I heard the commotion in the hallway before I ever saw Jack’s face, or his nervous secretary with the odd hairnet hair, or Megan Stanford. I couldn’t imagine what topic they all had in common until Megan spoke. “Brice, a woman’s out on the eighteenth-floor ledge, and she’s threatening to jump.”
“You called 911 and HR?” I asked, my heart suddenly double-timing.
“Yes, but you need to come,” Megan said. And I deserted my desk and followed her and the others down the hallway and into the elevator.
“Is it an employee?” I asked as we waited for the slow transfer of bodies up to eighteen.
“Zane Stephens,” Jack said, and images of the heavy-set, mid-thirties woman in the mailroom filled my head. Zane rolled her wire cart up and down the hallway every day delivering letters and magazines and useless flyers to every office in the building. Most of the people who talked to her were secretaries, but all of us knew her. Why a woman in her thirties would be satisfied pushing packages down corridors every day of her life was too depressing for me to contemplate. And today, apparently Zane felt the same.
The elevator doors opened to reveal a dozen people in the eighteenth-floor lobby circling the reception desk and strung down the hallway toward an office that overlooked the avenue below and was where all the action seemed to be centered.
“Who’s talking to her?” I asked Jack.
“I don’t know, but not the right person or she wouldn’t still be out on the ledge. You need to talk to her. You could relate to her.”
“To a gay woman on a ledge?” I asked reproachfully.
He gave Megan a look that seemed to say he’d anticipated that kind of response and worse.
As we parted the sea of bodies to get into the room and over to the open window where one wide and battered black tennis shoe was visible at windowsill height about ten feet away, I cut the rest of my comments short.
“Where are the police?” I asked Megan.
“On the way. Special suicide unit. Deals with edge-of-the-ledge people,” Megan said in the cryptic briefing style I preferred, having obviously learned it from Maxine.
I nodded, acknowledging her comments. I hated heights, so I clung to the window molding as if it were a winning lotto ticket and leaned out to assess Zane’s resolve. She was wearing a sleeveless white shirt, and her bare arm bore a large tattoo with the word “Mary” on it. Her heavyset body, clad in black men’s pants and a worn belt, was pressed up against the wall of the building. Her straight brown hair, maybe five inches long in all directions, blew in the wind as she struggled to keep her balance, her chin jammed back against her throat as if her body had decided it didn’t want to follow her mind to its death.
“Zane, it’s Brice Chandler. Can you move carefully over here, just a few feet, so we can talk?”
She hesitated, then slowly slid her left foot toward me. That was easier than I thought. After a few cautious sideways steps she loosened a tiny piece of the ledge with her foot, and it crumbled and tumbled over the side, falling eighteen stories, as everyone near the window gasped.
The collective intake of air seemed to make Zane nervous. “Tell them I’m not a sideshow!” she ordered.
“I will. Just relax a second.” I leaned back inside the room and addressed the crowd for Zane’s benefit. “Ladies and gentlemen, Zane would like for all of you to know that she doesn’t have your fucking mail! So go back to your desks and wait until she gets to each of you. Thank you and good-bye.”
People around me looked startled as I waved them off, and Jack and Megan jumped in to help clear the room. Now, with just a handful of us left, the real work was at hand. I grabbed the window trim and leaned back outside to report the exodus to Zane in my role as the Christiane Amanpour to the suicidal.
“Done,” I said, my head once again hanging out of the window. My stomach lurched as I glanced down.
“Who was in the room?” Zane asked, which I took as a good sign. People seriously about to jump probably don’t care what’s happening back inside, I reasoned.
“Damn near everybody in the building. You have quite a following,” I lied.
Zane let me know she wasn’t going to be won over with that kind of BS, then added that she cared about only one thing.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Ending it,” she said, and her tone was flat and tired and laced with anger, and I worried I’d misread her and maybe she was going over the side despite everything.
I launched into a litany of questions—the kind I could get into when time was ticking and I was about to lose my audience over a ledge. I asked who had upset her: was it work, was it her family, was it someone at home? What could I do to change things, who did she want us to call and let her talk to, all while I wondered where in the hell the damned police were.
My neck was cramping from the odd angle of hanging my head out the window, and I was running out of topics when she finally said, “There’s no one at home anymore.”
“You were living with someone and now…you’re not.”
“We broke up,” she said, and looked down.
Finally I had it. I knew why we were all out on the ledge. “Who is she?” I asked, one hundred percent sure I had the gender right.
“Mary. Mary left me.”
Of course! The name Mary is tattooed on her arm, for God’s sake! Why didn’t I figure that out?
“You can’t know what that means,” she said. “You can never know how that feels.” Zane suddenly launched all her anger and venom and what felt like her resentment of a lifetime at me—me, the only life form currently hanging out on the ledge to save her silly ass.
That thought made me realize how quickly my sympathy could shift when people irritated me and my neck hurt. I was probably not the best person to be talking someone off a ledge.
As I contemplated that fact, Zane yelled, “You don’t get it! My lover just left me!”
“Mine did too. For someone who looks like you!” I shouted back.
A pause, then Zane chuckled. “Don’t fuck with me.”
“I’m not fucking with you. In fact, if you throw your ass off this ledge no one will ever fuck with you again.” I gave her a moment to consider that double entendre. “There are other fish, dear.”
