She started down the steps toward him.
— I’m locked out here. Next door. And I got all these people coming over to see our new gallery here, and I’m wondering if you might know someone in the building here, or maybe —
A premeditated recognition on the part of Edgardo or Miguel.
— I gotta take this over to my friend’s.
— Oh, come on.
The turntable, balanced precariously on wrought-iron railing.
— Can I get over on the roof? M. J. said.
The rashness of the proposal, maybe, persuaded him to change his mind. What white girl from the suburbs would propose going over the roof? A conspiratorial grin broke out on his unblemished face.
— Sure, the roof. You could go over on the roof.
She asked if he would show her how, notwithstanding political implications of wanting to be shown how, wherein a woman asked a man for instruction, affected an unknowing because of the stylized exchange of information that might follow; she still liked it when a guy would show her how, whether it was how to program certain technological appliances, the coffee machine, the stereo, how to operate a handsaw or how to hit a backhand, and perhaps it would have been that way with Gerry, if he had known how to do anything, but he didn’t know much, a few knots from when he had taken sailing lessons in the suburbs, but he could fix nothing, and once a couple of weeks ago she had found him, inexplicably dangling a hasp in front of the windowsill, as if one could be used on the other, What are you doing with that hasp? He knew about Frege, Austin, Kuhn, but his evasions on home repair subjects were appalling. Can’t we get someone in to fix that? She inflated this evidence, on the front step of her building, into a notational system of romance: you and your lover showed one another how to, according to diagrams, and then when you knew how to, you moved on to the next person, to have them show you how. Once an object in question was fixed, you needed it broken again, or replaced by another, and fast. And the question before her now, by way of reminder, was how does a girl steal onto the roof of her building?
— Gonna put this back in the basement, Angel said. — Hang on.
Then he returned. Together they occupied the warped stairwell. Cinder block. Exposed ceiling bulbs dangling from frayed electrical lines. Lead-based paints flaking from scuffed walls. She followed him. With each flight of stairs, their pace increased, their gasps and exhalations, their anticipations, and she not only managed to keep up, but to drive Angel on more furiously, though she’d eaten nothing but a rice cake since throwing up breakfast. At last, they each grabbed the banister on the red emergency ladder; they hoisted themselves up; at last, they pushed back an old rotting hatch; at last, they heard a scattering of pigeons. They were on the roof.
Night had fallen across the landscape. Dramatically. Beyond the nub of green that was Stevens Institute of Technology at a distance, night upon the World Trade Center, night upon Hoboken high-rises, night upon the spectacle of New York City, night upon the Hudson, night upon the ships of the Hudson, night upon the garbage barges and their peppering of diapers and six-pack holders, night upon the history and politics of the tri-state area, night upon the Newport Mall of Jersey City, night upon Liberty State Park, night upon Edgewater, night upon Fort Lee, night upon the George Washington Bridge, night upon arteries great and small, night upon marshes and blacktops and rail yards and baseball fields and electrical substations. Who could turn from it? Who could neglect it? Night had come, even while the town below undulated with dispute and jubilance.
Did she say the next words before acting, on the roof, in fresh moonlight, words that had to do with kissing a complete stranger from a different economic class and ethnic heritage on the roof of a known drug location, while the guests for her party were amassing, or did they kiss first, words occurring like spontaneous, retroactive evocations of the riptide of subcutaneous wishes? Where did the thought come from, in this furnace of retrospection? What made her do these incredibly stupid things? Because she’d been hung up for so long, out in front of the building, and was just grateful, at last, to have gotten her ass indoors? Or was it some quality in Angel himself? Wasn’t there a moment when she’d thought about it and realized that this might not be the smartest decision she ever made? No. Things had been connected together, conjoined. There was no fulcrum with which to pry them apart. This was part of what had come before. How blissful not to have to make a particular decision but to yield to what was already as obvious as if it were mixed up with propositions of physics. She thought, or she said aloud, Let me kiss your spectacular Caravaggio mug, and she knew that he knew they were going to kiss too, like candidates for elopement; the kiss was unclear as a romantic gesture, but forceful as an observation on the nature and duration of the month of October and what the end of October meant: onslaught of holiday madness, mixed precipitation, folly in the street, We’re young! We’re beautiful! We’re supposed to make out! He held her off. Let’s get over the fence.
Barbed wire, rusted by age and emissions of sulfurous compounds, separated her building from the known drug location. Coiled above the flush edges of the two buildings, bolted into cement. Remorseful visitations of conscience implicit in the difficulties of barbed wire. But these visitations of conscience didn’t last very long. Angel (real name Mike) seemed, of course, as if he was made to go over barbed wire, which was a generalization on M. J.’s part about things she didn’t understand, to which people who had a lot of stuff were given in the consideration of those who didn’t have as much. Nevertheless, Angel simply found a spot that was well traveled, and he pulled some heavy work gloves out of the pockets of his windbreaker, set them down, took off his windbreaker, tossed it like a proverbial cape so that it draped on the fence, gripped the fence in work gloves, vaulted over. Plucked the jacket from the barbs. Now the fence separated the two of them.
— I can’t go over that, M. J. said.
What about the party? What about the people gathered in the street outside? What about her career as a dancer? Did she want to marry? Did she mean to procreate? Had she been a good friend to her good friends? Had she attempted to remember the kindness of parents, for whom she was an only child? Had she taken in stray pets? Given to charity? Looked for the good in others?
— I’ll lift you over, Angel said.
— You weigh about ten pounds more than I do.
— No problem.
— You can’t.
He stood at the spot where he had climbed over himself. The barbs were speckled with gouts of blood. Maybe it was the light. Blood of the fiscally challenged, blood of laborers, blood of suffering addicts who flocked to the known drug location. While their wives or parents slept, when the attention was off, they came up Madison Street, incanting, skulking, sweaty, desperate, to 619 Madison. They banged upon the door. They didn’t own enough layers to put off the cold. It was no fashion statement. Angel reached out his arms. She didn’t have much faith. She climbed up on the ledge that separated the buildings, and with an expressive saltation, a frisson, she landed in his hands, arms around his neck; she could smell him now, and he smelled funky, like a human, and up close she could see the planes of his cheeks, hairless and boyish. It was true. He could lift her up. She was air, she had perfected the designs of the universal choreographer and made her body insubstantial like a bird’s, A bird is a messenger of death for people who have nofeeling. There ought to have been even more splashy lifts and embraces, but instead the sequence culminated predictably. That is, her black miniskirt became entangled upon barbs, and there was the shredding of fabric giving way, a sliver of her miniskirt, and her tights too, and then she felt the sting of it, the barb, and she thought about her immodesty, her exhibitionism, about tetanus. That skirt was expensive. He put her down, she touched herself on her thigh, with the shyness that had overwhelmed Anthony at the apperception of his sprained ankle, What was she doing here? She recognized, on her own roof, a dismal arrangement of browned spider plants and expired geraniums irresolutely tended here by the cat lady up on the third floor. M. J. was bleeding.