The Stranger on the Roof


Jerry stood looking over the edge of the building, preparing to jump.

He thought back on all the things that had brought him to this point. He began to make a step up to the ledge before, once again, bringing his foot firmly back to the roof. He made another half-hearted effort and returned his feet side-by-side again. After mentally scolding himself, he went for it once more before flinching at a nearby noise.

“Just do it already!” said a voice next to him. Jerry looked over to see a stranger; a man he had never seen before, smoking a cigarette not twenty feet away from him. How had he not smelled it? “If you’re going to jump, jump.”

The stranger was young, late-twenties. He was a good-looking guy with sandy blonde hair, a cocky, crooked smile, and symmetrical features. He sat on a square cement block, puffing at his cigarette. Jerry simply stared at him, confused.

“That’s what you’re doing, right? Trying to work up the nerve to jump?”

“Who are you?” was all Jerry could manage. He knew everyone in that building; maybe not by name, but he knew their face. And this guy was not someone from the office.

“What does it matter?” the young man asked, his crooked, cocky smile firmly planted on his face. He took another long drag from his cigarette. “Why try to learn new things at this point?”

“You’re a strange one,” Jerry said, as if describing the difficulty of a crossword puzzle.

“Me? Look at you.”

Jerry did, and had to admit, the man wasn’t wrong. Jerry had decided, just that morning, that if he was going to die, he may as well wear every garment of clothing he had received as a gift but had never worn. He sported a hunter green fedora with a comically sized quail feather sticking out of it; a cowboy cut shirt, somewhere between orange and salmon; a very loud canary yellow and sky blue plaid blazer; his pants were the perfect shade of yellow for eating hot dogs in, because if any mustard fell on them it would blend right in; bright pink, almost fluorescent socks; lime green tennis shoes. He certainly must have been a sight to behold.

“This isn’t how I normally dress,” Jerry said, trying to defend himself on his veritable deathbed to a complete stranger.

“Hey, it’s your life,” the young man said, taking another puff of his cigarette. “Or, at least, it was.”

Something unsettled Jerry about this young man. What was he doing here? How did he get here? Finally, Jerry decided he didn’t care. He simply ignored the young man and went back to looking over the edge of the building. The sidewalk seemed so close, yet so far away. He once again reminded himself why he was there, steeled up his nerves, and took another step. Then a second. Finally, he had both feet placed on the ledge, overlooking his fate. This was it, the last step. He had taken millions, maybe billions of steps in his life. This would be the biggest. This would be the last.

“Better go headfirst,” the young stranger said between inhales of his cigarette. Jerry turned to look at him.

“Expert on suicide, are you?”

The young stranger stood up and tossed his half-finished cigarette off the edge of the building. Jerry watched it fall and hit the sidewalk in an explosion of sparks. He’s lucky he didn’t hit anyone, Jerry thought. The man started walking smoothly towards Jerry, almost gliding. He had the thought that if this young man decided to hurl himself off the building like Jerry was attempting, he would probably just hover, floating there several stories above the sidewalk.

“Well, it’s not that far down, now is it? If you jump feet first, you’re just going to shatter both your legs. If you land on your stomach or back, sure, you may die, but more likely you’ll just break all the other bones in your body, but not the one you want to. You’ll just be in agony. Maybe you’ll die from complications and injuries afterwards, but that’s hardly you calling it. Now, if you go head first, no problem. Nice, quick, and virtually painless. I mean, that’s what you’re going for, right?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jerry asked, looking sideways at the young man.

“Well, that’s how any coward wants to go, right?”

“I’m not a coward!” Jerry was angry. He had enough shit on his plate already (why else would he be in this position?) without some asshole kid questioning his motives.

“Because you’re killing yourself. Anyone who commits suicide is a coward.” No hesitation, no uncertainty. The young man was sure of this.

Jerry once again stepped down from the ledge. Something flashed across the stranger’s face. Disappointment? Relief? Boredom? Jerry regarded him, trying once again to determine who this man was.

“I’m not a coward,” Jerry said quietly, through gritted teeth.

“Then why are you killing yourself?”

Jerry ran through his justification for the umpteenth time that day (and at least the thousandth time since he had decided to end it all). He wasn’t a coward, he was brave. He stood there in direct opposition to mortality, Death, and God Himself, taking total charge of his own life, and deciding how and when it ended.

“Because I’m actually quite brave. You see, I’m standing here—”

“Willing to be the master of your own destiny, spitting in the face of Death and God, and making sure your life ends exactly how you want it to?” the young man asked, barely looking at Jerry.

He stopped. He hesitated. He stared, probably open-mouthed, at this young man. It was so eerily close to exactly what Jerry was thinking, he couldn’t help but be stunned.

“Who are you?” Jerry asked again. The stranger just laughed, picked up a small pebble off the roof, examined it, then threw it with all his might out towards the city. Jerry scoffed.

