Looking at the City

The city looked so peaceful from 12 stories up…a blanket of shimmering lights glowing golden in the crisp night air…a orderly jumble of movement across well-traveled avenues and byways…a soft symphony of imagined music and muted noise and rambunctious life wafting gracefully up from the Earth and out to the cosmos.

Sitting on the edge of the roof…on the edge of my world…I took it all in and let the blues shuffle off to wait for me elsewhere.

“What’re you doing?” a voice called out from the roof access door.

I frowned, annoyed at having my solitude sullied, and took a deep breath. “I’m looking at the city,” I said as curtly as I could without being unnecessarily rude (even in my annoyance I took pains to spare the feelings of other people…I’d never quite decided if that was an asset or a liability though I often leaned towards thinking of it as the latter.)

The newcomer’s steps edged closer. I didn’t know who he was and I really didn’t care, I just wanted him to go away. “It’s kinda dangerous sitting on the edge like that,” he said.

It was, I thought with forbearance, actually quite kind of him to be worried about the welfare of a stranger he imagined might be suicidal.

For a few moments a pregnant silence hung between us and then I said, “I’m not going to jump.”

The man stopped, weighing his relief against his disbelief, and waited for a couple of heartbeats. “Are you sure?” he asked finally.

I stopped myself from sighing out loud. “Quite sure,” I said. “If I jumped I would never get to look at the city at night again. That would be a damned shame.”

“It is beautiful,” he said, easing up closer to me. “But why do you have to sit on the edge like that?”

For some reason the question almost made me laugh but I refrained. “Where else would I sit?”

My question caught up unawares and he didn’t have a quick comeback.

“I’m not going to jump,” I repeated more emphatically, “I’m just looking at the city.”

He was, I was pretty sure, still not convinced about my intentions to see the next dawn. “Life is hard, friend…we can choose to deal with it…or to give up…”

I couldn’t suppress a rueful chuckle that time. “I’m sorry,” I said immediately after laughing. “I don’t disagree with you…life is a bitch but since I’m not sure of the alternative I’m in no hurry to leave it.” I paused and then added, “I’m just looking at the city…and the night sky…and trying to remind myself how insignificant my disappointments and failures are in the grander scheme of things…”

“Bad day?” he asked. He was next to me now but I didn’t turn to look at him.

“Bad year,” I said before I could censor myself. I prided myself on not taking my problems to others and the others in my life always seemed quite happy with that arrangement. “Happens to the best of us.”

“Want to talk about it?”

His concern was starting to irritate me. “Nope.”

“You sure?”

I turned to look him…his face was weathered and kindly...and he looked back expectantly. “What do you want me to say? That I have too many bills and not enough money? That I have so many dreams and almost no prospects? That love is fleeting and fickle and my heart is weary from all of it? That sometimes I want to shut myself in a dark room and make the world just go away?” I realized I was ranting and, quite embarrassed, I stopped and looked back out at the city.

“Something like that,” he replied without the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“Well there you go,” I said softly.

Silence fell between us again. “It’s getting a bit nippy up here,” he said hugging himself, “I’m going to go inside.”

Good, I thought. I said nothing.

“What are you going to do?”

I took in another deep breath of the admittedly brisk night air and let it out slowly. “I’m going to look at the city,” I said. “Maybe I’m going to feel sorry for myself if the mood strikes…” I let my words linger for a few moments and then added, “And then I’m going to go down to my bedroom and go to sleep and get up and start all over in the morning. Fair enough?”

It was his turn to sigh softly. “Fair enough,” he said, seemingly resolved to my lack of suicidal intention. “My name is Robert, by the way, I just moved into 715.”

“Christopher,” I replied, hoping the exchange of names might hasten his departure. “805.”

He moved away from me. “Good night, Christopher.”

“Good night, Robert.”

The roof access door opened and closed and the night…the city’s lights and muffled and imagined sounds…filled my senses again. I looked at the city…I looked into the night…and when fatigue started to take me, I pulled away from the edge and headed off the roof and downstairs to my apartment…to my life. Tomorrow would be another…maybe good, maybe not…day.