“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.