“You know, you’re being quite distracting,” Jerry said, with an edge of irritation in his voice. The stranger laughed. A dry laugh, but still bright, full of youth, promise, and a future. “I’m serious. I’m trying to do something very big here, and you’re throwing me off.”

“Would you like me to throw you off? It would probably make this whole thing easier.”

Jerry almost wanted to laugh at his cavalier attitude. Who on earth would act so nonchalantly about another man’s suicide? Jerry decided to, again, try to ignore him. He shook his head a couple times, turned resolutely away from the young man, looked up into the sky, and stepped back onto the ledge. He started lifting one foot, creeping it over the edge; creeping towards oblivion. The foot shook, trembled, tremored, and swayed, before returning to the ledge. Jerry swayed, tremored, trembled, and shook before stepping off the ledge.

“Where do you think you’ll go?”

Jerry sighed disgruntledly as his concentration was once again broken.

“I reckon down to the sidewalk there,” Jerry answered incredibly sarcastically.

“I mean after that. After you’ve jumped and splatted, and all the people down there scream and cry. After the police and ambulance show up and scrape your body off the sidewalk. After some poor sod” – (this Jerry thought was odd, as the young man was certainly not British)— “comes and washes the blood and bits of poor ol’ Jerry off the pavement. After there’s an investigation. After they talk to all your coworkers and family and people closest to you, who will inevitably say (putting on a mock-voice) ‘no one could’ve seen it coming’, and (in a different mock-voice) ‘he just didn’t seem the type’. After they’ve put you in the coffin and buried you. Where do you think you’ll go?”

“Do you mean heaven or hell?” Jerry asked.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t put any stock into that. Maybe once, but not anymore. There’s nothing out there. I jump into the oblivion, and just keep falling.” Jerry felt good about that line. It felt almost poetic. Good last words. He stepped again onto the ledge.

“You’ll go to hell,” the young stranger said matter-of-factly.

This time, it wasn’t Jerry that took himself off the ledge, it was the brashness of the young man. “And what makes you think that?”

“Because that’s what the Catholics teach. Kill yourself, go to hell.”

“So you’re Catholic?”

“Maybe, maybe not. What does it matter?” Jerry was finding this young man rather unenjoyable company.

“There is no heaven or hell. If there was a hell, we’re already in it,” Jerry replied sullenly.

“So what do you think happens if you kill yourself in hell?”

This was a question Jerry had never considered, and one he certainly didn’t expect.

“It’s not like you’ll die,” the stranger went on. “You can’t die, it’s hell. My guess, you leap down off that building and end up in agonizing, excruciating pain. No death, just lying there, probably for eternity, feeling every injury you have.”

Something ran across Jerry’s mind. Something strange; thoughts he hadn’t had in years; tales from his youth, cautionary tales. Suddenly, Jerry knew exactly who this man was.

“Are you the Devil?”

The words hung heavy in the air. Both men looked at each other, contemplating each other. Jerry feared what the young man would say. Suddenly, another cocky grin cracked across his face.

“Seriously?” the young stranger asked in incredulity. “No! I’m not the bleeding Devil!” Again, weird choice of words, because, again, not British.

“You’re a charming stranger that just so happens to show up right at the moment I’m trying to kill myself, and you not only instruct me on the best way to do it, but actively encourage me to do it. That definitely sounds like something the Devil would do.”

The stranger laughed again, though less brightly than his last laugh. “I’m no Devil, sorry.”

Then another thought hit Jerry. One that he had somehow overlooked before.

“How did you know my name?” Jerry asked.

The young man looked back at him blankly. “What?”

“Earlier, when you were describing everything that would happen after I killed myself. You said they’d be scraping bits of poor ol’ Jerry off the sidewalk. How did you know my name?”

The young stranger hesitated for half a second. “Because, I mean, look at you. You just look like a Jerry.”

Jerry looked down at himself. Right now, he wasn’t sure what he looked like in his ridiculous outfit. But he thought of all those pep talks he gave himself in the bathroom mirror, and decided this man wasn’t wrong.

“Why are you doing it?”

Jerry slowly turned to the man, looking directly at his face for the first time in several minutes.

“So you can ask me personal questions, but won’t even tell me your name?”

“Of course! I actually have a reason to learn things. I’m sticking around,” the young man beamed at him.

This hurt Jerry a little bit, but he quickly brushed it away. Jerry had gone through much more painful things to lead him to this moment. He finally decided to give a snarky answer.

“Why does anyone kill themselves?”

“Oh, ‘cause they have no friends, no family, no job. I’m guessing your wife left you, and” – the next two lines he sang in a drawling country twang — “she took my truuuuck, and my daaaawg!

