Letters From The Ledge (18 page)

“Brendan, what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, something’s different about you today. Different than the other times I’ve met you.”

“You mean because I’m not stoned today?”

“That might be part of it, but we don’t really know each other all that well yet, and I don’t want you to think I’m weird.”

“Too late.” Brendan smiled and Nate grinned back at him.

“I can’t really put my finger on it, but you look like–I don’t know. The last couple of times I’ve seen you, you’ve been so sure of yourself, so cocky–like you had the world by the nuts, you know? Today, it looks like you’ve completely lost your identity. ”

Brendan swallowed hard. “It’s been a rough week.”

“Fair enough.”

After a few more minutes of small talk, they finally got up to the window and ordered their food. Nate picked up the tab. By the time their trays were ready, all the tables were full.

“We can sit on the grass.” Brendan offered. “Unless you don’t want to ruin your pants. Wouldn’t want to soil your Brooks Brothers.”

Nate kept scanning the tables. “Oh now that’s priceless, coming from you, Mr. Hilfiger. I’ve got a better idea. Over there!”

“What?”

“Come on!”

Nate led them through the small maze of tables to a small two-person in the corner who’s occupants–both female and rather stunning–were just finishing their meals. He fished a quarter out of his pocket and slipped it onto the corner of the table, then stood back unobtrusively until one of the women looked over knowingly and smiled. She obviously liked the look of both of them because she elbowed her friend and they both gave them the once over. Brendan flushed a bit.

The blond one spoke first, directing her comment toward Nate. “You hoping for my number or next rights to the table?”

“Unfortunately, my girlfriend would be really mad if I asked for your number.”

She eyed him blatantly. “Well, that
is
a shame.” She looked over at Brendan and then at her friend. “We could have doubled.” They gathered up their stuff. “It’s ok though. We were just leaving.”

Brendan was laughing out loud by the time they sat down and arranged their food on the freshly vacated table. “Now
there’s
something you don’t see every day.” He took a good look at Nate, who was pretty darned good-looking for a guy. “Or maybe
you
do.”

“Nah. Just got lucky.”

“So what was with the quarter?”

“Hold back from the bar days.” Nate took a bite of his burger and moaned with delight. “Oh my
God
that’s good!”

“You want to elaborate on that?”

“Foosball, pool, pinball. When you want next rights to the table you put your quarter up. That’s how the person playing knows someone’s waiting for a turn. Otherwise they’d just keep playing all night long.”

“Ok, but how did you know those girls would get the gesture?”

“When you’ve spent as much time in bars as I have, you get to recognize the type.”

Brendan just nodded. “Quite the ingenious way of getting a table, I must say.”

“That’s nothing–you should hear how I got my first apartment.” Nate grinned.

Brendan found himself smiling and shaking his head. This guy was alright. He was actually enjoying himself. He took a big bite of his burger–the first thing he’d eaten all day–and it tasted like heaven.

“Do tell.” Brendan managed with a mouth full of burger.

“The obituaries.”

“Excuse me?”

“If you read the obituaries you can find out about apartments that are coming vacant before they’re ever listed in the papers. I got a great little place in the village that way. Old guy with no family in a rent-controlled apartment kicked the bucket and I went down there and charmed the lady into letting me take over his lease. Man, that was a great apartment!”

“Genius.” Brendan just sat there shaking his head and chewing. “That’s pure genius.”

Nate just chuckled. “That woman loved me. I used to catch her watching me come and go from her window upstairs. She used to leave me casseroles and stuff. It got a little weird after a while, so I moved out. Sure served a purpose though. At the time I really needed the break on rent.”

“So here’s the part where you tell me your rags to riches story, right? Poor boy from the hood makes good?”

Nate shook his head. “No, actually I was born with a silver spoon, just like you.”

Brendan stopped. “So why’d you have to go looking for cheap rent in the village?”

Nate stared him down. “Why indeed?”

The possibilities started coursing through Brendan’s mind so fast they were causing collisions of time and space. Nate seemed content to let him direct traffic on his own. Eventually it dawned on him, but he felt stupid for not seeing it in the first place. Before he could ask any more questions, Nate changed the subject–sort of.

“So, you’ve cleaned up your act a bit. That wasn’t for my benefit, was it?”

Brendan looked him straight in the eye. “No. It wasn’t. Although it is part of the plan.”

Nate sat back in his chair. “Ah yes. The plan. You mentioned that in my office. Europe, was it?”

“Yup.”

“So, why lose the piercings and make your ears stick out?”

Brendan stared him down. “Why indeed?”

Nate smiled. “Touché.”

They finished their burgers in silence. Brendan’s stomach wasn’t going to allow the last few bites, so he threw his napkin on top and called it quits, sipping his shake and sizing Nate up. “So, you have a girlfriend huh?”

