Steve lay in bed until two o’clock in the afternoon, sleeping, mostly, and just laying there feeling like someone lay a large slab of concrete on his chest sometime during the night. But around two, due to a series of large bangs coming from somewhere upstairs, he finally decided to get out of bed. The upstairs tenants probably decided to rearrange the apartment, dragging a couch to a new location, and then dragging a safe or a bag of dumbbells.

He put on his grey and black checkered bathrobe and went into the kitchen, and noted the few dirty dishes in the sink, which he would wash later. After deciding he had little else to do, he decided to go to the supermarket. He didn’t really need anything, but he often went there and strolled around the aisles, and often found items that he would like to purchase. Then he would buy these items, and he would go home and spend time preparing these items and cooking these items, and afterwards he would feel strangely content. Then he could enjoy his coffee or tea, and maybe watch an old movie on television.

While he breaded a chicken cutlet, and the egg yolk sat in a bowl and a bit dribbled onto the kitchen table where he prepared his meals, the phone rang, and he washed a thick crust of breading and yolk from his finger tips before answering.
“Hello,” he said. He thought he might miss the call.
“Steve, Steve. Thank god you’re home.”
“Hello, Karen. Why? What happened?”
“Just, come get me. And I’ll tell you when you get here.”
He figured she was stuck on the side of some road somewhere and needed someone to change her flat tire.
“Where are you, Karen?”
She told him that she was at a hotel in Manhattan, mid-town.
“It will take me a long time to get in there. Give me an hour. I’m on my way.”
She told him to hurry, and he looked at the half-breaded chicken cutlets sizzling in the small bubble of olive oil, and he switched off the stove-top burner before grabbing his hat and jacket and heading out.
The traffic wasn’t too bad for eleven o’clock on a Saturday night, and he made his way quickly down the expressway and even went across the bridge without any bumper to bumper mess.
He found the hotel. And he went through the revolving glass doors, crossed the marble floored lobby and approached the cute blond woman working behind the front desk. Of course she was staying in a place like this, he thought.
“Karen Serendon,” he said, and the woman looked up at him from a computer screen, seeming confused. She had these cute baby-fat cheeks that went rather plump when she looked up and forced this smile, but she also had these grey-blue eyes, slightly blood shot, like she was up all night yelling at someone on the telephone. Beautiful eyes.
“Can you tell me what room Karen Serendon is in? I’m a friend,” he said.
The receptionist could call up to the room, but she couldn’t disclose any guest’s information, for security reasons. Understandable, in a place like this. Who knew who else stayed here, maybe a president or some pop stars. Still he didn’t exactly look like an assassin or a starry-eyed fan. Policy is policy.
The receptionist made the call, and drummed her fingernails as she waited for an answer. Steve thought she kept a rather good beat, and tapped his foot as well. She seemed to hear him and immediately stopped her beat.
“I’m sorry, no one answered,” she said.
“Look, I spoke to her a little more than an hour ago, and she seemed very upset. Do you think you could let me go up, or send someone up to check on her?”
She hesitated, and then said she would have one of the cleaning ladies check the room.
“Maybe she went out for a walk?”
Great. Steve did a half circle walk of frustration back towards the door, and then looped back around to the lobby.
“What time do you get off today?”
“I work until eleven.” One hour away.
“How ‘bout me and you get out of here, at eleven, and we get ourselves a drink somewhere not too pricey?”
“I have a boyfriend,” she said. She shrugged, and tweaked her rose lips to the side as if to apologize and say there wasn’t more she could do.
Most stories don’t end happy, he thought. He figured that Karen had gone out somewhere—for a walk, a cup of coffee, a bagel--and that he could wait around for her, so he sat down on a large green chair in a circle of chairs, facing a large stone fireplace. A television hung on the wall above the fireplace, and the Knicks game played, and they were down by ten points, so it wasn’t a very good game. But the couch was comfortable and leather, and he rarely had the opportunity to spend time in a place like this, even if it was the waiting lobby.

