James Hynes: Next

“Yes,” she says. “I forgive you.”

He kisses her. Her lips are salty, and he feels the fingers of her other hand trembling on his cheek. They embrace at the edge, cheek to cheek, and through her singeing hair, Kevin can see the inverted river of fire, filling the space above where they’d been a few moments before. Kevin shuts his eyes and dips his head and whispers hoarsely in her ear, “Are you ready?”

“No,” she whimpers.

“There’s no more time.”

“I can’t do it.”

“It’s all right,” Kevin says. “I’ll do it.”

She tightens her arms around him. “Don’t let go of me.”

“I won’t,” Kevin says, and in one sudden movement he presses their joined hands to his chest and jerks his shoulders forward, pitching them over the edge.

For an instant Kevin thinks, maybe prayer works! because they just seem to hang there, buffeted by the wind. His eyes open to the whole Google Maps panorama of Austin turning slowly below them — the ant-busy street below, the buildings thrusting up toward them, the hammered verdigris green of the river, the sun-faded hills studded with red roofs — and for a nanosecond his heart swells with the hope of a miracle, that they will soar like angels, wafting hand in hand to the pavement below to land gently on the balls of their feet like the risen dead before the eyes of breathless office workers and astounded first responders. But it’s not a miracle, it’s not a moment of salvation, and let’s hope Melody didn’t think her God was rapturing her at the last moment. She’s not an angel — not yet, anyway — and Kevin’s not either, he’s just Wile E. Coyote, and he’s overshot the edge of the cliff to hang there just long enough to make a mournful face and hold up a sign that says HELP! The next instant they’re plummeting into a sixty-mile-per-hour wind, Kevin’s jacket snapping behind him like a cape, his blood-stained tie whipping over his shoulder. Melody’s hair is streaming, her skirt is pressed between her legs, her jacket puffed with wind. The two of them are pinned, no doubt, against the faded blue sheet of Austin’s sky, or against the gashed, rectilinear facade of the burning building, by the lenses of cell phones and news cameramen, witnessed live over cable news networks and the Web, doomed to be replayed endlessly in a loop, YouTubed over and over and over again, the pair of them a tragedy or a rallying cry or a sick joke, stripped of their individuality in the three and a half seconds it takes for them to fall.

Then their hands are pulled apart and they’re falling separately, from fifty stories up, at a terminal velocity of fifty-five meters per second. Kevin’s got just three seconds to live, and he wants to know a lot of things all at once. Is this going to hurt? Why doesn’t anyone stop this? What did I do to deserve this? Isn’t my life supposed to be flashing before me? Where’s my highlight reel? I want a fucking highlight reel! Turns out I was middle-aged at twenty-five, only I didn’t know it. Where’s Melody now? Did she let go of me or did I let go of her? He’ll never know now, but so what? Everybody dies alone, but at least she’s got a family, she’s got children, someone’s going to miss her. Who’s going to miss me? Nobody I know even knows I’m here, and nobody here knows who I am. Who’s going to remember me? Who’s even going to notice that I’m gone, and how long is it going to take for them to notice, and how long is it going to take for them to figure out where I was when I died?

The wind is punishing his eyes, but Kevin keeps them open, watching the upturned faces below scattering from his descent. None of them know who I am, I might as well be a 180-pound sandbag as far as they’re concerned. Who will mourn me? Who will write my eulogy and what will they say? Will I even have a eulogy? He was too young to give the eulogy at his father’s funeral, and it fell to his father’s brother Tim, who showed up drunk at the church and rambled and sobbed and lost his place in his notes. Later he typed up what he’d meant to say and mailed a copy each to Kevin and Kevin’s mom and Kevin’s sister, and now Kevin doesn’t know where his copy is anymore, he never read it anyway, it’s one more worthless piece of paper he’s leaving behind for someone else to dispose of. Who? Kathleen, probably, he can’t imagine Mom doing it, she’ll slide deeper into her bottle of Gordon’s, staring out through the glass while Kathleen shoulders the burden, which is what Kathleen always does, but then there’s also Stella, his de facto widow; Stella will cry buckets and shudder with grief and no one will ever know how much she means it, maybe not even Stella.

Kevin writhes in the air, the wind thumping in his ears, the tower streaking past. He glimpses Melody one last time, her legs pedaling, her arms flailing, her face obscured by her hair. Still alive, though, as he still is, if only for another instant. So far, so good.

