Quiet

Years after that party, I'd find myself overwhelmed by my job, troubled in my family, and my subconscious would cobble for me a fresh horror from the parts. I touch the mark of that dream often. In it, I'm sitting on a roof edge, gaily swinging my legs. Standing at precipices dependably sends chill electricity up and down the tendons of my leg, but anchored heavily ass to tar paper I am released from the churn below, secure as the flexing tip of a grown pine. Bresee and I used to trespass the Nathan Eckstein Middle School roof and be princes of the spilling neighborhood, or dangle our legs from a Starbucks awning only twenty feet over the heads of oblivious university students. Like angels. In dream he emerges smiling from the roof access shed and comes at a jog. He doesn't slow enough, and I'm silent. The only words are once he's over the edge looking back with nascent terror: "I'm going to die." There's no more.

Night of the party was all ruckus. My brother, my bigger, older brother led me to Patrick Foley's apartment on Essex in the Lower East Side. I hadn't been in New York City very long, had made only a couple friends. When Will offered me the inheritance of his social wealth, I accepted. We rang. Pat stuffed keys to the building in a sock and threw them down to us. Up six floors, Pat was plating dishes. Bottles already half empty, guests half full.

Pat climbed the black steel ladder, heaved the hatch aside, vanished out to the roof. I stopped at the highest rung, ready to convey. Everything had to get to the roof--music (first), food, bottles, and a couple more chairs. Amaury's dog, Daisy, was loathe to part from attention. She set to whimpering as the elements of our night flowed up the chain of hands. We ferried her last, the squirming bundle giving affectionate licks at every hand-off.

In a trice, the fold-out table was laid. We flooded the roof with jollity. I sat back in an unlikely Adirondack and met Gabby. She presented an animated wit behind wide-set eyes--the spread of NYC and new Los Angeles sitting on offer alongside roasted Brussels sprouts and Zha Jiang noodles. Later, I leaned against the tent-like skylights, working a glass of wine. Amaury spoke with a thick Belgian accent, his bawdy humor and eager grin penetrated my wine haze, if not all of his words did. He glanced from time to time at Nicole, whom he will have married in two years and with whom he will raise two couple children, while she scratched at Daisy's ears. The dog, still a puppy, broke away. She wouldn't sit still long, and combed the rooftop from willing hands to interesting smells.

I was back in an Adirondack, discovering a shared interest in Frank Herbert's Dune when Nicole paused to ask, "Where's Daisy?" The music was still loud, the conversation still rolling across the tar, but something insistent had arrived to the roof: a freshly minted silence. Nicole's question hung unanswered. She called out to Amaury again, more loudly. "Baby," she quavered. Her question even at volume couldn't match the rising silence.

Daisy had slipped over the edge. Amaury flew downstairs, Nicole wailing in Clem's arms. Someone might have cut the music--it's all silent in my mind now. I imagine Amaury ringing one of the next building's tenants at random, a beat, and then the rest of them. I imagine his words, but I can't imagine his voice. Daisy died in the car on the way to the veterinarian.

That's not Daisy's story though. The stillness that displaced our joviality, the recognition that the laugh I had just heard over my shoulder would be the last--that wasn't Daisy's timeline. There's a gap between ours and hers. She had been trotting the dim roof, mapping it. She had peed in one corner. She would have seen the park lamps below her--what a vantage for a dog!--and run toward the sprawling city. A pocket in time swallowed her while we continued oblivious. It waited.