The Bridge Read Online Free PDF Page A

class ignorance and into a world of artistic expression and awareness. As if I’ve never been to a goddamn museum.
    But then he has to go and say my name, all innocently, but with seventeen gradations of inflection, and that has to hit me right in the chest and
hurt
. How is that fair? What I really should do is crumple up my list and leave. Except that his face is so earnest, so worried now that he’s offended me, and I just can’t. I can’t be cruel. “I’m sorry. No, you’re right. Let’s go.”
    “Okay.” He breathes a little deeper, and goes on to item number two. “Don’t laugh at this one. It’s just that when I was little, my babysitter used to take me here. It’s a bit touristy, but they have the best hot fudge in the city, I think, and it’s in your borough and all, so…Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory? Is that okay?”
    I stare at him, surprised. “Yeah. That’s…that’s fine. It’s good.”
    “Great.” He smiles, and all at once I understand that I’m in danger. That kick to the heart when he said my name, and now the smile—something in me is reacting to him, responding, and I don’t want it to. I wanted that part of me dead, and if he hadn’t gotten in the way this morning, it would be, along with the rest of me. But here he is, here we are, and here’s that slender flame of life-force rising up and asking for something I don’t want to give it.
    I am here for one reason and one reason only. And that is to trick Henry into thinking he’s helping me. I don’t know what comes after that, but it’s a start. I picture myself throwing a bucket of water on that flame of life. Smothering it with a blanket. Dumping it into an empty pool and covering it with concrete. Until it fizzles and goes out.
    “Last one,” Henry says. “The rooftop pool at the Gansevoort. At night the skyline is nice, and since I doubt either one of us can stay awake for twenty-four hours, I can book a suite there and we can sleep.”
    “The Gansevoort? I can’t afford—”
    He holds up a hand. “I can. And in the morning we’ll—”
    “What? Go our separate ways?”
    “Yes.” The waitress comes to take our empty plates and we look to her like a lifeline, as though she could save us from ourselves. But she just clears the dishes and leaves us to stare at each other.
    “You could be some kind of psycho killer for all I know. I don’t even have a cell phone to call for help if you try to use my skin for a lampshade or something.”
    “No?” He looks pleased, almost. “Mine’s at home, too. Didn’t think I’d be needing it today.”
    “Why are we even bothering, Henry? This is ridiculous.”
    He looks at me. And then he does something terrible. He taps the back of his hand against the back of mine. With that big paw of his I was admiring earlier and wanting to touch. Well, I’ve touched him. He is just as warm as I imagined, even so briefly, and I can see the goose bumps rising up on my own arm.
    “Because I don’t want you to die, Christa.

7:30AM, Henry
    She doesn’t say anything for a long time and I begin to wonder if I’ve finally scared her away. Her thumb rubs the place where I touched her, on the back of one tan hand. Her fingernails are short and neatly filed, unadorned with polish. I wonder what her hands would feel like, if I wrapped them up in mine. If I took the place of her thumb and stroked. They would be warm, I think, and strong.
    It’s hard to understand why anyone would want to snuff out the vibrance that radiates off her. Satellites orbiting the earth are probably picking up her signal. Me, I’ve never had that kind of energy. My brother, Jack, was the one who shined like that. He was the perfect decoy—sucking up all the attention so I could fade into the background and disappear.
    But Christa—she’s not the type to disappear, or she shouldn’t be. There’s a buzzing in my skin in the place where her hand touched mine. I want to recoil from that vibration and at the same