Marcus Sakey - The Blade Itself

Danny held the look for a minute, then nodded, went back to straightening up. “Get the car tomorrow morning. You can pick me up at the same spot as last time, round one o’clock.”

“We going tomorrow?” Evan sounded surprised, turning to look up.

“What, you got somewhere to be?”

When they were ten, they’d played a game called Pisser. It was a made-up game, but it lasted for almost two years, until Bobby Doyle missed his jump from the roof of a two-story CVS to the fire escape of the building next door and broke both wrists.

When Danny remembered the game, he always felt the way he did when he caught his own voice on an answering machine. It felt familiar, but a little off, too. Like someone else was telling a story that had happened to him.

The leader of the game was the Big Dick. It was a title they fought to earn, though mostly it meant that as they went about their lives, they kept their eyes open for the right kind of opportunity. Say, a new skyscraper going up in the Loop, the concrete and glass of the curtain wall only half finished, the dark silhouette of a tower crane looming sixty stories up.

Boom . Call a Challenge.

Meet at seven o’clock, the yard deserted except for the security guys drinking coffee in their trailer. Squeeze under the chain link on the far side, keeping low until you’re in the building. The first floors would have actual staircases, what would become the fire steps. After that, plywood ramps. When those ran out, grab the A-frame of the crane, hoist yourself over the rail to the gridwork stairs, and start climbing.

At twenty stories, your calves burn.

At thirty-five stories, you’ve come farther than the outside wall. The wind hits.

At fifty stories, five hundred swimming feet of vertigo, people on the street are just dots. Cabs are those mini-Matchbox cars you can put a dozen in your pocket.

At sixty stories, you’ve run out of stories. The building drops away, structural steel blackened by welding marks. You’re climbing the crane to the sky. Start counting steps. Ignore your legs Elvis-ing.

One hundred and eighty steps later, you’ve reached the operator’s cab, the white box like the driver’s seat of a semi. But it’ll be locked, so go up twenty more, to the gangway on top of the mast.

Take panting breaths on the ceiling of the city, the sky indigo around you, the world spread out jeweled at your feet.

Now the Challenge, because that was just a warm-up.

Step onto the crane arm. The metal grid is maybe two feet wide, but it feels like a tightrope. Indian-walk one foot in front of the other, keeping low to fight the wind, nothing on either side, just a few inches of steel between you and a five-second trip to State Street. Hit so hard, they’d tell each other, your shins come out your shoulders. Hit so hard nobody can tell your head from your ass. Hit so hard your teeth bounce for blocks.

Step. Breathe. Step.

When you reach the end, take a bow. Then hustle back fast as you dare. If you’re the first to ante up, congratulations. You’re the new Big Dick. Pussy out, you’re the Pisser, a little baby still whines for his mommy and wets the sheets. No hair on his nuts. No nuts at all.

It was vivid to Danny, like he could step back into that Challenge today if he wanted. The way his legs had trembled and burned. The way the air cut as he drew it in, far, far above the city-street smells of exhaust and garbage.

Once he took that first step, the fear would fade. His mind would throw up interference, like radio static, that screened out everything but a calm inner monologue and his body’s response to it. The first step wasn’t the hard part.

No, the hard part came before he stepped into the void. The hard part was the waiting, his brain imagining all the things that could go wrong, all the things he couldn’t control, all the ways that fate loomed beneath him, hungry, eager for him to slip.

The hard part was sitting in the passenger seat of the nice black Saab Evan had stolen – a sedan, probably a five-star safety rating, just the thing to drive your kid to private school – watching Evan light yet another cigarette. Watching the digital clock soundlessly change a four to a five. He caught his hands fiddling with the strap of the duffel bag, and made them stop. “Go around again.”

Evan nodded, his cigarette bobbing up and down, the muscles in his neck rigid. He was feeling it, too. They stopped at a sign, then turned right, taking the block the other direction. On both sides of the car, wide lawns sprawled in front of five-bedroom houses nestled beneath towering shade trees. The streets had that oddly wide feeling of a neighborhood where every house had a garage, nothing like the crowded city parking he was used to.

“We saw the kid come home,” Evan said. “What are we waiting for?”

“You got to put yourself in the mind of the boy, right?” Talking to relax. “He gets home, drops his schoolbag, wonders what to do with himself. No brothers, and Dad won’t be home till eight or nine. So the kid,” Danny wanting to avoid calling him Tommy, not wanting to think of him that personally, “he’s got the run of the house. What’s he do?”

“Fuck should I know?” Evan said. “Turn on the TV?”

“Exactly. That’s where I want him. Watching TV. It’ll drown out noise, and I don’t think there’s an alarm console in that room.”

“So how long do we wait?” Evan seemed eager, almost anxious. Best to move.

“What’s it been, twenty minutes? Now’s probably good.” He unzipped the duffel for one final inventory. Everything was just as it had been the last dozen times he’d checked. Before closing the bag, he brushed the inner pocket. The plastic rectangle inside felt strangely reassuring.

Evan turned the corner, another right, Richard’s house now in sight, a brick and shingle two-story with bay windows, architecturally a cross between a Swiss chalet and an English manor. The driveway was smooth blacktop that hummed beneath the tires as Evan turned in gently, letting the car coast up to the closed garage door. He threw it in park and rested his hands on the wheel. They’d both put on driving gloves in the McDonald’s parking lot, and seeing Evan tap the Saab’s wheel with his elegantly gloved hands, Danny had a flash of him as a chauffeur. Just put a jaunty cap on him. The image was funny, but he pushed it aside.

“Ready?” Evan’s voice had a hint of excitement, a familiar note that Danny had almost forgotten. He used to have the same tone playing Pisser, just before diving off the Michigan Avenue drawbridge, or sprinting across Lakeshore at rush hour.

“One second.” Danny opened his cell phone and dialed. She answered on the second ring.

“Debbie. Give us five minutes.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

“Yeah.” Danny flipped the phone closed.

“What’s that all about?”

“Let’s go,” not answering Evan, grabbing the duffel bag and opening the car door. The October wind slapped at him as he left the heated car, the air high-thirties, way colder this year than most. Careful to keep his face pointed toward the house, he scanned the windows for any sign of life. Nothing.

He looked across the roof of the Saab at Evan, who also stood with his door open, and for a moment, they just held the gaze. Then Danny nodded, and closed his door.

Time to take that first step onto the ledge.

He turned and walked toward the near side of the house, around the garage, feeling Evan fall into step behind him. The adrenaline hit full force now, the rush of blood in his ears drowning out the fear, giving him the quiet he needed. They walked steadily around the garage, keeping up a front in case any neighbors happened to look out the window.