The Penthouse

by Timothy Singratsomboune

part 1

Waves of light poured in through the massive window, bouncing off the seven-layered chandelier like droplets of rain. The chandelier’s sparks were as lovely as they were many, but were not bright enough to light up the massive penthouse parlor below.

The 12-foot windows allowed much of the night’s vivid city light into the pavilion-sized room, but I could only see several objects in the dark around me. One diamond encrusted sword whose diamonds never caught much light. Two naga-wrapped vases filled with fine lacquered fruits that were never to be eaten. And three massive gold frames on the wall which enshrined paintings that I couldn’t quite see nor remember.

I walked over to one of the vases and studied its faintly visible features. Like rolling flames, the scales of the naga were carved with such vivid detail that they looked as if they would reach out and burn you. Equally as hot was the monster’s golden hue, which I could appreciate even in the dim lighting. As my eyes scanned the top of the vase, my hand reached itself out to cup a bunch of lacquered plums that hung out of the antique’s opening.

“Fake,” I told myself the obvious. Still, I cupped the unnaturally smooth fruit for a moment. The sour balls were never my preference, but something about holding those rare plums made me feel a small thrill.

As I held the inedible delicacies in my hand, a shadowy figure pulled at my peripheral gaze until I turned my head. It was the silhouette of a man on the couch in front of the great window. The incoming gold and wine-colored glow from the city separated his dark figure from the room’s black expanse with only a faint outline.

I scoffed with a slight smirk. No lack of lighting could hide Niccolo’s frame from me. Something about that man’s brashly broad-shouldered but angrily petite physique always alerted my senses. Especially when he sat upon that couch. That gold-embroidered, velvet couch was far too decadent for Niccolo not to sit upon it; otherwise, I would have thought he was standing. That’s just how high he held his chin.

“You’re fortunate that I know your footsteps, Sylvio,” he said to me, as I began walking toward him. “You know how I like to handle miscreants intruding into my private quarters.”

“Regal jargon isn’t your forte,” I responded.

Niccolo chuckled. “Okay, then. You know how I like to handle goons when they try to do something stupid.”

“You know you’d never hurt me.” I said, stopping and folding my arms.

“Yeah, I do know that. You’re so cocky.”

Even with his back turned, I could tell Niccolo was smiling. His sharp teeth were probably sparkling in tune with the chandelier.

“But,” Niccolo continued, “I don’t know why you’d tempt fate. You’re lurking around in the dark like you weren’t raised with any sense.”

I raised my eyebrows at him and waited a beat before replying. “Why are you sitting here in the dark, anyway?”

“Because,” Niccolo said, reaching over to grab a candle and lighter, “it makes the view more cinematic.” He lit the candle and set it down, but its amber light was barely noticeable compared to the energy emanating from his body. “Now come sit down already.”

I took several miniature paces toward Niccolo, smoothing out my silk robe as I moved. Walking past marble pillars that were carved into rearing elephants, I felt so small on my way to him. This feeling was especially poignant as I stepped onto a rug so thick that I felt my feet pressing its gold embroidery into the deepest layers of thread that lay below.

“I don’t know why you won’t rearrange this place, though,” I said, winding around more of the penthouse’s hand-carved furnishings. “So much stuff to trip over. Everything’s too expensive to leave to chance, you know.”

Niccolo didn’t say anything, but I assumed he was still smiling.

As I sat down next to that high-chinned man, my eyes scanned his whole figure from foot to crown. The raised peaks of Niccolo’s cheekbones shone like the river on a sunny day, even though I logically expected them to be cast with shadows. That was because the only noticeable light in the room came from the city 150 meters below us.

Defying even more logic, his bronze-kissed skin and his wine-colored robe seemed to illuminate themselves. Finishing off his daring ensemble was Niccolo’s all-black, sharply tapered suit that anchored his appearance with a storminess that matched his aura.

Niccolo crooked his grin in my direction then pointed his chin out toward the window. “Don’t look at me. Look at that.”

I didn’t turn my head away from him. “You know,” I started, crossing my arms again, “we should probably talk about what to do with this giant penthouse.”

“Sylvio,” he said, “please just watch this with me.”

