Bridge of Sighs

drifting across that median had the feel of inevitability, the only surprise being that it had taken so long.
    After their epic battle Noonan’s path had crossed meaningfully with Jerzy’s only once, during his senior year in high school. One of his part-time jobs that fall was as Sunday night bartender—the legal drinking age had been eighteen back then—at a West End dive called Murdick’s. He’d just given last call when Jerzy sauntered in, his hair slicked wetly back in the same ducktail he’d worn in junior high. He’d dropped out years earlier, as soon as he legally could, and had been working nonunion construction jobs. Noonan occasionally caught sight of him on Division Street, filthy when he got off work, and they usually exchanged cautious hellos. Now he punched in an old Frankie Valli song on the jukebox and slid onto a barstool so gracefully that Noonan suspected it might become his defining adult gesture. He waited a beat before coming down the bar, not long enough to provoke his old adversary, but not exactly jumping to attention either. “How you been, Jerz?” he’d asked, keeping his voice neutral, neither friendly nor hostile, making it clear things could go whatever way the other boy wanted, though neither was exactly a boy anymore.
    Jerzy said nothing for a moment, and in that brief silence there’d been an eloquent admission of just how little remained of what had been between them a few short years ago, of who they’d been but weren’t anymore. “I’m still here,” he said finally, and Noonan drew him the draft beer he asked for, along with a shot of cheap rye whiskey on the side. “How’s life in the Borough?”
    “I wouldn’t know,” Noonan said. A few weeks earlier he’d moved out of his father’s house and was now living downtown, above the Rexall drugstore on Hudson Street. Dec Lynch, who knew everybody, had arranged with the owner that Noonan could squat there rent-free provided he didn’t smoke in the building or have parties or allow vagrants inside. There was neither kitchen nor bathroom, which meant he had to shower at the Y, and he slept on the floor in a sleeping bag.
    “Your old man cool with that?”
    “I’m doing it. What he’s cool with doesn’t come into it.”
    Jerzy nodded, then took a drag off his cigarette. “Seen a couple of your games. Almost made me wish I didn’t drop out. You could’ve used me.”
    Noonan said, yeah, they probably could, but for the life of him couldn’t imagine it. “You’d have had to give those up,” he said, indicating the cigarette.
    “Fuck that, then,” Jerzy said. “So, will you be graduating?”
    Noonan admitted he probably would, and wondered if there was a note of wistfulness in this question.
    Jerzy downed his shot of whiskey with one gulp. “Then what?”
    He decided to be vague. College, maybe, if he got a scholarship. If not, probably enlist, though that would mean Vietnam.
    “I tried to enlist,” Jerzy said, “but I failed the physical.”
    He knew he wouldn’t, though, and Jerzy seemed to know it, too. He gave Noonan one of his nastier grins. “You’re with Nan Beverly now,” he said. Not asking him, telling, just in case he tried to deny it. “What’s she like?”
    “She’s a nice girl,” Noonan said, no intention of saying anything more. The other boy pushed his beer glass forward for a refill. Noonan thought about saying no. It was past closing, but he poured him another shot of rotgut and refilled his beer. So far Jerzy had made no move toward his wallet.
    “I’m married now,” he said. “You probably knew that.”
    Noonan said no, he hadn’t heard.
    “She’s a whore,” Jerzy said, matter of fact, then told him her maiden name, which rang a vague bell, but he couldn’t summon a face to go with it. “She’s fucking somebody else for sure. Like I care,” he added.
    Noonan didn’t know what to say to that.
    “We got a little girl, though.” Perhaps this was something he
did
care about. “They still talk about us, you know,” he said, smiling now. “That fight we had? You hadn’t got that first punch in, it would’ve been different.”
    “I don’t remember much about it,” Noonan told him, the absolute truth.
    “Would’ve been different,” Jerzy repeated, and for a moment Noonan wondered if he might be considering renewed hostilities. “It definitely would’ve been different. But you know what? It wouldn’t have changed anything. You’d be right where you