Bridge of Sighs

go?”
    “Yes, well, there you are.”
    “What does your husband want?”
    “Wouldn’t it be nice to know? If I could figure that out, I could want the opposite.”
    “Try changing something small,” he suggested. “Something that doesn’t matter. See how it feels.”
    “I’ve been thinking about that, actually. The small thing I’ve been thinking about changing is you.”
    “If you’re trying to hurt my feelings—”
    “I’m not,” she said, tears really starting to flow now. “I’m really not. I mean…did you enjoy it tonight? Us? Did it speak to you in any way?”
    The question was fair enough. The exhausted orgasm he’d finally achieved, while pleasurable enough, had seemed remote, something happening on a parallel track, vibrations half absorbed by the ground, no danger of collision. Was it just age? The law of diminishing emotional returns played out in the flesh? “I’m glad you came over,” he said, which was true, though it was also true he was now just as happy to return her to her husband and her life.
    “Want to hear something crazy?”
    “I guess?”
    She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt, smudging it with eye shadow. “Here’s what I seem to want from you, Noonan. I want to
not
see you again for a very long while. That’s the first thing. The second is if Hugh comes tomorrow, I’d like you to come with him.”
    “I think you just summed up about forty years’ worth of my relationships with women,” he smiled. “It’s not a new ambivalence. It’s just new to you.”
    “Do you want to come up?”
    “Now? Christ, no.”
    And then she was gone, the slamming door echoing out into the canal. He said her name, then tried the door, but it had locked behind her. Lucky that, for he might’ve followed her inside. He lingered a moment in the doorway, then stepped back a few paces to the water’s edge and looked up, waiting for a light to come on inside, which eventually it did, reflecting off the shimmering water and the dark brick walls that framed the canal. A painting, Noonan recognized. And also a memory? A moment later Eve appeared at the window, reaching outside to pull the shutters closed. He didn’t think she saw him standing in the shadows below, but then her voice came down, barely audible. “Go home, Noonan.” With the shutters closed, the canal was dark again, the painting gone.
    He had just rounded the corner and started to descend the three steps into the narrow
calle
that opened into Campo San Stefano when something hit him in the chest, hard. Before he could make sense of that, there was the inexplicable sound of coins dancing on the stones at his feet. Todd Lichtner’s pale face momentarily swam into view and, when Noonan blinked, was gone. He stepped back, rubbing his breastbone, the pain there the only thing he could be certain was real. Then he saw the other man again, gathering up the scattered coins as best he could in the dark and muttering, “What a rotten bastard you are, Noonan.” It seemed not to occur to Lichtner that a truly rotten bastard might just kick Todd Lichtner in the head as he scrabbled around on his knees, and Noonan might have done just that if he hadn’t been so puzzled by the coins. The punch and the simultaneous explosion of coins illogically suggested that his chest had been full of them, freed by the blow, like candy from a piñata. He would’ve preferred another explanation, but when he tried to form a question, he discovered he had no breath, that Lichtner had hit him harder and with more conviction than Noonan would have ever guessed he possessed. It was all deeply puzzling, so he sat down on the step to watch him grope around in the dark for coins he seemed to think belonged to him. One had come to rest between Noonan’s feet, and he picked it up to examine it. Poor light, but he could have sworn it was an American quarter.
    Finally Lichtner got to his feet and came over to glare down at him with a mixture of anger and, unless Noonan was mistaken, dawning embarrassment. Evangeline had apparently been wrong about at least one thing. Her husband
did
have clue one. Noonan handed him the quarter, which he promptly threw in the canal. “You shitheel,” he said, still shaking, though his pique seemed to wane as his embarrassment waxed.
    Noonan’s breath was returning, and with it an idea. Lichtner must’ve had a roll of coins in his fist, to heighten the impact, but the blow had ruptured it. And with that