Page 67 of Crash and Burn

"Ihave to admit, I'm a little sketched out right now," I told Grant.

He held out his hand for me to take as he crouched on the stairs of a rusty, rickety fire escape.

"Are you sure that thing won't collapse out from underneath us?" I asked skeptically from my position on the ground, both feet planted firmly on the pavement of a dark alley.

"It'll be fine," he replied. "I've been up here a bunch of times."

"And you think it will hold both our weight?"

"Are you chicken?" Grant teased.

"I just don't want to die at the tender age of twenty-two falling from a fire escape, thank you very much."

"I guarantee you, it's sturdy," he said. "Come on, take my hand."

With a sigh, I put my hand in his and let him hoist me onto the first rung. The metal ladder swayed dangerously and I used my other hand to clutch at the railing with a white-knuckled fist.

"This better be worth it," I muttered.

"It will be, I promise," Grant said.

Slowly, with tentative steps, I climbed the ladder up the side of the low-rise brick building until we reached the top step and landed on the roof.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Grant asked as he looked out on the city. Neon lights from flashing billboards and spotlights from nightclubs illuminated the skyline, blotting out the stars.

"Light pollution sure is grand," I said.

Grant tipped his head at me.

"It's not that." With two hands on my shoulders he guided me to the side until we were facing a brand new building that I knew had recently finished construction.

"That," he said, pointing to the building's angled facade. "See the way the roof juts out like that? The way the sharp corners seem to point upward to the stars?" He turned me a few inches to the left. "And see how the windows of that one floor are made of green material that's different from the rest of the building? It looks like a garden in the middle of a high rise."

"I guess," I said doubtfully. "To me it looks like the person who designed the building had never seen one before and was going off a three-year-old child's crayon drawing."

"Exactly," Grant said emphatically.

His hands left my shoulders to rummage around in the camera bag slung around his shoulders. He took out a camera and began snapping away.

"It's like nothing else," he said from behind his camera. "It's unique. It stands out. That's what I love about it."

I took another look at the building, trying to see it from Grant's point of view. It was pretty odd looking. Unique was a good word for it. It was true I'd never seen a building like this one before.

"This architect is well-known for these kind of designs," Grant continued. "None of his works ever look the same. They all have that special something that makes them unique."

He lowered the camera and stared down into the viewer screen.

"See, look." He beckoned for me to look at the screen with him.

As he flicked through the set of photos, I saw that this building wasn't the only one he'd photographed. There were pictures of half a dozen other buildings. All of them had at least one unique aspect to them, although most of the others weren't as weird as this one.

"Is this what your project is about?" I asked. "You're taking photos of buildings?"

"I'm taking photos of unique structures," he corrected. "I want people to see the world from a different angle. I want people to look at things in a different way." He gazed out at the horizon with a contemplative look on his face. "Something as mundane as the roof of a high rise can be so beautiful."

My throat closed up at his wistful expression. Grant really did have an artist's soul.

"Let's take a photo," he said.