“Yeah, well, you know how important this was to me. Do you see my arm?”
“Yes, well, it is more challenging when you’ve given a woman top billing on your bicep. Tattoo ‘Proud’ in front of it, and people will think you’re a Tina Turner fan. Or ‘Poppins’ after it—”
“And people will think I’m a fruitcake.”
“Or simply add another ‘r’ and the word ‘me,’ and it’s ‘Marry me’!”
I could hear Jack saying, “I think she just proposed to her.” I made a mental note to kill Jack, if I ever got my head back inside and the kink out of my neck.
“Come on, Zane, you’ve got a sense of humor. Years from now you’ll find humor in this. Come in, please, for me.”
It seemed like minutes. Silence. Zane was obviously thinking it over. Slowly she edged toward me, and when she got within reach, I told her that a couple of men were going to help her inside so she would get in safely. By now two police officers were in the room, and they got her by the arm and one leg and hoisted her to safety.
Suddenly my heart raced and my body ached and I had to sit down. Zane looked at me as they led her away, and I gave her a thumbs-up. Who knew what was going to happen to her now. I asked HR to stay with her and report back on whether she had family or someone to take her in.
“Man,” Jack almost whispered. “You were somethin’ else! Brilliant saying your girlfriend left you for someone who looks like her.”
“She did,” I said, and gave him a look that dared him to continue.
“You’re killin’ me!” he said.
“I’d like to,” I said. “Get out, will you.”
The room was nearly clear now, everyone following the woman in crisis, each with his own role to play. I looked up to see Megan Stanford observing me steadily from a few feet away.
“What?” I asked testily, sensing she was holding something back.
“That was the best thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.”
“Well, then, you need to get out more,” I said, letting her know I wasn’t up for any adolescent sentiment. But she was undeterred by my sarcasm and gave me an admiring grin before leaving.
How fragile we are, I thought, often tethered to this earth by a single soul who becomes the string that keeps us from floating away. And when that tie is cut, we want to leave like a balloon ascending into the heavens in search of our soul’s connection. I was sweating, having just connected with the thought that Zane could have actually chosen to jump.
My adrenaline finally ebbing, I pulled myself together to walk back to my office and suddenly they appeared: a cameraman and a news anchor—omigod, it’s Liz, my mind registered.
Liz’s expression conveyed that she knew she might be in uncertain waters. “Brice, I understand there was a suicide attempt. My news director asked me to go live from the scene—”
“There’ll be no live-from-the-scene,” I said decisively, leaving no room for discussion.
She checked her watch, apparently under time pressure to make the cut-in for the noon news, then made her decision. “Get word to the booth, no cut-in,” she told the cameraman, and he used his cell phone to call.
“Can I tape, then?”
“Not really,” I said, my mind flashing with anger. I felt ambushed, invaded, taken advantage of. A million things I could not articulate. And all by Liz Chase, who had used her relationship with me to somehow get into the building and up to this floor.
“This is an important story, Brice.” Liz’s voice was quiet.
“I’m sure it is. But it’s another woman’s story, not yours, and she may not want to share it with the world,” I said, angry over the invasion of privacy.
“I have to get something while I’m here.” She looked resolute. “Roll tape,” she said, turning to the cameraman and speaking into the lens the moment the red light signaled her that the camera was on. “This is Liz Chase live on the scene at A-Media Entertainment, where today a woman tried to take her own life by jumping off the eighteenth-floor ledge of this building. I’m standing here with Brice Chandler, division president, who reportedly was on the scene and talked the employee off the ledge. Ms. Chandler, can you tell us what happened?” Liz implored, and I said nothing, merely staring at her.
“What did you say to her?” Liz probed.
“Don’t jump,” I said, staring coldly at Liz.
“Did she tell you why she was jumping?” Liz asked, and that was the last invasive question I could handle.
I put my hand over the lens to end any visuals and made a silent cut sign across my throat, wishing it were the cameraman’s.
He looked at Liz, who nodded her okay.
When the light went off, I said, “Perhaps to avoid the invasiveness of the press,” and walked out.
Liz caught up with me. “You couldn’t give me a single sentence?”
“Don’t ever pull something like that again!”
“I didn’t pull it on you. I called, and your HR department and your secretary approved my showing up. They thought what you did was heroic, and they thought it would be fine to get it on tape.”
“Well, they thought wrong. Someone’s life about to end is not cause for the circus to show up and pry into her despair.” I bit the words off.
“I suppose TV cameras are a circus to someone who doesn’t want anyone to get too close.” Liz turned and walked away.
How dare she use our relationship to get the story she wants. “Oh, no, you’re not getting away with that!” I said, catching her by the arm and stopping her. “Why would you do this to me?”
“This isn’t about you! Stories like this one get tagged with suicide-prevention hotline numbers and places where people can get help. It’s not about just one woman on a ledge, Brice. It’s about a lot more who are thinking about stepping out on it.”
“These are my employees, not docudrama subject matter, and my employees don’t affect you!”
“Really? Your employee who recently abused his wife is Fred Davis. His wife who then, in despair, stayed home and tried to take her own life is Toni Davis, my former college roommate. So I guess your employees do affect me.” And Liz Chase exited, leaving me stunned.
“Shit,” I said quietly to the world at large.