Fire Escape Confessions

*This story was born from a fantasy of summer heat and accidental intimacy... where mistakes lead to the best kind of chaos. Hope it makes you sweat and smile. Thanks for reading!*

The fire escape outside my apartment window gets hot enough to fry an egg by seven in the evening, and that night in July it was worse than usual. I sat out there anyway, because my apartment had no air conditioning and the cross breeze up on the metal landing was at least something. I had a folding chair, a paper fan I'd stolen from a Thai restaurant on Ninth, and a warm feeling in my chest that I recognized as self pity.

My name is Lindy. I'm thirty two, and I'm working on a graduate degree in architecture that has taken five years longer than it should have. My thesis is on adaptive reuse of industrial buildings, which is a fancy way of saying I look at old warehouses and imagine what else they could be. Some days I think I should apply the same logic to myself. Take the old structure, keep the bones, imagine something new.

That was the kind of thing I thought about when I sat on fire escapes at dusk, fanning myself and listening to the couple upstairs fight through their open window. The last date I'd been on was in March, a woman named Jen who worked at a coffee shop near campus. We'd had nothing to say to each other by the second drink. She'd told me about her sourdough starter for twenty minutes and I'd nodded like it was fascinating. When she said she had an early morning, we both knew what it meant. She never texted again and neither did I, and honestly that was a kindness on both our parts.

So there I was, thirty two, sweating on a fire escape, feeling like a warehouse nobody had a plan for. The couple upstairs had moved on from fighting to something louder and more enthusiastic, which did not help my mood at all.

"Great," I said out loud, to nobody. "Thanks for that."

I do talk to myself when I'm alone too long. You'd do it too, if your social calendar looked like mine.

The thing about the heat is that it makes everything feel urgent. Sitting still got unbearable around eight, and I made a decision that felt enormous and was actually very small. There was a rooftop bar six blocks from my place, on top of a building so rundown I'd studied it for one of my classes. It was called the Lantern, and I'd never been, mostly because going anywhere alone made my stomach hurt. But the stomach hurt less than the sweating, so I put on a sundress, looked at myself in the mirror, and walked out.

The building was worse up close than in my notes. The elevator was out of order, obviously, and there was a handwritten sign that said ROOFTOP ACCESS, 6 FLIGHTS, GOOD LUCK. The stairwell smelled like old cigarettes and the paint on the walls was peeling in long curls. By the fourth flight I was reconsidering my entire evening. By the sixth I came out through a metal door into open air and stopped caring about everything.

The roof was half gravel, half sagging wooden deck, strung with mismatched bulbs that buzzed instead of glowed. There was a bar in one corner under a tin awning, a handful of tables, and maybe fifteen people total. The air conditioner behind the bar was broken, which the bartender was kicking softly, like you'd nudge a vending machine. The whole place had the tired charm of a friend who never cleans but is always glad to see you.

I ordered the cheapest beer on the menu, which was four dollars, and carried it to the railing at the far edge. Below me the street was doing its loud evening thing, buses and horns and people shouting, and up on the roof it all came through muffled, like the volume had been turned down on my life. I leaned on the rail and tried to look like a person who belonged there. I have no idea what that even means, but I did it anyway. Elbows on the rail, relaxed shoulders, small sips. I'm sure I fooled nobody.

Here's what nobody tells you about going out alone: the first fifteen minutes are the worst thing in the world, and after that it gets easier. I made it through the worst part by watching the other people. There was a couple at a table who hadn't spoken in what looked like a while, both on their phones. There was a group of three women near the bar laughing at something on one of their phones. And there was a man at the other end of the bar, tall, talking to the bartender with the easy rhythm of somebody who comes here a lot.

The bartender kicked the air conditioner again and it sputtered and went quiet, and they both laughed like it was an old joke between them. Then the man at the bar turned around, scanned the roof the way I'd been scanning it, and his eyes landed on me for a second before moving on. I looked back at the street. My heart did a small stupid thing that I chose to ignore.

I want to say, for the sake of the story, that I wasn't looking for anything that night. I wasn't. I was looking for air and beer and a few hours where I wasn't alone with my own head. The loneliness had gotten heavy that summer, the kind of heavy you stop noticing until you put it down. The roof put it down for me. That was all I wanted.

The bartender came out from behind the bar with a rag over his shoulder and started walking along the deck, and I kept my eyes on the street and pretended not to track him. He stopped at the railing maybe ten feet from me and leaned on it, and I could tell from the corner of my eye that he was looking out at the view like it was the first time, even though he clearly saw it every night. The bulbs overhead buzzed. The broken air conditioner wheezed. Somewhere below, a bus groaned past.

"Hot enough for you?" he said.

It was the most ordinary opening line in the history of opening lines, and I turned toward him anyway, because the alternative was staring at the street like a statue.

"It's not the heat," I said. "It's the humidity. No wait, it's definitely the heat."