What’s Stella doing right now? What is she doing right this instant? His watch is still set to Michigan time, but he’s dying in the Central Time zone, and it’s the same time in Chicago that it is here, and that brings her closer to him somehow. She’s not in the bar with some guy, she wouldn’t do that, Stella loves me, I’m pretty certain of it, she wouldn’t do that. She doesn’t know what’s happening to me, she can’t sense it, but she’s thinking of me anyway, she’s on her way out of the Sheraton on an errand that has to do with me, and it’s poignantly ironic because she’s passing the bar where a crowd is watching the breaking news on CNN and she’s not turning to see what all the fuss is about as the growing knot of midday drinkers and conventioneers draws a collective breath at the video of two wriggling figures falling from a burning office tower in Austin, Texas. Déjà vu all over again. But Stella’s too wrapped up in her thoughts of me at the moment, she’s stepping out of the Sheraton briskly and expertly on her high heels, her purse slung over her shoulder, out onto the streets of Chicago where it’s as midsummer hot as it is in Texas, and she’s carrying herself with that lovely feral walk that I still love even though she annoys me and terrifies me, she’s carrying herself purposefully in search of a CVS or a Walgreens, she’s already got the address from the hotel concierge, and she marches up the fluorescent lit aisle of the store in search of a home pregnancy test, the one she used last month didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear, but now she’s missed her period again, and she buys the little box at the pharmacy counter from a bored young black pharmacy clerk, and Stella twinkles at the young woman, trying to get her to share in Stella’s anticipation, but the clerk’s not going for it, it’s just another boring moment in the middle of her boring shift. But Stella doesn’t let that bother her, she never lets the indifference of others bother her, and no, she doesn’t want a bag, thanks, she just sticks the box and the receipt in her purse and sails out of the store into the sticky heat again, eating up the sidewalk in long strides like a runway model, though her legs are too short and too muscular for that, and she hardly notices the crowds on Michigan Avenue or the bleary sun or the odor from the sluggish river alongside the hotel, though it seems like a longer walk going back than it did coming, even though it’s the same distance, silly, I know that, but even Stella understands the psychology of it, she’s carrying a secret, or the promise of a secret and she can’t wait to be back in her room, and that’s where she is right now, her purse and her suit jacket dumped on the bed, her pumps kicked off on the carpet, the box of the pregnancy test ripped open on the bathroom counter along with the folded sheet of instructions, which she hasn’t bothered to read because she’s done this before, she knows the drill, and she’s sitting on the toilet with her skirt tugged up and her panties around her ankles, and she’s pigeontoed, holding the stick under her stream, concentrating with her lips pursed like it’s painful. The bathroom door’s open and the TV’s on with the sound off, not CNN, thank God, that would be too poignant, but Bravo, probably, showing a marathon of one of those hideous housewives shows she likes so much, and apart from the upholstered hush of the room and the rumble of ventilation, the only sound is the patter of Stella’s micturition against the stick and into the bowl. Then she sets it aside, pulls up her panties, tugs down her skirt, stands barefoot on the icy bathroom floor, washing her hands and watching herself in the mirror — is that the face of a mother? — and then she picks up the test and pads out onto the carpet, instinctively shaking the stick as if it were a thermometer or a Polaroid, and she sits on the end of the tall bed with her bare feet dangling like a little girl and watches the zaftig, bitchy housewives with the sound off, until at last the test is ready, and she reads the result by the light of the TV, then looks up at herself again in the mirror over the desk. Hi, Mom! Still holding the stick, her heart pounding, happily oblivious to the tang of her own pee, she plunges her hand into her purse on the bed and comes up with her phone, then rises from the bed and floats barefoot over the carpet to the window, where she gazes out at the sunlight glinting on the dirty water of the Chicago River below, then lifts her eyes to the glittering meniscus of Lake Michigan, in what she guesses is roughly the direction of Ann Arbor, and she starts to tear up at the thought of her boyfriend, her landlord, her lover, not quite her husband, the man she isn’t entirely sure loves her. She flips the phone open one-handed, turns it on, cants her head to one side like Carrie Bradshaw, lets her middle finger hover over his speed dial number — think fast, Kev, you’re going to be a father — but she doesn’t press the button, because on second thought maybe it’s not such a good idea to tell him over the phone, it’s the middle of the day, he’s at work, he doesn’t always answer his phone and even if he does, he might not take it well. Because anyway you look at it, this is going to be a difficult negotiation. Stella’s too savvy not to know that. Better work up to it and tell him in person, tell him after dinner tomorrow night, after a heavy meal, get a bottle of wine in him and cuddle with him on the sofa, where she can tell him face to face while she’s touching him, reassuring him, coddling him along like the big baby he is, before she starts to remake him into the man she needs him to be. She flips the phone shut again and stands at the window hugging her secret to herself with her phone in one hand, her other hand cocked at the wrist and brandishing the pregnancy stick like a cigarette holder. I’m ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille. She’s crying from happiness, sure, but from anxiety, too, and from anger, because what’s that grump of a boyfriend going to do when she tells him?