Smirking, I turned my gaze toward the horizon-width window and stared out at the city. The shock from what I saw sent a small jolt throughout my body. I would have guessed the sight to be an outlandish video game, just like the ones that Niccolo would play on our state-of-the-art window-screen system.

But it wasn’t. The city I was watching pulsated with a realness that no software developer could ever recreate.

Down in the thoroughfare below our penthouse, thousands of people poured over each other like coins falling into a treasure chest. Some threw confetti, some shot fireworks, and some sprayed liquor from brown and green glass bottles. Several bands of burly men were carrying banners with Niccolo’s face painted on them, mountainous cheekbones and all.

The riverside roadway that ran next to our high-rise looked surreal in that moment. The drab cement was holding up masses of elated and galloping people instead of the usual masses of deflated and commuting machines. I couldn’t hear anything from the rallying crowds that roared so far beneath our velvet couch, but I knew that they were chanting their unwavering loyalty to Niccolo’s once-vigilante armies.

A wave of thoughts sparked into my mind, and I smiled in amusement. Only a few decades prior, the world’s decaying superpowers were arguing over their decaying nuclear weapons. Not anymore. Waves of conflicting nationalisms — and several other ism’s — had ripped apart all of these overly armed nations, pushing corporate overlords to become regional warlords. Clamoring for remnants of the decayed superpowers, these warlords brought together hordes of swords-for-hire who funneled into their armies in hopes of survival and plunder.

History had come to show that only the boldest were able to get a bite of the overcooked, chewed-up and spat-out pieces of the world’s former empires. Niccolo proved that he had a seat among the boldest. The evidence was visible in the several thousand plumes of street dust that his supporters’ reveling feet kicked up into the city’s atmosphere. The fine, shoe-stomped dust hung over the crowd as they celebrated, but it could not obscure the passion and absurdity of the spectacle below. At least not when viewed from 150 meters above.

I couldn’t exactly remember which enemy Niccolo had overcome to spark this celebration, but I definitely knew that it was one that cemented his boldness. My memory was a little clouded, and I assumed that it was due to the storm of distracting visuals raging outside. There was no denying it, the festivities inspired feelings of sheer awe in me.

And in my feelings of sheer awe, I could have easily sat with my mouth ajar. But I knew that such a reaction would have Niccolo gloating. I surely wouldn’t allow him to cheapen this night with his ego just yet. Instead, I put my arm around him and pulled him closer, using my other hand to hold his. Our bronze fingers wove together on that couch, shining in the light of flares, torches, and cellphones that wove together below.

Despite the rich radiance that seemed to glow from the crowd, the spectacle also displayed a concerted plainness. The matte gray shirts and matte gray slacks of the crowd added a dense weight to the celebration’s overwhelming vibrancy. This gave the extravagant spectacle just enough dullness to be watched without squinting. Bearing only a small patch of regional embroidery, the Spartan gray outfits remained accessible to every layer of the city’s war-wearied society. The presence of the outfit gave our one-night-only celebration an air of every-other-day.

“It’s ours,” Niccolo said to me, now holding me tight. “It’s all ours.”

I didn’t say anything, but I did rub my fingers against his. The masses below us swirled with such energy that I was certain a few of the revelers would dance all the way up to our window. Through this commotion, I could barely see the ever-present smoke from the factories immediately across the river. Tonight the smoke blew away from us, undoubtedly pushed back by the gusts of thousands of voices chanting.

Powerful as it was, the whirlwind outside did nothing to disturb the snug, toasty, sandalwood-scented air of our penthouse. Niccolo’s warm and comforting body harmonized with our apartment’s atmosphere as he stared down at the masses. My fingers, caressing him gently, meandered slowly down the silky smoothness of his relaxed muscles. Fully enveloped in Niccolo’s aura, I drank in the fact that I was wrapped in the arms of one of the world’s great powers. And in turn, he was wrapped in mine. The two of us were like a single star, with our followers swirling around us distantly like an asteroid belt.

