Second Honeymoon Part 78

How could I mix up Paul Newman and James Caan? Must be the nerves.

I lock up and move quickly down the hallway to the fire escape, accessible by key. I pop the door open and slip into the night air just as I hear the ding of the elevator down the hallway.

I TAKE THE stairs of the fire escape, all six stories, at a slow pace, gripping the railing fiercely. I don't like heights. Presidents Was.h.i.+ngton and Jefferson wanted D.C. to be a "low city." I'm with them all the way.

In the 1890s, the Cairo Hotel was built on Q Street to a height of 160 feet high, towering over its neighbors. Congress pa.s.sed a law a few years later, then amended it in 1910, which generally limits the height of buildings in the capital to the width of the street they face, plus twenty feet. Most streets in DC are no wider than 110 feet, so most buildings are no higher than 130 feet, which usually means thirteen floors or less.

Still too high for me. I can't stand near ledges. I'm not so afraid of losing my balance or slipping. I'm afraid I'll jump.

When I reach the bottom, I walk through the parking lot and take the stairs up to the brick path that follows the C & O Ca.n.a.l. Diana lives on a tiny, two-block stretch of 33rd Street Northwest between the Potomac River to the south and the Chesapeake and Ohio Ca.n.a.l to the north. Hers is the last building before the dead end at the ca.n.a.l, so it's an isolated walk for me as I come around to the front of her building again.

It's sticky-hot outside in August. The capital was built on swampland and our humidity is unbearable this time of year. I don't blame Congress for staying away.

Two younger guys are standing outside the lofts across the street, smoking cigarettes and checking out my bike.

"Sweet ride," one of them says. He's small and mangy, like Joaquin Phoenix in To Die For, Nicole Kidman's breakout role, in my opinion, where she showed for the first time she could carry a movie.

"You like it?" I ask. I do, too. It's a 2009 Triumph America. Dual overhead cams, 865cc, twin four-stroke engine, twin reverse cone pipes, phantom black with chrome detail. Yes, the same model Colin Farrell drove in Daredevil. I'm not saying I bought it for that reason. Not saying I didn't. But yeah, it's a pretty sweet ride.

"You get this thing out on the open road much?" the guy asks me.

Colin Farrell was terrific in Phone Booth. I liked that cop movie he did with Ed Norton, and that futuristic movie with Tom Cruise, Minority Report. He's underrated as an actor. He should do a movie with Nicole Kidman.

"Yeah, I try to stretch her legs when I can," I tell the guy. I'm not supposed to be advertising my presence here, and yet here I am chatting up a couple of guys about my bike.

I look up into the darkness at Diana's apartment, at the brick triangular balcony that juts out, overlooking 33rd Street. The balcony serves more as a garden than anything, the ledges all lined with potted plants and flowers, some small trees sitting on the balcony floor, all of which she treats with loving care.

A light has gone on inside her apartment, illuminating the kitchen window.

"What do you got on the front there?" the guy asks me, kicking my front wheel.

"A 110/90 ME880," I say. "I like to ride with 880's front and back."

Diana's home already? That's...interesting.

"Cool," says the guy. "My tire guy doesn't do Metzelers. I've been running Avons all these years."

I look back at the guy. "They handle pretty well so far."

He asks me for the name of my tire guy. I tell him while he scribbles it down on a sc.r.a.p of paper. Then I jump on the bike and take one last look up at Diana's balcony. Good night, Lady Di-

-what-

"No!" I cry.

A body is in freefall from Diana's balcony, plunging headfirst six stories to the ground. I close my eyes and turn away, but I can't close my ears to the sickening whump of a body hitting the bricks, of bones snapping and crunching.

I JUMP OFF my bike and sprint toward her. No. It can't be. It can't be her-

"Did you see that?"

"What happened?"

I reach her second, after two women, from a car in the circular driveway, have jumped out and knelt down beside her.

Oh, Diana. Her body lies just short of the street, spread-eagled and facedown. Her luminous hair spills over her crushed face and onto the curb. Blood runs over the curb onto the street. I stand by the two women, looking over their shoulders at the only woman I've ever-

Why, Diana? Why would you do this to yourself?

"Did anyone see what happened?" someone shouts.

"That was Diana's balcony!" someone running toward the building shouts.

A crowd has quickly gathered. n.o.body can do anything but stare at her, as though she were a museum object. She is-I can't say the word, but she isn't breathing, her body has been crushed, she...isn't alive.

Leave her alone, I say in my head, maybe out loud, too. Give her s.p.a.ce. Let her have some dignity.

At least it's dark, which, mercifully, shrouds her in a semblance of privacy. You can't see her damaged face, can't see the pain. It is, in a strange way, consistent with Diana's fierce pride that she would hide her broken face from the public even in death.

Somebody asks about an ambulance. Then ten people at once are on their cell phones. I sit back on my haunches, helpless. There is nothing I can do for her. Then I see, to my right, between the feet of some onlookers, pieces of a broken clay pot and dirt. I even detect a whiff of cinnamon. I look up at her balcony again, not that I can see anything from this angle in the dark. Must be her apple geraniums, which she kept in pots outside during the summer, near the tip of the triangular balcony overlooking the street.

I pull back and part the growing crowd of people, moving back onto 33rd Street, suddenly unable to be part of their morbid curiosity.

I turn and vomit on the street. Before I know it, I'm on all fours on the pavement.

Diana's hand on my cheek. Diana giggling when she spilled creamer all over herself at that new coffee shop on M Street. Diana showing me her hair a month ago, when she dyed it brown, wondering what I thought, caring about my opinion. That look she had when something was on her mind but she didn't want to say anything. Turning and looking at me, realizing it's me, and smiling. Smiling that carefree smile but maybe not so carefree. She was taking lorazepam, you idiot; how did you miss that? How did you miss the signs?

She needed my help and I wasn't there for her. I didn't take the steps necessary to be proactive. It never occurred to me that suicide could be an option.

Murder can be made to look like suicide, and suicide can be made to look like murder.

"Hey, bro-"

The apple geraniums.

"-dude's freaking out over here!"

Run, Benjamin, run.

Sirens now, flas.h.i.+ng lights cutting through the darkness, sucking away the air-