Crossing a Bridge
By Jake Stimmel
After the divorce, Tim moved to a shitty apartment where he drank heavily and bought coke from Harry, a dishwasher. Harry worked in the diner below. Tim never went into the diner. Instead, he stayed home and browsed the internet, lurking various social media and staring into the endless flow of text and images, like gleaming water bugs riding the drainage ditch down to a clear lake or river.
And as he sat and read, Tim would periodically check the small black smartwatch on his wrist as it blinked on and off to inform him of texts, emails, notifications, and various reminders that he always ignored. He did pay close attention to any updates on his longevity index. Life is, after all, the only thing that matters.
A truck rattled past his little apartment’s window, rumbling his desk and sending concentric ripples through the surface of his gin and tonic. He wrapped his crooked fingers around the glass to stop the movement, but his arthritic hands were always shaky. They only added a different vibration.
The circles on his drink reminded Tim of a water table. He used one in the last project he had been able to work on as an architect. A big tide pool at a local waterpark, now defunct, never even finished the pool. People didn’t like waterparks. They registered poorly on the L index, very unwelcome numbers indeed, and nobody was interested in even the relatively safe excitement of a tide pool. God forbid they ride the great pink, orange, blue leviathans, where people sometimes become stuck. Somebody died of a heart attack like that, stuck in a tube in another state, the year before the tide pool project was conceived.
Tim sipped the drink and stared at his reflection in the dark black square on his wrist. A wild goatee, once neat and attractively speckled with grey, now clung stark-white around the bottom of his sharp chin. A few curly bits of stubble on his cheek looked like they had been stuck there with wood glue. His blotchy pale skin…. It repulsed him. The last time he saw a doctor, five or ten years ago, they told him it was a symptom of the arthritis. The screen lit up with a text from the dishwasher: “do it again?”
Everything was ready in the chest pocket of his jacket, and he jogged down without responding. Harry was sitting on the little concrete stoop outside of the apartment door.
They took their places on the stoop without speaking. Tim produced a clean square of tinfoil and two plastic bags of white powder from his pocket, while the dishwasher uncapped the water bottle and flicked his red lighter impatiently. Then together, they poured the coke and baking soda onto the foil, mixing it with the water, waving the lighter below to cook it together. They stuck pennies in their mouths and dragged the flame down the aluminum in ragged stripes, blackening the metal and vaporizing thin streams of acrid smoke.
Tim watched Harry lower his face over the foil and inhale again. Harry’s left forefinger was half gone, and after the hit Harry rubbed his skin with the remaining knuckle instead of picking with a nail. Tim scratched his neck.
Soon the whole sheet was cooked dark brown. Like burnt blood, Tim thought, and he reached for a pack of cigarettes that wasn’t there. The need was intense; it was sparkling across the asphalt like powdered glass. Or were they ants? Tim squinted. Powdered glass, surely. All over the fucking place in this alleyway.
“We need smokes,” said Harry, and Tim nodded, smashing ants with the toe of his black canvas shoe.
Both stood up fast and paused, Tim staring at a pile of books next to the door, Harry towards the end of the alley. Tim checked his watch and Harry checked his phone and they compared their indexes— a very small rise, but the same .2% for both of them. With this kind of metric, even tiny differences stick heavy in the stomach and the colon.
“How do you think it knows?” Tim asked, staring idly at the dumpster and the waterlogged books beside it.
“Think what knows?” asked Harry.
Tim didn’t answer and Harry started to wander down the alley. He was thin in the night, a lean figure moving past the pile of books. On top was a Dr. Suess book, Oh, The Places You’ll Go. Tim’s daughter had given it to him the last time he saw her, more than a year ago.
“The index, Harry,” Tim said, finally, but Harry’s head was tilting back toward the sky, shaggy brown hair clustered at the shoulders of his jacket. His mouth hung open and dark red in the dim light coming from the streetlights ahead.
