Before You Go

by Tommy Butler

  “Bannor, are you okay?”

  He shrugs. “I’m fine.” Bannor is as conditioned as the rest of us. Great, he may as well have said. Busy.

  “Did something happen?” I ask—seeking, like Rita, something more authentic.

  “Nothing to cry about.”

  It’s clear to me that this isn’t true. It’s also clear that I won’t get more out of him, so I don’t push. “I hate it, sometimes. This world.”

  Bannor sighs. “I can’t say I’ve seen enough of the world to hate it.” He turns to rest his hands on the railing, raising his eyes to take in Manhattan’s shining silhouette. “Well, would you look at that. Like a postcard.”

  “What you imagined?”

  “It was my daughter who imagined it. How she got it in her head, I don’t know, but she always wanted to come stand here and see the city at night. I told her I would take her someday.” Bannor’s hand falls to his side. His fingers clutch at the empty air. “I never did.”

  “That’s not your fault,” I tell him.

  “Maybe not. Or maybe it is a little. It doesn’t matter.” He straightens up, running his hands down the front of his suit. “It’s time for me to say goodbye, Elliot. This is the end of my road.”

  If I had thought my capacity to feel had been extinguished, I was wrong. My legs begin to quiver. I nearly fall over before Bannor reaches out a hand to steady me. “No,” I tell him, remembering his prophecy—that I would be there when he finally killed himself. “You set me up.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I’ll leave,” I say, scheming. “I’ll walk away. If I’m not here, you can’t die. You said so.” I manage to take one wobbly step, determined to flee in order to save my friend.

  “Elliot, please.” Bannor’s voice is filled with a rare hint of emotion that halts my escape. “I just want someone to see me.”

  My legs continue to shake, like the shoddy foundation of a structure that wasn’t built to last. We struggle so desperately to fabricate a human life. Be a baseball player, be a lover, be a productive member of the workforce. Be happy, be selfless. Declare a truth to your existence and erect it as a monument to the heavens, not realizing until too late that it was never anything more than crude scaffolding, prone to collapse. One or two good shoves is all it takes.

  I command my feet to stay. Bannor has never asked me for anything. I won’t allow myself to refuse his first and last request. “So that’s it?” I ask stupidly. “You’re going to jump?”

  “Leap,” he says. “I’m going to leap.”

  I feel myself starting to cry. “I’d really prefer that you didn’t.” My words sound pathetic to me—restrained, trite, shallow, utterly inadequate to express the despair flooding through me. When did I start talking like that? Have I been so well trained?

  “Sometimes the past just won’t let you go,” says Bannor. “No matter how hard you try.”

  “Is this what you saw?” I ask him. “Is this the future?”

  He nods. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “No,” I say firmly, resolutely, hoping my conviction will persuade him to stay.

  He steps forward and gives me a hug, patting me once on the back, soundly, as if to prove I’m there. He releases me and sits up on the railing, sweeping his legs over to stand on the lip, where he pauses to look at me.

  “I see you, Bannor.” My voice is the splintering of wood, the crash of metal bars.

  He takes off his homburg hat and presses it to his heart. “Thank you, my friend,” he says. “I see you, too.” Raising his free hand in farewell, he takes one step backward into the night. Then he’s gone.

  No one screams. No one runs over to help. It’s as if Bannor purposely timed it so that his departure wouldn’t cause a fuss, as if he knew the precise moment in which no one would be looking. Except me, of course. I can’t tell how long I stand there after he’s gone. For all I know, the wheel of the universe completed its final revolution, started all over again, and cycled right back to this moment, so that the world beyond the bridge’s end is wholly different from the one Bannor left behind. But, no, that is just one more childish dream. There is no magic wheel I can spin to change the world. Things are no doubt just as they were. My life savings are still gone, along with my career prospects. My relationship is still over. Dean still awaits my surrender. And my friend is still dead. I will never walk with him again.