After a few moments, the phone at the front desk rang, and blond and blue answered and very hastily hung up and dialed another number. Steve stood up, and approached the desk. The receptionist told whoever she was speaking to, probably the police, to hold on one second, and she pushed the receiver to her chest.

“Sir, everything’s okay. Just go sit back down over there, for now.”

Steve obeyed, but he didn’t like the tone of her voice. It was rapid and concealing something. He wished Karen stayed at a small place, a motor inn that didn’t have twenty foot ceilings in the lobby, so he could hear what beautiful blondie was talking about.

After watching the rest of the game, he heard sirens outside, and they came very close. They blazed and the lights flashed and circled right outside of the building, and even made a disco light scene of the marble and gold décor in the lobby. Two policemen came in through the door. One was older, in his forties, and fat. The other man was in his thirties, and he looked like he could rip a phone book apart with his hands. They went to the receptionist desk and the fat one talked very softly while the other man crossed his arms, looking mean, but in a hurry. He surveyed the area, and looked at Steve for a second, then he turned back to the conversation. It didn’t last long, and soon they rushed to the elevator and went upstairs.
Steve got thinking that maybe they were here for Karen. He could see her doing something like swallowing a bottle of pills and slushing it all down with some vodka and calling it a life, one last fuck you to her millionaire father who couldn’t answer all of her problems. And the bitch called Steve after she had already drunk the mixture, and was just waiting to fall asleep for the last time, probably in too much of a daze to remember the phone call whenever and in whatever world she woke to. Steve approached the receptionist, who was busy on the phone.
“Some girl. Rosa, one of the maids found her—I don’t know. No, they just arrived. An ambulance just pulled up also.”
Then two men in dark blue EMT outfits came through the revolving doorway and came up to the desk, and she told them
“Floor eleven. Room 1237.”
Great. What did the stupid bitch do? Probably the pills. Then the EMT men went to the elevator and waited for the great golden colored doors to open and went in and shot on up to the twelfth floor. The blond receptionist finally got off the phone.
“What happened?” Steve asked, after approaching the desk again.
“Karen. They found her. She’s up there on the balcony, threatening to jump.”
“Can I go up? I know her.”
“I guess so.”
He went upstairs, expecting to arrive too late, to have her jump. The door was open, and the police already tacked the yellow “crime scene” tape across the door. He couldn’t see much, because the hallway turned before entering the main room of the suite. He knocked on the door and a police officer came. Steve ducked to enter.
“You can’t come in, sir,” and Steve backed out.
“Is Karen in there? Is she okay?”
“You know her, wait right here.”

Several seconds passed, and the other police officer returned. From up close he had a face like a professional boxer, large and square and harder than most people’s fists.
“We talked her down, but she’s pretty upset. She said she wanted to see you.”
Steve imagined she wanted someone to be there, to listen to her, to watch a Disney movie with her and maybe rub her feet while she talks about how her husband, Marcus left her for another woman, or a guy.
“Good job, officer.” He said. “When can I see her?”
Steve assumed they would take her down somewhere for questioning, make sure she wasn’t going to climb up another ledge and peer down at the wandering heads of pedestrians any time in the future. Maybe she could spend the night in a hospital with her wrists wrapped to a steel bedpost.
“Come right in,” he said, and held the tape up for him to pass under.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, officer? I mean, I don’t want to upset her.”
“That is a possibility. But she doesn’t agree.” He held out his wrists, like two steel bars used to stamp out belt buckles. Pink scratches ran under the thick hair on his forearms.
“She can be a bitch,” Steve said.
The officer smirked. He had seen worse.


She huddled under a blanket on a large leather couch with two EMTs by her as if treating an injured player fallen on a football field. One kneeled on the ground, up front of her, one knee down and one up as if proposing, and the other sat on the couch, with one foot up and balanced across his knee, somewhat relaxed given the frantic rush he they ran up here with. She seemed safe and unharmed, if not shaken. Her feet were tucked under her like she was a little kid, and her small shoulders hunched forward like a cloak. Her wet hair curled and draped across her face. He always found something sexy in her vulnerable appearance.
“Have you swallowed anything?” One asked, while rubbing her back. Her cry out for help was a success. She had five men here now, all of whom would grab her if she tried it again, maybe pin her down and sedate her into a happy sleep. She didn’t seem like she would be going anywhere though.

