The Girl on the Other Side of the Window

The Girl on the Other Side of the Window

            Blood dripped down the sleeve of his Ralph Lauren jacket and puddled in the bumpy crust of bird-shit on the thin strip of decorative concrete.  Kevin’s day was not going well.

The suit had been a parting gift from his late mother when he foolishly decided to ditch his preordained small town future and move to New York.  Kevin detested his big-city life and job with a passion typically reserved for World Series umpires and African-American presidents, but when the urge to storm into his asshole-of-a-boss’s office and scream “I QUIT!” threatened to consume him, he’d wear “the suit.”  It provided a constant and well-tailored reminder to “Stick with it” like his mother had implored him as he boarded the Bolt Bus.

When she passed away suddenly, Kevin felt even more duty-bound to soldier on despite his staggering ennui.  Since then, his life had turned into “The Out-of-Towners” but without the laughs or the sad but sweet Sandy Dennis by his side.  In fact, there had never been anyone by Kevin’s side.  While hardly “a catch” in his hometown, at least in Bingham, there wasn’t quite the mindless, voracious competition for female flesh that drove this vibrant Mecca of commerce and carnal Darwinism. 

Kevin’s most vivid memory was a blink-of-a-moment during the dark and brooding days of high school.  He was sitting in the hygienically-challenged cafeteria finishing up some suspect piece of meat buried under over-salted gravy when something in the window caught his eye.  A girl outside was rushing to class when she abruptly turned on her heel and extended her arm backwards so she could walk into the school holding hands with her boyfriend.  Since that day, the tender memory had haunted him like the ghost of Jacob Marley.  Her hair.  What she was wearing.  The way she smiled when she turned to gaze at that lucky, lucky boy.  He could still see every minor detail like he was staring at a painting.

 But, as the colors and the textures of that mystical event had become ever more lucid over the years, Kevin himself had slowly faded into the invisible man.  He had dwindled down to that one person in the office-party photo who no one can quite remember the name of.  While most of his fellow translucent insignificants turned to booze, drugs and prostitutes to salve their psychic wounds, Kevin wrapped himself in dreams.  He dreamt of fresh-faced girls and success and his mother and a life far away from this beastly abattoir of souls.

 The temperature behind him was rising alarmingly.  The building belched out its hot, smoky breath like a wounded dragon, roasting him inside his own skin. 

Kevin had never felt comfortable working on the 109^th floor and that was when he was on the other side of the window.  Now there was nothing between him and the hellacious, bloodcurdling drop that had frightened him witless for the last four-and-a-half years.  It wasn’t nearly as windy as he imagined it might be.  But, perhaps today was just abnormally calm…weather-wise.  Perhaps the surreal chaos and tumult inside his former workplace and on the street below made his present precarious perch seem tranquil in comparison.  The cracked and brittle glass had become almost molten on the back of his neck and head but he needed a just few more minutes to gather himself, so he hung on and endured.  Kevin tried to think of his family back home and all those traditional things that are supposed to be so important when one’s life trickles down to the last few grains of sand, but all he could think about were girls.  The girls that his dreams were made of.  All those lips he had kissed but could never feel.  All the intoxicatingly rapturous love affairs doomed to a sudden and tragic end whenever he would open his eyes.  All those enchanting, kind and caring women that he would never know except in the warm soothing arms of a Morphean embrace.  And that girl at the window in high school, reaching back her arm.

He clung to a piece of exposed rebar with his good hand, using the material from his sleeve to mitigate the scorching of his palm. 

Kevin wasn’t a brave man but he didn’t want to be a coward.  He didn’t want his last few moments on this Earth to be spent blubbering like a baby or begging and bargaining for a salvation that he realized was not in the offing.  The fat lady was most definitely reaching the end of her final refrain and the curtain was about to fall.  God, he felt lonely. 

But, one must keep things in perspective.  Kevin was keenly aware that other people had calmly and nobly faced far worse fates than the grim task that lay before him.  People with horrible diseases and afflictions that slowly and corrosively devoured them from within.  He thought of the innocent who had been unspeakably tortured and Third World children, hungry and unloved.  Life had not treated him so badly up until right now.  At least his end would be quick and not too horribly painful.  He hoped so, anyway.  His lip quivered and he bit down on it hard.  His life may be forfeit but he would not surrender his dignity.  He may have lived without glory but he would die without shame and if there was a hereafter, they would know that, while far from perfect, he had accorded himself admirably under the most trying of circumstances.  Deep in his heart, Kevin hoped there wasn’t an afterlife.  He’d always had such a difficult time making new friends and an eternity of infinite blackness seemed far more appealing than finding oneself sad and lonely in heaven.

