On top, barely discernible. A silhouette. That's it- far enough way that the figure is just a silhouette- no features. A cloak flapping in the breeze. No, a cape. No, a dress. No a dressing gown. A robe. Rolling in the breeze. At least three stories, because there is a breeze, although the day is calm. Sunset far enough away that there is no breeze on the ground, only three stories up. Palm at arm's length, thumb and fingers curled. Building fits in the fingers, figure's silk robe flaps in the breeze. The nuances of silk easily recognizable even at this distance. Like seeing someone from a long way off, back is turned, recognize them anyway, by their gait, their stride, their posture. And so. This figure. Recognizable by its posture.

The dressing gown, rolling around in the wind. Oh yea- lot's of classical music. The Mozart Haydn young Beethoven era. But none of those guys. One of Bach's kids. Something in a minor key, recognizable as classical, but not a particular piece. Dismissed as average- quite appropriate for this. Something that swells, gets carried away with itself, calms down, swells again.

Remember: black and white. Classical music. A long way off. Breeze, silhouette, posture. Somehow, complete and total inertia. No movement, except for the wind-robe and music.

Attention: rapt.

Anticlimactic. The figure makes a small movement, smaller for the distance, disappears in shadows. Rush fast forward, bleed in the colors- dull grayish primaries, secondaries, blossoming brightness, proper contrast, tint, sharp focus as. Music disappears as if turning a volume knob not too quickly but by hand. House grows, blocks the sky zoom in faster just the sidewalk pavement and an explosion of stillness. A large crack under the body, just the body and the splayed robe, just the scarlet silk pajamas and face, the broken neck and face and clean clean clean hair, the face and hair, the face, the eyes, wide open, brown, deep brown, dark brown, black.

Steven has killed himself. Again.

***

I have cataloged the suicides of over 373,981 people in my notebook, of various kinds. Women like razors, like to see the blood that made them women in the first place- it's usually being a woman that makes them suicidal. Guys like guns, to screw their brain at last with the dick they never had, their brains being female what makes them want to die. The elderly use pills, for they who live by the sword. Blue collars use car exhaust, are afraid of the same aggression in guns and razors and pills that made them too depressed to live. Thanatophiliacs are the only ones who jump, and most of them don't mean it anyway, they slip, and even then don't manage to die, often. Seven of those got so depressed over faking it, accidentally falling, and not managing to die anyway, that they got guns and razors and pills soon after and finished the job.

Steven was the only one. He stood on top of that house for about three seconds. The average time for jumpers is four hours, for successful ones about two. I think they get bored. But not Steven. He wasn't bored at all. He stood there, I think checking the wind, and then. Most of them stand on the edge, and then sort of sigh as the let their knees collapse. Death is resignation for them- they die before their feet even slip off the edge. But not Steven. Steven ran, sprinted. Some of them actually jump, swan dive, or just point their heads down. Not Steven. He just ran until there wasn't any roof left to run on. And as he fell, he turned to look over his shoulder.

He was always doing that. If he was anywhere, like at a stoplight or at a party or regarding a vending machine. He would always look over one shoulder or the other, as if the muscles in his neck were connected directly to the part of his brain where he made decisions. He was always moving his head around- but he wasn't looking at anything. Like when you stare at a wall for ten minutes, and don't even see the wall. But Steven saw the wall. He didn't look at it, he just saw it. And when you stare at a wall for ten minutes, what's going through your brain? taxes sex the dog my wife inflatable pool toys baked bread the capital of France shit happens The Game starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn handy wipes seven eleven bleach wallpaper a bag of nuts. But what went through Steven's head when he turned to look over his shoulder at a wall before deciding between making a right turn at the light or a Mountain Dew was wall wall wall wall. So. As he fell he turned to look over his shoulder, as if he had a while before he hit, as if he had to make a decision about whether to die when he hit or not, and he probably saw some sky, and what went through his head was sky sky sky sky.

It's a pretty big notebook.

***

He's going to wake up and put on his slippers. Shuffle to the bathroom, take a pee. A nice long pee, he's saving it up. Peeing is sort of like cumming, especially right after cumming, he will think about that as he lolls his head back and pees accurately into the commode toilet pot, and when the good feelings dwindle away as the force of his bladder slackens but there are still drops to go he will open his eyes and think ceiling ceiling ceiling ceiling.

Next, he will shake, shake, shake, because without underwear on to absorb the three drops rule he will have the discomfortable damp patch on his bottoms which can catch a breeze and just make him think wet wet wet. Then he'll put his noodle back in it's bag and flush the flusher, and he'll put the seat down. Then he'll, he'll shuffle into his bedroom and get his robe. He knows to never pee while wearing a robe because sometimes the flap flies around and then it's just embarrassing. Then he'll shuffle up the roof and run off and die.

***

We received the call at 4:32 in the afternoon on the day in question, calm, partly cloudy with a high in the mid sixties and a low in the mid fifties. We rolled at 4:33, taking one minute to reach our vehicle and enter it, engage the ignition key, manipulate the parking brake and address the acceleration pedal. In a 1987 Ford Nova specially paneled to conform to standard enforcement regulations stipulations and condemnations, we proceeded forthwith to the locale of the sight off the incident of report. We braked suddenly to alert the patrons of the scene as to our sincere dedication to alerting people.

We placed our hand on the lever which was designed to facilitate exiting and entering the vehicle by means of a latch and swivel mechanism, and examined what was left of the perp, who was also the victim. SWM, late forties, seeks S,D,W, or M but S'd W or B or O or I or H/L F for dinner, dancing, walks in the park, the opera, mediocre sex, pet grooming, museum going, volunteering at the Y. No drugs, no kids, fat chicks accepted with visa or mastercard. Send photo and phone number, order today while supplies last. He had committed suicide by killing himself.

