Rooftop Augury

Some nights it is just not enough to hear your city sing from the streets, to stand on the ground and look up. Some nights you have to scale fire escape ladders in alleyways one-handed, dredging the ices of a frozen Pimm’s Cup. Because it is summer, not technically but the air whispers sticky that it is, and anything frozen is worth trying once.

These are some nights. These are the nights you climb regardless of whether you are wearing your bad luck dress, nights when luck is everything and nothing.

Don’t look down yet. There’s another flight, another ledge, another rooftop to conquer.

Let your legs dangle. These are the nights you can stretch Canal out below you, spangled bawdy with its nighttime glow. The streetcars grumble over their tracks, sparking, listening to conductors hollering car to car at passing stops. An airplane weaves too low in the skyline. It is headed the wrong way for any airport in particular, but you don’t mind overly much because some nights we all feel like that too.

Life goes on below in murmurs and shouts. In loiterers, in tired night shift workers, in men in crumpled suits crossing towards the French Quarter without their wives. Up here, too, where you stack your cigarette butts neatly along the precipice and marvel. Quietly, and after another breath comes another. You can feel the line of sweat sidling where the cement meets the flesh underside of your leg. Still, you are surprised pleasantly by the mildness of the night, the breeze. Nothing like the oppressive day-heat coming down like a greedy ruling hand. That’s just how it is, though, on these nights.

Going back down is an easy hand-over-hand down the rungs, toting an empty cup. Never less afraid of falling than on these nights. But planting feet on the sidewalk again is not always a let-down. Some nights it is a segue.

Some nights you don’t know where your next step is going to fall, but you can promise it will be forward. Some nights you don’t know the night air until you’ve knocked a tall shot of it back.

These are some nights.