A gun on a brownstone roof
“It’s the end,” he said.
He decided to do it up on the roof; they’d always loved it up there. He’d bring
a good bottle back from the wine store in 116th St; sometimes a Zinfandel – she
had loved that – or on warm spring evenings, a buttery Californian Chardonnay;
then they’d sit in the heavy teak chairs and watch the swallows flit in and out
of the eaves of the other brownstones as the sky deepened to its richest blue.
Sometimes they’d stay there really quite late. “I’ve got a pizza in the
freezer,” she’d say, “there’s no hurry.” So they’d sit through sunset and into
the blue hour, and the traffic from Seventh and Eighth Avenues was like a far-away
tide that lapped round an island that was theirs alone.
“I’ll end it up there,” he said. “At six or seven on a
spring evening. The time when we were happiest.”
He sat and wrote a note to his niece – they’d had no
children – and slipped it into his breast pocket. He took his standard-issue
Beretta from his desk drawer, wondering if it would still fire. “I shoulda
turned it in more than 50 years ago,” he said. “I guess there’s a firearms
officer somewhere still looking for it. Well, it’ll do me one last service. And
I shan’t hurt anyone firing it up there, and there won’t be any mess.”
He went into the kitchen, where a bottle of Zinfandel was
waiting on the sideboard. “You’re coming with me,” he muttered, and grasped it
by the neck. He nearly forgot the corkscrew, but slipped a waiter’s friend into
his breast pocket along with the note, then picked up one of their best crystal
glasses. Then he took a last look around the living room, closed the front door
behind him and climbed the stairs to the roof of the brownstone. It was May,
and half-past six, and the sky was a brilliant blue. He sat down in one of the
teak chairs, the Beretta in his trouser pocket, and poured a glass of Zinfandel.
“To you, hon,” he said. “I shan’t be long.” He lifted the glass in the
direction of the Stars and Stripes that flew from the Blockhouse in Central
Park, just visible through the houses of the next two blocks. And he savoured
the timbre of the wine and watched the swallows as they darted over the street.
After a while he felt it was time.
He was about to reach into his pocket for the Beretta when
he became aware of a noise from the roof of the adjoining house. Like all the
brownstones in the row, this was separated from its neighbours by only a low
parapet, over which a child might step without difficulty; but no-one ever did
so. The roof spaces were a jumble of deck furniture, planters, aircon
compressors and in one case a row of beehives, which he had always viewed with
suspicion. Something appeared to be moving on the roof next door. He realised
it was the trapdoor that led from the house below; not all the houses had a
companionway – some had a hatch that was reached by ladder and often very
heavy. It clearly was in this case, as whoever was below was exerting
considerable force to raise it.
“Goddamit,” he muttered. “How is a man to kill himself
without privacy?” He pushed the Beretta down into his pocket and watched as the
trapdoor opened, slowly at first, then quickly as it fell back onto its hinges;
there was a crash, and then the head and shoulders of a being emerged slowly
and with curiosity, rather as an early vertebrate might have emerged from the
sea into the Devonian period of the Paleozoic era some 375 million years
earlier.
The vertebrate was a female juvenile of perhaps 18 or 19
years, clad in jeans and a tee-shirt with a gaudy design that appeared to celebrate
Beethoven. Her fingernails and toenails were painted with a bright green
varnish; her hair was mostly blonde but streaked with green and purple and she
had a diamante nose jewel, and a dull steel stud through her cheek. In her hand
she had a large portable Bluetooth speaker that she laid tenderly on the roof
before easing her body through the aperture, pulling herself backwards and
sliding on her rump onto the roof coating, her legs following a little
awkwardly. Her feet were bare.
“Well, hi,” she said.
“Hello,” he replied. He checked the Beretta’s safety catch
was on and found to his relief it was.
“We moved in next door,” she added.
“Oh.”
“I came up to listen to some music,” she went on. “I’m
studying music. At Juillard.”
“Congratulations.”
“Do you live here? Do you have a family?” she asked.
“Yes. No,” he said, trying not to be abrupt. Jeez, he
thought, can’t a man blow his brains out in peace.
“Are you single then?”
“No. My wife died last week.”
“I’m really sorry,” she said. She frowned. “Were you married
long?”
“Yes. We were high-school sweethearts. Then I had to go to
Vietnam.” He paused, then went on, not quite sure why. “When I came back I was
kinda messed up. But she married me anyway.”
“Oh.” She looked down, then up again. ”I guess I shouldn’t
ask questions like that, should I? Mom always says it’s inappropriate. She says
it’s because I’m neurodivergent.”
Whatever that means, he thought. “Are you
neurodivergent?” he asked.
“No, but I’m Canadian,” she said.
“Oh, that’s all right then.”
She didn’t say anything to this, so he said:
“Would you like to play your music?”
“Would you mind? It’s Schubert.”
“Schubert is good,” he said. He was surprised his voice was
so gentle.
She held down the switch on the Bluetooth speaker then
fiddled with her phone. A rich, tender sound flowed across the rooftops and
seemed to billow down into the street below. He blinked.
“My goodness,” he said.
“It’s special, isn’t it. It’s the Credo from the Mass No 2
in G Major.” She smiled suddenly. “I don’t play this stuff in the apartment,
you see. The others don’t get it. But you do, don’t you?”
I never have, he thought. Why do I now.
“I took my wife to the Lincoln Center,” he said. “Last fall.
She’d just been diagnosed. She wanted to hear the Mozart Requiem. Towards the
end she cried.” He looked up at the young woman. “She did things like that
sometimes. Is that strange?”
“No.” She sat crosslegged and looked straight at him and he
saw her eyes were a deep blue-grey. “No, I don’t think so. It’s the same with
art sometimes. You see, this is what we’re on the planet for, isn’t it? It’s
sort of the price we’re paid to make up for the pain of being human.”
“I never thought of it like that.”
“Hannah!” called someone from downstairs. “The pizza
showed.”
“OK,” she called back.
“Was yours the deep-pan Margherita?”
“Yeah and I wanted fries.”
“You got it. Serving up.”
She stood up. “I guess I better go.”
“I’m sorry. I love this music,” he said. He did.
“You want I leave the speaker here? I can stream from my
phone from downstairs. I’ll put the Mass on from the beginning,” she said.
He was about to say no, then nodded. “I’d like that very
much,” he said.
She smiled. “I’ll pick up the speaker later. You take care,
huh?”
“You too,” he said.
She wound her long legs back into the hatch and disappeared
into the apartment. He sat back and listened to the Mass in G Major. The world
slowed down; he didn’t move; the sun set and the blue hour arrived, then the
moon rose above the chimneys.
Some time after that, he poured another glass of Zinfandel.
Then he took the Beretta out and emptied the magazine.
More short fiction from Mike here
Mike is now also on Substack here
Mike Robbins is the author of a number of fiction and
non-fiction books. They can be ordered from bookshops, or as paperbacks or
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