At exactly seven, Dormshiganger hit the corner, just across from the business center. We barely shook hands before I ducked behind him, dropping into a sharp squat with my back to the street. Secretary was leaving work. Let her think I was in Saint-Tropez. Hell, maybe tomorrow I actually would be.

“What’s wrong with you?” Dormshiganger asked. I recovered, waving a hand at the disappearing car.

“C’mon, I’ll show you everything.” I led him under an archway. Alone in the whole yard, we followed the walls to the spot. On the way, I slipped him a pre-prepped thousand-yuan check. “Here’s your stage.” Behind the low building in the middle of the yard, I heard the warehouse guys locking up. Inside, bolts and locks, chains and fasteners, zippers and buttons rattled like a goddamn orchestra. They probably decided to keep quiet about the missing forklift until they figured out who the hell stole it.

“Will it hold steady?” The mouthpiece mentally gleamed with a slobbery uncertainty. “I can’t play on a wobbly stage.”

“Unless you wobble it yourself, you’re golden.” Not a soul in the yard but us two. I shoved a walkie-talkie into his chest pocket, hooking it up. My clumsy elbows made him yelp, face twisting like a paralytic frozen mid-rollercoaster ride. I’d nicked his imaginary mouthpiece; it nearly punched out his front teeth. “Platform, please. I’m taking you up three stories.” I hopped into the forklift and jammed the lever. To my utter astonishment, Dormshiganger folded in half, slid down the back wall, and plopped off the platform. Yeah, I had slammed the forklift into reverse. The poor bastard’s lips were snatching at his falling mouthpiece. He looked at me with moist eyes, the fee tally ticking up. “Thousand apologies, Dormshiganger, first time in this thing today. I’ll get it right now. Please, get on up.”

“I’m not moving until I get another five hundred on that check. You’re torturing me.”

“Fine, another apology. Here, please.” Dormshiganger carefully stuffed the check into a tiny pant pocket, then stepped back, letting me roll the forklift into the alcove. He got on the platform, crossed himself.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m an atheist.” He rose, higher and higher, nitrogen condensing on his saxophone’s surface. It dripped in fat drops, dangerously clinging to the lower copper curve. Right over my head.

“Dormshiganger, I’ve gotta cross the street now. Radio me if anything. I’ll hit you up in literally three minutes.”

I bolted from the yard before Dormshiganger could bury me in questions. The forklift was on lockdown. Everything was under control. Everything? 

I ducked into the apartment building across the street, climbed the stairs to the attic, then onto the leeward side of the roof, scrambling up to the ridge. The walkie-talkie in my pocket was screaming electricity.

I hid behind a wall jut, sitting right on the ridge, which dug painfully into my biofield. The walkie-talkie chirped. My binoculars had astigmatism. While I fiddled with the knobs, the light in the shop downstairs clicked off, shutters lowering. She stepped out, pulling the door shut. Climbed four dusty steps to the sidewalk. Heavy boots with metal inserts. The girl, whose name I didn’t know yet, spun around, then dashed back down the four steps, slamming headfirst into the door. It groaned in protest, something clapped or clicked, and she deftly twisted a key in the glass door’s gut. A deep breath, my poor stranger climbed the steps again, hid the key, and turned left from the shop exit. Instantly, her back was to me—my binoculars were fixed now—and the main entrance slammed shut with a crack. A third of a minute later, light flared just left of the stairwell windows.

“Dormshiganger!” Why the hell was his name so complicated! “She’s in the apartment. Are you facing the wall or your back to it? Over!”

“There are three walls here. I’m facing away from all of them.”

“Alright, now you’re gonna play into the left pipe. I’ll tell you when to start. Over!”

“But what do I play? We never agreed.”

“Uh, play some Frank Sinatra—like, ‘Strangers in the Night’ or, I dunno, some Duke Ellington Dixieland… your call. Over!”

“What volume you need?”

“Not too loud—just enough to make it clear someone’s playing, annoyingly. And nothing distinct in the other pipe. Over!”

“That’s a complicated order. But yeah, I get it,”—the girl stripped, made herself tea. She walked into the dark room, changed, then emerged back into the bright living room, buttoning a dark green shirt on the fly. Pulled up her pants, zipped her fly, and headed for the kitchen, visible through the living room. Hot mug in hand, she walked to the street-facing window, placed a hand on her belly, propped it with the other, leaned slightly, and slowly drank, watching the cars below. I watched her, completely hidden behind the ledge, peering through the large square holes at the top of the roof pipe. Dusk was thickening, but spotting a person on the roof would still be easy as hell.

This girl? Barely describable. A volatile mix of divine beauty and disarming simplicity. She smiles, even when alone. Maybe she’s just so used to it from the shop during the day, she can’t shake it off in the evening. Flannel shirt, faded relaxed jeans, once light-blue, thick beige socks. Cold, dense branches of her curls, every color of an English sunset, cascaded onto her shoulders. Her wise eyes were set so wide, the entire wisdom of humanity could fit between them. Her features, not their color, made her face golden. Her voice? Magnificent. I didn’t remember it, but looking at her, I knew it for a fact.

