The roof is empty. Me and Penelope venture out. It’s safe up here, except that there are no walls around the edges. There’s this little lip, about a foot tall. Other than that there’s no fence or anything.
You can hear the bass from below. It hits through you. This would be a terrible neighborhood to live in on the weekends. My place is up the road a little, and over. You could walk there from here in about 20 minutes.
Penelope sits on the lip of the roof, with her back to the city. We’ve got a couple of tall buildings, a few others. That’s it. City I grew up in, city I might die in. A river, about a million people, and a whole bunch of factories no one uses anymore.
“You got a light?”
“No, Penelope, I don’t really smoke.”
She has one, she had one in her pocket, she wanted to see if I had one. She has two cigarettes out and she lights them both and hands me one. I face her, standing.
“Is it usually people up here?”
“Sometimes,” I say. But I’m enjoying it like this. “You wanna dance?” I say. “We can go downstairs. We can dance right here.”
“That’s ok,” she says. “I don’t really dance.”
I smoke. Penelope smokes. Penelope and I have a strange relationship which is basically that we both like artichoke hearts on sandwiches and sometimes we drive to funerals together. I’m serious. When our friend Dennis jumped off a parking lot to kill himself we drove to the funeral together. It took us forever because we got lost. Penelope was driving. I was sitting in the passenger seat taking pictures. We got to the funeral late, but it was ok because we got there together. We could always be the two people that got to Dennis’s funeral late instead of it just being: that one person who got to Dennis’s funeral late. And we both really, really like artichoke hearts on our sandwiches.
“We could dance right here. If you want. I’m not trying to gyp you out of your Thursday night experience.”
“Do you want to?”
“Not really.”
“You’re not gypping me. Come here.”
But she’s sitting on the edge. I sit on the roof, kind of next to her, kind of facing her, but I sit on the low part, before the edge.
“Do you have ecstasy?” That’s what she says to me. Not: “Have you eaten any artichoke hearts lately” or “how’s things” but “do you have ecstasy?”
“Yeah,” I say. I’m not gonna lie to the girl who drove me to Dennis’s funeral. I’m definitely not gonna drink tonight. I’m not gonna drink if I’m gonna do ecstasy. And I’d do ecstasy with Penelope.
“Do you have it with you?” She smiles, and she leans back.
And I think she’s gonna fall. My hands tense up.
But she doesn’t fall. She’s just standing up. Standing up from the lip of that building. And now she’s standing before me with her hand out. “Let’s go,” she says.
“Do you mind if I just give you my keys?”
“It’s not with you?”
“It’s in my car. It’s in the trunk.” I unzip my pocket. “I just kinda want to sit here for a second. Just..to take a second alone. But come back.”
“I will.”
“There’s a purple bag, just a little cloth bag. There’s a film canister inside there. It’s inside that.” I hold back my keys. “There’s a whole bunch of it in there, just bring us two..or bring us four..but don’t tell Ashley and don’t take any more than I can see. And you keep track of me. Bring it up here and take it with me.”
“I will.”
“And come right back.”
“I will.” She takes the keys.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “I’m just a little weird today.”