Miracle in Midtown (conclusion)

To understand how Paulie Macaluso became a symbol—of what exactly, no one can quite agree—you must first imagine him: a sixty-three-year-old window washer with a nicotine-scratched voice and the expression of a man permanently five minutes late to something meaningful.

You must then imagine him briefly dangling from the 88th floor of that very skyscraper—a feat he survived with the dubious assistance of two security guards and what he later claimed was "a divine wedgie."

This was not how prophets usually arrived.

But then again, Paulie Macaluso never asked to be one. He only wanted to see her again.

Not her, capital-H Her, the Virgin Mother who allegedly winked at him through the warped glass of The Helix’s 47th floor. No, Paulie wanted to see Celia—the one woman who had ever truly believed in him, right up until the ventilator took away her breath and the pandemic took away her name from every registry except his guilt.

The board, of course, had no use for nuance.

They wanted spectacle.

Sanctity with a sales pitch. A miracle that could be monetized and branded with tasteful font. Paulie, however, chose a different kind of resurrection: he ran.

Two nights later, beneath the sharp scent of window cleaner and moral crisis, Paulie snuck past Helix security—who were distracted by a flash mob of TikTok seminarians—and climbed once more to the 47th floor.

Not via the elevator, but the way he’d always gone: with suction cups, muscle memory, and a prayer uttered to no one in particular.

Just as Paulie reached the 30th floor, the walkie-talkie he always carried crackled to life. It was Miguel.

"Macaluso! What in the f**k are you doing up there?”

“What does it look like I’m doing, you Puerto Rican prick?”

“Who are you calling a Puerto Rican prick?”

“YOU! I’m calling you …!”

“You listen to me! I want you off of that building!”

“Not happening!”

“You know what kind of trouble you’re in?! You’ve got security going crazy down here! I’m gonna have you arrested!”

“You do that! The cops are on my side! The city of New York is on my side!”

“Don’t play ‘Man of God’ with me, Macaluso! I know who you really are! You’re a drunk! Dollars to donuts—you made this whole thing up for attention!”

“F**k you, Miguel!”

“Oh f**k me? Helix is firing all of us! Because of you! You put us all in danger with your b******t lies and your Virgin sightings! All because you’re a train wreck of …”

“I don’t care what you or anybody else thinks of me! I’m almost there. If you were half a human, you’d have a scaffold waiting for me on the 47th floor! So either do something useful or go f**k yourself!”

Paulie snapped shut his walkie as he climbed higher. On the street below, every New Yorker held their breath.

When Paulie reached the glass on the 47th floor, the city stretched below him in all directions—a spangled abyss of steel and flickering windows. The kind of view that made people feel either infinite or irrelevant. Paulie, for once, felt both.

He stood still momentarily, one hand braced against the window frame, the other holding a worn terrycloth. His fingers trembled slightly—not from fear of heights but from something more challenging to name. He didn’t know what he’d come to see, only that he had to see it.

He rubbed the glass in a slow circle, the cloth squeaking faintly against the warped surface.

Clarity doesn’t come to the calm. Visions—if they come at all—don’t visit the righteous. They find the broken, the cracked vessels, the ones who’ve run out of stories to tell themselves. Not as reward, but as ruptu