Top Of The World

Michael Cibeno

May 1989. Based on a true story. (But really, aren’t they all?)

I knew I shouldn’t, but my friends could be very convincing. As a sort of pre-graduation celebration, they decided we should ditch school and drive down to the shore. I’m sure it was Emil who came up with the idea. We called him “Katt” on account of his last name, Kattermann. It suited him perfectly because he had a certain feline quality of somehow always getting his way. “C’mon, Mikey,” he purred as I wedged myself into the passenger seat of his cherry red Pontiac Fiero. “It’s too gorgeous a day to be sitting in classes.” I really couldn’t argue with that.

We met up with the others in the parking lot of the A&P supermarket. Wayne was already there, leaning against the hood of his silver Mercury LN7. We called him “Dicky” on account of his middle name being Richard. He was sporting his Maverick look with brown leather jacket and aviator sunglasses. A minute later, Todd came screeching in. At six and half feet tall, he possessed no quality that could be described as subtle. Changes by Yes blared from his white Nissan 200SX. As you’ve perhaps ascertained, my friends had in common a penchant for second-rate sports cars. And we all had our nicknames. Todd’s was “Wacky,” which was bestowed after Katt once walked in on him jerking… Well, never mind, you don’t need to hear that. The guys called me “Spanky” (but for reasons totally unrelated to Wacky’s moniker).

So the four of us headed out of the county and toward the nearest entrance to the Garden State Parkway. I stayed in Katt’s car, while Dicky jumped into Wacky’s. (Dicky wanted to drive, but Wacky complained the LN7 didn’t have enough room for his giraffe legs.) Nowadays, I suspect it’s hard for kids to cut school. It seems every absence triggers a call or text to whomever is listed as next of kin. But back then, I don’t think schools were quite as vigilant.

We made it to the beach and Wacky opened up the Nissan’s hatch to reveal a styrofoam cooler filled with a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon (in cans). On account of his size, he was almost always able to buy beer from a local bar whose owner wasn’t overly concerned about checking IDs. A lot of things were different back then. None of us had really eaten breakfast, so the beers went to our heads pretty quickly. We were having a grand old time throwing a Frisbee, and feeling quite superior to all our classmates stuck in a big brick building on this glorious summerlike day. Until the police showed up.

Boy, were my parents pissed. The fact that my own dad was a cop didn’t really make things any easier. Well, maybe it did because when the officer who busted us found out who my father was, he called all our parents and no charges were pressed. Still, we had to serve a week of detention at school, and I was grounded for a month. I tried to pass the time reading or figuring out keyboard riffs on my little Casio CZ-101. At about 9PM on a Friday night, I was working on the main riff from Van Halen’s Jump when the phone in my room rang. (I was allowed to have a separate phone line so that I could use the modem on my Commodore 64 without tying up the house’s main line.) “Hallo. Is dis Michael?” I immediately

recognized the accented voice. Her name was Mariette. She was one of a group of Swedish girls who came to work as au pairs for the summer. I met her just the weekend before at a bonfire party at Katt’s house. I have to say I was smitten from the moment I saw her. The light from the fire reflected off her waist-long blonde hair, and her Nordic silhouette appeared to me like something from a piece of art. She smiled when we made eye contact, and we ended up talking for a while. I had given her my number as a friendly gesture, hoping for more but not really expecting anything.

“Hi, Mariette, how are you?”

“I’m great! But actually, to tell the truth, I’m a little bit sad because, you know, we are free tonight but we really have nothing to do. Would you like to spend some time, and we do something together?” The cadence of her accent was like singing. It was mesmerizing and I loved the sound of it.

“I’m sorry, did you say ‘we’?”

“Well, yes, me and Marie.” I remembered she had arrived at the bonfire with an attractive darker haired girl. I also remembered something else in that moment – the fact that I was grounded. And there I was with a chance to go out with two beautiful girls from Europe. That was a pretty rare opportunity in little Sussex County back in those days. I imagined boasting about it to my friends afterwards. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell this girl that I’d been grounded. She’d surely call someone else who wasn’t under house arrest, and the thought of that was unbearable.

“I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

I opened my bedroom door just a crack and peered down the darkened hallway. I could tell the light in my parents’ room was off. Dad had just come off a double shift from work, so they had both gone to bed early. I checked myself quickly in the mirror. Ideally, I would have taken a shower and had a change of clothes. But that would have made too much noise, and anyway the clock was ticking. I arranged my pillows beneath the blanket to sort of appear like a body was in there. (I didn’t have the Ferris Bueller crash test dummy setup, but this would have to do.) I descended the staircase gingerly to the ground floor, making sure to avoid all the creaky spots.