“Yup.”

“Is it serious?”

Nate wiped his mouth with a napkin. “You make it sound like pneumonia. Yes, it’s serious.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Very.”

“Blond?”

“Yup.”

“Prettier than the blond who was willing to give you her number a minute ago?”

“No contest.”

"Of course she is–you’re one of
those
guys."

Nate’s head tilted. "One of
what
guys?"

"The guys who have everything." Brendan sipped his shake. "You’ve got that look about you."

Nate grinned. The kid was intriguing. "Oh, I’ve got to hear this–lay it on me man."

Brendan smiled tentatively. "You think I’m messin’ around, don’t you?"

Nate watched him but said nothing.

Brendan ignored him and looked out at the park instead. "There really are only two kinds of people in this world."

"The haves and the have-nots?"

Brendan shook his head. "The ones who actually give a shit and the ones that don’t."

"Which one are you?"

He looked back at Nate. "Depends on the day."

Nate called it quits on his plate of food as well. "At least you’re honest–that’s gotta count for something."

"Not in my world it doesn’t."

"Tell me what you love about photography."

Brendan was thankful for the change of subject, but it took a minute to consider his answer. "I love that the lens captures things in a still frame that most people miss with their eyes. I love that pictures tell entire stories. I love that they can explain things that-" Brendan’s voice trailed off and he took a quick, deep breath in through his nose before continuing "–that otherwise don’t make a lot of sense."

"Things like what?"

"Look, don’t try to ‘shrink’ me Nate."

"I’m not trying to shrink you. I’m just trying to get to know you. I want to understand you."

"Why? Why do you even give a shit?”

Nate’s eyes were so intense that it made Brendan uncomfortable. "Because everything happens for a reason."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

“How about you? Got a girlfriend?”

Brendan thought about Tess. He thought about Sarah. He couldn’t explain either one so he just shrugged and said “I’m not sure yet.”

“Fair enough.”

They were finished with lunch, and Brendan could tell it was going to get awkward soon.

“Just spit it out.”

Brendan’s head shot up. “Excuse me?”

Nate smiled at him, trying to lighten the mood. “You look like you’re about to explode. What is it?”

Brendan took a couple of deep breaths and stared. “When I was at your office, there was a twenty dollar bill folded into an airplane. You said you found on the ground.”

Nate nodded.

Brendan pulled a second one, identical to the one in Nate’s office, out of his backpack and set it on the table. “Where?”

Nate sighed heavily as understanding dawned. He started to get up. “Come on.”

“Does this violate the doctor-patient relationship?”

“Not unless you grab my ass.”

- Good Will Hunting

They walked in silence for a long time. Just two guys, heading through the city. Brendan already knew the airplane was his. He’d spent hours as a kid perfecting his technique. He knew what it took to make it fly. What made him really curious was how far it had gone. Besides, who in their right mind would make a paper airplane out of a twenty-dollar bill?

They passed Sarah’s building on the other side of the block and stopped just around the next corner. Nate pointed upward. “It seemed to be coming from that direction up there. I watched it float down, perch briefly on that windowsill up there, then land on the ground, over here.”

Even though he’d known, it was still a little hard to take. All those years; all those airplanes. Like messages in a bottle, someone had finally found one. He nodded at Nate.

“You want to hear something else that’s weird?”

Brendan wasn’t sure he could take much more weirdness, but he nodded anyway.

“I found that twenty the same night I met your father. We were walking to the Carlton to meet them for drinks.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me and Paige. That’s my girlfriend.”

“But that’s not the night you came to my house.”

“No. That was a different night.” Nate took a deep breath. “But about that…”

“What?”

“Follow me.”

“Oh…kay.”

Nate backtracked a bit and entered the lobby of an apartment building, pushing the button for the elevator.

“Where are we going?”

“I have something to show you.”

Brendan’s eyebrows went up. “You’re not a serial killer, are you?”

“If I was, would I tell you on the way up?”

Brendan laughed. “Good point. Guess I’ll have to take my chances.”

Nate laughed too. “I guess so.”

When they got to Nate’s floor he slipped his key in the door.

“What is this place?”

“My apartment.”

Brendan’s heart started to race. “You live here?”

“Right around the corner from you. I know, freaky right?”

Brendan nodded uncomfortably. “Little bit, yeah.”

“There’s more.” He walked Brendan through the apartment and opened the window.

“You want me to take the quick way down?”

“No, I want you to see the view.”

Nate pointed toward Brendan’s balcony, but Brendan already knew what he was getting at. By this point his heart was slamming against his shirt and he was trying desperately to maintain composure. “Yeah. I see it. So?”

Nate sat down on the couch and let the tension settle a little. He spoke softly. “I didn’t know it was you until the night I ended up at your apartment.”

