I happened to be standing next to the docent when she fell out of the window of the St. Louis Arch, and because I’d argued with her in the elevator on the way up, the other Arch visitors started saying I pushed her, which was crazy, because I was only arguing with her about the game from the night before, whether that last play should have been scored as a hit or an error, not like if abortion should be legal or who was right about Gaza or some kind of trolley-problem-level shit that would infuriate me to the point of pushing a woman, twice my age and half my size, out the window of a national landmark. What everyone should have been focusing on is how a woman, no matter what size, would fit out one of those tiny windows, and how a window, which I’m assuming is thick as they can make it, is even breakable when they get over two million visitors every year and can’t have things like that happen, so many sad people in the world, so many kids, all those curious weirdos beating on the glass just to see if it’ll break. But again, that’s beside the point, as a person, not even a baby, unless you chopped it up, could fit through one of those holes. There could be no glass at all and even the skinniest person would get stuck, their hips and shoulders just too broad to work their way through, unless they were a freakshow contortionist—that’s not what happened, though, some circus attraction easing their body out, little by little. This woman was standing by the window, a few feet away from me, and the next thing we knew, there was a crash from the glass breaking and then a faint scream, growing fainter she got closer to the ground, then the light thud, then the bevy of tourists screaming, losing their shit. I didn’t push her out. Because that’s impossible.

This is what I told the police, first the National Park rangers, then the St. Louis cops, then the FBI, because they all asked, over and over and over again. What happened was, they couldn’t explain how something horrible went down, so they decided to make up the most logical explanation, one that would clear their desk the quickest. They put a face to the crime, a face on the news, someone for everyone to hate: me. My lawyer assured me it wouldn’t hold up in court, though the mayor, running for reelection, promised the city, the nation, my head, that sweet, little docent fifty years on the job, as beloved a figure in the community as Stan Musial, Charles Lindbergh, and provel cheese combined. The lawyer said I would get off, without question, but then I might have had to move, out of the state, maybe the country. He said he had scientists who would explain the physics on the witness stand, and when I got up there, I should firstly not use the terms “chopped-up” and “baby” in the same breath, but if pressed, I could detail the disagreement about the game, how I thought it was a hit and the docent lady thought it was an error. Then I said, “Whoa, counselor! It was the other way around,” that it was clearly an error and she thought it was a hit, that the official scorekeeper had to either be blind or on something. The lawyer said, “Oh, wow. I watched the replay. It was clearly a base hit. Prime Padres Ozzie doesn’t make that play,” and the next thing I knew, there was a loud crash and my lawyer was outside the interrogation room, on the floor in the hallway, somehow launched through the little glass window with the wire mesh woven inside, a rectangle window on the door the size of a dictionary. That left me standing there, having to explain it, again, how there’s no way a grown man, in a suit, carrying a briefcase, could fit through that window, could even break that glass, steel-reinforced and thick as shit. I had to be innocent, because of physics, because of common sense, no matter what it looked like, what I’d already been accused of, no matter how pliable the victim, how fast they were going, no matter how accurate the throw to the plate.

Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four collections of stories, most recently The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Moon City Press and Moon City Review, as well as Interviews Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and two Pushcart Prizes.

Art: Courtney Burton, Squeeze, 2026, oil pastels, colored pencil, and graphite on paper. 8 x 10 in.

Courtney Burton is an artist, writer, and musician living in Springfield, Missouri. Her work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Ghost Parachute, Moon City Review, Flash Frog, Bull, Does It Have Pockets?, and Blood + Honey.