Trump Tower

Did you know, Trump Tower is 58 stories high? I checked on the way here. I probably should have been thinking about John but the father of a young child, divorced and loss of both parents to the pandemic is pretty textbook. Political activism was a fun twist. I did look forward to using that to talk him down. I think it would have worked, but seeing as I've barely opened my car door and he's already ten stories from the roof, I guess we'll never know.

I'm pretty good at my job, you know? I've talked over two dozen people down from a, sometimes metaphorical, roof this year. Jumping is actually pretty rare these days - half the time it's firearms, and half of what's left is suffocation, but no one usually finds out about those fast enough to get me there. Maybe picking a gun up out of state and pulling the trigger in front of the Tower would have been a stronger message, but I suppose falling half a kilometre has less risk of going wrong. John was, now fifteen stories down, a political risk analyst before the divorce - no wonder he was dissatisfied with the current administration.

It's hard to negotiate with suicidal thoughts. Terrorists are easier, you can rub their ego, sympathise with them, and most the time the aim is just to talk them toward the nearest window. Armed robbers are even easier, you just drip-feed them things they want until, eventually, they stand to close to a window. I'm beginning to wonder if the fashion for glass towers was secretly a strategy to make life easier for the good old American Sniper - they've certainly made my job easier. Today though, I could do without them. John, twenty stories down and slowly tumbling through the air like a child learning to do a roly-poly, is no head down, his dark blue suit flapping like a flag in a storm, his limbs flailing cartoonishly as if they might still find something to grab on to. I don't often see this bit, I'm good at my job, but when I do it always reminds me of 9/11. The far off footage of desperate staff who preferred to take their chances with the angels in the air than the devils in the fire. That was like watching a movie, albeit with the gut-hardening truth that it was actually happening. This isn't. There's no screen between me and John. And the windows make it worse.

I see his face in the window of the 36th floor and I'm struck, both by the sharpness of my vision and by the stillness of the image. It's an incredible feeling, when a gunshot, or the threat of violence, or the bloody, bruised remains of a hostage's face forces adrenaline into the bloodstream. Everything sharpens, the glitter of the Sun across the glass towers, the rhythmic whirring of sirens and their synchronised flashing lights, the poorly hidden fascination and excitement peppered amongst the horror in the gathering crowds. Every sense sharpens and, when you're used to it, your thoughts sharpen too. The noises, the lights, the faces, blend into the brickwork and the traffic. You notice them no more than the pigeons in the trees. You begin to focus entirely on the job at hand, only my job is 350m in the air and falling fast.

His face had been so serene. It changed the way he looked completely, he wasn't trying to hold on to anything. His limbs weren't flailing, they were flapping in the breeze with his jacket. It reminds me of being sixteen. My Dad took me to England, a quaint little country, not so many suicides by gun there - not in the city, at least. We wanted to see just how quaint it could be, so we asked a friend to take us to the Lake District. "Are you sure?" she asked, "it's a long drive!" Five hours later we were there, at the other end of the country! We laughed at how she thought it was a long drive. The next day we were up at dawn ready to climb our first 'mountain'. It's so cute - it's called Helm Crag, just outside of Grasmere (best gingerbread in the world there, if you ever get the chance), but it's nicknamed The Lion And The Lamb, after these two rocks that very loosely resemble the respective creatures. I climbed the Lion, half expecting to see The Shire in the distance, but when I was on top of that stone animal, with nothing but the wind around me, I felt a kind of permeating peace that I don't think exists back home. Well, I didn't think it did. Now I've seen it in John's thirty-floor high face.

Now that he's dipped into the shadow of the city, his face has been replaced with the wide-eyed, covered-mouth faces of the staff of Trump Tower, taking time away from their jobs, which I can only assume include Twitter-related damage control, technically-not-fraud, or expert legal loophole construction. It's at this point, when I see a rather rotund man selflessly comforting a young female colleague, that I realise I have no idea what happens in Trump Tower. Perhaps it's just pilfered piece of real estate that the old peach rents out to anyone willing to walk under his name every day.

I'm out of my car now. I haven't taken my eyes off of John for a moment. I don't think I've even blinked. Even when he was still bathed in the evening light and the Sun pierced my eyes with its reflection in the great glass Tower. I wonder how it felt, standing on top of Trump Tower, the Sun setting over the Hudson, watching all the little lives wandering around Central Park, knowing that his was about to end on the sidewalk with his president's name in gilded letter's looking down on him. "Not my president," he'd have thought, before taking that last defiant step over the edge.

I hope that wasn't his last thought. It's so impersonal. I hope he thought of his parents in the warmth of the Sun's dying glow. I hope he felt them with him. How they used to be, looking after him, not how he last saw them piped into respirators on a screen being held at an awkward angle by a nurse eleven hours into a nightshift. I don't want to know how that felt, watching his Mum take her final breaths under the Apple logo. On the same screen he watched his Dad die only the day before. On the same screen he was too busy working on to meet them before they died. On the same screen he reads the news on in the morning and listens to mindfulness podcasts on at night. On the same screen he plays fucking Candy Crush. I hope had a childhood memory to keep him warm as he dropped into the shadow of the city, swallowed by the countless towers that pierced the surface of the earth like great teeth.

Only twenty stories left. He's tumbled the right way up now. Looking down on us, he almost looks likes a superhero, rising up in the air, on rewind, very fast. I've become acutely aware of a silence sweeping in along the street from behind me. As the people furthest away lose sight of John among the early autumn leaves.

Fifteen stories. He's clearly been accelerating. I wonder if he's reached terminal velocity. Half remembered dynamics formulae from college flash against the back of my eyes. I've no idea if they're correct. My job is to stop people taking the step, not calculate how long they have after it, and I'm good at my job.

Ten stories. The silence reaches me and John has made his way back to head down. He seems to stabilised himself and, I think, his reflection is smiling. I hope he's happy, and I really mean that.

Five stories. The silence is broken by a clattering of gasps and screams.

Four. I feel my legs pulling me forward, as if there's anything I can do now.

Three.

Two.

One.