Arthur Penhaligon was a man who lived in the key of C-sharp minor. As the world's most celebrated conductor, he could command a hundred musicians to breathe as one, yet he could not find a single moment of peace in his own skin. I have served as Arthur's valet for twenty years, and in that time, I have learned that the higher a man climbs, the thinner the air becomes, until he is simply suffocating in luxury.

It was a Tuesday in November when Arthur decided to "visit the world." He climbed the stairs to the roof of his penthouse, a glass-and-steel fortress that hovered above the smog of Manhattan. I followed him, as I always did, carrying his cashmere coat and a silver tray with a single glass of neat scotch. From the doorway, I watched him. To the public, Arthur was a titan of culture, a man of iron will and divine inspiration. To me, he was a trembling collection of nerves held together by expensive tailoring.

He walked to the edge of the roof, his silhouette sharp against the orange bruise of the sunset. He didn't look at the city with the eyes of a master; he looked at it with the eyes of a drowning man. I saw his shoulders slump, the rigid posture of the maestro collapsing into the posture of a frightened child. He began to speak, not to me, but to the void. He spoke of the silence that followed the applause, of the terrifying emptiness of a life spent interpreting the emotions of dead men while forgetting how to feel his own.

I stood there, a silent shadow in the doorway, and felt a flicker of something that might have been pity, but was more likely contempt. I knew the secrets of the man on the roof: the insomnia, the pills, the way he wept in the shower when he thought the walls weren't listening. He was a man who had spent his life climbing the mountain of prestige, only to find that the summit was a barren rock. He was a king of a kingdom of air.

"Do you see it, James?" he asked, his voice cracking. "The scale of it? We are nothing. All of this—the music, the fame, the buildings—it's just a way to distract ourselves from the fact that we are alone."

I stepped forward and draped the coat over his shoulders, the fabric heavy and warm. "I see a very cold evening, sir," I replied. "And your scotch is getting warm." He looked at me, and for a second, I saw the sheer, pathetic desperation in his eyes—the need to be seen, not as a maestro, but as a human. I simply bowed and stepped back into the shadows. He remained on the roof for a long time, a small, dark figure against the infinite sky, while I wondered who would be the one to finally tell him that the view from the top is exactly the same as the view from the bottom.

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