Earlier

Monday is fine to get a new job. To start over. Each day he filled applications. Life could be worse. He had somewhere to stay, it had a big view. Twenty-third floor, sweet view of the city. The business zones and tourist gyps, pocket-sized.

Warm for September, strength in the hazy sun. Crafting statements of suitability and refreshing his resume, he gazed between multiplied windows, across rail yards of long, grey wagons, to where the city burst like an emergency through the flat land. On the twenty-third floor, among gliding gulls.

Between the towers and the city, a fortified, rectangular block intrigued him. Too squat and fierce for apartments, a slab of layered windows and fussy turrets. A prison, floating alone on bare real estate. Forbidding, no doubt, when fresh built, throwing shadows on cinder lanes across the heath. Isolated, before the city stretched to meet it. Now, among apartment towers, it seemed sunken. A maze for mice. He tried to consider the men locked away but, out of sight, they meant nothing. A hundred years’ back they would have looked out on dark, feral country. Now they saw stores and apartments. Made it worse, maybe. He wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t visit.

Next to the building where he had this room was a cemetery, an old place of mature trees and stone graves weathered grey. A sprinkle of new burials shone like prosthetic teeth. Resting his eyes from role profiles and person specifications, he engaged the cemetery’s stillness. From the twenty-third floor he saw maybe sixty graves. He knew there were more behind. The grass was trimmed and nobody much seemed to visit. In late afternoon a spatter of solitary men might sit on the benches. Hunched forward, fists clenched between their knees, or leant back, face to the sun. Doing nothing, speaking to no one, till some signal drew them away. He assumed those men had no reprieve, no hopes, no Hail Marys. Between them and the men beneath their feet was no distance.

Leaves were late to fall. The path across the cemetery tented beneath old trees, once in orderly rows but grown ragged in accretion of slow life. After dark, lights along the path stove up through the canopy, green-yellow pools shifting beneath fused boughs. They recalled to him siren lights, shipwreck and deceit.

The graves were cleaned on Sunday afternoon. A Sunday activity, tending a grave. Old people – mainly old people – washed the stones and flung away dead flowers. They stood around, loose-handed, surprised there was no more to do. He never tended a grave, he knew nothing about it. He assumed satisfaction came from performing remembrance. Or the act was an extension of cleaning house.

Each afternoon he scrolled job boards and chased opportunity. Sunlight sharpened the prison walls and raised vivid green from the trees. It might still be summer, till early dusk swilled around the tall air.

Below his window, along the street, the roof terrace of the next building had a brick cupboard for the elevator and a square of slat benches beside stalls of spiny plants. Sterile and striving, a well-mannered amenity. Low bushes, mauve as sage, dead-seeming climbers and pale greenery under the wall. A starved formality against the luxuriant graveyard.

Each evening, as he reviewed his day’s rejections, a woman tended the roof garden. Small and muscular in a grey tracksuit, her short hair in a tight tail, she patrolled the roof, soaking the wooden planters with a hose. Sometimes she’d kneel to weed the containers, turning the scant earth, tidying and trimming till daylight was gone. Attentive and always with more to do, how it seemed to him. She brushed benches, scraped the brickwork, stared at the city with open hands. She coiled the hose and left if anyone came to the roof. Interlopers, sightseers, smokers. People who jogged on the spot.

He took pictures, in her action and her stillness, no cause when or why he might need them. Women sunbathed on balconies. But with the gardener, he took pictures.

He began to reflect her routine, pausing his trawl for jobs, saving his files and settling expectations, in time for her night’s work. As days went on and it failed to rain she watered the plants, turned the beds and he wondered, when she stared at the city, if she used to smoke. Something to those empty intervals suggested relinquished distractions.

He woke, early hours, thinking she was still there, watching the ripped, red city. He’d lift the shade – a furtive move – outside, dark shapes and distant lights. He thought he might walk where she’d see him. But the building had cameras and night attendants and he would become an event. Better to give them nothing to consider.

Sometimes she’d drain the hose on the low purple bushes for six and seven minutes. He watched the clock. He knew. Water would soak the wooden slats, to snake blind-headed across the deck. He grew bold watching her. Framed in the window, with lights behind, he’d be a burnt shadow. The roof was perhaps sixty meters away, four stories lower. She rarely looked up, she made no sign she saw him.

Every minute searching for jobs, applying for jobs, kept his eyes from the window. From the chance that, off-routine, she might be there in daylight. He loathed the people who used the roof garden. The dazed youngsters who pointed and gawked. The musclemen wristing dumbbells and throwing pushups at the floor, huge bodies ponderous in the high air. The women with children, the couples who danced. She would leave when anyone came to the roof.

