waiting for things to change, but it never happened for me. And things have only gotten harder. I'm out of hope. So now I just want to be someplace else now. Because being here isn't working."
"Okay! I understand that! I've been there. Many times. You just need a friend to walk you through it."
She laughed bitterly. "Mister, if I had a friend, do you think I'd be up here?"
He took a deep breath. "Maybe your life looks pretty dark now. But if you'll just come down, maybe we could talk about it." He held out his hand.
Tears welled up in her eyes. "Why are you doing this? Can't you just leave me alone? I'm not bothering anybody!"
"Ma'am—" He remembered that the man had called her Candy. "Candy, I'm sorry. I just can't leave you alone. You know that, don't you?"
She shook her head.
"Please. Come down."
She suddenly burst into tears. "I can't."
"You can! Listen, don't let that guy—don't let anybody take away your hope. He doesn't have that right."
"I've got nobody! No family. No friends. He's the only damn thing that shows up every morning. So he can do whatever the hell he pleases!" She turned back towards doom.
"Candy, that's not true! You have one other thing. Me!"
She said something but the wind picked it up and carried it away.
He began to climb the tables. "Just hang on, okay?"
But she had stopped talking, and he instinctively felt that it was a sign that she had resigned herself to whatever fate waited for her at the bottom of the Benjamin Building. When he saw her edging herself forward, he had to fight from allowing sheer panic to overtake him. Think! he told himself. She leaned forward. Think faster!
He reached a point where he was about one-half meter from her. He spoke very calmly and very deliberately so as not to aggravate her. "My name is Neal. I'm an engineer. I work for the government. In Washington. I have job, good co-workers, and I have real friends. Right now, I have almost ten thousand dollars in the bank. I'll make a deal with you, Candy. If you grab the hope you've got left and come down off that ledge right now, I'll give you half of that money. And I'll talk to my friends. I'm sure that they can help you find a place to stay until you sort your situation out."
She shifted back towards him so quickly that half of her bottom swung out into open air. She grabbed onto the ledge with both hands and pulled herself into a safer position.
"I don't believe you," she said. "No one would do that."
He smiled. "I would."
"Do you believe that my life is worth five thousand dollars?"
"Yes, I do." He pushed his hand towards her. "Come on. Take my hand."
For the first time, she smiled. "All right." She placed her hand in his. Broussard felt massive relief. I saved her. I saved a life.
As he helped her down, he noticed that they were both trembling. He led her to a stone planter and took out one of his business cards. "This has all of my info on it. Call me first thing tomorrow morning and we'll start setting things into motion. Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?"
"No."
"No problem. Here." He took two fifties out of his wallet. "Get a room."
At first her eyes widened, but then she refused the money saying, "I'm sorry. If I take your money—"
He cut her off. "Trust me. It's not like that. It's a free assist."
She relented and he walked her back inside. There was no sign of her husband. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked her.
"Yes. I believe so. Thank you so much. I don't know how I'll ever be able to repay you."
"Just get through this. That's all you have to do for me. Got it?"
She let a girlish laugh slip out. "Got it." She thanked him profusely several more times before he left her outside the apartment's stairwell access door.
Broussard tried to make his way back out into the garden in the hopes of meeting up with the others. On the way, he was knocked down twice, shoved into a closet, and nearly bitten by one of Dina's now hysterical dogs. A man in shorts and topsiders was knocked to the floor and trampled. A woman screamed. Ragged scuffs of blood, lots of it, began to stain the floor. Incongruously, loud dance music began to play. All of the shaking must have jiggled Dina's stereo system into action.
A young woman, model thin and starlet pretty, stepped over an unconscious woman and sidled up to him. "Hi. My name is Karyn-with-a-y."
His breath caught. Was she talking to him? He took the chance that she was. "Hi, Karyn-with-a-y. I'm Neal-with-an-a."
"Neal." She mouthed his name with pillowy lips. "I don't know any 'Neals.'"
"I do. They're great guys," he replied, injecting confidence into his voice.
The girl squinted her heavily lacquered eyes at him. "Oh, my God. You're gorgeous! You look like that old actor when he was young. Newman. Paul Newman?"
