My plan is to get us to the roof so that we can make out in privacy. We sign in for my appointment at the security desk. The guard directs us to the elevator banks. The one we get on must be the local, because it stops at practically every floor. Suited people get on and off, talking loudly about Very Important Things. Despite what Natasha said earlier, I can never work in a building like this. Finally we get to the top floor. We get off, find a stairwell, and walk up one flight and straight into a locked gray door with a NO ROOF ACCESS sign.
I refuse to believe it. Clearly the roof is just behind these doors. I turn the handle, hoping for a miracle, but it’s locked.
I rest my forehead against the sign. “Open sesame,” I say to the door.
Magically, it opens.
“What the hell?” I stumble forward, right into the same security guard from the lobby. Unlike us, he must’ve taken an express elevator.
“You kids aren’t allowed up here,” he grunts. He smells like cigarette smoke.
I pull Natasha through the doorway with me. “We just wanted to see the view,” I say, in my most-respectful-with-just-a-hint-of-pleading-but-non-whining voice.
He raises skeptical eyebrows and starts to say something, but a coughing fit overtakes him until he’s hunched over and thumping his heart with his fist.
“Are you okay?” Natasha asks. He’s only bent slightly now, both hands on his thighs. Natasha puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Got this cough,” he says between coughs.
“Well, you shouldn’t smoke,” she tells him.
He straightens and wipes his eyes. “You sound like my wife.”
“She’s right,” she says, not missing a beat.
I try to give her a look that says don’t argue with the old security guard with the lung problem, otherwise he won’t let us stay up here and make out, but even if she interpreted my facial expression correctly, she ignores me.
“I used to be a candy striper in a pulmonary ward. That cough does not sound good.”
We both stare at her. I, because I’m picturing her in a candy striper outfit and then picturing her out of it. I’m pretty sure this is going to be my new nighttime fantasy.
I don’t know why he’s staring at her. Hopefully not for the same reason.
“Give them to me,” she says, holding out her hand for his pack of cigarettes. “You need to stop smoking.” I don’t know how she manages to sound so genuinely concerned and bossy at the same time.
He pulls the pack out of his jacket pocket. “You think I haven’t tried?” he asks.
I look at him again. He’s too old to be doing this job. He looks like he should be retired and spoiling his grandkids somewhere in Florida.
Natasha keeps holding out her hand until he hands over the pack.
“Be careful of this one,” he says to me, smiling.
“Yes, sir.”
He puts his jacket on. “How do you know I won’t just go get some more?” he asks her.
“I guess I don’t,” she says, shrugging.
He looks at her for a long moment. “Life doesn’t always go the way you plan,” he says.
I can see that she doesn’t believe him. He can see it too, but he lets it go.
“Stay away from the edge,” he says, winking at both of us. “Have a good time.”
THE GIRL REMINDED HIM a little of his Beth. Direct but sweet. That, more than anything, is why he let them stay up on the roof. He knows perfectly well that the only view they’ll be looking at is each other. No harm in that, he thinks.
He and his Beth were the same way. And not just at the beginning of their marriage, but all throughout. They won the lottery with each other, they liked to say.
Beth died last year. Six months after they’d both retired. In fact, the cancer diagnosis came the day after retirement. They had so many plans. Alaskan cruise to see the aurora borealis (hers). Venice to drink grappa and see the canals (his).
That’s the thing that gets to Joe even now. All the plans they’d made. All the saving. All the waiting around for the perfect time.
And for what? For nothing.
The girl is right, of course. He shouldn’t smoke. After he lost Beth, he took himself out of retirement and took up smoking again. What did it matter if he worked himself to death? What did it matter if he smoked himself to death? There was nothing left to live for, nothing left to plan for.
He takes one last look at the girl and the boy before closing the door. They’re looking at each other like there’s nowhere else they’d rather be. He and his Beth were like that once.
Maybe he will give up smoking after all. Maybe he’ll make some new plans.
DANIEL WALKS TO THE EDGE of the roof and looks out at the city. His hair is loose and blowing in the breeze and he’s got his poet face on. The non-bruised side of his face smiles.
I go to him and slip my hand into his. “Aren’t you gonna write something down, poet boy?” I tease.
He smiles wider, but doesn’t turn to look at me. “It looks so different from up here, doesn’t it?” he asks.
What does he see when he looks out? I see miles of rooftops, most of them empty. A few of them are populated with long-abandoned things—nonworking HVAC units, broken office furniture. Some have gardens, and I wonder who tends them.
Daniel takes out his notebook now, and I move a little closer to the edge.
Before these buildings were buildings, they were just the skeletons of them. Before they were skeletons, they were crossbeams and girders. Metal and glass and concrete. And before that, they were construction plans. Before that, architectural plans. And before that, just an idea someone had for the making of a city.