He shook his head. “I didn’t,” he said. “No one comes to the City of Bridges unless it’s their fate to do so. In that sense, you brought yourself.”
“But ... ?”
“I know. It’s all strange and different. You don’t know where to turn, who to trust.”
There was the faintest hint of mockery under the dry tones of his voice.
“Something like that,” Moira said.
He seemed to consider her for the longest time.
“I don’t know you,” he said finally. “I don’t know why you brought yourself here or where you come from. I don’t know how, or even if, you’ll ever find your way home again.”
Bizarre though her situation was, oddly enough, Moira found herself adjusting to it far more quickly than she would have thought possible. It was almost like being in a dream where you just accept things as they come along, except she knew this wasn’t a dream—just as she knew that she was getting the brush off.
“Listen,” she said. “I appreciate your help a moment ago, but don’t worry about me. I’ll get by.”
“What I do know, however,” Jack went on as though she hadn’t spoken, “is that this is a place for those who have no other place to go.
“What’re you saying? That’s it’s some kind of a dead end place?” The way her life was going, it sounded like it had been made for her.
“It’s a forgotten place.”
“Forgotten by who?”
“By the world in which it exists,” Jack said.
“How can a place this weird be forgotten?” she asked.
Moira looked around at the bridges as she spoke. They were everywhere, of every size and shape and persuasion. One that looked like it belonged in a Japanese tea garden stood side by side with part of what had to be an interstate overpass, but somehow the latter didn’t overshadow the former, although both their proportions were precise. She saw rope bridges, wooden bridges and old stone bridges like the Kelly Street Bridge that crossed the Kickaha River in that part of Newford called the Rosses.
She wondered if she’d ever see Newford again.
“The same way people forget their dreams,” Jack replied. He touched her elbow, withdrawing his hand before she could take offense. “Come walk with me if you like. I’ve a previous appointment, but I can show you around a bit on the way.”
Moira hesitated for a long moment, then fell into step beside him. They crossed a metal bridge, the heels of their boots ringing. Of course, she thought, they couldn’t go anywhere without crossing a bridge.
Bridges were the only kind of roads that existed in this place.
“Do you live here?” she asked.
Jack shook his head. “But I’m here a lot. I deal in possibilities and that’s what bridges are in a way—not so much the ones that already exist to take you from one side of something to another, but the kind we build for ourselves.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Say you want to be an artist—a painter, perhaps. The bridge you build between when you don’t know which end of the brush to hold to when you’re doing respected work can include studying under another artist, experimenting on your own, whatever. You build the bridge and it either takes you where you want it to, or it doesn’t.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
His teeth flashed in the moonlight. “Then you build another one and maybe another one until one of them does.”
Moira nodded as though she understood, all the while asking herself, what am I doing here?
“But this,” he added, “is a place of failed dreams. Where bridges that go nowhere find their end.”
Wonderful, Moira thought. A forgotten place. A dead end.
They started across an ornate bridge, its upper chords were all filigreed metal, its roadway cobblestone. Two thirds of the way across, what she took to be a pile of rags shifted and sat up. It was a beggar with a tattered cloak wrapped around him or her—Moira couldn’t tell the sex of the poor creature. It seemed to press closer against the railing as they came abreast of it.
“Cancer victim,” Jack said, as they passed the figure. “Nothing left to live for, so she came here.”
Moira shivered. “Can’t you—can’t we do anything for her?”
“Nothing to be done for her,” Jack replied.
The dusty tones of his voice made it impossible for her to decide if that was true, or if he just didn’t care.
“But—”
“She wouldn’t be here if there was,” he said.
Wood underfoot now—a primitive bridge of rough timbers. The way Jack led her was a twisting path that seemed to take them back the way they’d come as much as forward. As they crossed an arched stone walkway, Moira heard a whimper. She paused and saw a child huddled up against a doorway below.
Jack stopped, waiting for her to catch up.
“There’s a child,” she began.
“You’ll have to understand,” Jack said, “that there’s nothing you can do for anyone here. They’ve long since given up Hope. They belong to Despair now.”
“Surely—”
“It’s an abused child,” Jack said. He glanced at his wrist watch. “I’ve time. Go help it.”
“God, you’re a cold fish.”
