Boy on the Bridge Read Online Free PDF Page B

down the street by themselves toward the faraway phone booth, a two-kopek coin burning in her hand. The paper with his number on it was smudged, as if she’d worn out the ink just by looking at it too much.
    She dialed the number. No answer.
    Laura cursed the Soviets and their lack of answering machines.
    She waited a few minutes. Maybe he was in the shower. Maybe he was just about to walk in the door. She stepped outside the phone booth and looked around. The street was quiet, but a man in a fur hat and black-rimmed glasses loitered on the corner. Was he watching her? No, he had a dog with him, on a leash. Just out walking his dog. Probably. Unless it was a front. Dog-walking would be the perfect spy front. Maybe she should try another phone booth.
    She crossed the street and walked even farther from the dorm. Two blocks later she found another phone booth. She glanced back. No sign of the man with the glasses.
    She stepped inside and dialed Alyosha again. Still no answer. She’d just have to wait another day.
    Maybe this is a good thing , she told herself. Maybe the universe is protecting me from my own worst instincts. If Binky’s right, I’ll seem overeager.
    No. There was no way Binky could be right.
    I’ll just try him one more time. One more time. Then I’ll go back and do my Translation homework.
    She slipped the coin into the slot and dialed. Ring … ring … ring … “Allo?”
    She was so startled she couldn’t speak for a second. The words caught in her throat.
    “Allo?”
    “Alyosha? It’s me, Laura.”
    “Laura! I’m so happy you called. I was just thinking about you. I went to the market and they had some very pretty blue flowers — Imagine! A miracle! — and they made me think of you. So I bought them, thinking, Laura would like these, even though I have no idea if you even like flowers —”
    “— I do —”
    “Of course you do! Who doesn’t like flowers? I’m going to put them on my kitchen table. They’re for you, even if you never see them.”
    “Thank you.”
    “When can I see you again?”
    Her heart was pounding. She wasn’t sure why. She just knew that she couldn’t wait to see him again. “Tomorrow?”
    “Yes. Perfect. I’ll meet you in the same place in Dom Knigi.”
    “Three o’clock.”
    “See you then. Good-bye, Laura.”
    “Good-bye.”
    She hung up the phone and stood in the protective cocoon of the booth for a few minutes, trying to catch her breath. His voice, those Russian words, the way he pronounced her name — Laoora, oo, oo — did something strange to her.
    She emerged from the booth. The man with the glasses and the dog turned the corner. He didn’t follow her.
    She went back to the dorm, taking the same streets she’d walked on the way to the phone booth. But somehow those very streets looked different now, as if they were part of a movie set and the director had changed the lighting. The piles of snow, which had been dirty and dingy before, now glittered like sequins. The cranky citizens trudging from chore to chore had transformed into jolly shoppers on their way to warm homes to make dinner. The mangy stray cats skittering down an alley became gleaming, graceful wild animals in an urban jungle. Laura whistled a song, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” without giving much thought to the meaning of the words.
    * * *
    The next day, after Phonetics class, with Pushkin’s words still rolling around in her mouth (“ I loved you once, in silence and despair … ”), Laura hurried away from the university toward thePalace Bridge. She crossed the river and walked down Nevsky Prospekt, the globe atop Dom Knigi fixed in her sights. She tried to imagine Josh saying — or thinking — or even reading aloud — lovely words like Pushkin’s. I loved you, though, with love so deep and rare … There was no way. He couldn’t say something that pure without an ironic smirk, without making fun of it. Maybe no one could, anymore. After all, Aleksandr