The Incident on the Bridge (33 page)

T
he ivory cat hears her hitting the door with the heavy can. The sound is nothing, does nothing, brings nothing. Perhaps the parrot? But what can a parrot do! She kicks the door. She screams the raspy, hopeless scream.

The cat is the only thing listening, and perhaps the parrot is no longer teasing it, because the cat resumes patting the flipped-up flag that is telling people the wrong message:
stay far away from me, I might explode.

J
erome holds the news article so Ted can see the photo of Thisbe. He hands her the business card that says
SEER:
Reuniting Souls in Transit.
The dog looks at them with brown eyes and brown face smoothed and shaped by little black hairs. She has a noble bearing.

Ted dials and then tells everything fast to the guy who answers at the police department: the nervous man, the newspaper picture of Thisbe in his camp, the path that says
NO TRESPASSING
. Ted doesn't care now who sees them on the wrong side of the fence. She wants to see where the weird man went. “Can you tell Elaine?” she asks the police person. “And the giant man?” He says he will, but she isn't sure it will happen fast enough. Nothing happens fast enough.

“Wait,” Jerome says when they're almost out of the bridge's shadow, and he pulls her back before she can run.

The man Maddy bit is a shadow. The sun's down now but everything is still half-yellow, half-black. Ridges in the green mud look like furrows seen from an airplane. Bits of trash spoil the effect here and there. The man is out of his boat, standing on the mud, his hair a black halo.

“What's he doing?” Jerome whispers, as if the man might hear them. He's about fifty yards away. He holds his arm like it hurts.

A voice yells, “No! Don't pick that up!” The voice comes from a boy on the sidewalk, some skater, but the man looks in the wrong direction, under the bridge. Ted feels the man see her and Jerome. The man stands perfectly still, like that might make his physical self and Ted's physical self evaporate. The man stares for one more second, maybe two, then rolls the wheels up on the boat and climbs in. The water rises around the boat. The sky in its yellow-orange glowing is like a half-dead fire.

Should they stop him?

She wants to stop him.

“Wait,” Jerome says. “Watch him.”

Watch him row? Watch him leave? Jerome holds his hand on her arm or she'd run, and she's not sure what to do. When the man can't be seen because of the darkness and other boats, Jerome's grip on her arm loosens and they walk with Maddy until they reach the beached dinghies and the skater who told the guy to stop. “Ted?” he says. It's Fen, and he looks really freaked out.

“Why did you tell him no?” Ted says.

He doesn't answer her.

“That was great,” she says, but he doesn't look glad to hear it.

“We need to go after him,” she says. She still doesn't hear any sirens or see any twirly lights. Everything is taking way, way too long.

She finds a boat that isn't locked. Not a nice one but it will do. “Help me,” she says to Fen and Jerome.

Jerome says they should wait for the police and Fen just stands with his hands in his pockets. Far off, the sound of sirens.

She shoves the boat to the mud and is glad to see the tide has come in so much. She won't have far to go before she reaches the water. Hands are helping her and the dog is barking. “What are you doing?” Fen asks.

“You come with me,” she says to Fen. “But can you stay, Jerome? To tell the police what happened?”

What a slow boat this is. If she had her paddleboard, she'd be better off. She has to row harder or the man will disappear. That's her sense of it: he is going.

The sirens are louder. They might be coming this way.

W
hen she hears footsteps on the deck, she curls up to hide.

If you close your eyes, others can still see you, Thisbe.
Her mother said that to her gently, so long ago, she doesn't remember why, only that she was under the coffee table and it was the middle of a school day. Something had happened at school, something mean.

She doesn't close her eyes. She watches the hatch, but it doesn't open. She hears thuds and the rake of metal, maybe the sound of a chain.

I am the devil of reality,

Seen for a moment standing in the door.

The sound is the anchor coming up, the links of the chain coiling. He's trying to take her away, and there's nothing she can do.

T
here's no time to open the hatch. He's waited far, far too long, and there are people watching him. He can feel their eyes like the eyes of Shiva. The engine waits in the cold. Worthless.

Though sometimes when you let it cool, the engine recovered.

He gives the cord a yank. It starts right up like nothing was wrong, like he didn't need the impeller after all.

T
he boat is moving. They're going again, going away. She raises both fists and goes to the broken window. “I'm Julia!” she says. She pushes the can of chowder out the window and hears it thud and roll. “Julia wants out,” she tries to scream, but the motor is louder than her ruined voice can ever be.