The Helix stood like a wounded animal in the Manhattan skyline—88 floors of architectural hubris wrapped in glass that caught the sun at angles that blinded pilots and scorched nearby buildings. Six months after its grand opening, the tower remained sixty percent vacant, its corridors echoing with the footsteps of maintenance staff and the occasional lost delivery person. The developers had hoped for a modern landmark. Instead, they'd created the most expensive failure in New York real estate history.
Paulie Macaluso didn't care. To him, it was just another job, another building to clean, another place to be alone with his thoughts and the bottomless drop beneath his feet.
“Macaluso! MAC! You weren’t late again, were you? Mac! I know you’re up there—I can see you!" Miguel's voice crackled through the comm unit as Paulie secured his harness to the scaffold on the 46th floor. "Boss is getting tired of your dumb-ass excuses."
"Tell him to find someone else who'll dangle from this death trap for what they pay me. Or maybe you’d like to try it sometime! Get your little Puerto Rican ass up here! You wouldn’t last six hours!" Paulie replied, slightly slurred. His hands trembled as he checked the cables, a combination of last night's whiskey and this morning's hangover.
"Jesus, are you drunk? At eight o’clock in the friggin’ morning?"
“F**k off! I’m in recovery!" Paulie squinted against the morning sun. “You’re talking to the best window man this city's got. So kiss my ass!"
Miguel sighed. At twenty-six, he treated Paulie with reluctant respect and constant exasperation. “Listen, Mr. Kiss-My-Ass, I need you to be alert and ready this week! They're talking about replacing the glass on the upper floors. Something about defects in the design."
"Entire f*****g building's a defect," Paulie muttered.
He began his work—spray, wipe, squeegee—his body remembering the motions despite the protest of his sixty-three-year-old joints and the fog of alcohol. Below him, Manhattan pulsed with its usual indifference. Paulie had cleaned windows for thirty-two years, watching the city transform from a vantage point few experienced, suspended between earth and sky, wiping away the collective grime of ambition and failure.
He'd been good once. At his job. At being a husband. Before the drinking took hold. Before Celia.
His phone vibrated in his pocket—probably Adriana, the waitress from the bar on 31st, wondering where he'd disappeared to last night. Or maybe Sofia from his building, who'd taken pity on him after Celia died. Or any of the women he'd used to fill the empty spaces in his life since his wife's passing during those dark months of 2020.
Died under mysterious circumstances, the neighborhood gossips still whispered. As if his grief needed the spice of scandal.
He ignored the phone and moved to the next panel, working his way toward the 47th floor—the floor that would make him famous in the days ahead.
The scaffold creaked as it ascended, the wind picking up between the buildings. Paulie felt the familiar vertigo, heightened by his hangover, but pushed through it. The 47th floor waited, its windows gleaming with unusual intensity in the morning light.
It happened on the third panel from the left.
Paulie was midway through a sweep when the glass seemed to ripple, like the surface of a disturbed pond. The cleaning solution dripped down in strange patterns, forming what looked like tears on an otherwise invisible face. And then, as he drew the squeegee downward, she appeared.
The Holy Mother.
She materialized in the glass like a photograph developing—robed in blue and white, her hands outstretched, her eyes meeting his with such intensity that Paulie nearly lost his grip on the scaffold.
“Jesus Christ," he whispered, “what the f**k!”
The apparition's lips moved, forming words Paulie couldn't hear. Her face was radiant with sorrow and love. Behind her, the city in the reflection wasn't New York—it was somewhere else, somewhere bathed in golden light, buildings adorned with gardens that defied gravity.
"Miguel," Paulie croaked into the comm. "Miguel, which one of you s**t stains is playing me this morning?"
“What now?" Miguel's voice seemed distant.
"On 47. The glass. There’s uh—f**k!" But Paulie couldn't finish the sentence. How could he explain what he was seeing without sounding insane? Or worse, drunk?
“Are we having another episode, Macaluso?"
An "episode." That's what they called the time Paulie had collapsed on a job site last year, sobbing uncontrollably, claiming to have seen Celia waving from a window in the Met Life building. His supervisor had written it off as delirium tremens, giving him a week's unpaid leave to "dry out."
But this was different. This was real.
