The Rooftop We Never Left

Ten years. That's how long I'd been dodging Raul Marsh. And on a Friday night in August, on a rooftop in the arts district, I almost got away with it too.

Rene's party. Her gallery had a show opening and she threw the afterparty on her building's roof, strings of café lights and a bunch of artists sweating through their good shirts. I came because Eric guilted me into it. I lasted maybe two hours before the heat and the small talk got to be too much.

So there I was, halfway down the fire escape, barefoot because I'd already ditched my heels, holding them by the straps like some walk of shame in reverse. The metal railing was hot under my palm even at eleven at night. LA in August doesn't cool off, it just gets quieter.

"Going somewhere?"

I knew the voice before I turned around. Forty-six years old and that voice still did the thing it did. Low, a little rough, like it was always about to laugh.

I looked up. Raul stood at the top of the stairs, one hand on the rail, backlit by the string lights. Tall as I remembered. Broader than I remembered. Hair going gray at the temples, which was honestly unfair.

"Raul," I said. Real smooth. Real eloquent.

"Hayley." He came down two steps and stopped, like he wasn't sure how close he was allowed to get. "Rene said you were coming. I didn't believe her."

"Smart woman, Rene."

"Yeah, well." He sat down on the step above mine, which put us at the same height, which I hated, because now I couldn't pretend to be leaving. "Ten years and that's the opening line. Smart woman, Rene."

"I'm working on better material. It's been a slow decade."

He laughed. And God, that was the worst part. It was the same laugh.

I never told anybody this, not even Eric. Ten years ago I was thirty-four and up-and-coming and terrified of everything, and there was a night on a rooftop almost exactly like this one where Raul Marsh and I stood at the rail for two hours talking about nothing, and he leaned in, and I bolted. Literally. Faked a phone call about an audition and took a cab home from my own friend's party. He was newly licensed, first big job, thirty-six years old and pretty as a sin, and I looked at all that and decided I'd ruin it. Or he'd ruin me. One of the two.

Then I got busy. He got busy. Ten years went by the way they do, all at once and not at all.

"How's the firm?" I asked, because I had to say something and his career was the safe topic. "I see your name on buildings now. Saw that thing on Broadway."

"The pocket park?" He shrugged. "It's fine. It pays the bills. How's the acting?"

"Same. Paying the bills."

"Oscar nomination I heard about?"

"That was four years ago, and no, it was a Spirit Award nomination, which sounds impressive and comes with a gift bag."

"Still funny," he said, mostly to himself. He looked out over the street. A bus went by, lit up empty. "I kept waiting for you to call. First year, anyway. Then I stopped waiting and started being annoyed about it, and then I stopped being annoyed and just kind of went numb about it, and that's basically my report on the last decade."

I didn't have anything to say to that. My heels were cutting into my palm and I was aware of sweat sticking my dress to my back and I was forty-four years old standing on a fire escape feeling exactly like I felt at thirty-four, which was pathetic, honestly.

"Why'd you come tonight?" I asked. "You knew I'd be here."

"Rene didn't tell me you'd be here." He paused. "She told Eric, and Eric told me, and I thought about it for three days and came anyway."

"Three days."

"Two and a half. Don't flatter me."

Somewhere below us a door slammed and a couple came out into the alley laughing about something. The traffic hummed. My heart was doing something I chose not to narrate.

"I owe you an apology," I said. "From that night. I know it's ten years late and I know the statute of limitations ran out on it, but I've carried it around and it's heavy and I'm tired."

Raul was quiet for a while. Long enough that I almost filled the silence with some joke, which is my whole personality, ask anyone.

"You know what I remember?" he said finally. "You looked at me like you were about to jump off something. And then you were gone. And I stood there holding two glasses of warm chardonnay like an idiot."

"Rene's chardonnay was always warm."

"Hayley."

"Fine. Yes. I bolted. I panicked. I was thirty-four and I thought you were too good and I was too much of a mess, and I did the coward thing, and I've done the coward thing in every part of my life since, ask anyone, ask my agent, ask Eric."

He turned to look at me then. Full on, both eyes, the way he used to when he was actually listening. "Okay," he said. "Apology accepted. Now come back upstairs, because it's a hundred degrees down here and I refuse to have this whole conversation on a fire escape like we're sneaking out of something."

I noticed he said "back upstairs" like we had somewhere to be. I put my heels back on anyway, because apparently I punish myself in small ways.

* * *

The rooftop was worse than when I'd left it, meaning better and more crowded and hotter. Rene spotted us coming through the door and her whole face did something triumphant, like a coach whose underdog just tied the game.

"There they are!" She crossed the roof in four strides, wine glass in hand, forty-eight years old and built like she ran on battery power. "You found each other. On the fire escape. Where nobody goes. What are the odds."

"Very natural odds," Raul said.

"Extremely organic," I said.

"Mm-hm." She handed me a fresh glass without asking and steered us both toward the far corner, away from the speakers, where somebody had set up a folding table with a cheese situation on it that had given up in the heat. "You two have ten years to catch up on and I have guests to be fake-nice to. Sit. Drink. If either of you leaves early I will make your lives difficult in ways that are legal but annoying."