We used a standard no. 2 chalk and traced around the jumper's body and clothing and broken limbs. Correction. By using a very complicated and as yet illegal type of mathematical calculus we determined the victim's point of departure vis the top of the building and deduced that he had not actually jumped, but had merely run off. We also determined through our excellent detecting skills that the perp had spent all of a few moments on top of the building as opposed to the several hours that mundane gravity-eaters spend, contemplating.

We questioned various personalities at the scene, including a boy who alleges that he was related to the deceased, a wifish woman, a servant who will probably be old when the boy is grown, a man with a very large notebook, and the deceased himself. Each suggested an entirely different motive for the reason the dropper decided to make the decision of doing what he had discovered a reason for motivating the union of neck bones and cement. The alleged boy suggested it was due to his apparent father's incessant working which had led to a certain numbness that could not be alleviated by the sex, drugs, rock, and roll. The woman of wifish disposition posited the possibility that the recently accelerated had been spending too much time at the office and had become despondent over not finding any recreational activities sufficiently stimulating to engage his interest. The servant was of the mind that the bounceless one had become something of a 12-hour man and was reduced to staring at things in his spare time, thinking things things things things as he did so.

New paragraph. But the deceased told a different story, one of love and hatred, fame and fortune, sound and fury, signifying nothing.

We dispatched a coroner to dispose of the fleshy remains and summoned a psychiatrist to attend to the emotional difficulties of the survivors of the one who didn't survive. Following a small discussion, funeral arrangements, and paperwork for our office, we left the crime scene in hot pursuit of a lead. Unfortunately, it was a red herring, and was of little help in solving the case.

The case is closed. The autopsy proved that the victim was dead. The death certificate is to read death by suicide, on September 31, this year of our lord. And due to the constitution and the amendments, the certificate will also read this year of our congress.

Officers Wesson and Smith.

***

I'm the angry girlfriend he never knew he had, oh why did he have to do it? I would have been pregnant with his child if he had only lived and he had known I loved him, had known me, had had sex with me, had I forgotten the pill and the diaphragm and if he had forgotten to wear a rubber condom trojan, and maybe he had broken one? Our child would have grown up without a father if he had not done this and then done this, oh what a wicked cruel man, why did I ever love him? If he had only lived, then he would have loved me, and how could he have loved me and still have done this to me? And his child? Now the child he never knew he never had will never grow up, and will have to live with the knowledge that his father was a dead man, who never knew his mother, the child will have to look life in the eye and will only be able to say, if I had been born and my father had known me and killed himself anyway, at least I can say he was a man even unto his death, sprinting off the roof with all the force and speed of the only man who could have produced a child like me if he had and then had done it anyway.

Oh, what will I do, now that what never was will never be again? Ours was a love so pure, so clean, so perfect, even I didn't know we had it until he killed himself and I realized we never did. And his poor wife, living with the fact that if her husband hadn't killed himself, he would have killed himself over me and his unborn child. And his poor son, living without the half-brother that if his father hadn't of killed himself he would have abandoned with him by killing himself. Oh, it breaks your heart.

I would have remembered dinner at the diner, dancing at the dance hall, walking in the park, going to the opera. Oh, we would have had wonderfully mediocre sex, would have had wonderfully groomed pets. How could he abandon the pets he never had? And me- after the museum where we mused on art, and the Y, where we would have volunteered if he hadn't of killed himself and then killed himself.

I am distraught and will never love another man like I would have loved him. I would have had to go on with my life, and now I have to go on with my life without having had to go on with my life. Suicide is so selfish, why couldn't he have thought about the people he would have had to think about if he hadn't done it? So selfish. I hate him. I hate the fact that I would have loved him enough to hate him if he hadn't done it and then done it. But I will survive. As long as I know how to love I know I'll be alive. I've got all my life to live I've got all my love to give I will survive, I will survive.

I won't kill myself myself, because two wrongs don't make a right, because if he hadn't of killed himself and had killed himself because of me I wouldn't have killed myself. And If I kill myself I won't have been able to have not killed myself because he killed himself for not having killed himself, and four wrongs don't make a right, not even two.

***

BUSINESS MAN KILLS HIMSELF TO DEATH

Widows his wife and son and a servant

Knight-Rider news service

Sanfran Cisco, Califor: Steven the famous business man leapt to his death today, killing himself on the flagstones of his driveway which runs in front of his beautiful palatial homestead from which he threw himself today, dying.

He was only 48.

In the 373,981 recorded suicides, Steven's is unique in that he did not stand for a long time on his roof, but ran as fast as possible to the edge of his gigantic house before plunging three stories down to his death.

What drives a successful business man to kill himself in this way, via suicide? This just in- sources say that Steven may have been working so hard that his brain was so numb that he had to kill himself.

It's the way of all businessmen.

Especially famous ones.

Like Steven.

Steven was and still is survived by his wife and his son and a servant, and sources allege he may have never had a girlfriend. In an anonymous statement, his wife was heard to have said, I loved him like only a wife could. He was my husband, my partner, and my friend. I will miss him dearly. I will never marry another man. I will raise our son as if Steven was still alive, as if he could see his father everyday as a walking around the house person and not as a fading chalk outline on our driveway where he likes to rollerblade but only if he doesn't have homework because Steven wanted his son to be raised intelligent.

Steven left no suicide [continued page A-7, column four, middle]

[A-7, column four, middle]

BUSINESS MAN'S DEATH A TRAGEDY

(continued from A-1)

note.