HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!

“HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!” I could hear his nasally voice calling across Houston and at this time in New York, the city that never sleeps, few people were on the street. “Some dude just fell outta the window. It looks like he’s messed up on the awning down there. Maybe broke a coupla bones.”

My head hurt and my eyes were blurry. I could barely see below me, but I knew blood drops were dribbling off my leg, but I was still shaking from the fall from thirty stories above. I figured when I took the leap that I’d land on a green canvass tarp unraveled by Mille Esley who owned the entire building, but who’s main shop was jewelry on the ground floor. I figured I could get the blueprints and jump out the window without wires crossed underneath that tarp. Wires that broke and cut my leg in what felt like fifty places. I was upside down and my head was throbbing. I’d heard on Dr. Phil that people who stayed upside down for any amount of time could get a stroke. 

It’s pronounced “How-Stan” Street, not Houston Street like we’re in Texas, dude,” some guy answered him. He had a low, deep voice, but neither of them even looked up, like they were about to help me.

“Howson, Houston, tomato, tomaaato,” the deep-voiced guy answered.

“Help!” I yelled out, hoping the fellow who’d worried about Houston would back it up with a call to 911, but as I saw him, from my upside-down position, he looked like he was taking pictures of me and my unfortunate situation on his iPhone. “Mister?” I yelled at him. “Call 911.”

Two kids on bikes, clearly on their way to some fancy school uptown, bracketed me and one of them reached up and pushed an ice cream into the back of my neck, the only place on my person he could reach. Kids were usually my biggest fans. I am a game developer, until last week, that is. Then someone came in and stole my plans for “Easter Goon” a transgender protagonist who changes form and his/her sex in order to save kids’ lives in different predicaments and the first person who uncovers what form he/she’ll take in the game, wins. It was a totally original idea, and I knew Mille Esley was jealous. When we were at Columbia she’d follow me around like a little twerp, snooping in my backpack, calling me for ideas for computer class. I knew what she was up to, but this was a new low. 

Last week she was in my building a couple of blocks away with blue prints in her hand and a stupid grin on her face as she passed me in the hallway presumably on the way to her boyfriend’s office, the CEO of a gaming company---  Games. My hair had been falling out recently, and I know he was the reason. He had the money, the power, the connections to outwit me. I held on tight to part of the awning as I waved the other arm.

“Hey, down there. I’m stuck. I can’t get myself down. Help!!!”

A well-dressed woman in her thirties who looked like a buyer for one of the fancy department stores along this street, looked up at me and shook her head.

“The things some people will do to amuse themselves,” she said loudly enough for me to hear.

“I’m not amusing myself. Look at your feet, does that look like red paint in the street? It’s blood, lady, my blood. Please. Call 911.”

“Yes, yes, of course I will. Hang in there, fella.” And she ran across Houston to the sneaker shop, at least my head could raise that far. But suddenly I couldn’t breathe. A plastic bag had wrapped itself around my face. I was trying to scream, but the more I opened my mouth, the more the bag seeped into it. And I would have died. Died for sure if that hand hadn’t reached up and pulled it off my face.

“Help me,” I said.

“Oh, yeah. You’re the guy comes in sometimes with your dry cleanin.’ Yeah, yeah, how you doin’?”

“I think you can see how I’m doing,” I said. “Look, blood on the pavement. See? I’m locked up here, I can’t move up here.”

“Okay, let me see.” He reaches up and pulls at my head. My leg slams down to another pipe and I shriek out. He lets go. My arms flop on the canvass and I can’t get ‘em over my head to let him help me. “I think I got a ladder. Yeah, pretty sure I got a ladder. You wait right there, I’m gonna get the ladder.”

He leaves. The plastic bag is swiveling around the street and I’m just waiting for it to fly up again and this time get me. 

Mr. O’Reilly. That’s his name. I forgot. Mille told me to go to him and I did once. I’m surprised he remembers me, when he jumps out of a doorway I din’t even know what there.

“You got blood spots on the jump suit. Blood spots, man. I can’t afford to keep dry cleaning this dame’s jumpsuit. You gotta pay me for that.”

“Get me down from here and I will.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure you will. Ya bum.”

“Please, call 911. Tell them we got a problem out here on Houston and forty-forth. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”

“Ain’t you Mille’s boyfriend? What are you going to pay me with? She tole me you design play games for the kids on those X-box things.”

“Yeah, I do. Listen, I’m losing feeling in my legs. I’m upside down here. I could get a stroke.”

I can see him turning and looking up at me from every which way. I can see he’s invested now, but he’s frowning and burping, and he don’t know what the hell to do.  A big splotch of my blood from my leg, I’m guessing, plops down on his cheek and he jumps back, rubbing his cheek like he just got a left jab from Mike Tyson. 

But he surprises me, he really does. He reaches up and grabs my face and tries to pull me down. Then he just stops. Stops and wipes his face with the inner lining of his jacket. It’s got his total concentration now and he just scurries away, checking out his coat.