“Fucking never mind,” Tim muttered, and he walked on.
Harry followed him silently out onto the street and into the nearest lamp’s glow. Their steps were quieter out there, beneath the tall buildings of their city. Silently, they walked on together, first across a cracking footbridge over the highway, then down a small street running past a closed gas station and a grocery store. Neither of them was planning their way to the destination, but both of them moved together. Turns were initiated by one or the other, sometimes completely at random down an alley or dead-end side street. They were following each other; neither led.
When they were within several blocks of the gas station, Harry turned them into another alley. Dumpsters were scattered against its buildings, their brick sides coated patchy white with painted-over graffiti and a gray-brown grime along the bottom edges. Their watches chimed in unison. Both of them stopped dead. Wind came down the alley cold and fast, lifting Tim’s prickly grey goatee.
“48%” said Harry, his voice thin and terrified.
“Now he talks,” said Tim. “Mine’s the same.” The alley was quiet.
“Should we turn around?” Harry asked, now whispering, his shoulders tight around his chest. Tim’s body was probably protecting itself too. His mind was blank, fearless and buzzing.
“No, fuck it. Fuck it!” Tim yelled down the alley. “Come for me,” he tried to keep yelling, but his words broke thin and weak against another chime from their watches.
Tim heard something groan at the far end of the alley. The two turned around fast and ran from the sound, little echoes behind them reminding them that the sound had been real and another watch-chime that it was something to be feared. Tim, in spite of himself and everything he had been doing lately to burn out his capacity for memory, could only picture his daughter’s hands as they had once touched his arm. The two men turned and sprinted back up to the street. Out there it was quiet, and the drugs shut Tim up again, and Harry shut up too, and they walked as if nothing happened.
The two arrived at the Speedway gas station. They went inside, holding it together and grinning strangely at the neon plastic packages. Tim approached the counter for a pack of light blue cigarettes.
The clerk was a tall guy with a graying beard. He glanced up from his phone as Harry leaned on the counter. After he saw Tim’s hands, still shaking even when pressed against the counter, he put the phone away.
“Hey,” said the clerk.
“Hey, hey… what’s your name, man?” asked Tim.
“Dick,” he said. Tim scrutinized his face. Was it a joke? Was he calling him a dick? What could be done about it? Tim’s heart began to race.
“Your name is Dick?”
Dick looked at the rack of cigarettes above his head. “What can I get you?”
“Two packs of those.” Tim lifted his finger to point and noticed it was shaking. So did Dick.
He pulled down the two packs and smiled. “21 bucks. You don’t recognize me, Tim?”
“Where would I know you from?”
“You came in here last week. And yes, my name is really Dick.” Harry slipped out the door behind them. “I don’t know your buddy, though.”
“His name is Harry. I think. I like to keep him around, you know.” Dick nodded like he understood while Tim unrolled a couple wadded bills and pressed them into the counter.
“Matches?” asked Dick.
“No, I’m good.” Tim pulled out his lighter, dark red, and held it up so Dick could see. Then Tim’s watch lit up and he dropped it on the counter. When Dick gave it back to him, his watch lit up, too.
“Take it easy, Tim,” said Dick. Tim nodded and went after Harry, back into the cooling night air.
Back on the curb, Harry pulled two bags of chips from his jacket. Tim crunched the salty chips and smacked the cigarettes on the butt of his hand, twice, packing down the tobacco and grinding his jaw. The shards of chips pressed into the tender parts of his molars—their watches blinged again.
“Let’s get back quick,” said Harry. “I gotta do it again.”
“Which way?” Harry asked.
Two steps and Tim was off the curb, not listening for an answer, down the middle of the street with purpose: get back quick. Nothing else mattered. The watches lit up and made noise; they didn’t matter. On the street, the yellow lines twisted around his feet and dragged him towards oncoming headlights. The driver honked, but that didn’t matter either. Harry yelled at Tim from the sidewalk and then just followed him until they reached the bridge back across the river. Heavy wind rolled off the arc of the bridge.