Jack tapped his watch. “Time’s slipping away.”
Moira was trapped between just wanting to tell him to shove off and her fear of being stuck in this place by herself. Jack wasn’t much, but at least he seemed to know his way around.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
She hurried back down the arched path and crossed a rickety wooden bridge to the doorway of the building. The child looked up at her approach, his whimpers muting as he pushed his face against his shoulder.
“There, there,” Moira said. “You’re going to be okay.”
She moved forward, pausing when the child leapt to his feet, back against the wall. He held his hands out before him, warding her away.
“No one’s going to hurt you.”
She took another step, and he started to scream.
“Don’t cry!” she said, continuing to move forward. “I’m here to help you.”
The child bolted before she could reach him. He slipped under her arm and was off and away, leaving a wailing cry in his wake. Moira stared after him.
“You’ll never catch him now,” Jack called down from above. She looked up at him. He was sitting on the edge of the arched walkway, legs dangling, heels tapping against the stonework. “I wasn’t going to hurt him,” she said.
“He doesn’t know that. I told you, the people here have long since given up hope. You can’t help them—nobody can. They can’t even help themselves anymore.”
“What are they doing here?”
Jack shrugged. “They’ve got to go somewhere, don’t they?” Moira made her back to where he was waiting for her, anger clouding her features.
“Don’t you even care?” she demanded.
His only reply was to start walking again. She hesitated for a long moment, then hurried to catch up.
She walked with her arms wrapped around herself, but the chill she felt came from inside and it wouldn’t go away.
They crossed bridges beyond her ability to count as they made their way into the central part of the city. From time to time they passed the odd streetlight, its dim glow making a feeble attempt to push back the shadows; in other places, the ghosts of flickering neon signs crackled and hissed more than they gave offlight. In some ways the lighting made things worse for it revealed the city’s general state of decay—cracked walls, nibbled streets, refuse wherever one turned.
Under one lamp post, she got a better look at her companion. His features were strong rather than handsome; none of the callousness she sensed in his voice was reflected in them. He caught her gaze and gave her a thin smile, but the humor in his eyes was more mocking than companionable.
They continued to pass by dejected and lost figures that hunched in the shadows,
huddled against buildings, or bolted at their approach. Jack listed their despairs for her—AIDS victim, rape victim, abused wife, paraplegic—until Moira begged him to stop.
“I can’t take anymore,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I thought you wanted to know.”
They went the rest of the way in silence, the bridges taking them higher and higher until they finally stood on the top of an enormous building that appeared to be the largest and most centrally placed of the city’s structures. From its heights, the city was spread out around them on all sides.
It made for an eerie sight. Moira stepped back from the edge of the roof, away from the pull of vertigo that came creeping up the small of her back to whisper in her ear. She had only to step out, into the night sky, it told her. Step out and all her troubles would be forever eased.
At the sound of a footstep, she turned gratefully away from the disturbing view. A woman was walking towards them, pausing when she was a few paces away. Unlike the other inhabitants of the city, she gave the impression of being selfassured, of being in control of her destiny.
She had pale skin, and short spiky red hair. A half dozen silver earrings hung from one ear; the other had a small silver stud in the shape of a star. Like Jack, she was dressed casually: black jeans, black boots, white tanktop, a black leather jacket draped over one shoulder. And like Jack, her eyes, too, seemed like a reservoir for the moonlight.
“You’re not alone,” she said to Jack.
“I never am,” Jack replied. “You know that. My sister, Diane,” he added to Moira, then introduced her to Diane.
The woman remained silent, studying Moira with her moonbright eyes until Moira couldn’t help but fidget. The dreamlike quality of her situation was beginning to filter away. Once again a panicked feeling was making itself felt in the pit of her stomach.
“Why are you here?” Diane asked her finally.
Her voice had a different quality from her brother’s. It was a warm, rounded sound that carried in it a sweet scent like that of cherry blossoms or rose buds. It took away Moira’s panic, returning her once more to that sense of it all just being a dream.
“I ... I don’t know,” she said. “I was just crossing a bridge on my way home and the next thing I knew I was ... here. Wherever here is. I—look. I just want to go home. I don’t want any of this to be real.”
“It’s very real,” Diane said.
“Wonderful.”
