Bridge of Sighs

father? At himself? How could you tell?
             
     
    B Y THE TIME he arrived at Angelo’s, his friends had already left. “You just missed them,” Jerry said from behind the counter. “They said to tell you they’d—”
    “Be at Ikey Lubin’s,” Noonan told him. Suddenly the predictability of this, something he usually found comforting, dispirited him. Having been treated to a series of unwelcome surprises at Nell’s, there was something demoralizing about returning to these old routines, and he found himself wanting to skip the next six months and wake up in the middle of whatever and wherever came next. By this time next year all of Thomaston would fit neatly in the small rectangle of a rearview mirror.
    But for now, there was nothing to do but join his friends at Ikey’s. They were seated around the small table where the old geezers had their coffee in the mornings, drinking free sodas, Nan and Lucy arguing about what to name their children, a running gag that had originated in honors back in September when Mr. Berg, immediately recognizing how conventional and conservative both were by nature, had jokingly suggested they get married and start breeding. As the semester wore on he’d continued to treat them as a couple, taking every opportunity to suggest how intellectually and emotionally compatible they were, even speculating, after they’d realized they were soul mates and that their destinies were linked, what their children would be like. It was a laughable notion, and as such easy to embrace. There was something in it for each of them. Nan, who’d been unable, even in jest, to conceal her horror at the idea of one day marrying Lucy Lynch and having his children, discovered that by playing along she could appear less superficial without actually becoming so. Or at least that was Noonan’s take on it. She’d had lots of boyfriends, but never a boy for a friend, which made this a whole new kind of experience. Lucy wasn’t interested in her romantically, now that he had Sarah, and that had been mildly disconcerting to Nan at first, but then she realized this meant she could trust him and be at ease with him. For his part Lucy was proud to be linked in the popular imagination, albeit comically, with the prettiest girl in the school, who not so long ago had struck him mute with terror. And of course Mr. Berg was right. They did have far more in common than either of them knew even now.
    Though Noonan played along, the whole what-will-we-name-our-kids riff made him uncomfortable, perhaps because Sarah’s father’s jokes always trailed an undercurrent of cruelty. He supposed it was good that Lucy had loosened up enough to laugh at himself, at the shy, skittish boy he’d been most of his life, though Noonan was far from certain his friend understood that he and not Nan was the butt of this particular joke. The idea that a girl like Nan would ever give her heart to a boy like Lucy was what made it funny. And their mock arguments over names implied her willingness to have sex with him, something nobody could picture without bursting into laughter. Noonan hated that Lucy mistook this as a sign of his growing popularity. But maybe Noonan was the one who was wrong. Maybe the time was right for his old friend to adopt a new public persona. Kids still called him Lucy, but affectionately now, and many seemed to have forgotten that the original intent had been to hurt his feelings. Possibly Lucy himself had forgotten. Maybe his popularity now, like his father’s, was the just result of his genuine good nature. Sarah, after all, had never given any indication that she shared Noonan’s misgivings or seemed at all embarrassed on his behalf, and Noonan was sure she’d never knowingly condone any joke whose purpose, stated or suggested, was the humiliation of her boyfriend.
    And why did Noonan himself play along? His primary reason, he had to admit, was selfish. When Lucy and Nan pretended to be a couple, it made an actual couple of him and Sarah. Whereas the two of them bickered over babies’ names, he and Sarah would find no shortage of real things to talk about. At Angelo’s, or even at Ikey’s, Noonan and Lucy always sat opposite each other, which meant you couldn’t tell, just by looking, which boy was with which girl. Instead of distinct couples, they became a foursome, easy and relaxed. Back in September, when they first started going places together, they’d configured things