The news report said that only two people had died, his mother – an old woman living in the same apartment for the last thirty years – and her son, the one responsible for her actually falling from the twenty-third floor balcony. As too many of those reports described, her son had not a few psychological problems and a couple of incidents with then law not more than a week ago. The whole ordeal was on the television in the bar I sat watching television in many times that week and in the weeks prior. It was a good bar with a good jukebox and people who didn’t bother you if you didn’t want to be bothered.

Nobody was bothering anyone that night as we all – all three of us – sat silent watching the eleven o’clock news to see for exactly what reason the man had forced his mother to fall all those floors. “Police were not speculating as to why tonight when asked by this reporter,” the woman before the camera said with a kind of forced passion while the cameraman used the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles as a suspenseful back drop to the story. They were giving me a headache but then I’d had a half dozen whiskey-soda’s so almost anything gave me a headache at that point.

“Grizzly,” Paul mumbled from behind the bar while he watched the scene that had become a favorite of the news’ that night. The man, the woman’s son, kept tossing furniture out his window and over the balcony looking like he was saying something. The video was either taken from a rooftop across the way or a hovering helicopter because there was no sound to speak of. The police or firefighters or whomever on the ground – presumably captured by another camera down there – frantically moved a giant air mattress back and forth then ducking out of the way of whatever debris might be in the air. The reporter explained that the police on the ground couldn’t tell from twenty-odd stories down what was junk and what was a person and had to cover all their bases “just-in-case.” We were mesmerized.

“I could never throw my mother off a building,” a shocked Paige said. She stood at the waitresses’ station propping her arm up on the bar as she smoked one of my Chesterfields. I smoked maybe a half pack a day but she usually took care of the other half. Paige was only five-three, maybe five-four depending on her shoes, and I looked at her trying to figure out what kind of person she could possibly wrestle off a building should she ever want to. Not to be mean, but it would have had to have been very small. “I could never,” she repeated.

“Don’t worry about it Paige,” Paul said with a smile. “Somehow I don’t think it’ll ever come up.” The jukebox started to play as it did when no one had programmed a song for a while and Paige went over to unplug it. As the sound died, the news showed how a police SWATT team attempted to cover his balcony with a kind of mesh to prevent any more furniture or whatever from being thrown over the side. The reporter explained that it was “an effort to protect him and others from himself.” Paul laughed and Paige smoked. Who really knew? We didn’t care. We were just watching to see the scene that came after.

“But how could he do it,” Paige asked still unable to believe that the news was telling the truth. “I mean, how?”

“The guy’s crazy,” I said. “He’s not right in the head. What you and I see as normal, this guy…” I lost track of my words. That guy, what? “I don’t know,” I said not sure of whether I was answering her or myself.

“Oh, wait wait,” Paul shouted as his favorite part came on. The man, the woman’s son, climbed out onto the net and around to the outside – perhaps to fight the police who kept him trapped inside, the reporter guessed, though we’d watched it enough times by now that our speculations were at least as good as hers – and started up the mesh. It was a very fine mesh. That is what we were told after. It was meant to keep people in and to prevent people from climbing on it like the guy did. So the police were understandably upset when the he showed Spiderman like qualities and scaled up to the next floor on the police issue webbing. We could see the police reading their guns for a possible confrontation when his foot slipped and he fell two feet. He would have fallen the whole way had he not grabbed onto a handhold as quickly as he did. It was amazing. Just like Spiderman.

The man, son of the woman who he had thrown so many floors just a few hours before, started climbing up again as two police officers offered their gloved hands to him. The picture switched to another camera on another roof that was zoomed in close to the Spidey’s face. He wore a scowl and was probably he was cursing like a sailor. The picture changed back to the first rooftop where it showed the man, almost in slow motion though the news wouldn’t use slow motion for journalistic reasons, loose his hand hold and start to reel backwards as he slipped down the side of the building.

The debris cam, the nickname Paul had given the one on the ground, showed the man falling and we could see that the reporter was right, he could have been mistaken for a broken lawn chair as he fell. It was pretty crazy. The network wouldn’t show the guy hitting the ground – though we were sure that had footage of it – but they played and replayed the image of him cart wheeling against the twilight sky, slowly growing larger as though the zoom focus on the camera was pulling him towards its viewers. Unlike all of the furniture they had succeeded in catching, the police missed the man and he ended up all over the sidewalk. We knew this because as the reporter spoke to the camera, behind the lights that gave me a headache, were whole spindles of police tape and not a few ambulances with their stretchers out and ready. Behind those, on the ground, was a large white sheet covering what we could only presume was left of the man.

“Another,” Paul asked fulfilling his duties and I looked at my empty whiskey glass and nodded. It disappeared and he wiped down the bar with a white towel he produced from his back pocket. Paige continued to stare at the screen even as she stamped out what remained of the butt I had given her. My watch said it was almost twelve and there was no one around that night. The cherry stained pine tables that populated the bar sat empty and clean.

My drink arrived and out of the small pile of singles I had on the bar I counted out six. It was late and I had work the next day. Paige watched me and cocked her head towards the door, her way of asking if she could stay over that night. Sure, I nodded back to her. That’d be nice.