I don't know many in our group. I meet up with Van, supposed to be a quiet night of just us two. Some friends of his end up joining later which is OK, they seem like nice enough people. I just don't know any of them from Adam is all. But they seem like they got their heads on straight. Dylan, this girl, even buys me a shot of whiskey and for a little bit there I think she's into me. She's talking, I'm talking, we're both talking to each other and I think she seems interested. She sure is interested in her boyfriend when he walks in, that's for sure. Think I hear someone call him Dylan, too, but that can't be right.
Turns out this guy is just there to take us away. Let's take this to my loft downtown, he says, and everyone gets real excited. Even Van, although it was supposed to just be the two of us. But who knows what the night has in store? So I don't go home. A bunch of cabs get called and I get in one with three other somebodies. How I ended up wedged in the middle of the back I'll never know, but I'm in between two attractive girls so I can't complain too much. One takes out her phone and basically makes love to it the entire ride, the other searches her purse for a Vicodin. So maybe I can complain a little bit. We get there and get out and whatever guy who's sitting in the front wearing a suit with no tie pays. I don't try to slip him any bills. Looks like he can afford it.
The Man Who Isn't Dylan ushers us all past the night guard behind the desk and we take the elevator to the nineteenth floor. When I was a kid this is the kind of building I thought I would want to live in when I was older: night guards and chandeliers, air conditioned lobby, vague Chinese-looking sitting arrangements in the corner, a sign out front telling people they've arrived. That was making it in my book.
We enter and everything is very tidy, very whole set, real posh. It's not set up for a party or anything, this is just how the guy lives. Maybe if you live as if you're always expecting guests people will actually come over. He puts on music and starts taking out drinks: beer, wine, liquor bottle after liquor bottle. I can see into the guy's cabinet and he's got twelve or thirteen bottles of liquor all at various stages of emptiness and younger me would think he's made it. I don't know, from the looks of it he's sure made something. Everyone seems to know the song that's playing. I don't know what it is, but I feel like it wasn't made for me.
Van hands me a drink, something brownish with ice in it. He gives me a look, Well, I guess we're doing this now. Yeah, I guess we are.
I make my way to one of the balconies. There's a few girls out there, including Dylan, and they're drinking clear drinks with ice, laughing, having a genuine time. I make a crack about jumping, I don't even remember what it was exactly. But it's enough to get the girls to quiet down. Dylan turns to me, says what, so I repeat. Whoa, you're being pretty intense right now, she tells me, and her friends agree. They go inside and I can see Dylan go straight for her hubby, telling him something quietly, looking in my general direction. He comes out to the balcony real friendly like. He asks if I need anything, how I'm doing, if everything's OK. Sure, why wouldn't everything be OK? He gives me another one of these looks I keep on getting and heads back inside to his spoils.
Honestly, who doesn't think about jumping? It would be the easiest thing in the world, and it's the easiest thing to think. I could just take one step, a little hop, I could barely try at all. It's not the falling you're thinking about, it's not the killing yourself. It's the jumping. Not thinking about jumping, that's not normal.
I rest my arms on the railing, look out at the city. I love the skyline, but now I'm in the middle of it, so I can't see it at all. Around me all I see are buildings and streets and cars, tiny little people trying to have a good time, and we could be just about anyplace.
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