Karen nodded and shook her head as the answers dictated. She wasn’t on any drugs, as far as anyone could tell. And nothing happened to upset her. No family deaths. Sparky the dog did not get run over. Then she noticed Steve, and stood up, keeping the blanket close to her. She stepped forward to him and all he could do was embrace her, pretend to be a caring parent or friend. She smelled like sweat and liquor. He rubbed her back. He was surprised that his first instinct was to console her. If the EMTs and police could do it, so could he.
“Hello, Karen.”
“I’m sorry, Steve,” she said, and she pressed her face into his shirt and gripped at the brown jacket he had swung over his shoulder.
Her back felt boney, as if his hand could rub through it if he wasn’t careful.

The police and the EMTs had asked her if she wanted to go to a hospital, and they looked at Steve simultaneously, as if he had the final decision. One of the police pulled Steve to the side and asked if he would stay with her.
“Naturally. We can’t leave her alone.” Naturally.
“Of course, officer.” He’d baby sit the girl. Then the EMTs left, and the police followed, after telling her to “take it easy out there.”
The room was clean, miraculously, clean. Even the bedspread was pulled straight and neat, and, except for a jacket thrown over a chair by the window, no other items lay about.
She still held the blanket over her, and she asked him to come sit down next to her. He didn’t want to. He wanted to yell at her, ask her why she did it, scream at her or throw her over the railing himself.
“A girl can’t even stand on a balcony railing in her underwear without being harassed,” she said. “Fucking pigs.”
They saved your life. He almost said it, but held himself back. He smiled anyhow, something too magnified and revealing of his thoughts.
“What?” She said.
“So how you been, Karen?” And he regretted saying that. He expected an outlash from her, something like “How’ve I been? I’ll tell you how I’ve been,” and then make a running leap for the streets to cannonball the pedestrians enjoying their Saturday night in Manhattan.
“Ah, so-so. Marcus and me split,” she said.
“Go figure,” he said. “I wondered where his Italian head of hair was at.”
“Yeah,” she looked down at the floor. Her eye makeup was on heavy and thick.
Not sure where else this night was going. And something about the way she smelled earlier made him think that wasn’t a bad way to spend the night. They returned to the main room and she sat erect on the couch, as if preparing for a slumber party with a group of her girls.
They sat in silence for a moment, and she clucked her tongue against her teeth. He hated that noise. That bored attempt to break the boredom by acknowledging it to whoever heard it.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said.
Silence. Steve didn’t want to probe her. Let her come to grips with her problem and she’d spill it all out, and hopefully to someone else, like a shrink.
Then she laughed like a parrot might laugh after it flies out of some predator’s reach and lands on a high up perch.
And silence. He thought he could hear himself sweat. “I’d have been scared I’d slip, climbing up there in this sort of weather,” he said.
“I almost did.” More silence. “Then I was up there, and, of course, I thought about what my parents would think and do, and how sad all of my relatives would get, and that was part of the reason I was up there. Let them experience my misery. Fuck them.” She shivered, a slight spasm that made Steve offer pull the blanket out from under him and hand it to her.
“How are you, Steve?”
“The same. Just another day,” he said. “I was making my famous chicken cutlets when you called.”
“Do you still have that bathrobe?”
“Of course I do.”
Steve didn’t know how long he’d stay, but at some point they both fell asleep on the couch, and he awoke in the morning with his shoes kicked off and his feet under a blanket, and direct sunlight roaring through the open blinds. Karen snuggled up next to him. He stood up, and she woke up, groggy, but fell back into the pillow, and he went to the window and looked out over the mid-town skyline. The window faced east, and the sky seemed a color blue he hadn't seen in a long time, with clouds strategically placed, like battle ships anchored in the Atlantic.
He didn’t make her promise to not do it again, or to call him if she ever had a problem. He gave her a hug and kissed her on the top of the head. Something about the way her hair smelled made him uneasy, almost nauseous—a mix of strawberries, sweat and liquor.