Friday Story — Skyline.

And here I am. Hiding high, under the dark roof of a night sky. It’s humid despite being seventy-stories in the air. Hong Kong’s rainbow-coloured lights look like pixels in a game I feel I’ve lost. They say there are no rewards without taking risks, though I’ve taken them. I can’t say the rewards have followed, though I’ve put myself out there. I watch columns of steam rise from air conditioning units that sit in boxes on top of hotels I can see in the distance. Their plumes are green, red or golden from the lights that sit at the base of each building. I see people living their lives inside of each brightly lit square through open curtains. Do they know they’re being watched? Do they care? Probably not. And why should they? I never have.

It’s nice sitting up here. I feel removed from it all. Like being in the box seat with a view of life and everything that goes on. A matchbox city with ants running from one thing to another with no real destination in mind. It makes me think of my last boyfriend. In hindsight, he was almost a carbon copy of the three that had come before him. Taller than me, fair of skin and hair. Soft features. Stupid. Is it me that feels dumb? Do I seek out those with less brainpower to appear to be smart? It’s possible, though I know I can hold my own. Can’t say I’m feeling that smart now though. I’m unemployed, almost broke and about to be evicted. Yes. By the stupid boyfriend. The one with the job, the apartment, and as it turns out, another girlfriend. In his defence, he’d given me notice. In my defence, I hadn’t taken any. That was a month ago. He has the luxury of friends in this town. People he’s been staying with. Mine, are really just acquaintances. Friends of friends of his. So what now? Now that I’ve made no plans to move, no aspirations to go anywhere.

Home feels like a distant land. Almost mythological. I think back to why I left it. Of the small town that offered me nothing. Of the boy, I loved as a young woman. The boy who had no aspiration to leave. Was I wrong to go? I don’t think so, I’ve never been back. No, you’ve just bounced from one unplanned destination to the next. You’re a passenger in this life. You live through other people. That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? Why beat yourself up? I inhale from my vape and join the air-conditioning units in polluting the darkness. I don’t think twice about it, I feel like its polluted me. Too much time spent in my head, my mother used to tell me. You’re always right when the conversation is your own. Whatever. I’m not that old, still young by my count. Thirty-one isn’t exactly a slippery slope. I love how baby boomers seem to rewrite the new great age dynamic whenever they shift into it. Though I think that run has ended. I can’t see how they’ll be selling in anything beyond seventy.

Someone’s pacing beside me on a neighbouring balcony. There isn’t far to go, so the laps have become distracting. I stand, try to see, though the sides of each one give you the privacy that makes a sideways glance at anyone impossible. I see smoke rising, it’s thick. I smell something sweet, a cigar perhaps? Now I can hear him coughing. Thick raspy noises that suggest his throat’s not used to it. I inhale once more, just really to remind myself that I can. I close my eyes and try not to laugh, exhaling smoke to suppress it. I can hear the cap being screwed off something, a glass being filled and a bottle being dropped back on to a table. He means business.

‘You can do this Ryan.’

He’s talking to himself, hyperventilating, getting himself ready for something.

‘Just put it all behind you.’

I hear a table being dragged across the tiles to the balcony rail, which stops me. Then he’s on top of it, visible. He’s a skinny young man with caramel skin, gangly arms and a mass of dark brown hair. He’s wearing a black t-shirt with the Rancontuers plastered in white letters across it. Dark eyes dart back and forth. He hasn’t seen me yet. He finishes his drink and tosses it backward, shattering it on the tiled floor. He shakes his hands, turns his head left and right. A red and white conversed foot steps on to the rail before I speak.

‘Want to talk before you jump?’ I ask, casually. Like we’ve just met at a party.

‘Jesus!’ he says stumbling, then falling backwards.

It sounds like he lands pretty hard on the tiles. I didn’t see it, though I can only guess from the awkward silence that follows.

‘You okay?’

‘Yip.’

‘You want to talk? There’s nobody else here.’

I just let it hang out there. I fight the urge to add more.

‘I’m good,’ he says, though it sounds pained.

‘Yeah, the thing is I’m not picking that you are. I’m going to grab some drinks and come to your door. You good with that?’

‘What’s your name? I mean, how will I know it’s you?’

‘It’s Cass, though I can’t imagine anyone else knocking at your door in the next two minutes.’

‘Fine.’

He’s cute. Maybe younger than me, though I can’t quite tell. I move the table and chairs away from the balcony ledge and move us inside. His story is worse than mine. The common thread as it always is an unfaithful partner and a lost future. I challenge him on that. Challenge him on what he might have thought he had. He doesn’t like it though accepts it. He asks the same of me. It’s hard, though I’m honest. Sometimes the best way to confront anything is to just say it out loud. I know what I’m doing. I’ve been here before. It’s the start of something new. Tread carefully Cass, he came close to killing himself. We speak easily for which I’m grateful. It’s been more than a year of silence and shit. We agree with Hong Kong and what it doesn’t represent for either of us. The lost look in his eyes disappears. He’s from a small town not far from my own. He thinks about returning, which is good. It represents the next step. I might even go with him. I send him to bed. Lock the glass doors that lead to the balcony and sleep on the couch. A vigil if you will. For the first time in a year, I sleep easily.