Releasing the emergency brake and putting it into neutral, I rolled my powder blue Dodge Colt to the bottom of the driveway, and as far from the house as I could push it before starting it up. This sort of maneuver was one of the benefits of having manual transmission, which my father had not so patiently taught me to drive. I checked my rear view mirror until the house was no longer visible. No lights came on, so I figured my escape had gone undetected.

Mariette greeted me when I arrived at the front door of her host family’s house. I was

nervous about my status as an escapee, but her smile made that dissolve. She gave me an unexpected hug and a kiss on the cheek. Her friend, Marie, appeared from behind and asked, “So, where are we going?”

That was a good question. My friends were all out on their own dates. (Their parents apparently had not doled out punishments as severe as mine.) I blurted out the only thing that came to mind. “Would you girls like to go see a movie?”

The girls looked at each other, tilted their heads slightly, and frowned. “We are feeling very much energy,” explained Mariette. “Maybe a place we can dance, yes?”

Discos may abound in Sweden, but the only place to dance on a Friday night in our neck of the woods was a rednecky joint called The Hayloft. I wasn’t sure I wanted to bring the girls there. I thought out loud, “There really isn’t a lot to choose from outside of the city…”

The girls lit up. “Ooh, the city! We have not yet seen. Could you take us?”

I felt my anxiety return. It was one thing to sneak out of the house to visit a girl fifteen minutes away. Driving into the city was a whole ‘nother ball of wax. My friends and I had been on several occasions, but I’d never done the driving. We didn’t have electronic navigation devices back then, so I knew I’d have to rely on signs and my wits. The rational part of me wanted to tell the girls I’d be happy to escort them into the city some other time, but that this particular evening was not ideal. But they were beaming with excitement, and I didn’t want to be the one to deflate it. And I had this feeling that any chance of getting closer to Mariette hinged upon this moment.

“All right, ladies, the city it is.”

The drive wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, but I admit I was apprehensive about getting lost. I knew I had to take I-80 East to I-280 East, and then follow the signs for the Holland Tunnel. Sounds easy enough, but I was notorious for getting confused by signs, merging lanes, and all the other variables that were not part of my everyday countryside driving experience. But I did my best to play it cool in front of the girls, who had been chatting away in their native tongue most of the trip.

I breathed a sigh of relief when we reached the toll booths for the tunnel, but got jittery again when it spit us out into the city. Thankfully I didn’t have to navigate the busy streets for too long before finding a parking garage. (And thankfully my wallet was stuffed with a sufficient supply of cash from my weekend job bussing tables at a local restaurant.) I pulled up the emergency brake, turned off the car’s engine, and turned to my passengers. “Alright, girls, here we are.”

They were wide-eyed with excitement as we made our way out to the street. Marie asked, “So, where are we going?” As with the previous time she asked the same question, I really hadn’t a clue. We were all underage, so that severely limited our options. I became annoyed that my “land of the free” had such an unreasonable drinking age. Heck, I didn’t even need to drink – just to take these girls somewhere they could dance and have some fun.

Thankfully it was a pleasant evening with lots of people outside. We walked through Greenwich Village where there were street performers breakdancing on large sheets of cardboard, or banging on drum kits fashioned from various sized plastic buckets. Music blared from boomboxes mounted on human shoulders, and the pungent odor of weed occasionally wafted through the air. Now and then I wondered if anyone at home had discovered my absence. But at that moment I figured it was worth it – even if I got grounded for another month.

We walked through Washington Square Park and made our way down to Little Italy. Good thing the girls were wearing comfortable shoes. I figured they might like to get a cup of coffee. That seemed like a European thing to do, even this late in the evening. We found a little place with tables set up outside, so we stopped and each had an espresso with a cannoli. Then we continued down to Chinatown, which I thought the girls might find interesting. The streets there were fairly quiet but we could see through windows that the dim sum restaurants were still bustling. We’d covered a lot of ground, and I was about to ask the girls if they’d like to get a cab back to the car. Mariette looked up and pointed at something in the distance.

