“No, there’s a ladder. To the roof.” He walks toward the window and pushes the wooden sash upward, a waft of fresh air drafting into the balmy room. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”
The metal ladder is similar to a fire escape, flat against the brick of the building. Except it runs all the way up to the roof.
“You want me to climb up this ladder?”
“You scared?” He steps out onto the first step.
From my perspective, it’s as if he’s balancing on air out the window.
I inch closer. “Yes, always.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Death?”
He chuckles and hops up a step with total ease. “Is that all?”
“Don’t be so glib.” I pout, but I lift my leg over the window sill, my foot hitting the metal step. “Not everyone’s afraid of heights, but everyone’s afraid of falling.”
My feet are a little unsteady, but for all my fears, it turns out he’s right, and I’m not scared. I almost giggle as I climb each rung because it’s kind of a weird irony.
Higher above, Mack moves up the ladder effortlessly, the boxes balanced perfectly on his hand the entire time.
But when we reach the top, the giggle dies on my lips.
The view.
The view in front of me is utterly unbelievable.
Mack hops to the ground, sets the boxes down, and offers me a hand as I hoist over the edge and onto the brick floor.
“Wow,” I whisper. “Did we just enter an entirely different universe?”
Because in the center of the large space of the roof is an enormous pool. Surrounding the pool in a larger perimeter is a wrought iron fence. And covering it all is a large glass dome.
There’s a door that he opens with a key, and then he gestures for me to enter.
But every inch of the space, and I mean every inch, is completely filled with flowers and trees and plants and bushes. It’s one of the craziest greenhouses I’ve ever seen. Or maybe it’s closer to a biodome. Or its own planet, really. Its own universe. Colors explode among the scenery: green, red, orange, pink, blue. Where the stairs dip down into the pool, there’s even a table and chairs nestled into the middle, untouched by the water.
“You like it?” he asks. He locks the door behind us. “Here, come this way.”
I follow deeper into the labyrinth of plants, letting my hands run along the large palm-like trees that brush us as we walk. “Like it? It’s The Secret Garden out here. Holy shit, it’s so beautiful.” I touch a fuchsia-painted hibiscus, the smell wafting beautifully through the air. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He hands me a rose, pale pink with a dark green stem, thorns sharp and aggressive. “My dad helped me do this. Helped design it. Brought in all the plants. I maintain it now though. But mostly it maintains itself. My dad and I don’t talk anymore, but I know he’s thinking about me sometimes. Every once in a while, he’ll send a plant.”
I shake my head, my eyes wide. I genuinely can’t wrap my head around what I’m seeing. “Why don’t you live here? It’s so much bigger than the tank you have downstairs. It’s like an apartment in and of itself.”
Mack steps into the water and down one step, and then he pulls out both chairs, gesturing for me to sit, and places the pizza on the marbled sea glass table. He waits until I sit to open the box and offer me a slice. I take it, still thinking about my most recent experience with pizza, but for the moment shake it out of my head.
He takes a bite, so I follow suit. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I literally dreamed about this place before I built it into existence. But it’s not really practical. I can’t have things delivered here. I’d always be going up and down the ladder to get to the apartment, and the more I do that, the higher the risk I’ll be seen. Not to mention, drones monitor the area quite a bit, and I can’t hide everything in the dome. I don’t need the CIA or the FBI watching over me.”
I bite into the pizza. Greasy and hot. “No, I get it. My neighbor’s a cop, and I swear to god, sometimes he listens by his door, just waiting for me to come out. I hate it. Constant surveillance. But I don’t know, for this place? This place might be worth the risk.”
Mack nods. Then he shrugs. “I guess I just need my life to be bigger than this. The tank is contained. I know that it’s not really what I want. This place . . . it’s so close to something real. To something free. But just not quite there. In a way, that almost hurts more.”
I chew and swallow. I’m not sure what it means, but also, in another sense, I feel like I know exactly what he means. “So, do the other residents know this even exists?”
He holds up the key. “Maybe, but it’s locked. My dad built it, so I’m the only one who has access. Plus, they’re all old, a lot of them unable to climb a ladder anyway. It’s kind of my own private oasis.”
I snort at what he’s saying. The way his life has been so privileged. Even now, even though he’s being punished in so many ways simply for existing in his body, he’s still protected in other ways. It’s an interesting conundrum. “Pretty crazy how I would actually probably hate you if you hadn’t grown scales all over your body.”
Mack tilts his head, a confused smile on his face. “How do you mean?”
“You’re a total rich kid. I mean, damn, even beyond this dome, look outside, look at this beautiful sunset. I’ve never dated a man who could take me somewhere like this. It’s crazy. Meanwhile, I’ve been working since the day I was born.”
He gives a gentle kick under the water, splashing my ankle. “What do you mean you’ve been working since the day you were born?”
I finish off the crust of the first piece of pizza. Eating a little bit has whet my appetite, and now I’m ravenous. I like the feeling. I go in for another slice. “Oh you know. My mother has barely ever worked a job a day in her life. She was always relying on me to bring home the money.”
“But as a kid?”
I shrug and chew messily, enjoying the freedom. For some reason, I don’t think Mack will judge me. “I modeled throughout my childhood and beyond that, right up until my young adult years. And my modeling paid all the bills. Put the food on the table. Kept the lights on. Paid for the pack of Marlboros my mother used to smoke every night. And the Botox she’d get injected into her forehead.”
“No kid should be responsible for their parents like that. I guess I don’t know anything about that at all since my family comes from money. They would never expect me to do something like that.”
I lift the pizza in a cheers gesture. “Yeah, but they still turned their back on you.”
He nods. “That’s fucking true. But without them, I’d surely be dead.”