Suddenly, all of my feelings of contentment began rapidly contorting into a tightness in the back of my neck. This pain began sprouting as I watched something like a wall form in the swirling energy of the crowd, breaking the revelers’ rhythm. I watched a cadre of men charge like bulls in a straight line through the exact middle of the mayhem, with their feet kicking up far more dust than anyone else’s. Something about the anger in their distant faces tinged with excitement made me feel like their dust-kicking feet were galloping against my spine.

My hold of Niccolo went from one of soft caressing to one of sharp clenching. Instantly, I could feel the stark contrast between his disposition and mine, but I didn’t move away from him. Continuing to watch nervously, I gritted my teeth as the line of bullish men marched into the open area. They were dragging something along the ground.

Rather, they were dragging someone along the ground.

“Your hands feel like claws,” Niccolo said to me.

“What’s going on down there?” I replied, half to Niccolo, half to myself.

Niccolo kept his gaze outside. “You know the customs of the masses.” He rubbed my arm slowly. “They always pick one.”

I leapt up to my feet. “Pick one what? What are they doing?”

“You know the customs of the masses, Sylvio.”

Turning my head away from both him and the window, I jerked Niccolo’s arms off of me and walked to the other side of the room. As I paced back and forth in the dark, my head started to feel dense, like it was being squeezed tightly in the newly heavy air.

“Customs?” I barely managed to whimper.

“The men, they...” Niccolo’s voice started to trail off.

“They what?” I snapped, turning back to look at him.

“They pick, they pick a man who, who lives, well, a different lifestyle.”

I turned around. The images of our city’s history flowed into my mind as if they had been injected by a sharp syringe. A sense of unfamiliarity carved deep ridges of confusion and fear into my forehead as a mental slideshow played rapidly. Ropes. Guns. Tears. The walls of the city collapsing. Men pointing their fingers at other men. Men forcing men to kneel before them. Men forcing men to stay kneeling.

“They’re lynching a man like us!” I spewed the words out like a poison. “You demon! They caught them a sissy! A broken-wristed punk that acts too much like a lady, huh?!”

“Sylvio,” Niccolo replied to me in a dry tone that I placed as neither stern nor disengaged.

“How?” I asked, before he could say anything else. “How can you hold me close while looking out at that?”

Niccolo looked down toward the floor. “There are just some things we have to accept if we want to keep our position of power. In this unstable world, our men think that real men need to fight. If the crowd can make a sacrifice of a man that can’t fight, well, then the crowd thinks it can pre-emptively... well, never mind.”

My head went from feeling tense to feeling tense and hot.

Niccolo sighed. “Svlvio, if we want to keep this lifestyle, we—”

“No,” I said in a cold tone. My head was still heating up as I spoke though, causing beads of sweat to bud on my forehead like the overgrown roses in the penthouse’s rooftop gardens. “You’re trampling on our own people so you can have some power.”

“It’s not about the power,” Niccolo said with the raised tone of defensiveness, pulling on his silk robe. “It’s about the mission. We just have to keep the people focused on the mission at hand. We can deal with this other issue of theirs later. It’s not like they’d ever do anything that barbaric to us. They just want us to allow them their traditions.”

“We’re supposed to allow this?!” I yelled at him. “You’re so full of it, you egomaniac!” My heavy gold necklace started stinging me as my anger rose, and a small part of me wondered if my rising temperature could melt the gawdy accessory.

“You think this is all for me?” Niccolo scoffed. “This is for both of us! You and me. So we can have a chance to change this doomed world! Everything outside, it’s just... a cost we need to budget for.”

I charged back over to the couch and stood before him. “Don’t you dare say any of that to me!”

“It’s the truth!” Niccolo shouted back.

“No, Niccolo,” I said, certain that the heat and heaviness around my head was going to fracture my skull. “The banners of your face are barely worth the paper they’re smeared on. They’re definitely not worth some bigoted blood sacrifice!”

Niccolo looked at me with a lifted nose of disdain. “Flashing your silk robe around like that, it really makes you seem intimidating. Maybe you can wave your hands around and really show off all those diamond rings.”

“You don’t know anything!” I growled.

With another growl, I grabbed my heavy gold necklace and violently slammed my hand onto its elephant-shaped charm. I felt a sharp pain in my temples and thought the heat of my anger might burst my head open.

Proceed to part 2...