I immediately saw what had grabbed her attention. “Pretty tall, aren’t they?” Though I’d seen them many times before, they never failed to impress me. “You want to get a closer look?” The girls both nodded with blue eyes wide.

Though the buildings appeared close, they were actually several blocks away, and it took a while to reach them. When we finally did, we stood at the base of one and looked straight up. The tower was so tall that it created the dizzying illusion of arcing out over you. Marie actually stumbled backward a step. I reached out to catch her. Mariette laughed and said, “Oh, the view from up there must be amazing! Is it possible to go up?”

“Well,” I answered, “normally it would be.” I looked at my watch and saw that it was nearly 2AM. “But the observation deck closed hours ago.” Then an idea occurred to me. I led the girls to one of the adjacent buildings, known simply as “5 World Trade Center.” When I’d snuck out of my room five hours earlier, this was perhaps the last place I thought I’d

wind up. It was where my father worked. The Port Authority police desk was located in the basement of the building. I understood that word would get back to my father that I’d been here. I approached the desk with polite caution and addressed the officer with three stripes on his sleeve. “Hello, sergeant, I’m Michael Boyer, Lieutenant Boyer’s son and….”

He looked up from his paper. “You’re Boyer’s kid? You’re not looking for your old man, are you?”

“No, I know he’s not on duty. I just, well, these girls are visiting from Sweden and…” A couple of other nearby officers stopped whatever they were doing to check out my companions. “I know it’s closed, but they really wanted to see the view from up top, and I was hoping…”

“No problem, kid. Hang on a sec.” He grabbed a big walkie talkie and said something into it. A crackle came back followed by a tinny voice.

A minute later, another officer carrying a large ring of keys appeared. He motioned for us to follow him, and led us back outside the building toward the South Tower. He unlocked one of the thick glass and metal doors and let us inside. “We’re gonna use the service elevator,” he explained, as if it made any difference to us. At this point, the girls were rather giddy. They understood that we were receiving some special treatment. I must admit, though I was trying not to show it, I felt like a big shot. Sometimes having a cop for a dad was a pain. But sometimes it did have its benefits.

The elevator shot up and we could feel that it was moving fast. The girls put their hands to their tummies and giggled – all the way up the 110th floor. The officer, who had been quite reserved up to that point, gave a playful smile, leaned toward me, and said softly with a wink, “Nice job, kid.” We reached the top and the doors slid open. The officer pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and said, “I’m gonna hang out here. You guys go ahead and enjoy the view.”

As we walked out onto the terrace, the winds slapped at us from all directions. The girls’ long hair whipped about, and the sleeves of their blouses billowed. Even with the protective barrier all around the roof’s edge, still I felt a need to grab hold of something, as though the wind might lift us up and carry us out into the abyss. I recalled a story I’d once heard about how a coin tossed from up there would supposedly land with enough force to kill some poor unsuspecting passersby below. Someone had also once told me that, if you were able to jump from the top, the air currents would carry you several city blocks away, or into the Hudson River. That all may have been a bit far-fetched, but from up there anything seemed possible.

One of the girls shouted to be heard over the roar of the wind, “Oh, goodness, it is so beautiful!” They were holding hands and jumping around in circles. (They looked like little kids, but for the bouncing of their ample bosoms.) The sky was clear and, up here above the glow of the city, we could clearly see the clusters of stars against the canvas of night. A jetliner flew by and I could easily read the markings on its fin and fuselage. Down below, lights of traffic twinkled and danced while, upon the water, the oxidized copper green lady with the thorny crown and raised torch kept her perpetual vigil.

I felt something press against me from behind. I turned my head and saw it was Mariette, who had wrapped her arms around my waist. Her body felt warm and soft, and I savored the sensation for several moments before turning to face her. Without hesitation or awkwardness, she kissed me.

We stood there and held each other for a while. At one point, I thought I felt the building sway slightly. I remembered my dad once told me skyscrapers were designed to do that. I thought that perhaps, in some ways, I was like those towers. Though the winds of life and change might cause me to reel and falter at times, I would never collapse as long as I stood firm upon my foundations.

Marie appeared from around the corner. “Hey, are you two lovers going to stay up here all night?” The three of us then proceeded to run around the perimeter of the roof like little kids on a playground. It felt like the joy of those moments would last forever.

Michael Thomas Cibeno is a language educator who formerly lived in Japan, and now resides in northwest New Jersey. His first novel, Masaru, is currently available, and he is now working on a collection of short stories from the 1980s.