This got to Jerry. A smile slowly spread across his face, then turned into a grin; then he laughed. For the first time in months, Jerry laughed. He brought himself off the ledge, sat himself on another cement block, much like the one the stranger was initially sitting on, and he laughed. The stranger laughed, too. It wasn’t like the dry laugh from before. It was a deep, full belly laugh. The two laughed together before falling into silence. Once the fit had worn off, the young man produced a pack of cigarettes from his inside jacket pocket. He pulled one out, put it between his lips, removed his lighter from his pants pocket, and sparked it up.

“You know, those things will kill you,” Jerry casually tossed out.

The stranger stopped dead, the lit lighter still several inches from the cigarette, then extinguished by a slight breeze. He simply sat there, before finally saying (mumbled, with the cigarette still pressed between his lips), “The irony of that statement was so strong, I was momentarily paralyzed.” He then proceeded to light the cigarette.

Jerry considered a chuckle. This time, though, he didn’t laugh. Not to prove a point, just because he didn’t want to laugh. He remained perched on his cement slab, once again staring at the young stranger. He still didn’t know what to make of him. After a few moments of silence, and several puffs of his cigarette, the young man spoke up.

“Tell me about your wife.”

Jerry was stunned. He didn’t know where this question came from. Jerry had never positively mentioned that he had a wife. Or, had had a wife.

“Why do you ask? And who said I was married anyways?” Jerry asked, trying to sound nonchalant, but failing rather spectacularly.

“I did, in my country song. You remember? I think I did a bang-up job, myself,” he rounded his sentence with a sharp burst of self-approving laughter, and a self-assured grin.

Jerry looked at him sharply. He wasn’t sure he’d ever looked at anyone before with a gaze that might be considered “sharp” (something that aggressive just wasn’t in Jerry’s milieu), but somehow this situation brought it out of him; even warranted it. His gaze dropped quickly, as he considered what he was doing, and found it most un-Jerry-like.

“She left me. Last week,” Jerry responded, curtly.

The young man nodded in seeming understanding. There was no way he could, Jerry reckoned, because how could he? Sure, he’s young, attractive, and suave, but there’s no way he’s had any meaningful relationships. He’s “played the field” (as they say), and has surely had his fair share of one-night-stands, but he’s never been in a situation where he was willing to even admit he wanted to marry the girl, let alone actually mean it. He was the love-it-and-leave-it type, Jerry was quite sure. And for some reason, he decided he needed to prove his point.

“So you must know what it’s like to lose the love of your life? The one person you thought you’d be with forever? The person you were convinced completed you?” Jerry let the question hang in the air, like a crudely created trap set for the cunning Roadrunner.

“No, I absolutely do not. I’ve never let myself get that close to someone. I just didn’t want to seem like an uncaring prick,” the young man stated, honestly and matter-of-factly.

Jerry didn’t know how to respond. He expected his question to catch his counterpart off-guard and force him to be honest. While the latter part may have happened, it was certainly not to Jerry’s satisfaction, and did not include the expected response to the first half. So, Jerry sat in silence. He half-looked at the stranger, half-looked at the pebbles that lay across the roof of the building that he used to work at, and half-looked at the skyline of the city he lived in, and planned to die in. At his own hands.

“So…” the young man said after several moments of silence. “Are you gonna tell me about her?”

“About who?” Jerry had legitimately forgotten what they were talking about.

“Your wife!” said the young man.

Jerry quickly jumped back in the moment. I’m here to kill myself, he thought. This is the roof of my old job… I came up here this morning to jump off. What the hell am I doing?

Jerry sat there, on the cement block, and looked at nothing. “Why?” He finally managed.

“Why? Because I asked. Why do you need reasons when you’re about to die?”

“The point of telling you anything amounts to the same as my life. Pretty much nothing. What’s the point of life? It depends on who you are, I’m sure. But I’m one of those people where the point of life is either to make other people feel better about themselves, or to suffer. Either way, not a great life.” Jerry had never been this candid, not even with himself. He had considered in great detail why he should kill himself, but never about the mortal aspect of his, well, mortality. Both men stared at each other without saying a word.

“So what is life? Is it even real? Are you real? Am I real? What is the meaning of existence?” The young stranger then took a long pull off his cigarette. In the meantime, Jerry retorted.

“I don’t know, honestly. At this point, I’m seeing everything in a haze. Everything I see might be real, and everything might be fake.”

“Man, I was just putting up a front. I don’t actually believe in all that new-age-mumbo-jumbo. But…” he trailed off and took a moment to gather his thoughts. He took a meaningful drag of his cigarette as he expertly formulated his next sentence, “I do think life may just be a dream.”

This wasn’t exactly what Jerry expected to hear. It was a different kind of deep that he didn’t think this young stranger would dive into. He wanted to agree. Maybe this young man was a philosophy major (that is, if he wasn’t the Devil). Maybe he thought about these things for fun and hoped to talk about these things for a living. But as he considered these possibilities, the actual thought that was presented to him started to swirl around inside his mind. He thought about life, and what it was; or, at least, what he thought it might be. Then a thought came to him, clear as day. A thought he’d never had before, mostly because he had had no reason to have the thought before. He decided to say it out loud, to this young stranger/Devil:

“Life isn’t a dream,” he said, looking at the stranger’s forehead. “It’s a just a string of jokes, a lot of jokes, all connected together.”

