imanant :: look at me go.

Monday, December 26, 2005
Jumper

The Washington Monument, removed and disinterested, stood above a luminescent and contagious blinking city. Or it stood by while the city was on fire - from that height Reese couldn't tell. Small yellow and white lights, patchy and spotty across the diamond, ostensibly changing shape and altitude, made their existence and message known to anyone who would look down on them. jump jump jump...they were calling out to Reese. The chant mellowed to a steady hummmm, their screaming and yelling saved for some real action. Reese was listening. He was fifteen floors up, minus the thirteenth, which was technically the fourteenth, but had been left out by superstitious architects and engineers afraid their souls would be eaten alive by savage hell demons with dried blood between their molars if they crossed the threshold of a floor marked with the number thirteen. Fifteen floors up: not an optimal height if a nearly 100 square mile city is chanting jump jump jump within earshot. Though labeling Reese suicidal wouldn't have been accurate. He wasn't thinking about dieing, he was just thinking about jumping off a balcony 150 feet off the ground, the same way someone pauses before jumping into a pool on an Indian summer’s day, not so sure if they smell an oncoming chill in the air. Or the way a steel worker eating lunch on top of Rockefeller Center wondered what it’d feel like if their body was broken into a million little pieces, held together only by putty after slamming into the pavement traveling at terminal velocity. Or the way a pedestrian contemplates what it'd feel like if a Mac truck slammed them into a brick wall. No, it's not that Reese was suicidal, he was just attracted to possibilities. What happens the moment your life is registered kaput? Do the lights shut the fuck up and stop blinking or do they find a new victim? Would the Washington Monument take notice? If it did, what would it do? Reese pondered all of this and took another sip of beer.

‘I could just slowly kill myself with this stuff’, he thought. "But would that make it easier or harder for everybody else? Watching a slow, painful demise or dealing with a moment? It'd be an easier story for the police. 'One second he was talking about the Redskins, the next he walked to the balcony and he was gone.' Drinking myself to death would be much worse.’ He imagined his family and friends telling their own single sentence version to a news reporter or a coroner or a barber. He gazed back through the deck’s screen door. They all stood around his living room, making conversation. He wasn't entirely sure anyone had noticed he'd left the room until he locked eyes with his friend Amanda. He smiled and turned back to the sociopath city across the river. Had they locked eyes long enough for her to interpret it as a message to come outside? Or did he crinkle his brow just so as to make it appear like a cry for help? He stood still for a moment waiting for the screen door to open. It didn't.

The wind began to pick up. At fifteen, that is, fourteen floors up the wind has more room to dance and play. Listen closely at that height and you can actually hear the wind whistling Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. Absolutely smashing. If Reese's apartment was actually in D.C (it was in Arlington, VA, the missing piece of the world’s formerly largest baseball diamond) he would not have been able to mingle with musical winds at eye's level with an aloof and phallic monument. Within the district, no building may stand taller than the Washington Monument, as if George Washington would be forgotten or the city would be any less intimidating to visitors if the Morgan-Stanley building was allowed to gain more office space in the sky. Still, Reese appreciated the symbolism. Let nothing stand taller than what this monument stands for. That got Reese wondering about whether it'd hurt more to jump, that is, fall from the top of the monument onto the grass below it or leap from his deck, or any deck really, to a street paved with concrete, if it'd hurt at all. If it did cause the faller pain, would the experience be altered by different kinds of concrete or grass? He didn't have long to question because behind him the screen door opened.

"It's a bit brisk out here," Amanda chattered, rubbing her upper arms and leaning against Reese. "What's going on?" His right arm began to feel a bit warmer, meaning he was taking some of her body heat. He felt this must be rude, but would it be more rude to move away? Would she still think he was playing the cootee game from kindergarten?

"You get used to it after a while." He remained still.

"What are you thinking about all alone out here?"

"Nothing much. How's the party doing in there?"

"O.k. Funny bunch, but they're doing their best to make conversation. Mostly talking about new year's resolutions and plans for the upcoming year. Your Uncle Marty told some story to all of us about you and a bulldog."

"It chased me up a hill, I was a small child, what was I supposed to do?" Being eaten alive by a dog must hurt more than being pounded through a brick wall into the next building. Would it hurt more or less as a child?

"No, you did what any kid would have done. It was a cute story." For a moment they stared out at America's capitol, seeing different cities. "OK, I'm cold. Come back inside, I think your mom wants you to open more champagne, and the ball is dropping soon." She smiled, showing her teeth, slid the screen door open, and walked back inside. Reese watched her walk away.

'She has a wonderful ass', he thought. 'Why didn't we ever hook up?' He took another sip of his beer. 'Maybe if we just got drunk together, then it'd be harmless. What a funny story it'd be and we could retell it to each other with some inside jokes, it'd bring us closer together. Who knows, maybe we'd actually make a great couple. I don't think grass or concrete would hurt any more of less, regardless of type. Instant death is instant either way.' Another sip.

'She did touch my arm. Maybe she wants me already.' Reese followed a plane descending slowly into Regan airport. For a moment, the city lights shut up. An optical illusion, perhaps, but no true jumper would have passed up such a reprieve. Maybe it'd even cause them to go back inside, turn on the television, have a soda.

Reese took a sip of his beer and then lobbed the bottle to the street. As it spun some beer spilled out, saying jump jump jump. He couldn’t hear the crash, but the rainbow of chanting alcohol was clear. When the descent was over, the sparkling shatters of glass joined in...jump jump jump. Reese looked towards the west, straight past the monument and the capitol dome, beyond the Chesapeake Bay, over the Atlantic, father than the European Union, through the minarets of Oman, around the Great Wall of China, farther than the sun over Japan, higher than the Pacific's waves, overtop the Rocky Mountains, and back to his deck just as he leaped to the concrete. As when the plane passed, the city was drowned out by a falling body.

With grace surpassed only by passion, Reese shook his head from left to right then up and down, clearing concrete from his nasal passages. Then he walked back inside to open the champagne.

posted by ezruh sellof at 7:30 PM 1 comments

1 Comments:

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