Read The Bridge for Free Online Page A

are you supposed to do, as a man, when other men do this? They want to talk about tits, and they expect you to join in, and what are you supposed to say? That you identify more with the women? It’s a good way to make yourself an outsider.
    The thing is, I can
feel
Christa’s body beside mine. I don’t even need to look. It emits a weird electro-chemical pulse that causes my body, in turn, to react with a kind of heated buzzing.
    I’m not an idiot. I know this buzzing is called attraction, but it’s so bizarre and appalling under the circumstances that the best I can do is retreat to a Spock-like distance and observe it. How it’s sitting right here with me like the cold wind is doing. Asserting itself where it’s not wanted and where nothing can be done about it.
    She still hasn’t answered my question about why we’re here on the ferry. Instead, she asks one of her own. “Why were you up on that tower this morning, Henry?”
    I thought we’d been over this. There’s no more detail to offer her. Nothing that would make sense to anyone but me.
    “Because from where I’m sitting,” she goes on, “you have everything a person could need. Money. Your health. You’re still young. You’re good-looking. You seem like a nice enough man. Why would you do it? Why throw that all away?”
    It’s what anyone would say. It’s what everyone
did
say, after my first attempt. Somehow it’s worse, though, coming from her. “You don’t understand.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    I push up from the cold seat and move to stand by the railing. From somewhere above, a foghorn booms and the ferry backs out of the terminal and into the harbor. Lower Manhattan slowly recedes, and Christa comes up to stand beside me.
    “Make me understand.”
    “Why?” I rub a hand over my hair, which needs cutting. I don’t know why I agreed to this charade, suddenly. Why am I here with her? What purpose could it possibly serve? I’m supposed to be saving her, persuading her, and all I’m doing is slipping further and further into quicksand. “Why do you care?”
    She breathes in deep, closes her eyes, gives her head a little shake. “I don’t know. Honestly? I don’t know, Henry. But you’re here. I’m here. We have the whole day in front of us. What’s the harm in you telling me?”
    “The harm,” I say, “is that there isn’t any point.”
    “Well, if there’s no point in telling me, then there’s no point in not telling me either. Might as well be depressed and go for a walk, right?”
    I narrow my eyes at her sneaky logic. The ferry drags deeper into the open water and as it does, the wind becomes heavy and ponderous. It’s difficult, almost, to hear her. Even to answer her question, I have to shout.
    “Let’s say I tell you.” I pitch my voice close to her ear, and I can feel her struggle to stand her ground, to not pull away. I have to brace myself, as well. The weighted rocking of the ferry makes balance difficult. The scent of her hair makes it difficult.
    “Let’s say I try to explain what it’s like. What are you going to do? Hand me some platitudes about how life is worth living? You’re hardly in a position to do that.”
    “It’s not the same for me.” She holds the railing with both hands and turns her face just slightly toward mine. “I’m going to die anyway.”
    “You don’t know that.” I shake my head. “You could get treatment. You could have years left. A lifetime.”
    The wind slaps against our faces and blows her hair back hard behind her. I flash back to the first moment I saw her, on the bridge, with the wind whipping that hair. The same line of defiance shoots through her spine now. “No. It won’t be like that. Trust me.”
    “Why not?”
    “You want to know why I chose the Staten Island Ferry?” She releases one hand from the railing, so that she can face me. The defiance now is in her face, but only partly. It blends there with a vulnerability that would break my heart, if I had