the roof is so strange. the menus say “the roof” at the top though apparently we are at “the standard”. S is comfortably cat-like with her feet up on the long orange sofa she has smilingly found for us, relieved that we can all be together, and away from the people who she says would wish us dead if we were in their space, their misplaced hostility and their unfounded cool. R has somehow acquired a cuban cigarillo and the smoke plumes uneven and ghost-like from his lips. strange artifacts on the table - M's unsightly ‘birthday hat’ with a disturbing balloon. some of us drinking martinis, some drinking red bulls. J has bought me a red bull and i drink it over ice in a glass and it looks and feels like i am drinking something exotic all the way up here. taxi driver is being projected onto the building across the way – it is huge and luminous and below it is a gym where i can see bodies bobbing up and down on treadmills. the pool is warm and the water comes right up to the top and i want to get in and i think of garden state. i want all of these people up here to disappear and the bobbing treadmill runners to evaporate so i can get into the pool in my underwear and stare up at all of the buildings that rise like science fiction movies into a sky that is full of light though it is night. it is difficult, in a space so full of insistently thumping music, and the humming unity of so many human voices, to imagine it suddenly quiet, empty, peaceful. it is an impossibly soothing exercise struggling to imagine this.
a.w.
