There was a house on top of the world he knew, away from the rent home on 23d west of the Congo tracks where he stayed when there was room (from the mother and the uncle and the sister with the sick husband and their child and the younger sister and sometimes the cousin too but nobody had seen him lately).
The house was on the roof of a hotel, abandoned some twenty years ago abruptly, the salt and pepper and ketchup dispensers untouched on the dining room tables downstairs. A special suite above the highest floor where celebrities once stayed, built and equipped as a home, to the extent of astroturf on the flat roof top. The decor was some sixties thing, for sure: aqua naugahyde, a pink refrigerator. Pink.
When he went there no one else was there. He could see across the river, across the lands, from downtown.
He sat in a lawn chair with a supply of Colt 45, feet raised to the parapet while the sun set over the river, listening in his mind to Sly's There's A Riot Going On. Back in the day he owned 8 tracks and disk players and a pocket transistor radio from his Dad but none of that was in existence any more. Some joker in DaNang once purported to sell him a rare and technically illegal bootleg extra-long take of the title cut and when he put it on it was 23:19 of nothing at all, no sound whatever, just the needle in the groove. In researching it with an acquaintance who owned the original legitimate recording he found the short version was totally silent as well but the label showed only a time listing of 0:00. "What's that all about?" he asked. His friend replied, "Think about it, man." "What?" "Listen. Listen close. You may not be thinking you're hearing anything, but inside, you know. You know, somewhere, no matter how quiet it is here, a black man's in trouble, somewhere There's A Riot Going On."
Now, he kind of liked it. The silence was portable. He could take it with him anywhere he went.
Others came to the hotel too. He knew it. But he'd seen nobody over the fourth story. Brown stains on pillows in the middle of the floor.
Power to the building long gone, the only way to the house was a trap door in the roof beside the elevator shaft, secured by a combination lock, the kind that had four rollers with numbers. You could roll them all away, or turn one roller by just one number and it was just as locked.
Only this time the lock was open. He got the bad feeling it was the last time he was going to sit out up here. Someone knew about it. Or was there now, even.
But it was just as possible he hadn't put the lock back right last time coming down. Colt 45s talked to him that way.
He went up. The house sat in the middle of an open area some 50 x 80 feet, behind it the elevator motor housing. Was that someone in there? This brought complications. Some birds in there, time or two. Anybody in there would expect him from the front, so he eased to the back, a forged window opening into the kitchen. Inside, he paused to let his eyes adjust from broad sunshine. Sudden movement. Dang! Whizzing around and behind him out of the blind peripheral and through the back he'd just come in. He fell back, got up, turned around, ran after. Someone small. Past the elevator housing, as if the little dude knew just what to do.
He hustled around the housing, barely catching sight of a sleeve over the edge. He ran to the parapet, fought his momentum, and looked down to the empty sidewalk fifteen floors down.
How in this living world had the sucker disappeared?
A feeling came to him. These spider-man moves.
Leaning over, way over, he saw the open window to the room to the room just beneath. He flew to the trapdoor and down, into the hallway and around the hall to the room the window belonged to. The door was wide open. The room was empty. But it was being used. Bed in disarray, empty chip bags, socks, odors from the toilet.
It could be who he thought it was. But there was a lot against it. He wasn't even supposed to be in town. If so, there were sure some hidden talents. Acrobatic talents.
Right there beneath him. All along. You get yourself a place on top of the world and it's just another joke played on you. One in a long growing line of them.
