She had never been in a bar so empty, so silent.
Are you open yet? she asked, and the bartender nodded. He poured her beer, and she carried it to a table a few feet away, wanting to stay close to another human being, but too self-conscious to sit facing him.
She considered making a song request. It’s so strange not to hear music, she said.
Sometimes, when I do this, people get bothered, he replied. They can’t handle their own thoughts. They ask me to turn something—anything—on.
No one told her they planned to wrap the bridge in stars.
It rained the night they did it, but starlight made slick just sparkles more beautifully, and all the people could wear their most colorful galoshes out into the dark to see it for themselves. She ordinarily disliked surprises, but on this day, clustered there with the others, she, too, let loose a soft gasp of pleasure.
She realized how different they were when he began talking about how much he feared bridges, that he thought driving over them was like traversing a steel and concrete tightrope.
She had always loved the way they arced through the sky, carrying all those who crossed toward possibility. They made her feel as if she were flying across the water.
I had no idea, she said, already seeing a new span open out to whatever would follow.
She’d made it as far as she could along overgrown train tracks, stumbling occasionally on clods of soil thrown up between the ties. She’d run a long time, and she’d allowed the rusted rails to set her direction. But eventually the woods around her began to darken, and she realized how much trouble she was in.
No choice at all is a choice, she said aloud, just to hear someone speak. It dawned on her, finally, what a long night it was about to be.
The thief who broke the window extracted six scarves. I had lain them in their bag on the back seat after getting a particularly good deal at a boutique; each one destined for a different friend. But when I returned to the car, pieces of window lay on the ground like brittle, fallen leaves, and the scarves were gone.
Perhaps the thief sold them, or traded them for what they want or need. But I hope they kept the most beautiful of the six, wrapping it around their throat like a talisman against our broken world.
She dipped her hand in and out of the current of air outside the window as they drove, feeling it push against her palm, against her forearm, against her elbow. She had spent so long working against the resistance of others that this slight pressure felt like freedom in her palm.
She had not expected this moment of escape, but seized it when it arrived. Sometimes the only right answer is go, now, go, right now. Even above the noise of the wind through the open window, she heard doors, far behind her, slam shut.
This is the way things are, she said. This is the way they have to be.
She had been told, once, that if she said things aloud enough times, they might have a better chance of coming true.
But I am not that person, and if that’s the case, you are not who you want to be. He had grown tired of telling her this. The door to the outside tugged at his attention.
She repeated herself, but this time, too softly for him to hear.
It’s time, he said, but he thought twice about squeezing her hand goodbye.
100 Proof 