“Back up Four at 1914 West Dalton. Report of a seventy-six.”
“Right,” District One said.
“Three-Eighteen,” the scanner said.
“Three-Eighteen,” the car responded.
Raphael waited.
On the lawn Heck’s Angels continued their war with their unseen enemies until five carloads of police converged upon them. The police spoke with the Angels at some length and then methodically and quite systematically confiscated all their toys.
ii
A couple days later, after supper, Raphael went out onto the roof to watch the sunset. He felt strangely contented. His life, though it was circumscribed, was interesting enough. The vague ambitions he’d had before seemed unrealistic now. Probably they always had been. He idly wondered what his life might have been like if it all hadn’t happened. It seemed somehow as if what had happened to him had been the result of sheer, blind chance-rotten bad luck. That was very easy to believe, and like most easy things, it was wrong. There had been a definite cause-and-effect sequence operating that night. He had been drunk, for one thing, and he had been drinking hard to incapacitate himself-to keep himself out of Isabel Drake’s clutches, and he had done that because it had been Isabel’s suggestions that had led to the events in the front seat of his car, and on, and on, and on. It had not been sheer blind chance. Of course the appearance of the train had not been all that predictable, but considering the way he had been driving when he had fled from Isabel’s house, if it hadn’t been the train, it would have been another car or even a tree. Trees are very unforgiving when automobiles run into them. The train had maimed him; a tree most probably would have killed him outright. He sat for quite a while, thinking about it.
“Hey up there, can I come up?”
Raphael leaned over the railing and looked down. It was the girl from downstairs. She stood on the sidewalk below in the early-evening dusk, her face turned up toward him. “Come ahead,” he told her.
A minute or two later she came out on the roof. “Oh my,” she said, pointing.
Raphael turned. The last touches of color from the sunset lingered along the western horizon, and the contrail from a passing jet formed a bright pink line high overhead where the sun was still shining.
The girl came over and sat on the bench near his chair. “You’ve got the best view in town up here.”
“If you like sunsets. Otherwise it’s not too much. On a clear day you can almost see to the sewage-treatment plant.”
She laughed and then crossed her arms on the railing, leaned her chin on them, and looked down into the street below. “You were right, you know?”
“About what?”
“That street those people. I’ve been watching them since we talked that time. All they do is exist. They don’t really live at all, do they?”
“Not noticeably.”
“You scared me, do you know that? I saw myself at forty-a welfairy-screaming like a fishwife and with a whole tribe of grubby little kids hanging on to me. You really scared me.”
“I was trying hard enough.”
“What for? Why did you bother? And why me?” She looked straight at him.
“Let’s just say it’s a bet I’ve got with myself.”
“You want to run that past me again? You can be infuriatingly obscure at times.”
He looked at her for a moment. In the faint light on the rooftop she seemed somehow very much like Marilyn. “It’s not really that complicated. I’ve lived here for six or seven months now, and I’ve been watching these poor, sorry misfits living out their garbage-can lives for all that time. I just wondered about the possibility of beating the system. I thought that maybe-just maybe-if I could catch somebody before the habits had set in, I might be able to turn things around. Let’s call it a private war between me and that street down there.”
“Then it isn’t anything personal?”
“Not really.”
“I just happened along?”
“It’s not exactly that. I like you well enough to care what happens to you. It’s not just a random experiment, if that’s what you mean.”
“Thanks for that anyway.” She laughed. “For a minute there I was starting to feel like a white rat.”
“No danger.”
“You don’t even know my name.”
“Of course I do. You’re the girl on the roof.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to call somebody.”
“It keeps things anonymous-impersonal.” He smiled. “That way I can beat that thing down there with no strings attached. It can’t come back and say I was out to get something for myself.”
“Okay, I think it’s a little nuts, but I won’t tell you my name. You can keep on calling me the girl on the roof. I know your name, though. You’re Raphael Taylor-it’s on your mailbox. That doesn’t spoil it, does it?”
“No. No problem.”
“All right, Raphael Taylor, you can chalk one up for our side. The girl on the roof is going back to Metalline Falls.”
“Well, good enough!”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far. When the girl on the roof shows up back home with a big tummy, tongues are going to wag all over town. My father might send me back out into the snow-and let me tell you, Raphael Taylor, we get a lot of snow in Metalline Falls-whole bunches of snow.”
“You’ll be all right. It might be a little rough, but at least the street didn’t get you.”
“It almost did, you know. I was ashamed. Girls from small towns are like that. You’re ashamed to go home because everybody knows you, and you know they’ll all be talking about you. It’s easier to hide on some street like this-to pull it around you and hide. I’ll just bet that if you went down there and asked them, you’d find out that most of those poor welfairy girls down there come from small towns, and that they first came here just to hide.”
“It’s possible,” he admitted.
“And now what about you, Raphael Taylor? Since you’ve saved me from a fate worse than death, the least I can do is return the favor. Nobody’s going to accuse the girl on the roof of being ungrateful.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure you are,” she said sarcastically. “Are you sure that street hasn’t got its hooks into you?”
“I don’t think there’s much danger of that.”
“Can you be sure?” she persisted. “I mean really sure? Except for that first day I’ve never seen you anyplace but up here. Are you really sure you’re not just settling in? You made me think about it; now I’m going to make you think about it, too. I’d hate to remember you just sitting up here, growing old, watching that lousy street down there.”
“I won’t grow old up here,” he told her. “I had some things to sort out, and I needed a quiet place to do that in.”
“You’ll be leaving then?”
“Before long.”
“Before the snow flies?”
“All right.”
“Promise?”
“Before the snow flies,” he said.
They sat quietly then. The streetlights came on, and the crickets began their drowsy drone.
“This is the only part of it all that I’ll miss,” she said finally. “I only wish we’d met each other before-before a lot of things.” She stood up suddenly, her movements abrupt as always. “I have to pack. I’m going to be leaving first thing in the morning.”
“Good luck.”
“We make our own luck, Raphael Taylor.” She said it firmly. “Or somebody else makes it for us-the way you did for me. How did you know exactly what to say to me to keep the street from getting me?”
He shrugged. “Experience,” he suggested. “Intuition maybe. How does divine intervention grab you?”
“God’s not all that interested in me. He’s too busy watching sparrows fall.” She paused. “It’s not really the same because the word usually means something so totally different, but I want you to know that the girl on the roof loves you, Raphael Taylor. I wanted to say that before I left.” And then she came over, kissed him lightly, and was gone.
For a long time after that Raphael sat alone in the darkness. Then about midnight it turned chilly, and he went inside to bed.
iii
Two days later when Raphael came home from work, old Tobe was standing in the middle of the street. He was roaring drunk and a wine bottle hung loosely in his hand.
“Tobe!” Raphael called to him as he parked. “For Christ’s sake get out of the street! You’re going to get yourself killed!”
“Who says so?” Tobe demanded belligerently in his foghorn voice, swaying and squinting at Raphael.
“I say so.” Raphael got out of his car and pulled his crutches out of the backseat.
“Oh.” Tobe squinted and tottered toward Raphael’s car. “It’s you, of buddy. I didn’t reconnize ya. How’s it goin’?”