As soon as the words left his lips, Jerry realized how ridiculous it sounded. He then remembered that not too long ago, he was seconds from killing himself, and he suddenly stopped caring about how ridiculous his words may sound. However, the young man started to laugh. Heartily. He clutched at his gut and ribs; he howled and snorted; he rocked back and forth on his feet; he tried desperately to keep his composure. Ultimately, he lost, dissolving into an almost-epileptic fit. But, being a stalwart example of misanthropy, he quickly collected himself and stifled his laughter. However, he couldn’t help but give a begrudging, “that’s a pretty good description, honestly.”

This did something for Jerry. He didn’t understand what it did, or even why. But, for whatever reason, Jerry sat there with a coy grin on his face, but a large inner grin. He mentally ruffled up his tailfeathers and patted himself on the back.

But why? Jerry wasn’t exactly looking for friends at this point. He wasn’t looking for anyone, or any kind of human contact. So why, all of a sudden, was he so proud of himself at having achieved the approval of this guy? This guy who he didn’t even know?

Before he could think more about it, Jerry was jolted back to the moment by the young man’s question.

“So… are you going to tell me about your wife?”

Jerry looked at him for several seconds. The first few were based in confusion, as if Jerry had never seen this person before and was suddenly asked to be the best man at his wedding. The latter few seconds were of contemplation, wondering (again) if this man was the Devil; but also wondering if it was even worth it to reveal this much about himself. Eventually, Jerry gave in and said:

“We met her junior year of college. I was a TA in her History class. I was getting my Master’s in…” Jerry trailed off, realizing that (a) he didn’t want to relive his heretofore unaccomplished dreams, and (b) realized the stranger he was talking to really didn’t care. So, he jumped ahead: “She sat front row, eager to learn, eager to answer questions, and eager to… well… make a good impression,” the stress Jerry put on this alerted the stranger that he meant doing anything (anything) to get a good grade. “It started off as just a fling, a simple thing. We’d meet up here and there, maybe twice a week. Then, it’d be more than that. But it wasn’t all just sex. We’d go out on dates. We’d sit for hours at a coffee shop or dive bar or whatever and talk. Just talk. And it took me far too long to realize what I should’ve known all along, and what she clearly did know all along. I was crazy about her. So, the day after she graduated, I proposed to her. We were married six months later. Then guess what?”

“She took a turn for the worse and you realized you didn’t love her anymore,” the young man stated matter-of-factly, as if answering a question on an oral exam in History.

“Nope,” Jerry replied, stiffly.

The young man looked honestly surprised. He thought he had this whole thing figured out, and here he was thrown a curve ball. He had to recover fast. “You took a turn for the worst and—”

Jerry interjected. “No, it wasn’t that either.” He took a moment before speaking again. “She got a job.”

The young stranger sat there, perplexed, staring at Jerry. He was trying to figure out what the hell that could have to do with their marriage, and, specifically, its ending.

“You don’t get it. A TA’s only job is to do a professor’s dirty work. All the shit they don’t want to deal with. And when that’s over, which is usually about the time you get your degree (and not just an Associates or Bachelors, I’m talking full Master’s or even Doctorate), you typically go on to pretty good things. Well, unfortunately, I did not. Go on to pretty good things, that is. No, I was turned down by university after university, college after college, community college after community college. Nobody wanted me to teach. Nobody wanted to learn from me. And my nice, big, fancy degree in History guaranteed me a spot doing… maybe trying to do… possibly doing… Yeah, it guaranteed me a teaching job. Which I didn’t get. But my wife… my ex-wife… she got a good job, right out of the gates. She was making good money and providing for us; for me. Eventually, it got old. Mostly for her. I wasn’t a big fan of her being the sole-provider, or even the main-provider. I was brought up to believe the man was supposed to care for the household. But I couldn’t. She could. Maybe it was jealousy, maybe it was spite, maybe it was resentment. Whatever it was, it got to the point where she couldn’t stand it. And when she told me how much she couldn’t stand my shit, I was more than happy to tell her how I couldn’t handle her shit. So, after a few weeks… months of fighting, she decided she needed some time away. Then a house of her own. Then a divorce,” Jerry took a deep breath. Partly because he had spoken so much, partly to consider what he had said, and if he should continue.

Eventually, he decided to continue, “It wasn’t until the divorce started going, and the divvying up of possessions began that I realized: I have nothing. Everything I have, anything I might claim as my own was really hers. Without her, there’s no house. The house is hers. Without her, there’s no furniture. The furniture is hers. Without her, there’re no cars. The cars are hers. Without me? What would there be without me? Everything. If I hadn’t existed, she would still have the same exact things. So what do I get? What I earned. That is, nothing. I was left with nothing. I have nothing.”

