Bridge of Sighs

“This is America. You got a right to go wherever you want. Anybody ever tells you that you don’t belong somewheres, you just remind them what country they’re in.”
    I nodded, confused.
    “Except sometimes it’s better not to upset people. If they think you don’t belong, the hell with ’em, is how I look at it. I mean, it’s nice where we are too, right? Third Street?”
    I said I thought Third Street was fine.
    “Same with friends,” he went on. “Better to be friends with people who want to be friends with you.”
    “Bobby wants to be friends,” I said, knowing what he was getting at. “It’s just his dad won’t let him.”
    We’d come to the end of the Borough now, and my father turned left into the East End, our part of town. It occurred to me that in our leisurely tour we must have driven right by the Marconis’ new house. It was on his route, after all, so he had to know which one it was. He no doubt put quart bottles of milk in their tin container twice a week, collected the money they left there and made change. Had they spoken to him, or he to them? Did Mrs. Marconi cower inside when he knocked on their door? Had he tried to get invited inside for a look? I’d been so absorbed in my own disappointment that it hadn’t occurred to me to imagine the effect their leaving had on him. He could no longer think of himself as being in competition with “Mr. Macaroni.” If it had been a contest, he’d lost. And he’d accepted the fact; that’s what he was trying to tell me now.
    “Them spells you get,” he said, catching me by surprise. “Are you thinking about Bobby when they come on?”
    I told him no, that I could be thinking about anything or nothing. My spells always began with things getting so fuzzy and remote that I felt almost sleepy. It wasn’t a bad feeling, really. I wasn’t scared. It was more like I was outside myself, an observer, like I was light enough to just float away. Actually, that part felt kind of good, as if I’d been released from something.
    I’ll never forget the look on his face when I explained this. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Louie? Just let yourself float away?”
    I told him I wouldn’t.
    “Not ever?”
    “Never,” I promised, and this seemed to reassure us both. Because even though the sensation of floating away did feel good, so did returning. In fact, driving back to our East End neighborhood that afternoon in my father’s milk truck felt a little like returning from one of my spells. Our house looked pretty small after our tour of the Borough, but for some reason, when we pulled up at the curb, it looked just right for us, for who we were. I
did
like our street, with Ikey Lubin’s store at one end and Tommy Flynn’s at the other. I liked living next door to the Spinnarkle sisters, even if they were quick to turn off the television when I visited. Only one thing bothered me.
    “I just wish he’d do like he said,” I told my father. “He said he’d call and give me his new phone number.”
    “They probably just kept their old number,” he said, surprising me again. I’d thought that you always got a new number when you moved, and that whoever moved into the Marconis’ apartment above the Spinnarkles would inherit their old one.
    I didn’t get a chance until later that evening, after my mother finished doing the dishes and joined my father and me out on the porch, where a cool breeze had sprung up. Once they both looked settled I went inside—to use the bathroom, I told them—and quickly dialed the number I still knew by heart. Bobby himself answered on the third ring, but I hadn’t thought things through. He must have said hello half a dozen times while I stood there, frozen, mute, trying to think of something to say. But how could I ask if his wrist had completely healed, if the cast had come off? Or say I was sorry I hadn’t called the turn and that I wanted him and his family to move back to Third Street and for things to be the way they were. That this new arrangement might be okay for them, but not for me.
    Only when Mr. Marconi took the phone from him and barked “Who the hell is this?” did I gently return the receiver to its cradle.

A SHOT TO THE HEART
     
    H EY ,” Evangeline said. She was poking Noonan as one would a dangerous animal that looked dead but might not be. Fully dressed and standing next to the bed, she was clearly prepared to run should the need arise. “Talk to me, Noonan.”
    “About