A chain-link fence and a NO TRESPASSING sign blocked the way, both teetering in the gusts. A crane stretched high over construction in the middle. Tim stuffed the tip of a cigarette into his mouth, chewed and smacked the tobacco until he felt it prickling the back of his throat.
The alarm on their watches went off again, and this time they couldn’t ignore it and said in unison, “Danger, Danger.”
“Danger, danger,” said Harry, and he laughed, coughed, spat.
“Fuck this fence,” murmured Tim. He grabbed the nearest post and, unanchored as it was, dragged it towards himself, making some space. Harry slipped through the gap. Tim followed, his bony hips getting stuck for a moment. They slipped onto the bridge, and the sky was beautiful rich blue and clear ahead, all stars despite the city lights, and the crane was only a black shape above them. There was a deep blue light below, from LEDs that ran along the underside.
A trailer sat near the center, at the base of the crane, and pieces of plywood were set up all around it like a barrier.
Beyond the trailer and the plywood loomed an unfinished gap in the bridge. To Tim, it looked like they could jump it. Harry followed him as they approached it. The neon blue lights strapped to the sides of the unfinished bridge shone on the water below, and the two aging men looked down.
The tips of the waves caught violet sparks, and they stared down fascinated. It was only a matter of time until one of them brought it up.
“It’s not so far,” said Harry, the blue light shining up through the gap onto his face. “I think we could make it.”
“The jump?” asked Tim. “I’d need to do just a little more.”
The wind picked up again and Tim’s ears stung slightly, then went completely numb. All he could hear was the roar of air rushing around them and the rapid pounding of his heart against eardrums.
He took two steps back and hunched into a long-forgotten sprinter’s position, tensing his calves and grinding the toe of his old shoe into the loose asphalt. As he took his second stride toward the gap his back began to sear, pulling the second to last step up short and throwing him off balance for the last, and his foot pressed against the sharp edge of the bridge’s end as he launched himself out into the neon blue light over the water. At first he didn’t think he would make it, his arms flailing for something and legs wheeling on instinct as his whole body tilted to the right in the air. Then he landed on his elbows with a gravelly scrape. Tim gasped, pure adrenaline snatching his breath.
Harry made the jump too, gleaming blue in the lights beneath the bridge, landing on his feet with significantly more grace than Tim. Neither spoke as their heartbeats and the wind died down. Now there was just the rush of the distant highway and the sound of their watches, beeping like B-movie time bombs.
Harry looked down at the bulging veins in Tim’s neck and his chest as it heaved for air. “I bet your daughter could’ve made that jump,” Harry said, and he wheezed a laugh.
“I don’t think she would’ve even come with us,” said Tim, struggling to his feet.
“You’re right. It’s too fuckin’ late for a nine-year-old.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Tim. Harry’s shoulders tensed up a bit and he started walking quickly toward the street. But Tim didn’t want to stop talking; the world was at fault for his daughter, the divorce, the drugs. Harry would be the target for his revenge, and he would inflict it by telling him the truth on his mind, in this moment of numb euphoria.
“She doesn’t love me anymore,” Tim continued breathlessly, jogging to catch up.
Harry rolled his head instead of his eyes. “Your daughter?”
“My daughter,” Tim said, “Marianna, she still loves me, I’m positive. She’s just, you know, giving me—” Something metal glinted along the edge of the bridge. “Check that out.” The two men walked over to the object.
“It’s a hammer,” said Harry, obviously. It was indeed a hammer. Tim had never seen one like it. The handle was splintered.
“Incredible,” breathed Tim.
“It’s a hammer.” Harry hadn’t finished the sentence when Tim grabbed the tool and began to run. “Where are you going!” Harry yelled after him.