Paulie stared at the Virgin's face, transfixed by her gaze. She raised one hand, pointing to the east, then to the west, then skyward. Three directions. Three visions, Paulie somehow understood, that she would reveal.
“Jesus, what’d ya doin’ to me? What’d ya want from me?!”
And then she was gone, leaving only the distorted reflection of the city and Paulie's weathered face—lined with age, grief, and addiction.
He finished the floor in a daze, his movements mechanical. When his shift ended, he didn't join the other workers for their usual coffee. Instead, he walked to the nearest church—St. Francis of Assisi on 31st Street—and sat in a back pew, trying to make sense of what he had seen.
"Been a while, Paulie," Father Domenico said, appearing beside him with the quiet movement that had always unnerved Paulie. The priest had known him for decades, had officiated Celia's funeral, had tried repeatedly to guide Paulie back from his spiral of self-destruction.
“Father Dom, I gotta talk to somebody. You’re not gonna believe this s**t. I saw something today. F****n’ blew my mind!" Paulie said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“At the bottom of a bottle, perhaps?"
“F**k you, too! Bottom of a bottle! I come to you in confidence! You’re supposed to be non-judgmental, you Holy prick!”
“Would you like to step into the confessional?”
“Nah, come on. This ain’t that. This is much bigger. But you gotta promise me, you’re gotta keep this on the lowdown. I do not want this gettin’ out.”
“Does this have anything to do with breaking the law, Paulie?”
“What?!Oh, man, listen to you! I’ve known you since how long, Domenic? Don’t get me started—you’re a bigger crook than half’a East Harlem, so shut the f**k up! Listen. You know I got s**t from Celia, who I loved like a Goddess, right? And I got that 20-year-old Black girl pregnant, and that was my fault, right? And I’ve done things I wouldn’t even begin to tell you, but at least I can admit I’ve sinned. Big time. But today, something happened that is like — I don’t know — a game changer.”
Paulie looked up. "I saw the Holy Mother in the glass—one of the windows—of The Helix Tower. I told you this was something, Domenic. I mean, I was up there—on the scaffold—with my squee-gee, and there she was. Real as I’m sitting here. I swear on St. Francis and every church in Manhattan!"
Father Domenico's expression didn't change. "Many find comfort in visions during times of grief, Paulie."
“Is that what this was? Because that’s why I came to you. Maybe you could just tell me this happens all the time. But she said something that …”
“The Holy Mother spoke to you?”
“Yeah. And isn’t it supposed to be Easter on Sunday?”
“It is Easter on Sunday.”
“Sunday is Easter Sunday, right? Well, there you go!”
“What is it you’re trying to say, Paulie?”
“I got three miracles to perform. Me. Of all people! It wasn't grief. And yes, I had a drink or two before I got to work but — my right hand to God — I was not drunk! The Holy Mother dead-eyed me through a reflection on the 47th floor of The Helix."
Father Domenico leaned back and crossed himself. “What exactly did She say to you, Paulie?”
Paulie leaned forward, suddenly urgent. His eyes filled with tears. “I can’t control this. I did so many bad things to Celia, Father. I destroyed her!”
“Take it easy, Paulie.”
“Maybe this is why! I can never make it up to Celia! This is why I was chosen.” Paulie stifled his tears and turned to Father Domenico. “She didn’t … talk, you know. The Holy Mother. She was communicating … I could feel her inside my head. She said she had three messages and three visions, but I don’t know. Miracles? I don’t know! What do I do? How can anyone expect me to be a messenger from God?!”
“No one is expecting you to perform miracles, Paulie!”
“Come on, Domenic, the Holy Mother isn’t f*****g around! I knew coming here was a mistake! I gotta get some real answers here! They’re talking about replacing windows on the Helix and if that disturbs the Holy ether or whatever the f**k you wanna call it, I’m fucked for life! Seriously! But first, I need a f****n’ drink.”
“Paulie, wait!”
Paulie left the church. Outside, the evening had settled over the city, the lights of the skyscrapers piercing the dusk like stars fallen to earth. The Helix dominated the midtown Manhattan skyline to the east, its spiral design catching the last rays of the sun. Paulie stood in silence, looking up at it.
end of part one
© Michael Arturo, 2025
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Michael Arturo writes fiction, contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.
