Yes, this will do.
And now, she waits.
CRASH!
In the foyer, Nirav topples the bar cabinet. The noise it creates as it smashes on the marble floor is positively deafening.
Kiyoko smiles—he did it!—and throws a sitting chair through a window at that same moment.
The cold night air pushes into the room and Kiyoko worries for a moment that she might get sucked into the vacuum she’s created.
Kiyoko steps to the window. “Do not look down. Do not look down.” She eases one foot onto the ledge. The ledge that encircles the building, the ledge that defines the Queen Anne and neo-Grec architectural styles, of which that jerk Starkweather was so proud.
She is a waterfall, her heart rushes. She breathes, five deep breaths, and becomes a glassy pond once more.
She eases her other foot onto the ledge and lifts herself, and now she stands here, eleven stories in the sky, head swirling, bile churning.
“Who, me?”she says in a mocking tone of her earlier self, in the powder room with Pax.“I would never do anything drastic!”
She eases right.
She eases right.
She eases right.
A pigeon alights beside her.You shouldn’t be up here, he communicates to her.
“No shit,” she chuckles. “I wouldn’t be out here if it weren’t for my asshole friend Pax, leaving me to be the touch.”
No, Pax. That’s what she should’ve said.I’m not going to do the meetup. You want me to be the touch? Go touch yourself.
Anger!
Yes, she can use anger.
You can anchor yourself to anger in moments of need.
She eases right.
“F.
“U.
“C.
“K.
“P.
“A.
“X.”
She inches to the right with each letter. Escape is two windows away. She knows this from the blueprints; the window to the stairwell is two windows from here. She eases right.
A flock of pigeons is now here, gently cheering her on, rooting for her with small coos.
Kiyoko pauses before she passes the next big window. The window into the parlor of Max Blanck’s apartment. If anyone inside sees her, she’s headed to jail. She peeks around the edge of the window into the room.
