Bridge of Sighs

all prepped,” his father told him. “Don’t forget to thank her.”
    Noonan said he wouldn’t. His father was clearly not happy with him, and who could blame him? He’d waited for him at the diner that morning for over an hour, before giving up and eating breakfast alone. Then, after Noonan had finally called to explain what had happened at the Beverlys’, he’d had to have Max drive him to the Borough to retrieve his car. Now he had to come fetch him for his shift. But arriving at Nell’s in the middle of an argument wouldn’t do. Willie could tell and would be upset, so they rode in silence all the way.
    He did his best behind the bar but screwed up one drink after another. “What the hell’s the matter with you tonight?” his father finally asked. Noonan said he was just exhausted from shoveling snow all day, grateful it hadn’t occurred to his father to ask about the scene he’d interrupted back at Ikey’s. At one point, though, Willie, his psychic tuning fork vibrating as usual, came out of the kitchen, tenderly took his hand in his own and rested his broad forehead on Noonan’s shoulder and told him not to worry, that everything would be okay. “Hey, William,” his father called down the bar. “Come here a sec.” Boys didn’t hold hands with boys, Noonan heard his father explain.
    “He was just trying to be nice,” he said later, when Willie was out of earshot.
    “I understand that,” his father said. “Next time, when he kisses you, he’ll be trying to be nice then, too.”
    Max, who’d gone into town to visit her mother in her nursing home, returned at nine-thirty, took one look at Noonan and told him to go home.
    When they pulled up in front of the drugstore, his father turned off the ignition, and as Noonan started to get out, told him to hold on a minute. “So,” he said, “I guess this Berg girl is the one you really like, huh?”
    He was far too exhausted for this or any other conversation with his father. “I guess,” he said. “I don’t know.”
    “But the Beverly girl’s the one you slept with.”
    “It’s kind of hard to explain.”
    His father shook his head. “Not really. You know what I see when I look at you?”
    “Nope.” But he knew what was coming.
    “Me.”
    Noonan swallowed what he felt like saying, but was pleased to feel some of the delicious old loathing return.
             
     
    U PSTAIRS, it was cold. Maybe not as cold as it had been the night before, though it felt even colder. As soon as he crawled into the sleeping bag, he smelled Nan, and his stomach lurched. Unzipping, he dragged the bag over to the lamp and used the same washcloth he’d given her that morning to scrub at the spot of her blood that had dried on the fabric, as if by removing that he could undo the act that occasioned it. But all this accomplished was to start his wrist aching again and to turn a small dry spot into a large wet one. The cloying scent of spoiled, petulant little girl remained.
    He tried not to think about how Sarah was lost to him. What he couldn’t help wondering was when, precisely, she’d decided on Lou Lynch and not Bobby Marconi. Something told him that when they’d kissed yesterday, her decision hadn’t yet been made, which meant she hadn’t known for sure until today. Had it become clear only when she learned about her mother? Had she known in that instant of brutal loss whose comforting embrace and genuine kindness she wanted and needed? Or was it when she’d come into Ikey’s? And if
he’d
been the one out front and Lucy in the back, would that same grief and loss have propelled her into his arms instead? But these were pointless questions. It didn’t matter how or why she’d chosen. She’d just chosen.
    Only when Noonan tried to crawl inside the bottom, closed end did he realize he’d put the top of the sleeping bag facing the back of the building instead of the street, as usual. Not that it made any difference, he thought, getting inside and zipping up. He’d be asleep in a minute anyway. Except he wasn’t. Despite his exhaustion, he lay awake shivering on the wet spot, the pain in his wrist coming in long leisurely waves now. If Sarah had chosen, then the thing to do was not care. Wasn’t that what he’d told Nan last night, that caring was something you could just decide not to do? Hadn’t he mastered that trick long ago? In the morning he would wake up and simply not give a shit.
    He lay there telling himself this and