He climbs up the side of my building every night in the middle of the city and bellows about unrequited love. The poor beast. Sometimes I join him from my apartment. I lean out the window and bellow. Other lovers appear in other windows and we all bellow. Even the couples deeply in love pause their mutual adoration and listen from their warm beds. They remember how it feels. Then a week goes by and King Kong is nowhere to be seen. I open my window and scan the horizon for his shape. I listen for the sound of his heartbreak. Nothing but a few small, plaintive moans in the distance. Our enormous heartbreak is made smaller by his gigantic absence. I pull myself back inside the little room. I send a text to a woman I liked, who I spent time with, then turned away from for a reason I can’t remember. No response. A month goes by without Sad King Kong. Then one evening I feel the building shake and I look out to see him ascending the floors, big hairy hand over big hairy hand. As he passes my window I see his face very clearly. Not an animal who desires something he cannot have but an animal who has known love and has lost it. Who has possessed something and must now live without it. When he gets to the top he doesn’t bellow. He is quiet. Spontaneously, I step out the window and scale the building. I meet him at the peak. From here the city looks like a universe, bigger than me and my loneliness, my foolishness, bigger than this giant ape and his heartbreak. We sit quietly for a while. Finally I speak. “Maybe it’s true,” I say. “Maybe the heart was made to be broken.” King Kong nods, absent mindedly rubbing his hand over his forearm. “Oscar Wilde,” he says. Just then, from down on the street, deep in the canyon between the skyscrapers, we hear a man’s voice. “I love Caroline Petrosky,” he yells at the top of his voice. “And I always will,” he bellows again. He sounds drunk, almost happy in his despair. Then someone else, from a window across the street: “I’m sorry and I miss you, Kyle Winter!” Then more names, more declarations and apologies. It becomes a chorus up and down the avenue. I chuckle and look up at Kong. I yell out a name too, my voice leaving my body and joining the others. Then King Kong stands as tall as he can and, holding the spire for support and dramatic flair, he howls the name of his lost love. The whole city shakes with it. Devotion and heartsickness decorate the air like snowfall. Finally it’s quiet again. Then King Kong sighs. “Are you hungry,” I ask him. “I feel like an early breakfast.” “Oh, hell yes,” says Kong. We scramble down the building and don’t have to walk far to find an open diner. It’s nearly empty, the soft light and gentle activity inside a comfort. We order and then we sip coffee, watching cars pass by on the street. The slightest hint of sun is just starting to color the edges of the city. When our food arrives—a single medium-sized plate for me; several big, wide serving trays heaped with food for him—we devour it all. Eggs and toast and pancakes and potatoes. I sop up syrup my last bite of waffle. He wipes up Hollandaise sauce with his thick fingers. We both lean back in our booth seats, the food a small but welcome change in our chemistries. He and I don’t say anything for a long time, just observe the world waking up. Just letting the day come to be. Letting it draw us back in.