Brendan had absolutely no saliva left. His lips felt stuck together and he couldn’t utter a word. He sat there shaking, like an injured dog, cornered but too hurt to move.

“Can I get you a glass of water?” Nate asked.

He nodded, fingering his pocket and feeling for the reassurance of the baggie and lighter.

Nate went to the sink and poured him a glass, handed it to him and sat back down on the couch. “You want to sit?”

Brendan shook his head. The room was starting to close in on him.

Nate seemed to know exactly what he needed. “How about outside?”

Brendan looked over at the window that led to the fire escape and nodded. “Ok.”

Nate let Brendan go first, then followed him out the window and the two of them sat in silence on the fire escape. Brendan knew that if he pulled out a joint now, it would all but ruin his chances of working with Nate, but he was shaking so bad he could hardly keep his hands still. If he didn’t start talking he was going to come right out of his skin. “So when did you know for sure that it was me?”

"The night I met you at your apartment. After you and I talked, I went upstairs with your father into his office. I stepped out onto the upper balcony and when I looked over to my right, there you were, pacing, walking the ledge with your iPod turned on. I assume you didn’t see me."

Brendan shook his head.

“It gets even stranger.” Nate added.

“Not possible.”

“That night - the reason I went out there in the first place was because Paige had been watching someone.”

“Your girlfriend?”

Nate nodded. “She spends a lot of time out here.”

“And what does that say about your relationship?” Brendan tried to use sarcasm to get the focus off of him, but it seemed to make Nate even more tense.

“There’s a lot you don’t know, so don’t be too quick to jump to conclusions.”

Brendan was still shaking. “So you’re going to try to tell me your girlfriend was watching me out there.” He stuck his head out in the direction of his apartment, which during the day was a bit of a stretch to distinguish, but he’d spent enough time out there at night to know that backlighting made a world of difference. Billboards used the technique with great effect, and the images could be seen far and wide.

“She didn’t know it was you at the time. Neither of us did. She had noticed a girl first, watching something. Turned out to be you.”

Brendan just let his head bob up and down. The picture was becoming clearer, its pieces falling into his understanding faster than he could sort and place them.

“We even nicknamed you guys Romeo and Juliet for a while there.” Nate shook his head. “Anyway, when I walked out the slider in your dad’s office, I was just trying to see our building–to see if I could see someone else the way we seemed to be able to see others. I didn’t connect the dots until I looked down and there you were.”

"Did he see me too?"

“Who? Your father?”

Brendan swallowed hard. The word ‘father’ brought a fresh wave of confusion and it was all just too much to take. He could see the back of Sarah’s building and thought about the triangle it created. And here he thought he was all alone out there each night, but really people were watching him–had an emotional stake in his decisions. Tess, Sarah, the adoption piece, and now this…“Nate?”

“Yeah.”

“Is this a business meeting or are we just two guys hanging out?”

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re just hanging out.”

“Good.” At that Brendan pulled out his bag and fished out part of a joint, then proceeded to light it. He took a decent sized drag off of it and held his breath for a minute, willing the shakes to a halt and threatening them with more chemicals if they didn’t. After he released a long, slow breath he finally spoke again. “He’s not my father.”

Brendan watched for Nate’s reaction out of the corner of his eye. If he was shocked he wasn’t showing it. Nate stayed very cool, which was to his credit in Brendan’s book. He just shook his head in answer to the earlier question. “He was still inside at the time."

"That figures. He’s afraid of heights too." Brendan turned his head and offered Nate a hit, but Nate just smiled and shook his head.

"If he’s afraid of heights, then why does he live in the penthouse?"

Brendan took another drag off the joint and tried to speak while holding his breath. "Did you ever see Nacho Libre?"

Nate laughed and tried to impersonate Jack Black impersonating a Spanish monk. "Eets dee best?"

"Right.” Brendan smiled shakily. “Not bad, by the way."

"You should hear my Monty Python."

"Some other time."

"Right. Sorry."

"So what do you do when you work for him?"

"He wants me to help him with website development, a little advertising, maybe some marketing. We’ll take some actual photos of his offices and design some great graphics, maybe a new logo, then morph them together to form an appealing package for the web."

Brendan’s mouth turned down in disgust. "You sound like a commercial."

"Thanks. I try. Seriously though? Most of the older companies are too set in their ways to have any kind of a hip or trendy web presence, and yet that’s what the up and coming customer base is looking for. The good ‘ole boys are starting to realize that if they want to be competitive it’s not all golf games and scotch. That’s where we come in–working with them to update their image and moving them along into the millennium with the rest of the computer-savvy world."

"Sounds great."

"I’m not complaining."

"And your girlfriend?"

"Believe it or not, she works for him too. Temporarily at least. She’s an accountant and her firm is handling some of his business. That’s why we were meeting them for drinks the night I found the airplane."

