Chapter 7: The Window

The building on Streeter Avenue still had its laundromat sign.

Half the letters were gone.

It was dawn, and the sky over the alley was grey.

Ben worked a crowbar under the board across the back door and the plywood came away in one long crack.

Laurence went in first.

I walked behind him with my hands in the pockets of Maureen's parka and stopped at the foot of the stairs.

They were the same stairs.

A flight of steps, a turn, then another flight, and a smell of old water and mold that I had never forgotten.

My legs would not climb.

Laurence stopped on the landing above me and turned.

He did not reach out, because of the terms.

*She's going to turn around. I'd turn around.*

"I'm going up," I said, and I did.

The second floor was one long room with the ceiling down in places.

A steel chair stood alone in the middle of it with its legs bolted to the floor.

I knew the chair.

I looked at it for a brief second, and then I looked at the window, because I could not look at it any longer.

"There," I said.

The window was open a hand's width, held that way by rust.

Laurence crossed to it and put his palms on the sill and looked out.

Below, an iron fire escape zigzagged down the wall to a green dumpster with a dented lid.

He stayed there a long time.

*Second floor. Five months pregnant. In the dark. With pills in her.*

*She climbed out of this.*

I watched his shoulders.

They were shaking.

He did not make a sound, and he did not turn around, and I did not say a word.

"It's lower than it looks," I said finally.

"It isn't."

"I landed on my side. The baby kicked all night. That's how I knew she was alive."

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