“Call 911,” I yell to him. I can’t finish the sentence ‘cause diesel fumes fill the air and I start coughing my head off, and I almost pass out. Then I hear barking. I mean deep, serious barking, like some pooch has been trained to attack guys upside down on awnings. There’s a black and tan job that’s trotting down the street with no leash and no owner. He stops and looks up and keeps barking. 

I tell ya, how do people just let their dogs roam around off leash? It’s rude. It’s discourteous to those of us gotta walk these streets. Maybe the dog’s owner’s buying something and he’ll be around soon. Or maybe it’s a lady. I hear a piercing scream and some dame comes over and the dog runs off.

“What are you doing up there, young man?” She’s got oversized dark glasses on and a mini-skirt covered by a faux fur jacket and her pocketbook is a knock-off I tried to steal last week when the Africans laid their material down on Fourth. But they scooted it up and ran to the park and I never did get no goods. The dame pulls the glasses down her nose and frowns. “I know you, you’re Mille’s no-good boyfriend. The one who’s in and out of jail. What are you doing on that awning?”

“Ma’am, please, get a cop, call 911 or an ambo. Something. I’m hurting. I think I broke my leg in the fall.”

“What fall?” Back up her nose go the glasses. “You mean you jumped out of the thirteenth story window, with what? With plans? With somebody’s hard earned gaming program?”

“No, ma’am. This time it’s my gaming program. See it was stole from me, by the guy in thirteen oh two.”

“Mille told me that everything you’ve created was stolen and you’ve changed a couple of strokes to make it yours, but it’s basically the algorithm from someone else. You deserve to fall thirteen stories.” 

She starts runnin’ toward the stop light, shaking her head.

“Will you call the cops? Tell them I stole something and I’m trying to escape, will you do that for me, please?”

I don’t see ‘em, or I see ‘em too late, but two kids about twelve years old, so you know they know better, come bicycling by with ice cream cones. I knew it was gonna happen, I just didn’t want to think about it. Sure, one of ‘em shoves the cone in my face and bicycles off.

Traffic gets worse on Houston and begins to pile up. Blood starts to drip from the man’s leg onto wood pilings. 

I hear a bounce, then a crack. I can see it upside down, my cell phone has fallen out of my pocket and cracked on the pavement. I forgot to buy the protection plan at Apple. 

Night falls and the man is groaning now. No one is in the street. A guy comes by and puts a small ladder up to the rafters and edges the fellow out of the pipes where he’s been stuck all afternoon. 

My right foot had gotten loose and I could feel it wobbling. I tried to raise it, but it slipped down between the torn slips of awning and made my left leg ache. I hate Mille. She‘s the one who convinced me there was money in gaming. Just find the right game, she said, and we’ll make a fortune, you and me. So I stayed up all night and figured out the algorithm and sent it to her and she calls up a publisher down the street and tells him the whole idea. Then she calls me and tells me she did it. 

The ice cream is falling off my face and leaving the skin numb. Someone’s come up on my flank side and I can’t see him, but he’s handing me a package. Just what I need right now. Another package. And he runs off. I can see it’s a ‘he’ because he’s wearing these oversize shoes. A couple of hundred dollar bills fall out. 

Mille probably sent him over to see if I was trying to steal back my intellectual property. Yeah, yeah, I learned that from the lawyer who drew up our pre-nup. Not that I’m going to marry her now. All that blonde hair and blue eye crap. She’s a model. A million of them in this city. She saw a sucker when she met me. She told me the modelling agency dropped her because she wasn’t booking enough. I hear a whistle.

“Help!” I yell out as loud as I can, but it’s getting to be mid-morning and the noise out on Houston is enough to drown out any yelling. 

Now I see him. A cop. All dressed up in his blues. Even wearing a hat. He comes over and jumps up and tries to get me. “Don’t worry, fella, we got the ambo comin’. Then you’re gonna be in cuffs. Mille called, said you stole some blueprints from her, an algorithm of a game idea she had.”

“She’s a big liar!” I scream down at him, but I’m getting dizzy and feel like my entire blood supply is in my head. “She stole them from me. She was going to sell them to some company. Help me. I can prove it.”

I moved my hand for emphasis and the bag of money fell to the ground and hundreds of dollars spread over the street. The cop fell to his knees and started collecting them as passersby jumped in for the kill. “I can see that,” the cop yelled up.

“No, no, that’s not mine. Some guy just handed that to me.”

Out of the corner of my eye I see her. All dressed up in pink. Pink mink, pink silk pants, pink two-inch pumps like it’s New York Fashion Week.

“Mill,” I scream. “Mill. Tell them, it’s all a big mistake.”

I lose my grip and fall directly onto the cop’s knees. He screeches and grabs his right knee as Mille comes forward and grabs the money.

She pats the cop on the head. “My hero. Thank you so much.” And I watch her walk down Houston Street, stuffing money in her purse as the sirens from the ambo abruptly stop and two EMTs come out with a yellow stretcher. 

“Guy looks like he’s got a concussion,” one of them says as they lift me up and into the back of the ambo. I can see Mille through the back window strutting into a restaurant, checking her wallet. Well, she has enough money for whatever she’s up to now. 

And before I pass out, I see a cop car following close behind us, a siren wailing.