Brendan rolled his eyes. "Small world."

"I’ll say."

"So what do you mean by ‘temporarily’? Like a temp agency?"

"No. She actually works for a top accounting firm, and got hand-picked for this job, to do some consulting."

"Now
that
I can believe." Brendan snorted.

"Why do you say it like that?"

Brendan turned his head. "I’m sure she’s a good accountant, but make no mistake. My father always has the youngest, prettiest girls working for him. Most of them don’t last very long, but he never seems to have trouble finding replacements." Brendan looked at him with unflinching sincerity. "Just tell her to be careful."

Nate’s jaw hardened and his one hand clenched into a fist. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow and Brendan noticed for the first time how strong he was. "It’s no wonder you’ve got forearms that look like steel beams."

Nate looked at his arms. "What are you talking about?"

"You might want to carry around a tennis ball. At least then people will think you’re doing that for exercise."

Nate watched himself clench and unclench and looked at Brendan with a sort of stunned respect.

Brendan inclined his head toward his apartment building. "You want to know what the draw is? Why the ledge?"

"Yeah." Nate nodded.

It took a minute for Brendan to find just the right word. Finally he breathed out "Freedom."

"There are other ways to be free, Brendan."

"Prove it."

"I’m trying."

Brendan finished the joint and tossed the remains over the edge of the fire escape. “Sorry about your shirt.”

“Pardon me?”

Brendan smiled. “If I was you I’d change before I went back to work. Throw that one in the laundry.”

Nate sniffed his shirt. “What about you? Don’t your parents notice?”

“I don’t think they know the difference. They think it’s just the way I smell.” He looked away. “Not that they ever get close enough to get a good whiff.”

It was Nate’s turn to sit still and blink. He was obviously at a loss for words.

“I gotta go. Do you mind?”

“If you go? No, of course not. I–have to get back to work.” Nate suddenly realized he was blocking the window and moved in ahead of Brendan.

Once they were back inside the apartment Brendan picked the glass up off the table, poured it out and put it in the sink. “I don’t really know what to say.”

“It’s ok. It’s a lot to process. But I thought you should know. I’m a straight up guy Brendan. I won’t pull any punches with you.”

Brendan stood there with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

“Unless of course, you punch me first.” Nate was trying too hard to be funny and it made Brendan laugh.

“Yeah, well. With those forearms, it’s not very likely.”

Nate stuck his arm out to shake Brendan’s hand. “I really am glad you called. Maybe next time we could make it a business meeting and you could bring me a portfolio.” He startled. “Actually, hold on a second!” Remember I told you I’d made a tutorial program for some of your programs?”

“Yeah. I think I remem–” But Nate was already rifling through the drawers of a small desk. “–ber you mentioning that.”

“Yes! Here it is!” Nate produced a set of CDs labeld with sharpies in awkward penmanship. “Just try them. Pick out a few of your best shots and use them as samples to go through the tutorials. I think it’ll really help.”

Brendan took the CDs and thanked him.

“When you’ve got a few good projects worked out, give me a call and we’ll get together again. Sound good?”

“Sure. And thanks for lunch.”

“Any time.”

__________

For the next two nights Brendan stayed inside and worked on the tutorials Nate had given him. He read the next letter from Tess, and adapted some of her poetry onto the screen, hiding words and pictures within his creations, somehow conveying the heart of her work through the essence of his own.

It was easier to stay clean when he was focused on graphics. Creativity seemed to provide its own brand of high, and he found it easier to tap into innovative ideas with a clear mind. Nate had asked for a portfolio, and for the first time since–well, for the first time, anyway–he felt like he was up for the challenge.

The tutorials helped fill in some of the gaps, but there were also some things he’d figured out on his own that were more advanced than the basics Nate had given him, and he used those techniques as well, hoping to show Nate that he was more than just a hack with a chip on his shoulder.

By all rights the adoption thing ought to be occupying more of his thoughts, but he pushed that into a deep corner, and instead found his mind focused on Sarah. He would sit and stare in the direction of her building, wondering if she was out there somewhere, wondering about him. Tess was gone, but Sarah was real and warm and he relived the dream about kissing her over and over until he thought he would go crazy. He’d let the chance slip by with Tess. He wasn’t going to let that happen twice.

__________

"Sarah!"

Brendan snuck up and slipped his hand around the adjacent locker, effectively pinning her between it and the open door. She spun in the enclosed space and looked up to find Brendan staring back at her.

He leaned over a bit and put his face that much closer to hers. He watched her eyes flicker and her mouth twitch and he liked that it made her uncomfortable. "Hi."

He caught himself looking at her lips and tried instead to focus on her hair. “You look beautiful today." He picked up a lock of her hair. “I think I like this color the best so far.” His proximity didn’t change.