The young man sat stoically, listening without response, verbal or facial.

“So I decided to try to make things better for myself by going and talking to my boss. Hugh Mosha. What a piece of work… I make my case for how long I’ve worked here, how much I do. I figure that should be worth a raise. You know what he says?” Jerry asked rhetorically before quickly following up with, “’We’ll consider it.’ As if I’m asking for new desk chairs in the office. Then, after waiting a few days for an answer, I get called into his office. I think I’m about to get the raise, because why not? But oh no, I’m not getting the raise. ‘Jerry, we’ve thought it over, and, I’m sorry to say, we need to downsize. And after looking at everyone in the office, it seems that you are…’” With this, Jerry trailed off.

For the first time since interacting with him, Jerry felt like he saw a legitimate emotion on the young stranger’s face. If he didn’t know any better, he might even have thought he saw sympathy. Jerry maintained silence.

After a moment, the stranger finally chimed in, saying, “Ok, so that tells me about losing your wife and your job. But it doesn’t actually tell me about your wife.”

Jerry was taken aback. He had given far more details than he would’ve wanted to give, even to his closest friends; and yet this boy still wanted more. What was there to say about Jerry’s wife… ex-wife.

She was a bitch.

She was a she-devil.

She was the spawn of hell.

She was a wench.

She was a conniving wench.

She was a lot of bad things to call women.

She was really mean.

“She was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.”

Jerry was startled, shocked, and confused by the words that came out of his own mouth. He hadn’t had a positive thought about this woman for months, and here he was saying she was… the greatest… wait, what?

“She made me smile when I seemed too upset to console. She had the cutest wrinkle on her nose when she laughed, and it was even cuter when she was pretending to be upset with me, or acting like I was immature. She had this laugh that seemed to be reserved just for me. She always did little things that she knew got on my nerves, just to get to me, then would laugh when I figured it out. And any time we kissed… you know… passionately, she’d always end it with a couple quick, little kisses. She was really…” Jerry trailed off, suddenly aware of the embarrassing amount of personal information he’d given away. The stranger looked amused.

“Something?” He asked, a huge shit-eating grin on his face.

Jerry quickly looked at the ground. Why had he given so much information to this stranger? Jerry once again wondered who this man was, and why he was here. He continued to look at the ground and remain silent for several minutes. Then suddenly, he was hit in the face with something small and hard. He looked to where the object fell. It was a penny.

“Penny for your thoughts?” the young man said, hand still outstretched in front of him from having flung the coin at Jerry’s face.

“Just can’t help wondering why you’re up here.”

“Why are you so caught up on me and my ‘who’s’ and ‘why’s’? You’re about to take a swan dive onto the pavement, remember?”

Jerry did remember. But then he remembered how he’d forgotten. He hadn’t actually considered the fact that he was going to kill himself for a good chunk of time. How long, though?

“Right… I, uh… yeah.” This was all Jerry was able to say.

The stranger lit up another cigarette. How many was that?

After lighting the cigarette, the young man asked Jerry, “I mean, are you going to or not? Because we’ve been out here for-” he looked at his watch, “A little over two hours now, and I really should get going…”

“Two hours?!” Jerry asked, flabbergasted. It didn’t seem more than 20 minutes since discovering this stranger. This started making Jerry think again. This man isn’t the Devil. He can’t be. He must be something else. Why Jerry still thought this man was anything more than a bored, mortal human is anyone’s guess. People seem to make strange assumptions when they’re at the end of their rope. He continued to look at nothing and everything, trying to find some kind of rationale in nature or man’s work. The trees provided no answers; the architecture surrounding them even less.

“You’re not the Devil,” Jerry finally said.

“I know,” responded the stranger.

“So, what are you?”

“Oh, ok, we’re done with ‘who’ and ‘why’, and we’re on ‘what’ now? What am I? A bored motherfucker who just wanted a smoke, just one smoke, and ended up getting confronted with a suicidal Sigmund-fucking-Freud. That’s what I am.” He took a long, impatient drag of his cigarette. He then examined the tip of it for a second. Jerry assumed the young man was considering throwing it right in Jerry’s face.

All Jerry could reply with was, “Sigmund Freud?”

“I don’t know, man, I don’t know shit about psychology. I just know that you’re getting real introspectic,” Jerry noted that this person did not know the word introspective, “and that he was some famous psychiatrist, and those guys get all introspectic.”

“Can I ask another ‘why’ question?” Jerry asked, gaining some semblance of composure.

“Hey, it’s your funeral,” the young man responded in a cloud of smoke he had just exhaled.

“Why did you even start talking to me in the first place?” This, Jerry felt, was a very fair question.

