The View

The climb had been daunting, a modern building has such smooth sides. As he cleared each storey office workers had given rapturous silent applause behind toughened glass. Crouched now on a narrow ledge high above the traffic he thought, perhaps my angle of approach is wrong?
‘What do you mean, should you have taken the elevator?’ sneered the sarcastic inner voice which had dogged him all these years.
As usual his reply was earnest, no not the elevator, I was thinking more about why I’m here than how I got here.‘Well fuck you, you’ll just analyse until it’s all too late pal!’
His inner voice always had the last word. Most people seemed to have the last word with him these days. Conversations buzzed around him every day, in the office, at the grocery store and in the street. Individuals with fully formed opinions on trivia, idiots with detailed knowledge of jack shit, chatty, happy and ignorant. That clatter had a way of worming its way into his skull and settling in. It irritated him beyond belief that banality should overwhelm intellectual intensity. Today he had needed to find a place where he could be serious without interruption.

Carefully he rose to his feet, a couple minutes more effort would take him to the flat roof. He pressed his bleeding fingers into joints between the concrete and pulled the weight of his body up. His toes found the same cracks. He hooked an arm over the parapet wall, hung briefly before hoisting himself on his palms then collapsed onto the roof. Crushing winds howled from a terrifyingly high sky and threatened to topple him. He was so nearly part of that clear blue void.

The gale blew him to the services cabin from which an iron ladder, which was bolted to the side, rose vertically to a gantry stacked with satellite dishes. The ladder was cheating really. Above the communications hardware a caged spiral stairway led to a radio mast. Gasping for breath now he clung to the swaying antenna, wrapped his legs around the pole, reached up and pulled. With each pull he drew his legs up and re-established his grip.
So I analyse too much do I? he thought. Well I’m done with thinking now. He looked up and closed his fingers over the tip of the antenna, his muscles burning. The flat roof seemed small one hundred and fifty feet below.

He felt the mast sway heavily and closed his eyes against the biting wind. Each swing carried him way over the edge of the building to present a brief view of his sickening height. He readjusted his precarious grip and clenched tighter with his knees as the mast bent wildly under storm force gusts. This is the place they mean when they say remote. Why had he come to find himself in this lofty and lonely position? He allowed himself to look down at the street and saw miniature cars hurrying to and fro, people with purpose and energy. What happened to my purpose and my energy?
Suddenly a small voice rose from directly beneath him.
“Can I come up and just talk to you? Please?” She asked.