He watched every minute he saw her. In her tracksuit, or T-shirt and shorts when the sun was strong. He liked her in shorts, her legs thick and capable. With her hair twisted back and pinned tight. He wondered how long she tended the garden. He liked to think she did nothing else. That she slept and woke and watered the plants and returned to a small, neat room. No doubt she knew the Latin names, the binomials: genus and species. Her room would have books, charts, pictures of vast, lush gardens. He looked for jobs where all jobs were the same. But she would grow in steady endeavor, in the passion of plants.

The more he watched, the more she beguiled him. She was quiet, contained, unimpressed with others. Perhaps one night she’d meet him. They could talk about books that moved them, exhibitions they’d like to see. Perhaps go out one Sunday. Not at all, he’d say, when she offered to pay, get me something next time. Turn and turn about.

Through winter they could explore quiet, scholarly things. She could guide him around museums and collections. Then hot chocolate in a steaming café, its windows fogged and intimate. Share a slice of cake, turn and turn about.

Late season. People were there and gone in rooms around him – he met them, in kitchens and halls. They were preoccupied, selfish, made smalltalk about the view. None saw the place as more than a stop-off. Striving for elsewhere until, unlike him, they went back where they came. He felt he might stay forever, which was absurd. Money was scarce and, anyway, the place was a stop-off. By then, a ridiculous notion entranced him. Become friends with her, persuade her – after a while – to join their futures, at least for the meantime. He was never with anyone, didn’t know how to achieve such a thing. But a winter of cold galleries and hot chocolate stirred his heart.

He walked at dusk, to the cemetery, across the tracks, among the apartment buildings. He never saw her arrive, most likely she lived where she worked. He never saw her at the store where people went for pre-packed meals and coffee. The people he met in the kitchens, watching time die on the microwaves. He supposed she was frugal. Solitary, intelligent, frugal. But fun, he thought. She would be that. Friendly and willing and fun.

Those qualities made him uneasy. Other men would be ahead of him, her room already shared. That was how life had been. Everything happened before he arrived. The chances he missed, the jobs he didn’t get. He was never first.

Days shortened and evenings turned cold. The lights on sooner each night. The worst of the year, summer just gone, next summer beyond anticipation. Late season.

Tourists came to the roof less often. Untroubled by their nonsense she watered the plants. Summer heat gone but rain didn’t come. She held the hose seven minutes on each bed, till water ran through the slats to soak her sneakers. She trimmed and tidied and watched the city, till he could no longer see her against the dark.

Money was scarce, it wouldn’t last. A sense of impermanence dogged him. He hadn’t even unpacked his bag. To win required decision. If she was single, if she was willing, could be known only through action. He would go to her building, go to the roof, speak with her as she coiled the hose. He practiced his introduction – a little charm, a little pathos. He would praise her garden. He’d tell her that, from the twenty-third floor, he saw gardens on a half dozen buildings and hers was by far the best. He would express a modest ambition to learn about plants.

In T-shirt and shorts, she walked from the elevator. Briskly, she tidied the beds, swept the deck and unclipped the hose. She watered the plants a long time, longer than usual.

He laced his boots, put on his jacket, checked he had money in case she said yes to a drink. He couldn’t expect her to buy the first time. The deck lay stained with water. Rivers jostled between the walls of the plant beds, their shallow earth overwhelmed. She kicked through ruby pools in the last, low sun.

Ready to leave, he watched.

The woman dialed back the faucet and hitched the hose. Hands on her hips she toured the deck, shaking water from leaves and stems.

He watched.

With neat agility she climbed the wall that guarded the roof. The wall was topped with concrete slabs, about one meter wide. She faced the city, her body shaped by that same expectant absence.

A moment’s stillness.

She stepped off the roof.

A scream, then shouting. He jacked the window, jammed his neck through the gap. Already the crowd closed over her. Already, sirens approached. He couldn’t see her among the people who filmed her as she lay dead. He thought about running outside. He didn’t.

The inexplicable nature of her action made it perfect.

***

Later

I’m not here for the view but the view’s okay. People pay for this view. Top money. Not me. Other people.

There’s the prison. Nasty hole. Riles a man just to see it. Turned in on itself. Walls and spikes. A picture of hate.

The room’s okay and that girl on reception is nice. I’m sweet for that look, black girls with serious faces. When things move forward, I’ll find a reason to see her, to make my offer.

It’s a smile, this place. These tourists, all thinking they got a smart deal. These conference suckers. Low risk lives. Center lane, steady progress. Sometimes I have so much energy I kick the walls to make noise. I laugh till people move away. I’m a fire in the hole.