The look on the face of the stranger confirmed Jerry’s feeling.

“You know, that’s actually a damn fine question. I couldn’t rightly tell you.”

While this wasn’t what Jerry was hoping for, it was along the lines of what he expected.

“So you just decided, while smoking a cigarette, that you would say something, anything, to a man about to commit suicide? That’s a rather odd thing to do.”

“Wow, you are really hung up on my cigarette smoking.”

“That’s not really the point here…” Jerry said, allowing his simple reprimand to linger, forcing the young man to think about what the point actually was.

He didn’t.

“Point or not, you care a strange amount about my wellbeing. What, were you one of those D.A.R.E. kids that took it really seriously? Did a parent of yours die from lung cancer? Or are you just so low down that you have to at least look down on someone else?”

These last words stung Jerry. He wanted to lash out; to chastise, reprimand, and overall yell at this guy. Who the hell is he, Jerry thought, to be assuming this about me?

“You think I need to find an excuse to look down on people?” Jerry asked, “What, to feel better about myself?”

“Don’t you? I mean, shit, you’re about to kill yourself. That means you really don’t think much of yourself. And if you’re really willing to spend some of the last moments, some of the last breaths of your life on criticizing me for something like smoking… I mean, you did it so instinctively, too. You must really carry a grudge against smokers.”

Jerry hated… no, abhorred the way this person was making him think. He was up here for one reason, and one reason only. When you’re willing to kiss the pavement after a several-story jump, the last thing you want is thought provocation. But this distaste for deeper thought eventually led Jerry to deeper thought. And these thoughts brought up ideas. And these ideas conflicted with earlier ideas, but not more recent ones, which only served to confuse Jerry.

Jerry had already decided that this man was not the Devil. Jerry had already decided that he wasn’t just a mere mortal. And then, finally, Jerry decided that he was hungry. This had no relevance to the metaphysical nature of the stranger he had interacted with now for (apparently) over two hours. It was just what was in Jerry’s head. He then moved past that point and returned to the elephant in the room; that is to say, the stranger on the roof.  

“You don’t think your wife will miss you? Or be upset? Even devastated?” The proverbial elephant asked.

EX-wife,” Jerry said, the first syllable dripping with venom like blood dripping off an axe that had just beheaded its victim.

The young man rolled his eyes, “Ex-wife, Y-wife, Z-wife, what does it matter? She’s still a human being that decided to devote her time, effort, love, and even life to you. Even if it wasn’t as long as it was supposed to be. How is all this going to make her feel?”

“Oh, so first I’m a coward, now I’m selfish? You told me to jump, then you criticize me for it, then you want to know why. What kind of goddamn game are you playing?” Jerry was starting to get mad now. This was supposed to be quick; this was supposed to be simple; this was supposed to be over by now.

This young man made it anything but.

“I’m not playing any games. I told you, I’m bored. Yeah, I told you to jump. Then you didn’t. You decided to respond to me, so I gave you my thoughts. You then decided that the time that you had reserved for suicide was worth giving to talking to me. This is all you, everything about it. This is your suicide on your former place of work because of your shitty relationship with your wife. You notice how I’m not in your stories? Any of them?”

Jerry used to have a recurring dream, in his early-to-mid-teens, where he had these great, superhero-esque powers: strength, speed, healing. He would go up to all the kids that bullied him (because, believe it or not, Jerry was bullied in grade school… and college… and the professional world…) and use his powers to subdue them in such a way that would make them regret all their decisions and change their delinquent ways. They were dreams.

For the first time, Jerry felt like the villain. Ok, maybe not the villain; but certainly not the hero.

“You’re not the Devil,” was all Jerry was able to say after several… seconds? Minutes? Hours? Time didn’t seem to make sense anymore.

The young man sighed, exasperatedly. “I know—”

“You’re pretty much the opposite,” Jerry interrupted.

This caught the stranger’s attention. This was a new idea, something probably equally as crazy as Jerry accusing him of being Satan. The young man actually waited with anticipation to see what he was now.

“What am I, then?” He asked in gleeful curiosity.

“You’re my Guardian Angel,” Jerry said with no reservation.

Who knows what Jerry was expecting. He may have expected fanfare, flames, and some kind of celestial light show. He may have also expected the young stranger to finally put his cigarette out on Jerry’s face. Whatever Jerry was expecting, he got:

“You are the most daft wanker I have ever encountered in my life.”

Whatever Jerry was expecting or thinking, upon this response he was forced to think only one thing:  he’s not British.

“What the hell—” the young man seemed to notice the word choice, and decided to change it to: “What the fuck makes you think I’m any kind of angel, let alone your Guardian Angel?”

“Because,” Jerry began, gaining more composure and confidence in this idea the more he thought about it, “when I was at my lowest—now— you lifted me up. You made me laugh. You made me remember the actual love I had for my wife.  You distracted me for over two hours from actually killing myself. You’re only here to make sure I don’t do it. To help me realize what’s wrong with my decision.”

