Bridge of Sighs

that store. Give her free cigarettes and anything else she wanted.” Sarah did remember Karen Cirillo from junior high, beautiful in a cheap sort of way, at thirteen exuding sex from every pore. She supposed it was possible for a girl like Karen to steamroll a boy as shy and awkward around girls as Lucy had been, and still was. But she doubted he’d ever have given her free merchandise from Ikey’s.
    The driver shrugged, having apparently read her mind. “You don’t believe me, ask him.” Again he studied her in the mirror. “So now he does cartwheels over you, huh? Gives
you
all that free stuff.” Sarah said she paid for everything at Ikey Lubin’s, just like she would at any other store, but she could tell he didn’t believe her, that he harbored a deep conviction that most everyone else was afforded all manner of advantages expressly denied him. “He never give
me
nothin’ free,” he said darkly. “Her mom and me spent all kinds of money in that store, and they never give us nothin’.”
    Suddenly Sarah knew who she was talking to. Lou had told her all about Buddy Nurt, who’d robbed Ikey’s years earlier, and now here he was driving her home, his dark little eyes darting back and forth between the road and the rearview mirror. When she shifted her position in the rear seat so she wasn’t in his line of sight, he just grinned and adjusted the mirror so she was again.
    Sarah was trying to think of how to make him quit looking at her when he sat up straight and said, “Gotcha!” his expression triumphant. “Berg,” he said. “That’s your daddy. Mr.
Berg.
” She couldn’t help wincing. Hearing him say her surname was obscene. “What? You think I don’t know him?”
    Sarah said she had no idea if he did or didn’t.
    “Know all about Mr.
Berg,
” Buddy Nurt assured her. “Know more about him than you do, probably. Drive a cab, you learn all about people. You think I’m lyin’?”
    Before Sarah could answer there was a loud bang followed by an ungodly screech of metal, causing Buddy Nurt to use his rearview for its intended purpose. “Son of a bitch,” he said. When Sarah turned around, she saw that the cab’s muffler was dragging along the macadam and sending off sparks.
    Buddy Nurt pulled over onto the shoulder and turned off the engine. “Cocksucker,” he said, before getting out. When he popped the trunk, Sarah was able to see what was happening next through the gap. Rudely shoving her suitcases aside, he began rummaging through the clutter of old blankets, greasy rags, cardboard boxes, yellowed, curling newspapers, a tire iron, a case of motor oil, searching for she couldn’t imagine what and clearly not finding it. “Motherfucker,” he barked before slamming the trunk shut. An idea must have occurred to him, though, because he popped it open again and this time, to Sarah’s astonishment, he opened one of her suitcases and rooted around until he found a wire hanger, tossed the dress it was holding aside and went about the task of straightening the hanger. He then disappeared underneath the car, where he must have touched something hot because he yelped and uttered another foul oath. He was directly below her seat, grunting like a pig, his nearness disconcerting even with the undercarriage between them. She was certain those beady little eyes would be looking up her skirt if they could.
    Fifteen minutes later they were back on the highway, Buddy Nurt’s satisfied expression suggesting that he considered the coat hanger a permanent solution to his muffler problem. “I had to borrow one of your hangers,” he told her, as if the maintenance of his cab was their shared responsibility. “You had a bunch of them,” he added, so she wouldn’t feel ill used. Which, when she thought about it, was probably how he viewed the beer and cigarettes he’d stolen from Ikey’s.
    His little ferret eyes were back in the rearview now. “So how come you like
him
?” he said, confusing Sarah, in part because the reference to Lou was by then so remote, but also because she happened just then to look out the window and see her father flying by, hunched over the wheel of their Chevy and heading in the opposite direction, toward Fulton, to meet her train.
    “There goes your daddy now.” Buddy Nurt chuckled. “Guess he don’t know I already got you.” Nodding at her in the mirror, he was pleased, she could tell, to know something he thought no one else did, no matter what it was. She