The evening doorman announced his arrival of Charles’ sister and the young man limped from the intercom to the terrace. He peered over the edge to the street several hundred feet below. The cars on 57th Street were the size of Hot Wheel racers and he questioned the wisdom in listening to his driver’s plan. There was no guarantee that Caroline’s could steal away Sean, whereas a fall from this height was 100% fatal.
"Stop stalling." Bobby Vacca shouted from the door.
"It's high." The pedestrians were invisible from this height.
"All the more to scare your sister." If Charles Ames III went through with this near-suicidal charade, he was a sucker for any crazy scheme. "There's no wind. You climb on the edge. Your sister sees you. She agrees to help you. You come down and it's on to plan B. Winning a young girl’s heart.”
“This is crazy.” Charles was shaking his head and Bobby strode purposefully across the terrace.
“Sure it is, but your sister gets her hooks into Sean and Tammi’s yours.”
“Why would Sean go for my sister?" His silk robe offered no warmth against the cold and certainly no protection from a fall of several hundred feet.
“ Middle-class guys are suckers for two types of girls. White trash tramps like Tammi or beautiful heiresses and your sister fits that description to perfection. Let’s stick to our script and Caroline will take care of the Sean end.” Bobby sat on the parapet. No carpet of pillows lay on the other side, but he shrugged to indicate that he felt his employer was too timid to risk changing his life. “It means more to you than me.”
Caroline was seconds from the front door and Charles searched the night sky for guidance. No star pierced the city’s light overdose. The wind was slight. The air frigid. A life alone presented as much risk as climbing on this wall and Charles announced, “I’ll do it.”
“You won’t regret this.” Bobby clapped his hands. He was one stap closer to a GTO. The front door buzzer sounded from across the living room.
“Get the door. I’m ready.” Charles climbed on the ledge and spread his arms in imitation of Peter Pan, except one step forward took him straight to 57th Street, instead of Never-Never-Land. When he wavered on the ledge, Bobby shouted on the way to the front door, “Don't look down."
"Trust me, I won’t.” This was much higher than the school roof two years ago and Charles mused over the future detoured by that fall.
Charles would have graduated in the spring. He would have gone on to Harvard and Caroline would have attended Radcliffe. They’d be halfway through their sophomore years, instead he was risking his life for a runaway. All because of pride and he pivoted carefully on the ledge to observe his sister storm into the penthouse.
Caroline threw her black fur coat at the driver.
With her disheveled blonde hair and the white shirt unbuttoned to the waist, Caroline resembled any number of haughty blonde models from the covers of fashion magazines instead of a second-year NYU film student. Fellow classmates fell in love with her by the dozens and her tall slender frame coupled with aristocratic features earned the interest of famous photographers and movie directors, but the cold blue steel in her eyes refused everyone
“I'd appreciate, if you kept your eyes to yourself." Her brother should have fired this thug long ago, instead of re-enacting a cheap version of the master/servant role reversal from Joseph Losey's THE SERVANT. His driver certainly exuded none of Dirk Bogarde’s sinister charm, as he asked in a sullen Brooklyn accent, "Sorry?"
"I’m not one of your cheap girlfriends." Caroline had little use for people from the outer boroughs and her father had raised her to consider this prejudice more social selection rather than prejudice. "Where’s my brother?"
"He's on the terrace." The driver pointed to the silhouette against the night sky.
“Why is he doing that?” She put his palm against the window’s thick glass. It felt like solid ice, only the cold was the least of her brother’s problems.
"Got me. I ain't no mindreader, but he’s been out there a long time.”
"Why didn't you get him?"
"I'll show you." Bobby opened the door and Charles Ames III lurched on the parapet. His sister gasped with genuine fright and he shut the door. "Each time I try, he pulls that routine."
"Did you call the police?" Caroline had claimed her brother’s fall from the roof was an accident. Now she wasn’t so sure.
"If he saw any cop cars, he’d jump.” Bobby appeared confused. “Why are you here anyway?"
"He called me and said we had to talk." The balancing on the penthouse wall transported her to his horrible accident on Homecoming Day.
Charles had scored two touchdowns against their prep school’s oldest foe and celebrated the victory by unleashing the town pond to flood Main Street. The police arrived to arrest him and her brother climbed a dorm roof to lead the students in a school cheer. The autumn sun painted him a god and he beamed the most beautiful smile that she had seen on a human being, but this deified façade cracked, when his foot caught on a shingle and their fellow students laughed at his mad scrabble for a hold, until he slid off the roof.
Caroline had to talk him from the ledge and told the driver, "Go make us tea. He'll be needing it."
"Sure.” The next scene was a set piece for the two main characters.
Caroline tapped on the glass and her brother waved to join him. She prayed it was not a trick and opened the door.
“I can see father’s apartment. His lights are on and___” He smiled with a simple serenity.
"Charlie, please come down from there. I beg you." She beckoned him with an outstretched hand. “We can talk about this inside.”
"You can't believe how free I feel standing on this wall." Charles Ames III stretched his arms like a tightrope walker testing the highwire after a fall. "You know I can remember everything about that day I fell; the smell of the wet leaves on the ground, the laughter of the other students, or your scream as I fell to the ground."
