Bridge of Sighs

bright red blood. Not the best of reasons. All in all, he was just as glad he hadn’t been there.
    Next, having decided she was with someone who could protect her, Nan announced she wanted to go to Murdick’s, a place she’d been hearing about all her life.
    “I don’t think you’d like it,” he said. “Especially on a Saturday night.”
    But she insisted, and it was only a couple of blocks away. The street looked like it had been plowed earlier in the evening, though another foot of new snow, or close to it, had fallen in the meantime. Snow-covered cars were parked crazily everywhere, front and rear ends sticking out into the street as if the drivers had all been drunk when they arrived, which many of them probably were. Inside, music was throbbing, and a woman shrieked with what Noonan hoped was hilarity. “Let’s go in,” Nan told him.
    “You don’t want to do that.”
    “It sounds like they’re having fun.”
    “Your father wouldn’t like you being here.”
    This, of course, was the wrong thing to say.
    “If you don’t take me, then I’ll go by myself.”
    But at that moment the front door swung open, and Dec Lynch emerged, unzipping as he did. He looked half in the bag and didn’t notice them a few feet off. Arcing his stream over the railing, he tilted his head back, nearly losing his balance, so he could catch falling snowflakes on his tongue, his urine hissing in the snow.
    When he’d finished and zipped up, Noonan said, “Hi, Dec.”
    He swiveled, locating Noonan by sound. “Bobby,” he said, offering his hand. Noonan, not that fastidious, shook it. “You better not be riding my bike around in this weather.”
    “I’m not.”
    “Good. Don’t.” Then he noticed Nan. “Hey there, Cupcake,” he said, having apparently forgotten completely that a moment before he’d been standing there with his dick in his hand. “You stopped crying, I see. You coming in?”
    “No,” Nan said, tugging urgently on Noonan’s sleeve.
             
     
    B ACK DOWNTOWN, Nan had made up her mind. “I want to,” she said. “Tonight.”
    “It’s cold as hell up there,” Noonan said. They were again in front of the Rexall, and he was hoping she’d forgotten the place wasn’t heated. “It’s worse than cold. It’s ugly. I only have a sleeping bag.”
Also, I’m in love with your friend Sarah, my own best friend’s girlfriend. I kissed her earlier tonight and can still taste her lips on my tongue.
    “That’s okay,” she said.
    “That’s what you say now.”
    “I want to,” she said.
    He saw her wrinkle her nose at the stale urine smell in the dark entryway, and halfway up the steep, narrow stairs she hesitated, clearly frightened. Maybe, he told her, this wasn’t such a great idea. No, she was sure. She said this grimly, as if she meant to learn about all of life’s tawdry ugliness, including sex, in this one night, so she could be done with it.
    Over the months Noonan had learned not to pay any attention to his place, but now he couldn’t help seeing it through Nan’s frightened eyes. It was huge, like an airplane hangar, and everything was exposed—insulation, pipes, crumbling brick walls. The ceiling had tiles missing, where you could see the crawl space above. Dec’s motorcycle sat by the far wall, resting on its kickstand. Back in November he’d needed Lucy’s and Perry Kozlowski’s help to wrestle it up here, and since then it had been leaking oil onto an old bath mat. In the center of the room sat a ratty sofa, bowed in the middle, and an old footlocker serving the dual purpose of coffee table and clothes bin. Beyond this his unrolled sleeping bag lay on its thin strip of foam padding.
    But the most embarrassing detail was the commode, in full sight only a few feet away, and next to it a small, permanently stained sink in the process of detaching itself from the wall. When the toilet flushed, the sink jumped and banged as if someone was out in the hallway pulling on it with all his might. At least Nan wouldn’t be witnessing that. Noonan couldn’t imagine a circumstance extreme enough for either of them to make use of the commode tonight. Truth be told, he himself used it only the last thing at night, with the lights out, before sliding into the sleeping bag.
    “Oh, Bobby,” was all she could say, and he could tell she was more deeply affected by where he was living than anything else she’d witnessed on their tour of the West End.
    “It’s okay,” he