The neon-drenched streets of 1984 London didn’t feel like the future to Julian; they felt like a cage built of static and synthesizer hum.
By day, Julian was a "gray"—one of the thousands of office workers dressed in charcoal suits, filing papers for a ministry that existed only to justify its own existence. But by night, he retreated to a cramped attic flat in Camden, where he’d sit by the window and watch the "Luminaries." Wouldnt It Be Good - Nik Kershaw
One evening, through a fluke of a broken service elevator and a misplaced key, Julian found himself standing in the hallway of the penthouse floor. The door to Alistair’s unit was ajar. Driven by a desperate, feverish curiosity, Julian slipped inside. The neon-drenched streets of 1984 London didn’t feel
He looked back up at the penthouse. It still glowed. It still looked perfect. But as he turned toward his own dim attic, he adjusted his scarf and started to walk. The shoes were still worn, and the pockets were still empty, but for the first time, he didn't mind the weight of his own feet. The door to Alistair’s unit was ajar
In Julian’s mind, if he could just step into that penthouse, his problems—the mounting debt, the crushing loneliness, the feeling of being invisible—would evaporate. He imagined that the man in the penthouse, a sharp-jawed aristocrat named Alistair, never felt the biting chill of a drafty room or the hollow ache of an empty stomach.
"You look like you sleep," Alistair said, his voice a gravelly wreck. "I haven't slept in three weeks. They’re taking the company. They’re taking the house. And she’s already gone."
Julian looked at the man he had envied for months. He realized that while he was looking up, wishing for the shoes, the man wearing them was looking down, wishing for the escape of being nobody.
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