Get to work quick, no messing. Make use of the view. Take shots of the prison, zoom in, see it all fit together. That access road is constantly watched, that’s a given. Cars and trucks get held at the gate, get searched. Like a fortress, same advantages, same weakness. The windows and turrets inspire me to audacity. A solid thing takes effort to stay solid. Nothing lasts forever.

I like it, this twenty-third floor. The street’s busy, but here the air’s calm. Warm, for the time of year. There’s freshness, high above ground. It’s stimulating. Down there, people do Sunday things. Eat lunch on their balconies, smoke and talk. Enjoy all these pleasures they work for. This fracture between work and life suits people. They keep their time in boxes. I like to think that what people do is a choice. Not something they sleepwalk into.

Between the buildings there’s rail yards, lined with long, grey wagons. They promise treasure but only shift trash place to place. Lot of construction round here, to accommodate this transient population. That’s good. It enables a body to make measurements and take pictures. The prison catches the afternoon sun. Its bulky stones float free from the yellow grass of the heath. There’s arrogance to building a prison. Disdain in every brick. It makes inaccurate claims about resolution. I take pictures. I plan my moves.

Something distracts me, below left. The window opens only so far. For security, the sign says. Twist my head under the glass to get a look-see. There’s a cemetery, a large one, around the side of the building. Big trees along its spine. It’s tidy enough, the lawns are neat, but most of the graves are old. Though there are some new arrivals.

People lurk among the stones. It’s a Sunday thing, tending a grave. Some are brisk, they do what’s to do. Others stare like they just got a shock. A man and woman, long coupled I guess, sweep gravel around a new grave. Its stone still white, its sides not yet sunk in earth. The woman rakes dead flowers and dumps them in the trash, crushes them with her palm. The man scrubs the headstone. Obsessive, I think, doing that. But I wouldn’t know. There’s no graves I visit.

When the woman watches the man I take a picture. It intrigues me, this fussing at absence while there’s so many still present. I blow the picture big on the screen. She’s fifties I guess, well-kept. Shoulder-length, silvered black hair. Square, solid face, chevroned with lines from her nose and mouth. Hard expression. Not just solemn – the look of a boss’s first wife. I bet when she talks it’s to disagree. I don’t need to look at her man to know he’s weak and hypnotized by her. When they met, he thought he had it made. But she always raises the bar.

On the camera screen, the woman walks to the grave. She kneels to make adjustments. The gravel is offset with bottle green pebbles, like strip grass in the desert. She sifts the pebbles, not to tidy I think, but to enjoy their viscosity. I see myself with fistfuls of little green pebbles, swirling them over her body till, with an earthquake, she rises and tips them aside. I see us, urgent and ruthless, under the trees.

The man continues to clean, his face a half-smile as though this aspect of the day pleases him more than anything. He might say to his buddies at work tomorrow: I keep a sharp grave.

With all the expansion the pixels allow, I see the man speak and the woman dig her hands into her hair. She shakes her head, hair flipping over her fingers. She points at the grave, a long gesture. The man collapses onto his haunches, submissive. As she walks away she kicks at stones. Though that must hardly make a sound, he flinches. She sits on a bench, rubs her hands back and forward over her knees, reaching for where skin catches fire.

I get my jacket and go out, impatient of the slow-locking door, of the elevator that lingers down the building.

The girl on reception is busy with new arrivals, meeting their hasty, ignorant voices with a fathomless glare. The security guards watch me on screen, out the door and into the street.

Late afternoon hits me. Sunny for the time of year, but the heat lost on a strong wind. It flings dust and rattles the graveyard trees, tears their leaves. Flayed branches knock and hustle. My offer’s ready. I’m skilled and adept.

They’re gone, this woman and man. Their brushes and brooms packed in an ugly, ordinary car. I jog the cemetery path as the woman slides into the driver seat, slamming the door. She rests her hand on the roof. Wind lashes her hair against her face. I shout something coarse and sustaining. She pops the engine, the fickle slick of exhaust already scattered. I fumble to get a picture of the plate but I’m too slow.

Scalded, I trudge back through the graves. Late afternoon in late season. Everyone gone. I stop where the woman stood. Like all graves, it’s a beautiful lie. Its neatness concealing the bone truth, clean and wasting.

On the stone is a name, a date of birth, a date of death, the years close together. Leaves and flowers carved in the stone not yet worn by the weather. It says, ‘Beloved Daughter Gone Too Soon’. Just that.

I take a green pebble from the grave, but throw it away on the road.

– Mark Wagstaff