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The weak elevator rambles under John’s weight despite his scrawny figure.
He reaches for his ringing phone but with little haste. It sings a quiet melody, greatly overshadowed by an upbeat voice: an AD, and he would have to hear the full thing play out before he could answer the call. Marketing strategies have gotten so cryptic these days, buzzing about strange and twisted conglomerates of things that used to be distinct, once; now only a part of 12-in-one products that you just couldn’t live without. You wouldn’t understand what they were trying to sell, even if you tried.
No one really listens to them, least of all John. And hardly anyone has the patience to keep ringing until the AD was over. Mostly people rang for a few seconds then shot a text, if they called at all.
Not David though.
The AD sings its little outro just as John steps out of the elevator and sees David’s name shines brightly on the screen.
A crooked smile spreads across John’s face.
“John?” David’s voice comes tentatively.
“David.”
Outside the dark building, everything is fast, sharp, bright. Everywhere John looks, there is a billboard. Machinery and people are hard to differentiate as they pass by, all bleeding into dull, faceless crowds against a sea of skyscrapers so tall they hide the sky.
But there is calm against the constant wave of movement. There is David.
“You’re off work?” he asks. He sounds… Excited. John can practically see David ruffling his bright brown hair, a nervous habit of his.
“Yeah, I just left.”
“You’re heading home, then?”
“That’s typically what I do.” John raises his eyebrows with amusement at nothing in particular, trying to ignore the timer ticking on his phone until the next AD would interrupt their call.
“Right, right...”
John lets the silence sit for a minute as he takes off his dark blue suit jacket and hangs it over his shoulder, rummaging through his pocket.
“I have something to tell you,” David eventually whispers in a secretive tone.
“Do you, now?”
John pulls out a pack as he stops at the subway station. He’s always liked it here, a small space where everything is forced to a halt, where he could catch a minute glimpse of intricate lives watching the right people. A short collection of these moments would make for a rather amusing novel, he muses.
His attention is forced back to the white plastic of his cigarette pack, which glows orange with a message: SUBSCRIPTION FAILED TO RENEW. CONTACT 0054▵67..
He groans.
“I’m serious!”
“Right, what is it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
John knits his brows. He wants to point out that David is wasting time. That they are running out of time. That there is so little time. But this is how David is: leisurely.
“So you just called me to tell me that there’s something you can’t tell me?” John wouldn’t put it past him.
“No! I called you to tell you that you need to see it,” David says, seriously, then pleadingly adds, “For yourself– John, you need to see it.”
“Okay. Where are you?”
The phone starts audibly counting down the seconds, and the awaiting passengers eye him with annoyance. He cringes: a small apology.
“A rooftop.”
“What?”
“A rooftop. A tall building. It’s near M0138.”
“Do you have any idea how generic that is? David, why are you on the rooftop of a building you don’t know? How did you even–”
“Do you know that one MSJO billboard you really hate? I can see it really well from here,” David says with effort. He’s leaning over the roof.
“Fuck, don’t look down.”
“You’ll come over, right?”
The line cuts off. An AD. John stares blankly at the phone.
He switches trains urgently, looking for the fastest path to M0138. He would figure out the rest after.
David is strange, always has been. But this? Maybe he’s finally lost it. And John would soon follow for blindly playing along with David’s whims. But what else did he have in this world?
His food is moist cubes, his sleep fitful, his shifts long, every coworker a glowering mirror of the misery he avoids mirrors because of. He guarantees the ownership of nothing he has but his own slipping sanity. The world will not even remember him when he is gone.
But David, if anything, is a friend, if such a thing even exists anymore.
Cold wind bites into John’s skin as he runs on a narrow sidewalk, barely enough to fit a person. Five rows of traffic stand to his right, and all honk in disapproval. His phone plays AD after AD, and David does not answer.
John surveys an array of buildings desperately. Which? Which? Maybe he’d know if he just knew why.
He looks around, panting, and when he looks ahead, there is a billboard the size of a two story building. It has “MSJO” written in bright crayon colors. A few men in suits just like his are gathered around the logo, arms around each other and smiling brightly.
He looks behind him. Just another monotonic building but maybe his best shot.
He nears the glass door, and it immediately opens. He carefully steps into an office. Of course, it’s another office. It’s entirely dark, but as he walks in further, he sees a few lit cubicles with people sitting at them.
“Sorry,” he says instinctively. They do not even raise their heads to look at him, so he silently continues to the elevator. It’s where every other elevator always is, but it’s much more lavish than the one of his own workplace. The highest floors require a key card so he takes the one right under them then creeps his way over to the emergency staircase.
Panting at the very top, he finds the roof door budged open with a brick. Dragging it open enough to fit through is a hefty task.
It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the strobing, fluorescent lights outside again, but he immediately hears, “You actually found it! You smart bastard!”
When John sees David with his stout but soft figure, his crumpled shirt missing a few buttons while he remains smiling brightly, John’s relief and confusion is immediately replaced with triumph—quickly morphed into worried anger, and then once again, more confusion.
“Have you gone completely mad?”
“I think so.”
“I thought you were– What are you even– What is wrong with you?” John swings his arms, frustration spilling out of every movement.
“I need to show it to you,” is all David says before grabbing John’s hand and pulling him to the corner of the roof.
“No. No, why were you not answering?”
“John, look.” David points up.
“David.”
“Look.” He points urgently. “Please.”
He grumbles, turning his head up. And then, he pauses. There is a thin gap between the taller buildings, and where David is pointing, the gap is larger. The sky is a rich blue, deep and darker than the buildings around them—framing one lone, twinkling light.
“I saw one on my own company’s roof one night. I couldn’t see it any other night after though, and just, I couldn’t believe it. Maybe I’d imagined it. So I’ve been snooping around. The security of these companies isn’t so hard to bypass anyway. Not that I think they even try. Who would willingly go into such a place?”
John slowly trails his eyes back to David, still smiling all the way up to his tiny eyes, shimmering behind his squarish glasses. The sheen of their lenses reflects the light in the sky back at John.
“It’s a star,” David says with wonder.
“A star,” John repeats between held breaths.