Page 21 of Burn this City

The water had no revelation for him except oblivion, which in that moment he assumed would suffice. He sobered enough to spare a thought whether he had any unfinished business—any revenges not taken, any personal papers that could incriminate him, anything he’d have wanted to say to a loved one. Now in his early forties, he was too old to begin justifying or explaining himself to his parents—whatever unspoken things had stood between them had been condemned to eternal silence when he’d bought them an old farmhouse in a picturesque village in a part of Italy that was a lot friendlier to their creeping arthritis, and then all but bundled them off into a plane. Internet out there sucked, so no video calls. Thank God.

They still thought his “involvement with the unions” put him and them in danger. And the situation had been dicey, but nothing he hadn’t been able to handle. They were lucky they liked the artisan cheeses and ham that that area produced, and the last he’d heard, their health had improved and his father had lost enough weight that his knee replacements weren’t blowing out.

No unfinished personal business, then, with his parents as settled as they could possibly be. Left the car. In his own ideal scenario, he abandoned it there, door ajar, key in the ignition, and it remained there as a kind of totemic marker of what had happened. The cops would take an interest in the gun in the glove compartment but even they would quickly form a theory based on his prison record.

Still, some part of him called for complete annihilation—burn down his house and everything else he owned, and vanish as if he’d never existed. Romantic and very, very appealing, but impossible. These days, people always left transaction histories, the footprints of this age. The sound of a car engine tore him from his thoughts, and when it came closer and he smelled the exhaust, he half turned away from the river and glanced to the side.

The headlights were uneven, one decidedly dimmer than the other, the car being held together by nothing other than inertia and rust. Jack almost assumed some teenagers were looking for the best place for some illicit drinking or smoking or petting or any combination of the above, and he felt resentful that his grim reveries had been cheapened that way—even though there was no romance in it, and he knew it despite the hollow ache of self-pity and his total inability to see past the wall of despair before him. This wasn’t—and would never be—a kind of heroic act. It was the last remaining option, so whether teenagers messed with it didn’t matter.

Yet, when a door clapped and heels tack-tacked on the asphalt, he looked over again. The woman’s steps slowed as she looked his way, and he gathered an impression of thin legs sticking out of a blue jeans skirt, and an oddly patterned white or light blue blouse. She glanced at him, then hesitatingly stepped up to the railing herself, as if in defiance. Some kind of waitress, or maybe a prostitute, to be out and about at this time of night, though prostitutes should be able to afford better cars.

He returned his attentions to the water, aware of another human being like an itch under his skin. Eventually, he pushed away, resolved to return to his car and drive a little further, maybe take the car with him into the river.

But he saw her bony shoulders shake in the chill of the night, and his mind backtracked to that first impression of her. Not an odd pattern on the blouse at all. He gritted his teeth, but at the same time, something in his heart shifted. It was none of his business, but as he regarded her there, all alone in her blood-splattered clothes, sniffing in the darkness, he couldn’t help but resent her for messing with his struggle to reach a state of acceptance, at the same time aware that she might be in a much more desperate situation than he was. He walked back to his car, picked up his coat and walked over to her. He placed the coat within her reach and leaned on the railing again, in his own space, the coat now between them.

“It’s cold. You’ll catch your death.”

She sniffed and then broke into a sobbing laugh.

Regarding her from the side, and peering past her untidy mop of bleached blonde hair, he noticed somebody had done a number on her delicate features, and the sniffing was likely from a broken nose. A shadow of smeared blood across her chin and lips made her look ghoulish, indicating she hadn’t even had the time to clean up after whatever had happened. Maybe she’d resolved to let the river wash that away.

They stood together for what could easily have been an hour, the only sound the wind in the trees and a gargling of water below them. She seemed to calm down somewhat, but the occasional sniffles told him she was still there with him, not zoned out. Oddly, she seemed to be the only anchor to reality, the only other real and true thing here except oblivion, though nothingness was diametrically opposite of her and he was stuck somewhere in the middle. No, not stuck. He was moving, or rather drifting, but it was decidedly in one direction.

“Having a bad night?” she ventured, eventually.

“Depends.” He gestured toward the water. “Could go very badly or …” The other option hadn’t quite taken shape in his mind yet. It was all upside down—was it actually a bad or a good thing? Surely, an end to that pain inside was good, right?

He wrestled that question but couldn’t find an answer.

“I know what you mean.” She gave a resigned sigh. “What for, right? What is that shit for?”

A day ago, he’d have told hersurvival. Survival was the reason to do anything. But up here on the bridge, that wasn’t real anymore.

She rubbed her arms and shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Several of her fake nails had broken off. And her bruises were darkening almost while he watched. “What is any of this shit for,” she muttered to herself.

“At least you can be warm.” He pushed the coat over. “It’s nice.”

She eyed him. “And you?”

“I’m not cold.”

I’m nothing.There were no feelings, no sensations, everything felt empty and dead inside and he briefly wondered how long that had been the case. How long he’d swum only on the surface of his own soul. Years. Decades. When had he entombed himself like that?

She glanced toward his car. “Nobody waiting for you?”

He shook his head but finally managed to tear his eyes away from the blackness and release a tautness inside of him. Maybe it was because she reached for the coat and put it on. She almost vanished in it, though she didn’t attempt to make herself comfortable inside of it. Her hair remained inside the collar and she didn’t close it, just pulled it closer around her by crossing her arms in front of her chest. After a while, she stopped shivering.

He gave her a half smile to put her at ease. “You should get that nose looked after.”

She reached up and winced when she touched it. “No, I’m …”

“… Going to stand here?”

She looked at him then fully with her wounded, liquid eyes. “No.”

“Same,” he said softly, carefully, sensing the same tension in her. Hell, he didn’t know what he was feeling anymore, but he could pick up her pain clearly as day.

They stood like that for hours, silent witnesses of a kind of battle that was fought with determination but no hope. Long before dawn, though the deepest part of the night seemed to have passed, she agreed to get in the car with him and have her nose looked after, though he assumed the bruises and the broken nose had kept her anchored the same way she’d done for him.

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