“I’m no Clarence, man.”

“And I’m no George Bailey. But there are coincidences, and then there’s destiny!”

“You remember when I called you an idiot?” The young man quipped.

“No, I can’t say that I—”

“A second ago. I called you the most daft wanker I’ve ever met,” the stranger said.

“Oh, ok, yeah. I remember that,” Jerry said, easily recalling the interaction because of his confusion over his counterpart’s desire to use slang from a place he doesn’t live, and therefore slang that he forced himself to use instead of naturally affecting it.

“Well I was wrong. Here I thought you couldn’t get any crazier, more illogical, or stupider. And here you are, proving me wrong.”

Jerry realized he was standing. Not normally, no, but rather striking a Captain Morgan stance: one foot raised up on the concrete slab that (as far as he recalled) he was sitting on a second ago, both hands balled into fists and pressed into his hips, his chin pointed upward. As the words the stranger said sunk in, so too did the posture Jerry was exhibiting. First his shoulders slumped; then he lowered his elevated foot; then he dropped his arms to straight at his side. He assumed the form of a 2x4, rigid and straight.

Jerry had come here to kill himself. He obviously understood the point being made by doing the deed from the top of the building that he used to work at. But he also wasn’t familiar with other tall buildings like he was with this one. This one he could easily get to, even though he didn’t have legal access to the building anymore. He just simply used the fire escape. This then made him stop and think even more about the stranger. How the hell did he get here?

“How did you get up here?” Jerry asked.

“Who… Why… What… How… I’m not sure what ‘when’ you could possibly want to know, but I’m sure it’s coming,” the stranger responded, snarkily, pulling another long drag from his cigarette. Jerry had officially lost track.

“If you aren’t the Devil, if you aren’t my Guardian Angel, who are you? Come on, I’m a dying man. Grant me this wish,” Jerry pleaded.

“You’re not dying.”

“We’re all dying. I just have the advantage of knowing when,” Jerry said, rather proud of the profoundness of that statement, without trying to show it.

“Ok, so, you’re falling. Not far enough to kill you unless you do it just right. What’s going through your head at that time? Will it be ‘boy, I sure am glad that random guy told me how he ended up on the roof?’ Or will it be… I don’t know… anything of more importance?” At this point, the young man almost seemed exhausted. He reached for yet another cigarette, extracting one from a pack that Jerry remembered being rather full when they first started talking, but now seemed dangerously low.

“Humor me,” Jerry was exhausted, too. But in a way that few people could understand. Certainly not this person.

“I’m not a humorous person. Sorry,” the stranger said, trying to light his umpteenth cigarette. The lighter kept going out every time it got close. He shook his lighter and tried to light it again. No luck. He shook it more violently, and this time it looked to succeed. Then, at the last second, it didn’t. He cursed under his breath.

“It’s not going to light,” Jerry said.

The young stranger didn’t move. He stopped doing what he was doing, but he didn’t abandon it. He simply stared at Jerry, cigarette pressed between his lips, hands cupped around it, lighter anchored in his left hand, ready to be struck with his right thumb. “And what,” he started, the unlit cigarette bouncing on his lips as he spoke, “makes you so sure?”

“Because, you can’t smoke anymore.” Jerry didn’t say this as a reprimand, but merely as a matter-of-fact. He knew in his mind that this stranger couldn’t smoke. He knew this because nicotine is bad for you, therefore evil. And this man couldn’t partake of anything evil, not now that Jerry had blown his cover of being a Guardian Angel.

The stranger sparked the lighter, touched the flame to the tip of the cigarette, and inhaled. The cancer-stick lit, cherrying at the end. The enigmatic character breathed in, then exhaled a large cloud of smoke.

“Seems you’re wrong,” was all he said.

Jerry sat, phlegmatic. This was his last chance, his last opportunity for meaning in this life that had, by this point, failed him spectacularly.

That was it. That was all he needed. This was Charlie giving Willy Wonka his Everlasting Gobstopper back; this was the last sign he needed.

Jerry stood up. He looked at nothing. He walked, almost robotically, somewhere. And not the robot that’s programmed with a specific function. More like a robot that is created by a sick, sadistic creator that would give an only-technically-animate object sentience, only to not give it any kind of reason or purpose.

He eventually realized where he was heading, or at least where he was supposed to head. He found himself seconds later on the ledge of the building, once again. He ignored the stranger, pretended he wasn’t there. Jerry even started to hear him talk but gave him no mind. This was it; this was finally going to be Jerry’s moment.

As quickly and as unexpectedly as he found himself on the ledge looking out over the final view he would ever see, Jerry found himself looking at the stranger.

Again.

Who the hell…

Who the fuck…

Why the hell…

How the fuck…

Jerry finally decided: he gave up.

