy and what will they say? Will I even have a eulogy? He was too young to give the eulogy at his father’s funeral, and it fell to his father’s brother Tim, who showed up drunk at the church and rambled and sobbed and lost his place in his notes. Later he typed up what he’d meant to say and mailed a copy each to Kevin and Kevin’s mom and Kevin’s sister, and now Kevin doesn’t know where his copy is anymore, he never read it anyway, it’s one more worthless piece of paper he’s leaving behind for someone else to dispose of. Who? Kathleen, probably, he can’t imagine Mom doing it, she’ll slide deeper into her bottle of Gordon’s, staring out through the glass while Kathleen shoulders the burden, which is what Kathleen always does, but then there’s also Stella, his de facto widow; Stella will cry buckets and shudder with grief and no one will ever know how much she means it, maybe not even Stella.

  Kevin writhes in the air, the wind thumping in his ears, the tower streaking past. He glimpses Melody one last time, her legs pedaling, her arms flailing, her face obscured by her hair. Still alive, though, as he still is, if only for another instant. So far, so good.

  What’s Stella doing right now? What is she doing right this instant? His watch is still set to Michigan time, but he’s dying in the Central Time zone, and it’s the same time in Chicago that it is here, and that brings her closer to him somehow. She’s not in the bar with some guy, she wouldn’t do that, Stella loves me, I’m pretty certain of it, she wouldn’t do that. She doesn’t know what’s happening to me, she can’t sense it, but she’s thinking of me anyway, she’s on her way out of the Sheraton on an errand that has to do with me, and it’s poignantly ironic because she’s passing the bar where a crowd is watching the breaking news on CNN and she’s not turning to see what all the fuss is about as the growing knot of midday drinkers and conventioneers draws a collective breath at the video of two wriggling figures falling from a burning office tower in Austin, Texas. Déjà vu all over again. But Stella’s too wrapped up in her thoughts of me at the moment, she’s stepping out of the Sheraton briskly and expertly on her high heels, her purse slung over her shoulder, out onto the streets of Chicago where it’s as midsummer hot as it is in Texas, and she’s carrying herself with that lovely feral walk that I still love even though she annoys me and terrifies me, she’s carrying herself purposefully in search of a CVS or a Walgreens, she’s already got the address from the hotel concierge, and she marches up the fluorescent lit aisle of the store in search of a home pregnancy test, the one she used last month didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear, but now she’s missed her period again, and she buys the little box at the pharmacy counter from a bored young black pharmacy clerk, and Stella twinkles at the young woman, trying to get her to share in Stella’s anticipation, but the clerk’s not going for it, it’s just another boring moment in the middle of her boring shift. But Stella doesn’t let that bother her, she never lets the indifference of others bother her, and no, she doesn’t want a bag, thanks, she just sticks the box and the receipt in her purse and sails out of the store into the sticky heat again, eating up the sidewalk in long strides like a runway model, though her legs are too short and too muscular for that, and she hardly notices the crowds on Michigan Avenue or the bleary sun or the odor from the sluggish river alongside the hotel, though it seems like a longer walk going back than it did coming, even though it’s the same distance, silly, I know that, but even Stella understands the psychology of it, she’s carrying a secret, or the promise of a secret and she can’t wait to be back in her room, and that’s where she is right now, her purse and her suit jacket dumped on the bed, her pumps kicked off on the carpet, the box of the pregnancy test ripped open on the bathroom counter along with the folded sheet of instructions, which she hasn’t bothered to read because she’s done this before, she knows the drill, and she’s sitting on the toilet with her skirt tugged up and her panties around her ankles, and she’s pigeontoed, holding the stick under her stream, concentrating with her lips pursed like it’s painful. The bathroom door’s open and the TV’s on with the sound off, not CNN, thank God, that would be too poignant, but Bravo, probably, showing a marathon of one of those hideous housewives shows she likes so much, and apart from the upholstered hush of the room and the rumble of ventilation, the only sound is the patter of Stella’s micturition against the stick and into the bowl. Then she sets it aside, pulls up her panties, tugs down her skirt, stands barefoot on the icy bathroom floor, washing her hands and watching herself in the mirror—is that the face of a mother?—and then she picks up the test and pads out onto the carpet, instinctively shaking the stick as if it were a thermometer or a Polaroid, and she sits on the end of the tall bed with her bare feet dangling like a little girl and watches the zaftig, bitchy housewives with the sound off, until at last the test is ready, and she reads the result by the light of the TV, then looks up at herself again in the mirror over the desk. Hi, Mom! Still holding the stick, her heart pounding, happily oblivious to the tang of her own pee, she plunges her hand into her purse on the bed and comes up with her phone, then rises from the bed and floats barefoot over the carpet to the window, where she gazes out at the sunlight glinting on the dirty water of the Chicago River below, then lifts her eyes to the glittering meniscus of Lake Michigan, in what she guesses is roughly the direction of Ann Arbor, and she starts to tear up at the thought of her boyfriend, her landlord, her lover, not quite her husband, the man she isn’t entirely sure loves her. She flips the phone open one-handed, turns it on, cants her head to one side like Carrie Bradshaw, lets her middle finger hover over his speed dial number—think fast, Kev, you’re going to be a father—but she doesn’t press the button, because on second thought maybe it’s not such a good idea to tell him over the phone, it’s the middle of the day, he’s at work, he doesn’t always answer his phone and even if he does, he might not take it well. Because anyway you look at it, this is
going to be a difficult negotiation. Stella’s too savvy not to know that. Better work up to it and tell him in person, tell him after dinner tomorrow night, after a heavy meal, get a bottle of wine in him and cuddle with him on the sofa, where she can tell him face to face while she’s touching him, reassuring him, coddling him along like the big baby he is, before she starts to remake him into the man she needs him to be. She flips the phone shut again and stands at the window hugging her secret to herself with her phone in one hand, her other hand cocked at the wrist and brandishing the pregnancy stick like a cigarette holder. I’m ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille. She’s crying from happiness, sure, but from anxiety, too, and from anger, because what’s that grump of a boyfriend going to do when she tells him?