  Part IV

  A man crossing a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he caught hold of a vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, began to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Holding the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

  —Zen parable

  Elliot

  (2001)

  It is neither the gathering darkness nor the deepening chill that eventually forces me from the bridge. They are failed stimuli, registering on an intellectual level only. I am cognizant of the generally accepted view that when the sun is not shining on the surface of the earth, it is called night, and when air molecules around me oscillate more slowly, it is called cold. I know these things. I do not feel them.

  No, what motivates me to finally head for shore is the fear that Officer Rita may come back around, and that she may start asking questions again. Hard questions, like “Where’s your friend?” or “How are you?” What answers could I possibly give her? I am all out of falsehoods, and the truth is as chimerical as ever. He fell. He was never here. He leapt. I also am not here. I, too, have leapt. I just don’t know it yet.

  Most likely, I would say nothing. I have descended into a dumb, empty stillness. There is no longer a lead weight in my stomach, nor any quiver in my legs as they tread south toward the heart of Manhattan. It is well after midnight. The streets are dormant but for a scattering of souls—the unquiet, the restless, the lost. Their stirrings perpetuate the celebrated notion that the city never sleeps. It’s a lie. New York sleeps, it just has bad dreams—nightmares that rouse themselves to some semblance of life when the hours get small enough.

  I don’t know what time it is when I get back to the office. Night may be a passing shadow, but this darkness seems different, outside of time, looking in. Nor is the hour revealed as I slip down deserted hallways or turn on the lights in the cell I share with Matt. It is as if someone has stolen all the clocks. I step behind my desk and stare at the computer, its face gray and lifeless. I leave it be. From the bottom drawer of the desk, I retrieve the Vade Mecum. The notebook is curiously light in my hand, considering the weight I once placed on the thoughts within it. Its mottled black-and-white cover harkens back to those old composition notebooks in which callow hearts penned words they hoped would wrest meaning from the world.

  As I turn for the door, I spot the cigar that Dean gave me, the anticipatory bribe for yet another deception. I pick it up and go, killing the lights on the way out. I proceed down one hallway and then another until I reach Dean’s office, where the glow of his computer’s screensaver illuminates how different the room is from mine—spacious, private, chicly furnished, with windows overlooking the broad avenue below. I sit down at his desk, taking in the view from here, trying on the perspective, attempting to imagine what it’s like to be my brother. I can’t. He and his world are as alien to me as the deep sea floor. But of course I am the stranger here.

  Though Dean leaves the computer on all night, he doesn’t use it much. Instead, he keeps a stack of manila folders on his desk, one for each client. There are fewer than I remember, and I am again shocked that I didn’t notice how bad things had gotten. In fairness, our start-up clients fail all the time. Their young founders even take pride in it, claiming failure is a necessary step on the path to success. But not like this. This is a bloodbath. The folder for Satchel is still here, at
least for now. Inside are Dean’s personal notes—a passionate if incoherent scrawl—along with documents prepared for Satchel’s investor presentation, the offending financial statements among them.

  It would be easy, really, to comply with Dean’s demand. Turn to the computer, open the file, change a few numbers. That’s it. Would anyone ever know? Probably not. Does it really make a difference whether Satchel made money in January versus December, or is “year-end” a completely arbitrary division of time, not to mention a purely human fabrication in the first place? No, yes, yes. Would the investors really be harmed if I made the change? More so than the employees who will lose their jobs if I don’t? I can’t know, and no one else can either, but that’s not the point. It’s not for me to rig the game, and it’s not for Dean either.

  I close the file. From a pen holder shaped like a skull, I take a red felt marker. In large letters across the face of the folder, I write my parting words to my brother, keeping it simple so he’ll understand—“I quit.” Dropping the marker back into the skull, I stand to leave, but the bright red letters stop me. I realize that they will be my final words, not just to Dean but to my parents as well, which is not my intent. I find a new piece of paper. For some time, I just stare at it, its blankness another question to which I have no answer. How can words suffice to say goodbye? I take another pen from the skull, not the heavy red marker but a ballpoint that traces a thin blue line as I leave my parents the message I need to send. “I’m sorry,” I write. Then, remembering my mother’s age-old plea for gratitude, I leave them the message they deserve to receive. “Thank you.”

