2001-09-11 - 8:02 a.m.

Hey, New York people! Are you okay? Alive? please call us up!

They�ve rearranged the entire place since the last time Marius was here, and we are taken into the new living room out back. We sit, then he sits, stands up, and leaves the room. Marius tries talking to him, but he lets out just a short word or two and goes back to searching through his shorts for money, or exchanging sharp words with his wife in the other room.

�I�ve got tickets that I�m trying to get rid of too, dude,� Marius says. �Madonna, third row.� But Paul�s already left the room.

He returns with a long kitchen knife and lays it on the table. He shuffles through his closet and leaves again. Marius and I exchange glances and wait.

He�s bickering with his wife. Things aren�t good between them. And right now she doesn�t like him, she doesn�t like Marius, she�s sure Marius is going to swindle him. I find out later that she�s holding a cup to the wall from the next room and listening in on the conversation.

He comes back in and stands there, not looking at us. �I�m feeling homicidal right now,� he says. I�m feeling somewhat uncomfortable.

Finally he sits down to square up with Marius. Paul places a pair of boots at his feet.

�How much for the video?� Paul asks.

�It�s thirty.�

The woman calls in from the other room. �He said it was twenty on the phone.�

Paul shifts in his seat.

�It�s thirty, dude.�

�Now what is this about you saying it was twenty on the phone?�

�It�s thirty. It�s always thirty. Especially when I deliver it.�

�I wonder why she would say you said it was twenty.�

I shift in my seat. Marius sighs.

�Fine. You want it to be twenty, I�ll do it for twenty. You can do twenty for the video, thirty for the boots.�

Last time Marius was here, he crashed on their couch and left his boots in the apartment. Paul left them out on the porch and the dog chewed them up. Paul hemms and haws, though clearly he has the money. Only his wife is in the other room, ready to unleash the furies on him the moment we leave, or perhaps before. But finally he gives Marius the money, and we�re good to go.

We�ve got to jet, Marius explains. We�re parked in a no parking zone. But is it cool if we go up to the top floor and check out the roof before we go? He says sure, maybe he�ll join us in a minute, once he gets a few things squared away back home.

So we hop back in the elevator and continue up, saying holy shit, those guys are crazy, what the hell was that knife for? I told you these guys were nuts, Marius says. He did.

But now we�re out of there; we step out of the elevator onto the landing where Chicago�s loop spreads out in all directions, the skyscrapers before us and beyond that, a clear view of Lake Michigan in all its glory. We breathe in the blackness and the speckled lights.

I can see all the way up the coastline to the beacon at Montrose beach, the lone light stretching out into the water from the end of the fishing pier, looking so small in the distance. We just stare off for a moment and smile, basking in the glory of this fortuitous moment snatched from the daily grind of life, which one must savor at every chance, for it may not come again.

�Would you walk out on that ledge if I gave you say, a thousand dollars?� Marius asks me. We�re up at least 20 stories, and a slip from that ledge, separated from us by a metal barrier, would send a daredevil to a certain death. So many times the idea has occurred to me, the idea of leaping from a ledge, falling all the way down and landing with a dull thud. I get the image every time I stand at the edge of my deck, of those last moments of freedom before the earth knocks the life out of me. Sometimes I scare myself.

I think for a minute and tell him no, I wouldn�t do it for any price. Because what value has money when compared with my life?

Our reverie is interrupted by Paul, who has apparently settled his domestic dispute for the moment and come to join us on the deck. Marius poses the same question to him.

�Ah, that�s nothing,� Paul says. The he flips himself over the metal barrier and saunters over the edge. We protest with Dude, what are you doing, and Don�t do that. We avert our eyes, but they are drawn back. I want to psychically draw him back in, pull him away from the edge where he is risking certain death. But no, he steps right up to the edge, six inches to the left of death, raises one foot, and hops. Three steps he hops, three solid chances at death, just a little slip of the foot and he�s plastered on the ground below. One slip and we�re standing up on the ledge wondering what to do, wondering what his suspicious girlfriend will think when she finds her husband has fallen to his death while in the presence of the shady video seller guy and his companion. Quit it, I think, I didn�t ask for this, I wasn�t looking for actual near-death experiences, I didn�t want this to happen, this isn�t the experience I need at the moment. Come down from there please, I can�t handle this, I�m just a na�ve kid from the suburbs, from a good God-fearing Catholic family, I don�t want to see somebody commit suicide.

But he hops right off from the ledge and back to safe territory, and when he hops back over the barrier to our side I finally breathe a sigh of relief.

�I can�t believe you just did that,� Marius says.

�Ah, what do I have to live for anyway?� Paul says.

I don�t know what to say, and we�ve got to go anyway. I�ve got to get my car out of that tow zone. And Paul will return to his world, his rich home full of stuff, his wife who listens to his dealings with the aid of a cup, his life that only stays interesting when he�s playing with death.

�You�ve got to let me come back out here some day and tan,� Marius says.

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