He laughed, a real laugh, and stuck out his hand. "Gerard. I work here, actually. I'm the one kicking the AC."

"Lindy." His hand was warm and dry. "You kick it with confidence. I was impressed."

"Five years of practice. It only works about half the time."

He nodded at my beer. "The four dollar one, huh. You're either a grad student or you're very honest with yourself."

"Grad student," I said. "Architecture. How'd you know?"

"You've got the look. Tired but determined. Also nobody with money drinks that beer," he said it all without any meanness, and I found myself smiling at the railing instead of at the street.

The couple with the phones got up and left. The group of women ordered another round. The sun was going down behind the water towers across the street, turning everything orange, and Gerard stayed at the railing next to me, not too close, talking about nothing. The broken AC, the landlord, the best cheap food within walking distance. It was easy. It had been so long since a conversation with a stranger was easy that I kept waiting for it to go wrong, and it just kept not going wrong.

I finished my beer. He asked if he could buy me a better one, and I said yes before I could think up a reason not to.

I took the better beer to the railing and Gerard went back behind the bar, and that should have been the end of it, just a nice chat with a bartender on a hot night. That's what I thought anyway. The sky had gone from orange to this deep purple color, and the bulbs over the bar looked better the darker it got, and I was actually feeling okay, maybe even good, which for me in July was an event.

Gerard started mixing a drink for one of the three women, some tall pink thing with a lime wedge on it, and while he shook the shaker he looked up and caught my eye and winked at me. A full wink, one eye, quick little grin.

Well. Okay then.

I looked away fast and stared at the water towers and did the thing where your brain tries to construct a whole story out of one gesture. He was flirting with me. The bartender who bought me a beer was flirting with me, across the bar, in the middle of making a pink drink, and I had no idea what to do with that information. My last date had been in March, with Jen from the coffee shop near campus, and it had ended the way my dates end, which is politely and with everyone relieved. So my flirting muscles were not exactly warmed up. I took a sip of beer and rehearsed something casual in my head and got as far as "hey" before I heard footsteps and turned around and it wasn't Gerard at all.

It was the tall guy from the bar, the regular. Up close he was built like a personal trainer, which I only say now because I found out later, but at the time I just noticed the arms and the tank top and the general air of a man who owns a foam roller.

"Okay, so he did it," the guy said, arriving at the railing next to me with his own beer. "He actually did it. I owe him twenty bucks."

"Did what?" I said, because I assumed he was talking to someone else.

"The wink. He said he'd do it while shaking a shaker, no warning, and you'd have no idea what was going on." He shook his head, admiring. "Classic Gerard. That man has been trying to win that bet for five years."

I stood there holding my beer and having absolutely no idea what was happening. The heat pressed down. Somewhere below us a car alarm went off and gave up.

"Bet about what?" I managed.

"The wink," he said, like it was obvious. "We bet he couldn't do it to a stranger without cracking up. And he pulled it. Smooth as anything. You didn't even laugh, which honestly impresses me more than the wink."

I looked over at the bar. Gerard was garnishing the pink drink with the focus of a surgeon, not looking at us at all, and I could see his shoulders doing the thing shoulders do when someone is trying not to shake with laughter.

"Oh my god," I said. "He winked at me and I thought he was flirting with me."

The guy snorted into his beer. "No offense, but that's the funniest thing I've heard all week. What did you do? Please tell me you did something."

"I did nothing. I stood here and panicked and planned an entire casual conversation in my head and then you showed up." I covered my face with the paper fan from the Thai restaurant, which I had brought to the bar like an absolute weirdo, and peeked over the top of it. "I was drafting a 'hey.' I had one word ready."

"That's a solid opener though. Economical." He stuck out his hand. "Ryan, by the way. I'm the reason for the bet. We've been friends since he moved here, and we have stupid bets about everything. Last month the bet was he couldn't guess anyone's drink order three times in a row. He lost on a woman who ordered water with no ice and then changed her mind."

"Lindy." His handshake was warm and his grin was the kind that makes you grin back whether you want to or not. "So you two just sit around betting on winks at strangers."

"It's a slow bar. Somebody has to keep the culture alive." He nodded at my fan. "Is that from the place on Ninth? With the noodle counter?"

"Yes! The pad see ew place." I fanned myself with it, victorious. "It's the best fan I've ever owned. It outperforms every electric fan I've had."

"See, this is what I mean about this bar. You meet a woman having a serious relationship with a paper fan and it's somehow a normal conversation."

We kept going like that, back and forth about the heat mostly, because it was July and the heat was the third person on the roof with us. Ryan said his apartment had a window unit that sounded like a helicopter taking off, and I told him about mine, how there was no AC at all and the fire escape got hot enough to fry an egg by seven in the evening, and he didn't believe me so I swore on the fan, which he accepted as legally binding. He told me he was a personal trainer