Tim was going to a place he knew well, a frat house that he often passed on the way to an old job. The yard was dominated by a fountain with two plaster lions in the center, the whole thing lightly washed in fake patina. As he ran, his lungs burning hot, the two statues loomed up and grew closer.
Harry caught up to Tim just as he collapsed onto the lawn below the seated lions, their heads proud, their posture perfectly straight and correct. His breath was coming more and more ragged, with an asthmatic wheeze at the end. Bing.
“These motherfuckers,” Tim paused to breathe and started again. “These motherfuckers aren’t lions.” Harry nodded.
In one motion, Tim sprang to his feet and raised the carved hammer. Harry threw his hands up and the metal head caught the streetlight as Tim charged into the fountain and brought down the tool onto the nose of the nearest statue. Again and again, he bashed away chunks of plaster from the lion’s mane. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he switched to the other statue, placing a first careful blow on the nose and then mauling the cheap statue with a series of furious strokes. Finally Tim paused, wiped sweat from his forehead like a sedate handyman, and observed his craftsmanship.
Tim said, “The ancient Egyptians used to say that statues die without their noses, because they can’t breathe. I almost wrote my thesis on that. Had to do Nile irrigation instead.”
“You wrote a thesis?”
The question fell dead on the breeze, blown like fall’s last miserable leaf. They heard sirens down the road and listened to them, their heads buzzing. The question now, now that Tim had cruelly suffocated the lion statues, was what to do with the hammer? It was a murder weapon, albeit symbolic, and it couldn’t just go back on the bridge. Leave it there and leave his visitation rights there, too, Tim reasoned. But the lions couldn’t be let to stand anymore. Or sit. Tim was the one who couldn’t stand. Or stand them. The sirens grew louder; it was an ambulance whining down the street at high speed.
Twenty yards away, the big dark blue van pulled up on the sidewalk and screeched to a halt. On the side, emblazoned in gold, the words “Police” and beneath that “Mental Health Unit.” A badge with a massive set of gold scales was painted above with a heart on one plate and a feather on the other.
“Hell of a badge, officers!” shouted Tim, waving the hammer at them in a kind of greeting.
One officer, a skinny white guy, raised his empty hands. “Easy there,” he said. “Relax. We just want to talk.” His partner went back into the ambulance, presumably to get the long gun. She did not come back out and instead waited inside the open door, the tip of the rifle glimmering below the edge of the ambulance door.
“I never thought I’d be arrested for vandalism,” Tim said, remembering the drugs in his left pocket.
“It’s not about that,” said the cop. “We’ve been getting alerts from your health monitor for a while. You’ve been very close to the threshold. You’ve become a danger to yourself. We want to help you, and that’s all. It’s not our job to write tickets.” As he spoke, the cop smiled and stepped closer. Tim put the hammer on top of the lion’s head.
“You’ll still tase me, though.”
“I won’t. You can run, but you know. Your watch is registered under your name. Think of your family, Tim.”
“How do you know about my family?”
“We’re concerned about you; we take care of our citizenry, Tim. We just can’t let you keep going like this.”
Harry turned around and started to walk away.
“You too, Harry,” said the other cop, a woman, returning from the ambulance cab without any visible weapons, although her uniform shirt bulged with body armor. “You’re on my caseload.” She smiled.
The two men looked at each other in the fading glow of the cocaine and checked their watches. Chance of death: 23%. That, at least, was reassuring. They walked together into the back of the dark blue ambulance. The female police got in behind. The doors slammed shut and the skinny white cop started the engine.
Night was ending, the first bits of pink dawn staining the clouds. Two lion statues suffocated stoically, breathless and exposed. Their plaster nose bones disintegrated slowly, like crumbled chalk in the water. Inside the fraternity, a few quiet alarms began to chime.
Jake Stimmel is an educator and writer in Minneapolis, MN, and is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte. He has also been published by Club Plum Literary Journal. He is online at jakestimmel.com or, in real life, locked out of a high school staff bathroom.