Down Low tugged twice on his door to make sure it had latched. Then he pulled on it a third time. Nothing wrong with being extra cautious, especially in this neighborhood.

He stood at the top of the staircase down to the street. Fifteen steps. He could do it. He’d gone down every step every day for the past two months, three weeks, and six days. But it never got any easier on his leg.

Lowell — Down Low to his neighbors since he never appeared to have two nickels to rub together after his rent had been paid every month — felt at the brace on his leg. Still there, just like every time he checked. Maybe one day he’d reach down and there wouldn’t be one, and so he wouldn’t have to deal with the cold sweats and trembling hands that came with standing at the top of the stairs.

Today, though, he had found two quarters laying side by side in a ditch on his way home from work. To Lowell, that was a sign. A sign that things would turn out okay. Eventually. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, or even the next day. But eventually. People destined for eternal bad luck don’t find two shiny quarters laying next to each other. No sir, no sir.

Two quarters meant that it was HIS turn to pick the song at the jukebox. It was HIS turn to be the man with the plan. It was HIS turn to be in control for the one-hundred and sixty-one seconds that it took Tom Fogarty to croon out “Up Around the Bend.”

One Step. Two steps. Three st—

Down Low’s knee buckled, the rest of his two-hundred and fifty pound frame collapsing with nothing to support it. And suddenly it wasn’t just one step at a time — it was all of them all at once.

His head struck the pavement at the bottom of the staircase at such an angle that he didn’t feel any pain as his neck snapped and his spinal cord ripped apart like hot spaghetti under the faucet.

His hand in his pocket was wrapped around those two quarters. When Lowell went up the steps earlier that evening, he was Down Low.

But here at the bottom of the stairs, dead as a door nail and with a great big grin on his face, he was someone else entirely.

He was Up High.