Page 4 of Meet Me in Another Life

“Two tons. That’s how much extra weight everyone’s universal gestures add up to.” She shakes her head. “One of these days the whole bridge is going to fall into the river.”

“But think about the symbolism,” Santi says in an awestruck tone. “A miracle of engineering, borne down by the weight of human love.”

He’s definitely teasing her. “I’m sure the people who symbolically die when the bridge symbolically collapses underneath them will appreciate it.”

He laughs, high and exultant: the kind of laugh a boy might be mocked for. That he kept on laughing it anyway tells her something important about him.

Thora has been sitting still for too long: there is more to explore here, more to discover. She gets to her feet and steps aroundthe opening in the floor to examine the rusted mechanism of the clock.

Santi stands up. “Need some light?”

“No, I’ve got it.” She pulls out her lighter and flicks it on.

“You smoke?” Santi sounds surprised.

“God, no. My mum chain-smoked my whole childhood. That leaves a mark.”

Santi steps closer as she holds the light up to the gears. “Think we can fix it?”

Thora puts her weight to one of the gears and tries to shove it backward. “No,” she says, after a few seconds. “I’m afraid time has stopped.”

Santi tries to push the gear in the other direction. Giving up, he steps back. “I guess it has.” He smiles at her sideways in the flickering light. “Welcome to forever.”

It’s a pretentious thing to say. But Thora has to admit that’s exactly how this feels: a moment taken out of time, with no beginning or end.

“So we have to commemorate this, right?” Santi says.

Thora blinks. “What do you mean?”

He reaches into his jacket and brings out something made of dark wood. It’s only when he unfolds the tapered steel blade that Thora realizes it’s a knife.

She stares. “Are you suggesting some kind of blood ceremony?”

“No! Wow, you Czech-Icelandic-British people are so intense.”

Thora throws her head back in a laugh. “Congratulations on remembering all the nationalities. Most people have to be told a hundred times before they get it right.”

He darts her a look. “I pay attention.”

She holds out her hand for the knife. He gives it to her, and she examines it, turning the blade to the light. “Wow. You could stab someone to death with this.”

“Why is that the first place your mind goes?” Santi shakes his head. “It was my grandfather’s.”

Thora looks at him suspiciously. “Why do you have a knife if you don’t want to stab anyone?”

“Why do you have a lighter if you don’t smoke?”

Thora shrugs. “You never know when you might need to set something on fire.”

“And you never know when you might need to carve something into a wall.” He takes the knife back from her and goes to one of the pillars between the arches.

She watches over his shoulder as he cuts into the stone. “Santiago López Romero,” she reads.

He hands the knife to her. “I don’t know how to spell your name.” He leans over her shoulder to watch her work. “I hate to tell you, but that’s not a letter.”

She brushes the brick dust off the Þ that begins her first name. “Yes it is. It’s a thorn. We still use it in Icelandic. It used to be in the English alphabet too.”

“So what you’re saying is, Ireallydidn’t know how to spell it.”

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