  And still the temperature rose.

 It was a miracle he heard it, really.  Above all the screaming and explosions and the sirens, the tiniest of sound had found his ear.  The sound of a woman crying.  About 20 feet along the ledge clung Molly, coughing and weeping and staring down at the street so very, very far below.  Kevin had been hopelessly smitten by her from the second she joined the company two years earlier but predictably, he had never managed to catch her eye.  Molly was dazzling and radiant and laughed like angels at play.  The marrow in his bones used to ache with longing at the mere sight of her.  There was no greater bliss or   deeper despair than Molly when she smiled.  Kevin used to fantasize that she’d take pity on him and reluctantly agree to dinner.  Or perhaps she’d go out with him on a date to win a silly bet with a fellow worker only to discover that she was charmed by how much he adored her.  There had been hundreds of these deliriously fanciful scenarios conjured, mostly with happy endings, but they had come at a cost.  Lately, he had begun to fear that one day he would chance upon such a transcendently romantic and beguiling hideaway deep within the folds of his own mind and he and his beloved Molly would remain there forever and Kevin, the sentient being, would simply cease to exist.

But there his Lady of Cytherea stood in the real world, terrified and lost.  Her Elie Tahari skirt had been reduced to shredded rags and the gash on her right leg was deep and charred.  Oh, how Kevin longed to be Molly’s Superman.  How we wished he could fly over to her with a heroic and reassuring smile and whisk her away to safety; or selflessly offer up his life for hers.  As he gazed at this wondrous girl that had graced so many of his idyllic imaginings, he knew that he could easily be one of those men who would gallantly sacrifice his seat on the last life raft because honor demanded no less of him.   

“Fuck it,” he thought.  “If I fall, I’ll be doing myself a favor.”  Kevin released the scalding rebar and began to amble along the thin grey protrusion like it was a foot off the ground instead of 1300.  Within seconds he was standing beside his despondent princess. 

“It’s very hot,” she whimpered.  Her cheeks and forehead were scratched and bruised but she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever been blessed to espy.  Thunderous booms and cracks from the conflagration within the building roared through the shattered windows but all he could hear was the trembling voice of his dear, sweet Molly.

“Yes it is,” he said very calmly and smiled.  “Please don’t cry.  A face as pretty as yours should never know tears.”  He softly wiped the hair from her eyes with his one good hand.

“Your arm!”

The intermittent blood trickles had become an incessant stream.  Kevin adjusted his shoulder to hide the offending, lifeless limb behind his body and shrugged matter-of-factly.  “I don’t need it anymore.”

It was the only gift he had to give her; the person he had always hoped to be.

The nightmarish screams for help from inside had all gone quiet.  They were the only two people left alive at the top of the world.  Soon, their time would come, but in these final, meagerest of moments, Kevin would not allow his former self to deny him one tiny act of courage.  If the huddled musicians of the Titanic could play on until the icy waves did claim them, then by God, he would not fall short of their example.

“It seems ironic that I should finally get to meet you,” he half-laughed.  His vision was beginning to fail him but he kept on talking as if they were sharing a picnic by the lake.  “I’ve been trying to build up the nerve to ask you out for months,” he fibbed.  It had actually been years but he felt that the truth would sound a little stalkerish.

“That would have been nice,” she warmly fibbed back.  He wasn’t really Molly’s type and she had a boyfriend but this was no time for hurt feelings.  Kevin was a kind and gentle man offering her comfort and cheer in the last seconds of her life.

The heat from the inferno on the other side of the wall was virtually intolerable now.  It was becoming hard to breathe and keep their balance. 

“I’m so very frightened.”

“It’ll be much easier, if we do it together,” he reassured her in a confident tranquil tone that gave her strength. 

Molly slowly lifted her arm towards him.  “Could you…hold my hand?”

“Yes.  Yes, I’d like that.”  Kevin softly squeezed her hand in his.  The magical healing touch of a woman was beyond his realm of understanding.  This was what it was like to be that boy on the other side of the window.  For the first time in ever so long, he wasn’t alone.  Kevin knew he could do this now.

“I think we should be traditional, don’t you?” he cheerfully suggested, “And go on three.”

She nodded and smiled.  What a funny sort of a fellow he was.  Molly kissed his blistered cheek and wiped the lipstick off out of habit. 

One. Two.  Three.

They looked into each other’s eyes one very last time and stepped out into the morning sky.

The cool air rushing past them was actually a relief from the blazing heat. 

Soon Kevin would be dead and remembered by no one but for the next few moments, the loneliest and man in the world was a soaring eagle and holding hands with the girl of his dreams.