Yes, he had already given up on life. But now, he had reached a new level of giving up. Jerry had given up on giving up on life.

“I give up.”

“I know,” the stranger said. “That much is obvious.”

“No,” Jerry responded, shaking his head. “I give up.”

This didn’t give the young man any new information. The look on his face cued Jerry in to the fact.

“I give up on giving up. I give up on figuring you out. I give up on jumping. I give up on… I don’t know… everything? There’s got to be a point that people reach to make them do what I wanted to do today. But, there also appears to be a point beyond that. I have reached the point that so little matters, that it would be pointless for me to kill myself.” Jerry sat back down on the concrete slab that had, for much of this afternoon, been his perch.

“Bully for you!” the stranger said with mock excitement.

This time, Jerry didn’t even notice the purposefully-imposed British terminology. He just noticed this young man, full of hope and promise. This man who may or may not have saved his life. This stranger who probably wasn’t the Devil or Jerry’s Guardian Angel. This… messiah.

Jerry wanted to smile; he wanted to laugh; to hoot and holler; to greet everybody with this newfound lesson he had just learned, like some kind of evangelist missionary with no forethought of common decency: “Nothing matters! Especially not you!”

Jerry thought killing himself might bring closure. It wouldn’t. Not to him, not to the only person that would be alerted (that is, his ex-wife), not to the cruel, vicious cycle of “winners” and “losers”. Killing himself wouldn’t do anything. So, he finally decided not to.

Instead, Jerry decided to do absolutely nothing. From that moment on, until the second he died, Jerry vowed to never do anything that may benefit anyone or anything again. Not even himself.

This newfound energy seemed to exude from Jerry, and he could see the change in the countenance on the stranger’s face. Jerry could tell that his counterpart could truly feel the change in Jerry, just as Jerry could.

“Well, looks like you’ve come to… some kind of mental balance. How ‘bout we get the fuck out of here, huh?” He didn’t wait for a reply, he simply walked towards the door that would lead them down the stairs into the offices that Jerry once called his own. Jerry followed, rather blindly. He felt like a member of a cult, with this young, strange, mysterious man at the center of it. Except Jerry was pretty sure this person wasn’t about to offer him some Kool-Aid that would prove to be the last thing he ever drank. He walked, unnoticingly, into the office that he once used to call his own. However, he didn’t realize it; he didn’t even recognize it. Jerry simply stood idly by the side of his Guardian Demon, unaware of his surroundings, the looks and whispers, and his own ridiculous appearance. The thing that finally broke him out of his stupor was the all-too-familiar voice of one of the catalysts of his suicide.

Hugh Mosha walked up to the pair, jolting Jerry back to a very uncomfortable reality. He suddenly wished he was back on the roof. This time, he definitely would’ve jumped.

“Joshua, there you are! I’ve been looking all over… where have you been?” Hugh was even unpleasant to people he would refer to by first name. But wait, who did he refer to by first name?

No one in the office. None of the clients. Certainly no one in upper management. That must mean…

“Sorry, dad, I was just… um… catching some fresh air.”

“Yes, yes you went out for that cigarette hours ago. But then you just…” Mr. Mosha trailed off, finally comprehending the man in front of him dressed in the loudest, gaudiest, most un-matching outfit he had ever seen. “Jerry, my goodness, what are you wearing? More importantly, why are you here?”

Jerry suddenly realized “Joshua’s” annoyance with the “what’s” and the “why’s”.

“What am I wearing? Clothing. Surely, Hugh, you must recognize that. Why am I here? Well, frankly, everyone in this office should be asking that question. Yes, I mean on the true, spiritual level. But mostly, I mean on the very specific, very situational: ‘why the hell am I sitting at this tiny desk, in this uncomfortable chair, working for this blowhard idiot, and this shitty company, when there is no fucking reason to even care?!’ There’s my ‘why’ for you, Mr. Mosha. And my what for you is: What are you gonna do about it?”

Jerry gave one last brief, piercing, quizzical look to “Joshua” (as it was still too much for Jerry to refer to him by a name, let alone a standard name such as that). He then marched out the door, the feather in his fedora waving back and forth with his very determined stride.

“Cheers, mate!” Joshua shouted as Jerry marched down the hall towards the elevators.

For the first time since meeting him, Jerry wanted to punch Joshua in the face.

“You’re not fuckin’ British!” Jerry cried cheerfully over his shoulder, holding his right hand straight up in the air and waving it, backwards, at his Guardian… Tempter… Friend? Enemy? At Joshua.

Joshua and his father looked at each other. Hugh was confused, disconcerted, and even a little worried. Joshua was bored, hungry, and imbued with a thirst for life that he had never felt before, and even now didn’t recognize.

Jerry had a lot of things to think over, lots of decisions to make.

Jerry decided, right then and there, to key Hugh Mosha’s car. 

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