I crawl over to the edge of the roof of 1692. Crawl because I’m afraid of heights. I don’t see how somebody like Dennis could go to the edge of a parking garage and just jump over. Or he probably didn’t jump; he probably just sat on the edge and slid himself off. Or maybe he did jump: maybe he stood on the edge and jumped. I couldn’t do it. I guess you have to get to the point where you just hate everything so much, and feel so bad, that you’re not thinking about it the way I’m thinking about it right now. I think of the details, the funny details—like that last little scoot that you’d have to make. That last little exertion of pushing yourself off the edge. I mean how do you go through with that motion? Don’t you think, right then, holy shit, I can’t go through with this. I’ve gotten all the way up here, but if I do this last little scoot, I’m dead. I won’t be able to change my mind on the way down. Don’t you think that? You probly do. And at that point you probly just don’t care.
I can’t even sit on the edge of buildings. I make my way over there on my stomach, then I put my elbows and the top part of my head over the edge. I’ve got a whole body back there to keep me here. I spread my legs. It feels more stable that way. I smoke over the edge.
Penelope goes across the street—I can see her once she’s in the middle, crossing the far two lanes. There’s my car. She jumps up onto this concrete flower bed, this four-foot square with a tree in its middle. She’s skipping. She jumps off the tree, in this triangular courtyard and goes to my car, parked on the street. She opens the driver-side door and gets in. She leaves the door open. I’m smoking her cigarette. She turns on the lights. My headlights are beaming into the car in front of mine, a conversion van. Then Penelope closes the door. And my reverse lights go on.
I start to stand up—I start to raise my elbows on the lip of this roof—and then I stop. I delicately lower myself back down. And I smoke that cigarette, and for a moment I look away, at our two tall buildings and then past them, and I think about how big this world is. Then I look back at my car. I’m thrilled by it. I’m actually thrilled. Can you imagine? If Penelope steals my car, leaves the city, leaves the state, if Penelope just now decided she’d had enough of Dayton, and she steals my car to leave?
But she doesn’t do that. She doesn’t even drive around the block to get more cigarettes or sell my ecstasy at half price to ravers at another club. The lights go from white to red. And then they turn off. And Penelope gets out of the car and goes to the trunk. She has to bend down to see where the keyhole is.