The basement window was revealed first as the fog lifted. The grime-covered glass looked directly out onto the litter of tangled streamers and soggy straw wrappers on the city sidewalk.  Mr. Carson sat inside, the torn leather of his artist’s stool pressing against the back of his leg as he leaned forward to peer through the circle of clear glass. He maintained his precious circle each night at 5 p.m. with a bottle of Windex and a torn t-shirt.  His slim form slumped over the table pressed against the wall, and he was heavy with the fatigue of a night spent locked in position, watching high heels and polished leather loafers stride past his window, unaware of his presence down below. There had been a party the night before, and he had been able to hear the music through the floorboards, and besides that could see it in the rhythm of the shoes as the ankles pulled them along. The spillout from the party had milled in the street as the night wore on, and the shoes began to stumble and bang against the curb more and more. Once an oversized pair of black business shoes had pressed two thin high heels flush against the window, and the backs of the heels had rubbed small ovals in the layer of street dust, so close to Mr. Carson’s face that he could see the individual ridges of her ankles.

As the pairs of shoes drifted away in groups of twos and threes and the music above faded to a dull vibration on the glass that shook his forehead as it rested there, Mr. Carson began to hear the faint whistle of air past a dress that was only audible once the party was over. He’d had years of living in the semi-darkness and learning the signs, years enough to know what was coming. He craned his neck to see her, and saw her hair whipping back under the red glow of the rising sun. He studied her face for a moment and knew that she knew she was too late. His moustache sagged under the weight of that knowledge, and he looked away when she crumpled to the ground, blood pooling around her head and adding another rust colored stain to the sidewalk. He sighed as he surveyed the damage. There was a lot of blood, but if he got there quickly it might not soak into the sidewalk too much. She looked dainty enough that he could carry her out without help, but the limbs would sag in his arms and he wasn’t looking forward to feeling her lifelessness without the comfort of another living, breathing human by his side.

Mr. Carson ascended the short stairwell feeling the years hanging around his ankles like weights. He could imagine that this girl had once been young and beautiful, like all of them. Not so beautiful as his, though, of that he was sure. He’d never, in all his time there, seen another girl so beautiful as his daughter, the first one he’d carried bridal style away from the busy city sidewalk. His own daughter’s jump had been the first he’d seen and the one that made it impossible for him to spend more than a night away from the building where it had happened, drawn there and trapped like a fly in a web. The nights since that one had slid through his fingers like soap and paled to inconsequence in his mind in comparison with the one that had divided his timeline in two halves: before, and after. He remembered the first time he had climbed the staircase, his hip twanging with its first pain, not aching with the persistence with which he had since become accustomed, which he felt now as he reached the side door at the top of the stairs.

The side door opened out onto the street next to the body. A few passersby threaded their ways around her outspread arms, stepping carefully over the hair that fanned out behind her head and avoiding getting any traces of blood on their work shoes. Her hair swung loosely over the back of his arm as he lifted her, and a spot of red spread over the grey fabric of his t-shirt.

 She was still warm. He almost imagined he could have felt her pulse still beating in her wrist if he checked, and remembered the time he had done so, had rocked unbelieving over the body with his finger pressed hard, too hard, against her skin, feeling for any movement within her veins. The only girl whose death he hadn’t been able to accept even as she lay in her old bed for days without moving, slowly beginning to make the apartment stink until he had to open the windows to the icy winter air and shiver in sweaters too baggy for his rapidly shrinking frame. He’d lived there with her for three days, three miserable days without food or heat, before he’d left, gone back to the building where she’d jumped, the building she’d unconsciously chosen as his next home, and immediately bought the basement space for sale. He couldn’t bear the thought of a funeral for her, not his little girl, so he’d paid a man to take care of what he’d left behind at the apartment. He still regretted that he hadn’t had the strength to face it, and had tried to make up for it by walking unflinching up to every girl since then.

 And he hadn’t flinched, not until he saw the blue eyes that stared up at him with such intensity even in death, the same pale milky blue eyes his daughter had. He stumbled against the curb, barely registering the curious glances in his direction. They probably thought he was drunk. Drunk and trying to move a body. One hand moved without orders, drifted to her face to press her eyelids closed, then fell back to support her weight. He dragged her to the door, propped it open with his hip, then pulled her through after him. The door clanged shut with a metallic bang that left him stumbling through the near darkness again.