  I address an envelope, affix a stamp, and seal the note inside. In the top drawer of Dean’s desk, I find a butane lighter. These things I take, along with the Vade Mecum and the cigar. Everything else in the office I leave behind. There is nothing I will miss, except maybe Bora Bora, but that was never real anyway.

  Outside, the wide avenues of Midtown remain suspended in a dreamlike stasis. They carry me southward until they dwindle into the narrow streets of Alphabet City, where a stout blue postal service mailbox opens its wide mouth to swallow my last letter. Near Bannor’s building, in a dark corner of a neighborhood park, I find an open trash can full of newspaper and other garbage. I press Dean’s lighter to the newspaper, spinning its flint wheel until the whole pile is ablaze and the flames lick through the wire mesh of the trash can itself. Without ceremony, I toss the Vade Mecum into the fire. Its desiccated pages blacken and curl.

  As I raise the cigar to throw it in as well, a disheveled man limps out of the darkness to join me. His dirty clothing bespeaks a life on cold streets—wool hat and gloves full of holes, thick boots, one heavy overcoat layered over another.

  “Warm,” he says, drawing close to the fire.

  I nod.

  “Gonna smoke that?” he asks, seeing the cigar.

  I shake my head, handing it to him. “You go ahead.”

  “Thanks.” He juts his face toward the flames, deftly lighting the cigar without singeing his eyebrows.

  “It’s Cuban,” I tell him.

  His eyes close. He puffs gently on the cigar. “Ain’t that something.”

  Bannor’s building is as I remember it—dank and dim and branded with angry words until the fifth floor, where Bannor’s influence can still be felt in the form of the clean, well-lighted hall. The door to his apartment swings open without a fuss, as I somehow knew it would. What do I have that anybody wants? A Mexican rug, a dented teakettle, a photograph of a family that once was.

  Though my destination is elsewhere, I can’t help but take a quick look around. There is no suicide note, nor much else to prove that Bannor ever lived here. Clinging to the refrigerator is the abandoned photograph. The little girl in the blue dress is still smiling, heedless of the future. It occurs to me that, on a sunny day at the Bronx Zoo, at some moment years before this one, she is always smiling. I suspect there is a lesson there, about time and the nature of the real, but it’s lost on me.

  I take the photograph down from the refrigerator and put it in my pocket. On the dining table, a lone leaf of paper rests beside an envelope. The letter from Bannor’s ex-wife, opened now. I don’t need to read more than a few words to grasp the heart of it—“Remarried . . . adopt . . . change her name.” When I’ve seen enough, I tear the letter into pieces, though Bannor himself chose not to, and undoubtedly handled the news with more resignation than rage. I can’t say I’ve seen enough of the world to hate it.

  But I’m not here to tear up the past. Dropping the tattered letter on the table, I turn back to my reason for coming here at all. I open the window and crawl out to the fire escape. As before, the courtyard behind Bannor’s apartment is desolate, the buildings still obstinately keeping their backs to each other. I descend one floor to crouch outside the neighbors’ window. It is again dark and silent, though it no longer yields when I try to slide it open. Apparently Bannor’s neighbors have learned to worry about being robbed. I’ve no way of knowing whether anyone is inside, but I don’t care. I bend one arm and swing my elbow sharply against the window. The glass fractures with a muffled crash, followed by the tinkling of shards on the kitchen floor. I wait a moment to see if anyone will respond. When no one does, I reach through the broken glass to unlock the window.

