A year previous, to the day and nearly the hour, the same gull shot past the window, carried up and back by a sudden gust, white feathers fluttering like plastic bags in a breeze. Kevin’s eyes followed some way behind the bird, a peripheral glance of orange and white. They fell down, down far too fast, to stare at the concourse eleven storeys below. A little ripple of nausea flowed liquid from his bowels, crested wave through each muscle to finally melt away just past his ankles. It was a long way down. He sagged, every joint folded in on itself. Stood raised on the window ledge he leant outward. Only his head rested against the giant window, wire embedded security glass all that kept the wind out and him in. He looked down and down and down some more, to heads shoulders and spindly legs, pores pored sweat to steam on the ice cold glass, soothing away the night before.

The sight would never tire, wire woven, little specks of dirt he’d come to know by heart over the year. If he breathed right, deep enough and slow enough, he could pretend, just for a second or two, that he was hanging high above. He was hanging now.

“You enjoying that view there Kev?”

“Yeah,” He replied dreamily. “You should try it.”

“No thanks. Never really had a head for heights see, not since I was a wee scrag anyways.”

“What happened? Fall out of a tree?”

Mark grinned. He did that often. “Something like that.” He replied enigmatically.

Eyes closed, Kevin listened to Mark make his breakfast. He was surprisingly light of touch for a guy with bulk, not fat so much as solid. Foot falls full of something approaching grace. A voice to match, lilting and winding, the words were about the journey not the destination. Kevin hung. He could feel the tiny bristles of his shaved scalp bend and flex as he rolled his head from side to side, a massage light of touch.

“Kev do you want one of these sodas?” Mark pulled him from his reverie.

“Soda?”

“Aye, it’s a Belfast speciality boy. They use backing soda instead of yeast, makes it taste fine.”

Kevin glanced, eyes open a fraction to where the bacon, eggs and mushrooms spat hot oil.
“You’re cooking a full Irish there aren’t you?”

“Northern Irish Kev,” Mark corrected waving his butter covered knife fresh from the warm soda bread.
“I’m no Fenian.”

“Sorry dude.” Kevin trawled memory lost. He gave up.
“What’s a Fenian again?”

“The other side.”

Kevin couldn’t remember which particular side that was. He knew he’d been told, at some length too. Last night had featured a lesson or three. Interesting, just too intense for this patch of A.M. Change of subject was needed.

“No thanks on the soda cheers dude.”

“Probably for the best,” said Mark considering the small mountain of frying breakfast, “There’s not much here.”

Silent save the gentle bubbling egg yoke, Kev’s eyes fell down again. A guy stumbled into the light, grey bright despite the blanket of clouds. Heading home, Kev guessed, some girl left dozing in the half light as he slipped away. The figure below clad in brown leather and tight jeans strolled slow, cat with cream moustache, then turned and ducked into the tower next door.
“Lucky git,” Kevin found himself breathing.

“What’s that Kev?”

“Nothing dude…just…………..?” Kevin didn’t want to carry on. Too much effort for not a lot. Still, he felt he had to.

Saved by the door opening.

Black. Hair, jeans and vest contrasted with milk white arms face and trace of stomach flat and cold. She came in swinging a bottle, squinting a little without her glasses.

“Hi guys.” She wasn’t sure of names.

Kevin found himself wandering down, soft landing from hanging so high. Smell sweet. Black white but no grey. He went about making himself some breakfast and they talked about the first of many night befores.

“Is that absinthe Jess?” Mark asked of the bottle she’d plonked on the table.

“Yeah! And d’you know I’ve no idea where it came from! Found it standing by my door this morning.”

“Must have been a good craic if you landed a bottle of that stuff, that’s proper that is.”

“Must have been. Evil looking stuff isn’t it,” she said eying the luminous colour, flicking the glass and watching the thick liquid syrup like surge.

“Aye. Devil in the bottle. Makes you go a bit WOO.”

She fixed him with a smile.
“That sounds like personal experience“

“More than one.”

“Looks like piss doesn’t it.” The light had been catching the bottle, shards of grey scattered across green and made something else. They both looked at Kevin a little funny.

“Only if you’ve been drinking bleach.” She said.

“I had black piss once. Few too many jars of Guinness. Had a head on it too!”

“Did it take five minutes to settle?” Kevin joked. Little laughs followed, one prettier than the other. They’d know each other no more than fourteen hours, eight of them lost to drink and sleep. Old friends can exist comfortably numb in silence. They weren’t old friends yet. The seconds grew and breathe drew words nearly from mouths. It was ever Kevin’s weakness. The stutter of a conversation stalled was too much. Since he could remember within pauses pregnant and bloated he floated words out into world. Most of the time he had no control over them, the words a rash caused by his allergy to awkward silence. Sure enough his tongue made shapes. He didn’t know it but spilling forth the only words he could think of would shape his life. They got him the girl he said them too.

“But my piss does look like that.”

“So you have been drinking bleach,” Jess laughed.

Kevin laughed back but didn’t know why.
“No but…..it is piss coloured.”

“What absinthe?” She asked. “This is piss coloured?” She continued, picking up the bottle. “What colour is it?”

“Green.”

“And what colour’s piss?” Mark cut in.

“Green.”

“But Kevin,” Mark said, soft and slow, “Piss is yellow.”

6 was 9. World turned and Kevin had finally caught up breathless and wondering where and when. Piss was green and sky was blue. It was Blue right? He’d ask. Thought back. Sometime two and two should have made four. He must have heard grass was green and piss was yellow, but what he’d heard, even what he’d seen, mattered nothing to what he believed. And it was that thought that turned this scene from amusing anecdote to epiphany. Because it wasn’t just that Kevin was colour blind, it was that he’d looked but not seen. He spent the rest of his hangover, and a good many days, hanging, looking out to fields of distinctly un-piss coloured grass, wondering over what other truths he’d cast milky sightless eyes. Strange epiphany as epiphanies go. Urine tends not to be the liquid of choice for rivers of revelation.

He was ernest then. He lost such wide eyed sentiment not long after Jess miscarried their first and even the birth of Shaun some time later couldn’t bring it back, not completely anyhow. Bouncing baby boy beautiful on his knee so many years removed it was easy for Kevin to scoff at the child he was, yet he never did. Because even without the naiviety and achne, Kev knew how important piss is green had been to him. To others too. It was a debtate for the ages, or at least that year at Uni. It was a mirror to the soul. It was, as a surprisingly philosophical man would comment, as deep or as meaningless as you wanted to make it.

And it was the second to last thing that went through whoevers mind, not including the concrete of course.