Bridge of Sighs

their booth. It would’ve been funny if she weren’t so truly frightened.
    “Turn around, okay?” she said. She was holding her panties out in front of her, prepared to step in but unable to do so until his back was turned, as if covering herself would somehow make her more naked instead of less. “Don’t watch.”
    Noonan did as he was told, dressed quickly, then waited for her to finish. When he figured she must be done, he turned around and discovered she wasn’t. She was standing there in her bra, about to pull her sweater over her head, which she again refused to do until he turned around.
    “Okay, okay,” he said, crossing the room to the sink and flipping on the light switch.
    “Turn it off!” she snapped, though she was fully clothed now.
    He did, but not before glimpsing his bottom lip in the cracked mirror. Her elbow had burst it like a grape, and there was blood on his chin and around his mouth. “Look what you did,” he told her, hoping she’d see the humor in the situation or, failing that, at least acknowledge that he, not she, was actually the injured party.
    “Take me home” was all she said.
             
     
    W HEN THEY EMERGED into the street below there was light in the east. Noonan couldn’t believe how much it had snowed. Two feet had been predicted, but this looked closer to three. The parking meters had completely disappeared under snowbanks the plows had pushed up. A car wearing a tall snow hat was idling across the street in front of the theater, and he didn’t recognize it until the horn tooted.
    “That’s my father,” he told Nan, but if she heard him she gave no sign, standing, frozen, in the doorway. Upstairs, all she’d wanted to do was get home, but now, confronted by all this, she looked like she meant to just stand there until the snow melted. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
    His father rolled down the window and watched knowingly as he scrambled over the enormous snowbank.
    “What are you doing here, Dad?” he said, leaning against the car.
    His father flicked his cigarette into the snow and peered around him at Nan, who hadn’t moved. Only her head was visible above the snow. “Waiting for you to come down. Would you have preferred I come up?”
    “No,” he conceded.
    “I was going to give you about five more minutes. What happened to your lip?”
    “An accident.”
    “What’s the matter with her?”
    “Nothing. None of your business.”
    “That what you plan to tell
her
father?”
    “She had a fight with her parents last night, so she stayed with me.”
    “And?”
    “And now she wants to go home.” Suddenly, an intuition. “Did her father call you?”
    “Me and everybody. He wanted to know where you lived, but I thought it might be better if I came here first.”
    “Thanks,” Noonan said, meaning it.
    “He gave me an hour to find you. If his daughter isn’t back in”—he consulted his watch—“fifteen minutes, he’s calling the cops.”
    By the time Noonan returned to the doorway, Nan was crying again. “Put your arms around my neck,” he told her.
    “I don’t want to,” she said. “I don’t love you anymore.”
    “I’m going to carry you over the snowbank, is all. Then I’m taking you home. Your father’s getting ready to call the cops.”
    “Poor Daddy,” she said, snuffing her nose. “Everybody’s going to know what we did.”
    “Nan, listen to me. We got trapped by the storm. There was no phone. That’s all anybody needs to know.” Across the street, his father got out of the car and stood watching them. “We need to go, Nan,” he said. “Try to forget last night. Everything’s going to be fine.”
    “We shouldn’t have done it.”
    “But we did.”
    “What a horrible thing to say.”
    “Nan.”
    “You don’t even like me.”
    “That’s not true.”
    “It’s Sarah you really like, I can tell.”
    “We need to go now.”
    “I don’t know why I ever liked you. All my other boyfriends were nicer to me than you. They’re all still in love with me, too.”
    “I’m going to pick you up now, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    When he did, she linked her arms around his neck. “What if I have a baby?”
    “You won’t.”
    “What if I already am?”
    It was on the tip of his tongue to say
What if you’re already a baby?
but he didn’t. “You’re not pregnant, Nan.”
    When they got to the car, his father handed him the keys and opened the door for Nan, who just stood there, confused, as if he