"I had expected you to bounce to his feet and laugh off the hurt" She had rushed to his side and watch the specter of youth fade from his eyes. "The police pushed me away and carried you to the nearest cruiser, while I begged God for her brother’s life.
"He must have been in a merciful mood, but not too merciful" Charles had hovered in a coma and the doctors at NYU spoke of his impending death. The machines plugged into his inert body emitted the same bouncing signals day after day. Drugs, prayers, and medicine were useless. "At one point the doctors wanted to pull the plug." Caroline had refused to leave her brother and held Charles’ hand in a mad attempt to establish a psychic contact to the soul drifting away from his body.
"But you didn't let them." His robe fluttered in the wind.
"No, I stayed with you." She ate sparingly and the baby fat melted from her bones. A lack of sleep smeared black circles under her eyes and Caroline understood how nursing Scarlett O’Hara had led to Melanie’s death in GONE WITH THE WIND. This evening she approached him slowly, "Please, Charlie"
“I’d like to, but___”
“But what?”
"I haven’t been much good to anyone lately. Guess I was feeling too sorry for myself.” Charlie joined his hands in prayer. "Well, I've joined this band. I play organ and this girl sings.”
"A girl?" Charles had exhibited little interest in women before and none after his accident.
“I'm in love with her."
“Congratulations.”
“The only problem is she doesn’t love me. Not yet.”
“How can I help you?” She would consent to anything to get Charlie off that wall.
“I need you to steal her boyfriend away." This was asking a lot for his sister and he was sure of her answer.
“I don’t have affairs,” Caroline declared adamantly and her brother lifted his weakened leg. She snatched at his robe, half-expecting Charles to slip from the silky garment into thin air. Fortunately her brother had belted the robe and toppled onto the terrace, where she wrestled him to the tiles.
"Stop it, Charlie.”
“Not unless you help me.”
“What’s wrong with flowers or a car?”
“She can’t be bought.”
“Everyone has a price.” Her recent exploits had proven this time and time again.
“Not this girl.”
“Why she different from the rest of the world?” Everyone was the same, even her.
“She’s a punk.” Charles lay on his back with his eyes searching the sky.
“You mean punk rocker?” A drummer from Julliard had told her about this fad on the Lower East Side. The alienation, rebellion, and nihilism sounded so juvenile. She looked at his hair and clothing. “Don’t tell me you’re a punk too.”
“I hear from your voice that you disapprove.”
“Charlie, there’s fun and there’s fun.”
A month after his accident Charles had opened his eyes and weakly squeezed her hand. Caroline told him that he would be fine without revealing the extent of his injuries and left the hospital in tears. She stopped in Washington Square Park, where a graduate math student asked her if she was okay. The West Virginian had a kind face and an athletic body. He told her about a girl named Cheri never kissing him and losing his mind in Fort Tryon Park. She laughed at his story and he suggested they have a drink.
Caroline was barely seventeen, but knew what this stranger wanted from her.
She had planned on saving her virginity for her wedding night in a tropical bungalow as the sun was swallowed by the Pacific Ocean. Saying good-bye to the young man insured that dream’s sanctity. Instead she had accepted the young man’s invitation and drank three margaritas at Trude Heller and then spent the weekend at the Hotel Earl.
His initial penetration hurt a little. The next time was a little more pleasurable, but there had to be more to sex than a man’s ramming his member inside her and she bought a book called THE JOY OF SEX. By Sunday afternoon she was the teacher and he was the student. On Monday morning Caroline left him sleeping in the bed and returned to the hospital. Charles asked where she had been. She had told him, “Out with a friend.”
She had kissed his forehead and he had whispered, “Be careful.”
“I will.” Recalling how in the last century a strong-minded ancestor had formed a utopia in northern Vermont, espousing that marriage created an attachment to a love other than that of God, she searched for his book in the family library and read that this cult had depended on anonymous sex to liberate the soul from the body. The sect had failed in the 1840s after a series of scandals involving inappropriate sexual practices such as lesbianism and sodomy came to the attention of the general public, but over a hundred years later Caroline decided to wage a solitary crusade to vindicate her precedent’s ambition of spiritual independence.
After acceptance NYU’s film school, she had ruthlessly preyed on the artists of Soho, students from Julliard, and couples at Plato’s Retreat. None had seen her loft in Tribeca, possessed her telephone number or knew her last name. She considered any attachments as a threat to her hedonistic liberty. Her body was hers alone and no one had any domination over it, unless she counted her brother, who rose to his feet on the terrace. The wind was blowing from the north. Winter had come to New York.
“Caroline, your fun ends where everyone else’s begins.”
“Is there something wrong with that?” Caroline kept hold of his arm.
He had witnessed the full range of her passion at Plato’s Retreat and the difference between her desperate wantonness with Tammi’s serene eroticism on the Dollhouse stage midnight and 4am. Charles pushed his sister away, determined to get back on the wall. “I wish I could say yes, but I’m not you.”
“You’re serious.”
“Very.” Leaping over the wall was not a joke anymore and Caroline lowered her head to say softly, “I’ll do it.”
“No questions asked.” Charles hugged his sister.
“None.” Questions needed answers.
"I knew I could count on you."
"And I you.”
Life would be much easier without any dependencies, but her brother was the only person in her life about whom she cared and they walked into the penthouse arm in arm as a team, since it was always better two against one, when you were stealing away the one thing most people die for besides money.
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