Can’t mess with her like this. She doesn’t deserve it. Then again, she calmly told me she’d go to her neighbor’s. But she didn’t expect me to pull something like THIS. If only I’d realized how beautiful she was earlier! Before, I only felt her sex appeal, the sheer thrill she conjured. Now I see a goddess. A goddess, tired from a long day at the shop. I wasn’t at the shop today… was her day easier than usual? Nah, that’s a distraction.

“Dormshiganger, scratch that, I changed my mind. Stay on the platform, I’m coming down. Over!” I took one last look through the binoculars: the girl had moved from the window, examining a collector’s vinyl of Frank Sinatra on the sideboard.

“No, you paid me, I’m playing. I’m playing!!!”

“Dormshiganger, you don’t get it, this is serious. I can’t. I’m canceling. Keep the money. Over!” On the other end, Dormshiganger hesitated. No answer for too long. Suddenly, it was cold. With numb fingers, I fumbled to open the hatch to the attic. It wouldn't budge. A whole minute must’ve passed before I got it. Then I stood, one last glance out the window. No binoculars. The girl opened the bathroom door, flipped on the light, set her mug on the toilet table beside it. I froze, caught between decisions.

“OVER!” Dormshiganger barked. His button was jammed; I couldn't say a thing. He'd pressed it down, probably with a pack of cigarettes in his pocket or his imaginary mouthpiece, while the real one was in his mouth.

Music filled the walkie-talkie speaker. He was playing for Her, sitting in the bathroom. He… I didn’t know what to do. Run to him, drag him to hell in the forklift, leave the platform three stories up to prevent a riot? Or stay here, powerless? If I run, by the time I reach him, she’d already be at the neighbor’s. I just froze. Binoculars dangled from my neck. “Strangers in the Night” blared from my chest. I crashed belly-first onto the sheet metal, a gruesome pain seizing my stomach. I screamed, but no one could hear me. It was ME who was listening. And since I was listening, I could watch as well. I crab-walked on my hands to the ridge, flopped onto my chest, hooking my elbows over the opposite roof slope like a ladder, and brought the binoculars to my eyes.

Suddenly, the music died. Dormshiganger’s quiet muttering filtered through the walkie-talkie. In my chest.

“She’s gone,” he grumbled, smacking his lips. A second later, through tears that appeared from nowhere, I saw Her, dazed and terrified, bolting from the bathroom, hands tugging at her jeans to let her run. Her bare legs—under better circumstances, I’d probably linger on their magnificence.

In two giant leaps, she hit the apartment door, yanked it open, shoved it wide—and I was scrambling after her along the roof ridge, right on the peak she saw from her pillow every morning. I slipped, landing hard on my back, ribs slamming against the titanium sheet joints. Hot blood started seeping from my back as I rolled twice to the side. I managed to glimpse Her, one tense hand between her legs, darting across the landing to the opposite door. She hammered the doorbell, frantically glancing back at her own door, unsure if she’d locked it. Her hand was squeezing herself.

God, why am I doing this to the most beautiful girl in the Universe! Why did I decide to prank MAGNIFICENCE ITSELF like this! That’s what’s tangible. And at the same time—absolutely intangible. Untouchable. How dare I!

While these thoughts hammered against my skull from the inside, while my blood stained the silvery aluminum plates, while pain burned from my back and heart, while the walkie-talkie stayed silent, I saw a young girl walking through her living room to the apartment door. Her hair was not too short, deliberately disheveled. Through the binoculars, I saw the complex features of her face. As if sculpted from limestone by water. Like her friend, she was clearly intelligent. Her cheek was comically smudged with ink. She wasn’t rushing, but she wasn’t dawdling either. Her lips, soft and pastel, also smiled, but a far more restrained, plotting smile. A redhead? Or a beast head?

The girl held a sheet of paper, covered in short, jagged lines in a column, all starting from a single vertical margin.

Finally, she gripped her door handle, pulled herself toward the dark lacquered board, pressed her chest against it, and sharply peered into the peephole. A split second later, she was letting her friend into the apartment, stepping back to give way to the bathroom.

“She’s coming now,” the walkie-talkie rasped. “Concert’s resuming now.”

The young poetess’s face showed no trace of surprise. Her poems had seen worse. Rather, her expression conveyed an interest in the nature of what was happening and a somewhat feigned attention. She lifted her chin, tensed her lower lip, and watched Her fly into the bathroom.

The walkie-talkie inexplicably stayed silent. Maybe Dormshiganger figured it wasn’t smart to immediately kick her out of THIS bathroom too.

Or maybe he’d just vanished? Did the forklift release its brake, roll back, and crush Dormshiganger? Or did the cops decide to check the yard and are now happily driving him to the station? Or did he just somehow manage to climb down and run off?