[a pause.] Where was I? Oh, yes. As we’re going up the elevator together, me and this oil man, I engage the hidden button on my fake luggage and the tiny moving rectangle of space climbing that atrocious highrise begins to fill with a blue fog. Before Mr. Exxon even realizes it, I’ve replaced my shiny good-ole-boy back-scratching grin with a gas mask, a sight which would have probably given Mr. Exxon a number of disturbed dreams, if he had lived to dream them. The elevator opened on our floor and the blue smog was allowed to dissipate into the atmosphere of the hallway. I know, I know, Cass. What if someone had been in the hall? What if someone had seen me and Mr. Exxon awkwardly playing the roles of predator and prey? You know what I say to that, Cass? Live a little, that’s what. You know the next day you’re gonna be sometime else anyway. [a pause. another drag on the cancer stick. a plumey exhaling of gasified tar. the tight shutting of a hardback.] So the doors shut without incident and up I took us to the very top floor. You know those hanging chained signs on stairwells that say “No Entry to Roof?” Well, those are lies. All you have to do is step over them. With Mr. Exxon over my shoulder and both bags of luggage in my hand, we went to the exposed night and stared out over Dallas, and wow, Cass, all those lights! It’s like any big city really, Dallas. But I never get over big city lights. They remind me of so many things better than themselves, better than what they stand for or the metric fuck ton of coal they require. Lights at night, in a park, on a ship, strung through a garden, fucking torches on a castle—whatever you want. They’re like the perfect amount of human interjection over the environment without going ape shit. Just enough to say, ‘Hey, I can expose you, world, show you your own beauty in a night glow, and maybe I’ll do it whenever I want to, but I’ll stop there and not fuck you up anymore than that. Lights in the night, the goddamned invention of fire.’ Can’t that be enough? [a pause. yet another drag. a trodding, determined exhaling of smoke. possibly the wobbly floating of rings up to the fake-pearl-white motel ceiling.] I did the usual then. I sabotaged the luggage. This time it was kiddie porn hidden behind leaves of business papers in a leather slot of his bag. That’s the thing about these people, isn’t it? These big execs and top-of-the-food-chain capitalists. They are pure as the driven snow in their own minds, thinking they are doing everything all noble for themselves and their own. We have to go about pettily framing them in order for their world to comprehend the need for their destruction. It’s insanity. More insane than all of the carbon, the strip mining, the dirty water even. [a pause. a movement towards the lips. the briefest kiss of the cigarette’s papery filter tip. a pulling away. an exhale of smokeless air. the restless frustration.] So anyway, I commenced to undress the man and throw his five-figure suit in disparate parts around the roof. You would have been impressed with how natural it looked. I lifted Mr. Exxon onto the edge of our highrise, stood his naked ass right up on the edge of it. It was kind of a pain, actually, holding a limp body into a position like that, but I think the authenticity was probably worth it. At that point, it was as easy as blowing smoke. [a pause.] I wonder if Mr. Exxon ever dreamt of flying. If he did, Cass, do you think he flew around staring down at cities and rivers and canyons and all manner of our earthly wonders, or would he just be falling, roller-coaster jolt to the stomach, the nausea and headache and absence of time. No time to even consider why the earth would want to so badly bring him back down to it, to keep him close and at hand. Perhaps hitting the ground, melding with it, but not dying. Entering a new dream on the other side. Or rather, a millisecond before impact, being given the chance to force himself awake. What do you think, Cass? I’m addressing you. Do crooks and charlatans and playboys dream big like us, with our bird's eye view, or is the life they found here all they could have ever wanted? [a pause. a final suck of carcinogenic wind. the silent extinguishing upon a heavy white ash tray.] Ha, anyway girl, I’m gonna hit the hay. Sweet dreams, babe. Over and out. [click.]
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