  The apartment is too dark to navigate without Bannor’s penlight, so I risk turning on the lights in the kitchen. The glare sends something scurrying into a hole under the counter, but nothing else stirs. I move through the living room and into the bedroom. The light reaches just far enough to reveal that two of the mattresses are empty. On the third, two bodies lie nestled together, unmoving. Only the rasp of their breathing indicates that they’re asleep and not dead. From the floor beside them, the metallic glint of a needle catches my eye. I’ve no fear of waking them as I ransack the dresser, then the closet, then the rest of the apartment.

  I find no gun, however. This failure arouses neither anger nor frustration. There is no one left here to feel these things. Just a vacant space, a blankness clinging feebly to a human frame. My body moves to the front door of the apartment, where blurry fingers reach out to unlock the slide bolt. The door swings open crookedly, leading to an empty hallway, an empty stairwell, an empty street. I step outside—a void, an absence, a patch of night in the night.

  No easy way out, then. No trigger to pull. No button to press. Leaving only one path—follow Bannor’s lead. Simple enough, except that my body won’t jump from the George Washington or any other bridge. I know this because, after Bannor’s fall, I stood at the railing for a very long time, looking down. When I realized he was not coming back, I determined that I would dive after him. My limbs refused, some ancient wiring deep within my skull insisting that bridges are dangerous and cannot be leapt from. But it’s incomplete and flawed, this circuitry. It can be bypassed. I know of at least one high place where the wires cross and deem it safe, one high place from which I can jump, if only because I’ve imagined it so many times before.

  I walk south to the river’s edge between the two bridges. On the sidewalk, beside a familiar brick facade, a miniature cairn of cigarette butts marks the base of an even more familiar fire escape. I drag a trash can from the street corner, using it to climb to the bottom rung. Iron steps bear me upward, coiling past darkened windows before spitting me out over the low parapet and onto the roof. A subtle wind steals across the fractured tar. It is full of voices.

  I suppose the woods aren’t his anymore. There’s nobody here but me.

  Lights on the horizon. An infinitude of tiny, disparate points, like candles. Between us is the dark water, bounded on either side by the glow of the bridges, their spans ablaze with opposing veins of red and white. Luminous bits of filament traverse the gulf between the bridges. Ghost ships, sailing away, never to return. They are the way out, and this the point of departure, the last port of call, my welcome here long overstayed.

  Maybe we’re already in the other world.

>   I step to the far end of the roof, stretching the distance between myself and the edge. Plenty of runway. From here I cannot fall. From here I can only fly.

  At that time in Neverene, there was a giant, with a giant heart.

  The wind dies. The ghost ships stay their procession, waiting. A great calm descends, here at the margin of life, at the border between worlds.

  Step into the light so I can get a look at you.

  But it is fragile, this equilibrium. A ripple of movement at the edge of the roof disrupts the stillness. A bird, I think, until the shadow grows and rises, etching a hole in the backdrop of candlelight. The dancing shade of my youth, perhaps, come to see me off. Or the ferryman, seeking his toll. I watch in silence as the silhouette crosses over the parapet. It drifts to the center of the blackened tar, looks at me, speaks.

  “Are you hurt?”

  No. Yes. I don’t know.

  “There’s blood on your suit.”

  I look down. Why am I wearing a suit? Corpses wear suits. But no, the blood is from deep cuts across the knuckles of my hand. I am not a corpse. And the apparition facing me is neither bird nor shade nor toll collector, but a girl I recognize—a young woman with dark eyes and short black hair. She seems to have a knack for appearing at the extremities of my days. This time, however, Bannor could not have called her. And this time I am not holding a gun. She is.

  “What’s that for?” I ask.

  “I heard someone,” says Sasha. “On the fire escape. I wasn’t sure if it was you.” She sets the revolver down by her feet. A hint of daybreak begins to color the eastern sky. I can just make out the grip and barrel of the gun, recognizing it as the one I stole from Bannor’s neighbors, when they still had a gun to steal. “Anyway, it’s yours,” she says. “I’m sorry I took it.”