He shrugged.
"Remember? He played in that prison break movie?"
A slight smile played upon his lips. "Ironic."
"Yeah," she said boozily. "My mom's a dick, but you probably knew that."
"Pardon me?"
She was focusing in on him and it was making him uncomfortable, so he took two steps backwards, out of the light. In response, she teetered over to the nearest wall and braced herself against a life-sized steel tiger sculpture atop a marble pedestal. When she suddenly slumped against it, he rushed over and propped her up.
Her eyes closed and then opened in slow motion. They were on him again, tracing the features of his face. "Same eyes and mouth. I was a film major in college so I know these things?"
She had an odd, neo-Valley Girl way of speaking which placed question marks at the end of every other declarative sentence.
"Okay."
"I had this massive crush on him."
"Who?"
"Paul Newman? I wanted him to marry me. And we don't normally go for pretty boys?"
Was she using the royal "we"?
The elevator doors behind them opened with a business-like whoosh, and two paramedics rushed out with determined looks on their faces. Dina hurried over and directed them to a man lying prostrate before the fireplace. The party guests with the big hair were crying and attempting to console each other. Neal found himself amused. Everyone's actions were now syncopated by the hard driving rhythms coming from the speakers. It was as if they had suddenly found themselves in the middle of an Eighties' music video.
His palms were growing sweatier by the minute, and it wasn't just from the rising heat in the penthouse. "So what's a bad girl like you doing in a nice place like this?"
A confused looked crossed her face. "Sorry?"
"Who brought you to the party?"
"Oh, I pooled over with my boss and that fat cow from marketing." She jutted her slim hip out provocatively. "And you?"
"I came with Dina and a couple of co-workers."
"Dina Hodges?"
"Yes."
"Oh, she's awesome. So you work for Applied, too? Which department?"
"What's Applied?" he asked. The chaos was shortening his RAM.
"Applied Physics? I guess not. Well, almost everyone here works for Applied? Dina's husband owns the company, so I assumed that you were just another imperial slave." She drained her glass. "But it's cool? They pay us crazy money and throw monster parties." She giggled. "They throw a lot of parties. They throw parties when we get a new contract, or somebody gets out of rehab, or Beau has a solid bowel movement." She laughed at her own joke. "They like to party?" That last question was to herself. She stooped to set her drink down on a low table, and her two stout breasts popped out for the world to see. Broussard could not help but gawk. She had an American flag tattooed on one and the Advance South flag on the other. She caught him staring and pointed at the artwork. "I love them both." A sultry Britney Spears was crooning about her lover's many physical attributes. Karyn swayed rhythmically on her high heels, making small grinding motions with her hips. She was either so blasé or too hammered to notice the intimate
riot that had broken out around her, or that she was standing smack in the middle of it half naked. Either way, she definitely seemed to be open to other entertainment possibilities for the evening.
Broussard watched slack-jawed as her pink areolas, small and faint, slowly moved up and down in time with the beat. Now she pressed her backside flat up against the wall behind the crouching tiger, splayed her long fingers out and groped it.
Broussard's tongue rolled around inside his mouth, oiled and loose.
His hands began to clench and unclench. Suddenly, Bautista's wide face appeared just centimeters away from his.
"Neal, you having a seizure or somethin'?"
The building rocked again. A delicate glass tumbled through the electrified air high above their heads, trailing photons of sparkling wine. Some of it splashed onto Karyn's undulating torso, causing it to shimmer and glow in the unnatural light.
"I, uh ... " Broussard reached up and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. "I'm beginning to doubt my lack of faith."
Bautista giggled wickedly. "Me, too. I'm splittin'."
Broussard's eyes widened. "You taking off?"
"With Van? Hell, no! If he wants to go freeze his ass off in Canada, let 'em. I've got other plans. See you back at the hojo."
As Karyn continued her bump and grind in beat with the music, the heat intensified as another ray of heated light shot across the rooftop, bathing everything and everyone in a brilliant tangerine glow. Karyn raised one arm high above her head and brought it down on the smooth head of the metal tiger. Broussard watched, utterly fascinated, as the long hairs on her head began to lift from her shoulders until they stood straight out and up. She had