Wild Awake

this story now. Maybe because he’s saved the saddest part of all until the end. Maybe because I’m the only person in the world who can lift it from his shoulders now that he’s carried it for so long.
    “What did she say?”
    “She said, ‘The soul has a home of its own, and I want to live in that one.’ Some line from a movie. I had her write it down for me, eh, but I lost the paper. It knocked me out—this beautiful girl in a polka-dot dress sitting there on the sidewalk, selling her paintings and pulling out lines like that. Every single day, I told her to go home. Every goddamn day.”
    “Why didn’t she?” I say, even though I know the answer.
    Another car passes by with its stereo blasting, this time a nattering top forty host whose words I can’t make out. I’d never realized how loud the world was, how filled with cold and impersonal noise. It’s a wonder we ever find each other at all in its clamoring thickets. It’s a wonder we still try.
    The mattress groans as Doug leans over to get his crutches “Come on, honey,” he says. “I got something to show ya. It’s maybe not what you wanted, but I bet Sukey-girl would have liked you to see it.”
    He maneuvers himself up from the mattress. I watch him warily, my tears drying up but my cheeks still hot. I don’t think I’m ready for more surprises, no matter what they are. I want to be home with my head under a pillow, muffling as much of the world as I can. Doug works his way across the room, lurches past me, and goes into the hall. “Down this way,” he grunts. I follow him at a distance. “I’ve already seen her old room,” I say, remembering the porn magazines and the stench of old cigarettes.
    Doug shakes his head in disgust. “Sukey-girl never spent hardly any time in that shithole anyway.”
    He crutches down the hall quickly, as if he’s afraid I’ll find some excuse to leave if we don’t get there fast. The floor creaks beneath us like something that’s already breaking, even though the demolition notice taped to the door of the hotel when I came in this morning pins the date a few weeks away. Doug stops when he gets to the fire door at the end of the hall and leans on it with his shoulder.
    “Isn’t the alarm going to sound?” I say.
    Doug ignores me. “Give that door a push, honey.”
    He shuffles out of the way, and I reluctantly take his place. The door scrapes open when I shove it, revealing a rickety fire escape. Doug blinks at the blueness of the sky like he’s seeing an alien landscape. I gaze out apprehensively, my eyes wandering down through the metal slats to the alley four stories below.
    “I don’t know what you’re going to find up there,” he says with a rueful glance at his crutches. “Maybe nothing. But Sukey-girl was always sneaking up to that rooftop, so you may as well have a look around.”
    I glance at the spindly staircase climbing up the brick wall, and my stomach twists up like a wet shirt. I hate heights, hate-hate-hate them, and the fire escape looks like it would collapse if you blew on it too hard.
    “Go on,” says Doug.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You want to see what your sister saw, this is as close as you’re gonna get.” He pats me on the arm, gazing up the fire escape with an expression of such naked yearning I feel ashamed.
    “You stop by when you come down,” he says, “and tell me what it’s like up there.”
    The fire escape clangs each time I take a step. I grip the rusty handrails, silently uttering threats to the Imperial Hotel: If I die climbing this stupid fire escape, I will come back and burn you to the ground before they even get a chance to demolish you . Cars rumble past on the street below, and the smell of their exhaust pricks my nose. I can hear the bass thump of someone’s sound system and see the white splatters of pigeon droppings on the tops of faded awnings. Look at you, sneaking up fire escapes , laughs the Sukey in my head, but I’m so mad at her I don’t even answer. Each rattling step sends my heart racing. Every time I glance down, my guts contort. I can smell the cloying stink of the Dumpster in the alley below. That’s where I’ll land if the fire escape gives out.
    The higher I climb, the more I start to worry about the most random and trivial things, as if my brain has given up on trying to distinguish the important stuff and is just firing at everything that moves. I wonder if Math Boy found the solution to his equation. I wonder if