  Kevin’s crying, too, but tearlessly, because the wind of his descent is sandblasting his face. I love you! he wants to shout, but the wind’s also pummeling his lungs, he’s dizzy and lightheaded and he might even pass out before he hits the pavement, which would be a blessing, but he desperately wants her to know this one thing, he wants it to wing through the ether via some sort of telepathic wormhole, he wants to tell her that he loves her, that he always did and he always will, though the future tense doesn’t mean much at the moment and is losing value fast, at fifty-five meters per second. But I want you to know that, Stella, I want you to remember that I loved you when you hear the news, I want you to remember that I loved you when you realize I went to Austin without telling you, I want you to remember that I loved you when you understand what I was doing there, I want you to remember that I loved you when you realize that I was thinking of leaving you—I want you to know that I loved you and was thinking of you at the very last moment of my life.

  Will she forgive him? Is there time for that? Maybe not, that’ll have to come later, if at all, and Kevin hasn’t got any more time. What’s he got to look forward to now? He won’t be there when she comes home on Tuesday to an empty house, he won’t be there when she gets a call from his sister, Kathleen, because when they pull his driver’s license from his pulped remains, Kathleen’s his emergency contact, he never got around to changing it to Stella, and Kathleen and Stella don’t get along—Stella sets my teeth on edge, Kathleen told him in a rare moment of candor, and Stella’s always offering to help Kathleen lose some weight, if, you know, she really wants to make the effort—Stella’s going to have to hear it from her, maybe even off the answering machine or voice mail, as she stands in Kevin’s empty house, carrying his child. Oh, she’s gonna hate me, she’s gonna despise me, she’s going to be mortally wounded, well, maybe not mortally, since Kevin is getting a sudden, instantaneous tutorial in what “mortally” really means, and in this last, infinitesimal moment of his life, as the litter in the street and the grain of the pavement rush at him, he’s hoping that she takes it in stride, and he’s pretty sure she will, Stella is nothing if not a survivor, Stella’s a fighter, Stella has an uncanny way of landing on her feet, Stella keeps her sunny-side up, Stella makes lemonade. Stella’s going to be okay, Stella will get another man, even though that might be harder to do if she has a kid, and not just a kid, but a kid by a man who died in some spectacularly public and horrible fashion, who’s even a kind of minor celebrity now, one of the two jumpers from the tower in Austin. Look at the mess I’m making, and I’m not even dead yet. But even if she doesn’t get another man, she’ll raise the kid all by herself, she’ll buy every baby book in the baby book section and she’ll clean out Baby Gap and Ikea and stuff the house to the rafters with kid paraphernalia—no, it’s the kid he ought to be worried about at the very last, the son or daughter who right now is only pee on a stick and few thousand cells in Stella’s belly, it’s the kid who’s going to have to face life without a father, it’s the kid who’s going to learn at a tender age that his father died before he even got the news that he was going to be a father, it’s the kid who’s going learn that her father’s death will have been seen by millions before she was even born. Deal with that, munchkin, it’s bad enough to lose your dad at a young age, and I ought to know, but my own kid will have to live with the knowledge that the most important fact he’ll know about me is the way I died.