We got off that roof sharpish once he’d gone over. We decided it was best not to hang around and explain our role, or lack of it, in the poor chap’s demise. We had a little Toppers’ previous, after all, and by owning up, we’d only be confusing the issue. If people knew we’d been up there, then the clarity of the story—unhappy man jumps off of building—would be diminished, and people would understand less of it, rather than more. We wouldn’t want that.
So we charged down the stairs as fast as damaged lungs and varicosed legs would let us, and went our separate ways. We were too nervous to go for a drink in the immediate vicinity, and too nervous to travel in a taxi together, so we scattered the moment we reached the pavement. (What, I wondered on the way home, was the nearest pub to Toppers’ House like of an evening? Was it full of unhappy people on their way up, or half-confused, half-relieved people who’d just come down? Or an awkward mix of the two? Does the landlord recognize the uniqueness of his clientele? Does he exploit their mood for financial gain—by offering a Miserable Hour, for example? Does he ever try to get the Uppers—in this context the very unhappy people—to mix with the Downers? Or the Uppers to mix with each other? Has there ever been a relationship born there? Could the pub even have been responsible for a wedding, and thus maybe a child?)
We met again the following afternoon in Starbucks, and everyone had the blues. A few days previously, in the immediate aftermath of the holiday, it had been perfectly clear that we no longer had much use for each other; now, it was hard to imagine who else would be suitable company. I looked around the cafe at the other customers: young mothers with prams, young men and women in suits with mobile phones and pieces of paper, foreign students… I tried to imagine talking to any of them, but it was impossible. They wouldn’t want to hear about people jumping off tower-blocks. No one would, apart from the people I was sitting with.
“I was up all fucking night thinking about that guy,” said JJ. “Man. What was going on there?”
“He was probably just, you know. A drama queen. A male drama queen. A drama king,” said Jess. “He looked the sort.”
“That’s very shrewd, Jess,” I said. “In the brief glimpse we got of him before he plunged to his death, he didn’t strike me as someone with serious problems. Nothing on your scale, anyway.”
“It’ll be in the local paper,” said Maureen. “They usually are. I used to read the reports. Especially when it was coming up to New Year’s Eve. I used to compare myself with them.”
“And? How did you get on?”
“Oh,” said Maureen. “I did OK. Some of them I couldn’t understand.”
“What sort of things?”
“Money.”
“I owe loads of people money,” said Jess proudly.
“Perhaps you should think of killing yourself,” I said.
“It’s not much,” said Jess. “Only twenty quid here and twenty quid there.”
“Even so. A debt’s a debt. And if you can’t pay… Maybe you should take the honourable way out.”
“Hey. Guys,” JJ said. “Let’s keep some focus, huh?”
“On what? Isn’t that the problem? Nothing to focus on?”
“Let’s focus on that guy.”
“We don’t know anything about him.”
“No, but, I don’t know. He seems kind of important to me. That was what we were gonna do.”
“Were we?”
“I was,” said Jess.
“But you didn’t.”
“You sat on my head.”
“But you haven’t done anything about it since.”
“Well. We went to that party. And we went on holiday. And, you know. There’s been one thing after another.”
“Terrible, isn’t it, how that happens? You’ll have to block out some time in your diary. Otherwise life will keep getting in the way.”
“Shut up.”
“Guys, guys…”
I had, once again, allowed myself to be drawn into an undignified spat with Jess. I decided to act in a more statesmanlike manner.
“Like JJ, I have spent a long night cogitating,” I said.
“Tosser.”
“And my conclusion is that we are not serious people. We were never serious. We got closer than some, but nowhere near as close as others. And that puts us in something of a bind.”
“I agree. We’re fucked,” said JJ. “Sorry, Maureen.”
“I’m missing something,” said Jess.
“This is it,” I said. “This is us.”
“What is?”
“This.” I gestured vaguely at our surroundings, the company we were keeping, the rain outside, all of which seemed to speak eloquently of our current condition. “This is it. There’s no way out. Not even the way out is the way out. Not for us.”
“Fuck that,” said Jess. “And I’m not sorry, Maureen.”
“The other night, I was going to tell you about something I’d read in a magazine. About suicide. Do you remember? Anyway, this guy reckoned that the crisis period lasts ninety days.”
“What guy?” JJ asked.
“This suicidologist guy.”
“That’s a job?”
“Everything’s a job.”
“So what?” said Jess.
“So we’ve had forty-six of the ninety days.”
“And what happens after the ninety days?”
“Nothing happens ,” I said. “Just… things are different. Things change. The exact arrangement of stuff that made you think your life was unbearable… It’s got shifted around somehow. It’s like a sort of real-life version of astrology.”
“Nothing’s going to change for you,” said Jess. “You’re still going to be the geezer off the telly who slept with the fifteen-year-old and went to prison. No one will ever forget that.”
“Yes. Well. I’m sure the ninety days thing won’t apply in my case,” I said. “If that makes you happier.”
“Won’t help Maureen, either,” said Jess. “Or JJ. I might change, though. I do, quite a lot.”
“My point, anyway, is that we extend our deadline again. Because… Well, I don’t know about you lot. But I realized this morning that I’m not, you know, ready to go solo just yet. It’s funny, because I don’t actually like any of you very much. But you seem to be, I don’t know… What I need. You know how sometimes you know you should be eating more cabbage? Or drinking more water? It’s like that.”
There was a general shuffling of feet, which I interpreted as a declaration of reluctant solidarity.
“Thanks, man,” said JJ. “Very touching. When’s the ninety days up?”
“March 31st.”
“That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?” said Jess. “Exactly three months.”
“What’s your point?”
“Well. It’s not scientific, is it?”
“What, and eighty-eight days would be?”
“More scientific, yeah.”
“No, I get it,” said JJ. “Three months sounds about right. Three months is like a season.”
“Very much like,” I agreed. “Given there are four seasons, and twelve months in a year.”
“So we’re seeing the winter through together. That’s cool. Winter is when you get the blues,” JJ said.
“So it would appear,” I said.
“But we gotta do something,” said JJ. “We can’t just sit around waiting for three months to be up.”
“Typical American,” said Jess. “What do you want to do? Bomb some poor little country somewhere?”
“Sure. It would take my mind off things, some bombing.”
“What should we do?” I asked him.
“I don’t know, man. I just know that if we spend six weeks pissing and moaning, then we’re not helping ourselves.”
“Jess is right,” I said. “Typical bloody American. «Helping ourselves.» Self-help. You can do anything if you put your mind to it, right? You could be President.”