I was well on my way to being unnerved by that quiet when my cousin Travis called at 11:55 P.M.
“Go up onto the roof,” he said.
“What?”
“We’re coming to see you!” he said over loud noise in the background.
“Who is coming to see me?”
“Stinger and I.”
“Great. When?”
“Right now.”
“Now? Is this some practical joke, Travis?”
“Go up onto the roof of the
“Are you nuts?”
“No, I told Stinger that you were going to have to work late at the paper and that you didn’t sound too happy about being there by yourself at night. So we decided it would be fun to surprise you there. Stinger says there’s a landing pad on top of your building.”
“There is, but—”
“Who’s going to know?” he asked, anticipating my objection.
“One of the computer maintenance guys goes up there for a smoke every now and then.”
“Is he the type that would tell on you?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Hurry, then! We’re almost there!”
Wondering if Wrigley might call to check up on me, I set the phone on my desk to forward calls to the cell phone.
I took the stairs to the top of the building — a good workout — and opened the door marked ROOF ACCESS.
This actually opened on to another stairway. When I opened the final door, and stepped out onto the roof, I took a moment to enjoy my surroundings. It was good to be out in the open. The night air was cool but not chilly enough to make me long for a jacket. A slight sea breeze blew away the worst of the city smells. Sounds came to me — muffled traffic sounds, the hum of transformers and machinery housed on the roof, the sharp ching-ching- ching of the cables on the flagpoles, the soft flapping of the brightly lit flags (the Stars and Stripes and the California Bear). Within this mix I could also hear the steady pulse of an approaching, but still distant, helicopter.
Peering over the edge of the building, I could see some of the gargoyles and other ornamentation that in my childhood had put me in awe of this building, and had long since endeared it to me. I remembered the first time my father told me that this was the place where the newspaper was made, the
I reached over the waist-high guardrail and trailed my fingers across the sooty masonry, remembering my youthful veneration. “And look where that got me, old girl.”
I looked up at the flat, featureless face of the skyscraper next door, a dark gray nothingness broken up only by an office light left on here and there. The Box, I sometimes called it. The Box had other names — so many, in fact, it kept signmakers busy changing the logo at the top every few years. For all its shiny newness, it had never filled all of its rooms. Some of the Wrigley’s were empty now, too, but we had been around a lot longer. I stroked the stonework again.
I brushed off my fingertips and began walking. Although newer, taller buildings nearby have made it less spectacular than it once was, the view from the roof of the Wrigley Building is still breathtaking.
I wasn’t at the highest point of the building; part of the roof held several structures — some of them fairly tall — that were clustered at the end of the roof nearest the stairway. A series of narrow alleyways ran between the housing for the huge air-conditioning unit, various utilities, the high mounting block of the satellite dishes and others. The flagpoles and a spindly lightning rod were on top of one of the tallest and longest of these, most of the space below used for storage.
Despite these obstructions, one could walk all around the perimeter of the roof and still see quite a distance. I didn’t have time to take the grand tour that night — I could hear the helicopter coming closer.
I hurried to the other side of the building, and stood near an area with a special flat surface, painted with markings — the helicopter pad.
By now, I had seen the big Sikorsky. Its noise drowned out all other sound, a bright light shone down from beneath it, and a stinging cloud of dust and grime was raised in counterpoint to its slow descent to the landing pad.
I found myself grinning, pleased with Travis’s skills, wondering what my mother’s shy sister would have thought of her son’s outlandish arrival. I waved and waited for them to shut down the engines, then to crawl out of the cockpit.
“Were you piloting just now?” I asked Travis, after we exchanged greetings, knowing full well that he had been.
“Yes,” he said. “My first night landing on top of a city building!”
“Your first?” I echoed, then tried not to let him see how much that statement unnerved me. “You did great.”
“Sorry about all that dust,” Stinger said, shaking my hand. “Been a while since anybody landed here?”
