Joan (the seven-year-old version, technically "Joan, Jr.", named after his father in the old and embarrassing tradition of a family name) felt the stiffness in his backside when he leapt from his mahogany sleigh bed to his rich leather chair. He felt this stiffness travel when he unintentionally missed the chair and landed on the floor of his million-dollar penthouse. His family’s million-dollar penthouse, overlooking all the poorer or equally wealthy folk of New York City - none were wealthier. Joan knew that no one was wealthier than Mommy and Daddy. Joan wasn’t shy about it, either. One time he told me on the elevator, the same elevator we rode together this morning. He told me that Mommy and Daddy owned me. “Me?”, I said to him, “I don’t think that’s correct, Joan.” He looked content as he left the elevator and entered the frigid concrete world, where everything was certain – he knew everything was certain.
But certainty began to crash, more like the Titanic than consistent ocean waves, at the precise moment Little Joanie leapt from his bed to his chair and landed on his face. Little Joanie’s poor face, I thought when I heard the thud from below. I ought to go inspect his poor tiny face, maybe squeeze it like my orange juice maker squeezes my fresh Florida oranges early each morning.
I knew what the sound was because his mother told me at the exact moment it happened, filling in the details later. And she was certain of what that million-dollar thud was right then, because Joan had a habit of leaping from his bed to his chair, to and fro, over and over, while listening to his favorite Miles Davis tune on repeat. He did this every night when he had finished his homework, his mother told me. It’s probably a power thing, I thought – he thinks he can fly or something. Well, he can’t, I thought satisfactorily as Joanie’s mother grew more concerned about his fall, letting me know that he had never before fallen like this, that she knew it would happen eventually. The wrinkles on her face deepened into unattractive canyons, geographic features that hopefully were never photographed, for my sake. I looked away from the wrinkles for fear that they would live in my memory every time I so much as glanced at her, never mind how I knew they would decrease her appeal as I held her gaze for hours as she held mine, too.
She tilted her head back to stare at the crystal chandelier on my ceiling, the one that had been shaking just a few moments ago as we rocked my King-sized bed, heating up the Egyptian cotton sheets that I’d put on my bed especially for her.
Now the chandelier rocked with the vibrations of the massive earthquake that was Little Joanie’s fall from grace, one that I had a feeling would cause irreparable damage. And it would.
Joanie’s mother quickly dressed in her champagne-hued cocktail dress, its silk under-layer wrinkling up to above her panties. She fixed it quickly and ran out of the room, pulling her appearance together and smoothing all her wrinkles and defeating the cardiac challenge of the stairs faster than an Olympic runner, or so it had seemed to me at the time. I wanted her to be back in my bed, but I knew she would not be until the next monthly party in our boss’s penthouse, which was directly above both of ours.
So I went back to bed and pleasured myself with thoughts of Joanie’s falling onto the freezing cold floor, that dark wooden floor. The next time I saw him on the elevator ride was this morning - I was going up to my penthouse after a quick deli run. He was going down for a brisk morning stroll, and he said nothing. And I was assured, this time, of one gargantuan truth; Little Old Joanie was certain of nothing but the fact that he was going down, his only advancement being toward the icy cement crowds that awaited him at the end of the ride.