She said it loud enough that Eric, across the roof by the planters, raised his glass at me. Fifty-two, my old costar, my worst habit and best friend. He mouthed something I chose not to read.

So we sat. Two folding chairs by the rail, city spread out below us, heat coming off the concrete like the roof itself was breathing. Raul took off his jacket and rolled his sleeves up and I pretended I didn't notice, which was a lie I told with my whole face.

"Third glass?" he said, nodding at my wine.

"Second. First one's in my purse."

"You put wine in your purse."

"It's a big purse. There's a story behind the purse."

"There's a story behind everything with you." He said it without heat. He drank. "Tell me the purse story."

So I told him about the purse, which involved a prop house, a mix-up, and Eric daring me to keep it, and he laughed at the right places and by the end of it we were both loose and warm and the wine had done what wine does. Somebody changed the music to something older. A few of Rene's artist friends danced badly near the planters and didn't care who watched.

"Okay, your turn," I said. "Confession for confession. What was your version of that night? Because I've built mine up for ten years and I want to know if yours matches."

Raul set his glass down on the rail. He looked at me the way he had on the fire escape, and then a little longer than that.

"My version," he said, "starts the same and ends differently. In mine, you say yes."

I put my glass down too. The traffic hummed. The lights strung over our heads buzzed faintly, and the heat sat on everything like a hand.

"Raul," I said.

"Yeah?"

"I'm not running this time."

"I know," he said. "I watched you put your heels back on."

I laughed, and it came out rough, and he smiled at that, and somewhere across the roof Rene was watching us over the rim of her glass pretending she wasn't, and the night had a long way left to go.

We stayed at that corner table for a while. Rene's friends cycled past, said hello, drifted off again. The cheese situation got worse. Nobody touched it.

"Confession for confession, you said," Raul said after a bit. "So here's one you don't know. Three years ago I saw you in that play down on Spring Street. The one with the long second act."

I put my wine down. "You did not."

"I did. Front row of the mezzanine. I bought a ticket alone and told nobody, because what was I gonna say, hey Rene, I'm going to watch the woman who ran away from me pretend to be somebody else for two hours?"

"Oh my god!"

"And here's the part that matters. Curtain call. You came out last, and the whole house was standing, and you did that thing with your hand, the little wave, like you were embarrassed by all of it. And I thought, I know that hand. I almost had that hand."

I didn't say anything for a second. The traffic hummed down below us.

"Raul, I have to match that confession now, and mine's worse."

"Go."

"Every curtain call, for years. Before that play, before everything. There was a stretch around two years after the rooftop where I'd be standing out there taking bows and I'd pick one face in the crowd, some stranger, and I'd pretend it was you. Not every night. But a lot of nights. Forty-four years old and I'm doing a bit with an imaginary man in row F."

He was quiet. Then he reached into his back pocket, which was not where anyone keeps anything important, and pulled out his phone, and scrolled, and turned the screen to me.

A photo. Of a playbill. On a shelf, next to what looked like architecture books, spine cracked, corners soft.

"That's not," I started.

"Your first lead. Twelve years ago. Off Brixton, sixty-seat theater, I think. I was in the fourth row. You hadn't run from me yet. You didn't even know my name yet." He put the phone away. "I still have it. It moved apartments four times. It survived a flood in Long Beach. It's on the shelf next to my license."

"You kept a playbill for twelve years."

"I kept a playbill, Hayley. You kept a whole imaginary audience relationship. I think I win on the normal scale."

I laughed, and it came out loud enough that one of Rene's dancers looked over. I put my hand over my mouth and he watched me do it and said nothing, and that was its own kind of mercy.

"It's the heat," I said. "And the wine. And you."

"Yeah," he said. "Same."

* * *

By midnight the party had thickened past the point of talking. The speakers got louder, the crowd got younger, or we got older, hard to say which. Somebody knocked over a chair near the planters and nobody fixed it. Rene was in the middle of everything, glowing, working the room she'd built.

Raul leaned close so I could hear him. His voice, low and a little rough, right at my ear.

"Fire escape?"

"I thought you refused to have conversations there."

"That was before the room got loud. Now it's the quietest place in LA."

So we went. Past the cheese table, past Eric, who caught my eye on the way and gave me a nod that managed to be both smug and sincere, which is a skill. Out the door, down the little landing, and the metal was still warm under my shoes at midnight because this is LA in August and nothing cools off, ever.

We sat. He'd grabbed two bottles of water from the cooler on the way out and handed me one, and I realized I hadn't touched wine in over an hour and was stone sober, which was inconvenient, because it meant I couldn't blame anything. He took the step above me again, same as before, like we were picking up a routine we'd never actually had. The city did its thing below us. Freeway sound. A siren somewhere, going away instead of coming.

"Better," he said.

"Much."

"Hayley." He said my name slow. "Can I ask you something and you answer it without doing a bit?"

"That's a big ask."

"I know." He turned on the step so he was angled down toward me. "Ten years. You went to awards things. You got that nomination. You had whole lives I know nothing about. Why tonight? Why'd you come at all, if you've spent a decade dodging me? Eric told me you almost didn't."

"Eric talks too much."

"Hayley."

"Because I got tired." I looked at the railing instead of him. "Not tired like sleepy. Tired like I've been carrying this specific weight for ten years and it turns out it weighs the same every year