“She wants to help the unhappy,” Jack offered, “but they just run away from her.”
Moira shot him a dirty look.
“Do be still,” Diane told him, frowning as she spoke. She returned her attention to Moira. “Why don’t you go home?”
“I—I don’t know how to. The bridge that brought me here ... when I went to go back across it, its roadway was gone.”
Diane nodded. “What has my brother told you?”
Nothing that made sense, Moira wanted to say, but she related what she remembered of her conversations with Jack.
“And do you despair?” Diane asked.
Moira hesitated. She thought of the hopeless, dejected people she’d passed on the way to this rooftop.
“Not really, I guess. I mean, I’m not happy or anything, but ...”
“You have hope? That things will get better for you?”
A flicker of faces passed through her mind. Ghosts from the distant and recent past. Boys from high school. Eddie. She heard Eddie’s voice.
Either you come across, or you walk ....
She just wanted a normal life. She wanted to find something to enjoy in it. She wanted to find somebody she could have a good relationship with, she wanted to enjoy making love with him without worrying about people thinking she was a tramp. She wanted him to be there the next morning. She wanted there to be more to what they had than just a roll in the hay.
Right now, none of that seemed very possible.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I want it to. I’m not going to give up, but ...”
Again, faces paraded before her—this time they belonged to those lost souls of the city. The despairing.
“I know there are people a lot worse off than I am,” she said. “I’m not sick, I’ve got the use of my body and my mind. But I’m missing something, too. I don’t know how it is for other people—maybe they feel the same and just handle it better—but I feel like there’s a hole inside me that I just can’t fill. I get so lonely ...”
“You see,” Jack said then. “She’s mine.”
Moira turned to him. “What are you talking about?”
It was Diane who answered. “He’s laying claim to your unhappiness,” she said.
Moira looked from one to the other. There was something going on here, some undercurrent, that she wasn’t picking up on. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“This city is ours,” Diane said. “My brother’s and mine. We are two sides to the same coin. In most people, that coin lies with my face up, for you are an optimistic race. But optimism only carries some so far. When my brother’s face lies looking skyward, all hope is gone.”
Moira centered on the words, “you are an optimistic race,” realizing from the way Diane spoke it was as though she and her brother weren’t human. She looked away, across the cityscape of bridges and tilting buildings. It was a dreamscape—not exactly a nightmare, but not at all pleasant either. And she was trapped in it; trapped in a dream.
“Who are you people?” she asked. “I don’t buy this ‘Jack and Diane’ bit—that’s like out of that John Mellencamp song. Who are you really? What is this place?”
“I’ve already told you,” Jack said.
“But you only gave her half the answer,” Diane added. She turned to Moira. “We are Hope and Despair,” she said. She touched a hand to her breast. “Because of your need for us, we are no longer mere allegory, but have shape and form. This is our city.”
Moira shook her head. “Despair I can understand—this place reeks of it. But not Hope.”
“Hope is what allows the strong to rise above their despair,” Diane said. “It’s what makes them strong. Not blind faith, not the certain knowledge that someone will step in and help them, but the understanding that through their own force of will they cannot merely survive, but succeed. Hope is what tempers that will and gives it the strength to carry on, no matter what the odds are ranked against them.”
“Don’t forget to tell her how too much hope will turn her into a lazy cow,” her brother said.
Diane sighed, but didn’t ignore him. “It’s true,” she said. “Too much hope can also be harmful.
Remember this: Neither hope nor despair have power of their own; they can only provide the fuel that you will use to prevail or be defeated.”
“Pop psychology,” Moira muttered.
Diane smiled. “Yet, like old wives’ tales, it has within it a kernel of truth, or why would it linger?”
“So what am I doing here?” Moira asked. “I never gave up. I’m still trying.”
Diane looked at her brother. He shrugged his shoulders. “I admit defeat,” he said. “She is yours.”
Diane shook her head. “No. She is her own. Let her go.” Jack turned to Moira, the look of a petulant child marring his strong features before they started to become hazy.
“You’ll be back,” he said. That dry voice was like a desert wind, its fine sand filling her heart with an aching forlornness. “Hope is sweet, I’ll admit that readily, but once Despair has touched you, you can never be wholly free of its influence.”
A hot flush ran through Moira. She reeled, dizzy, vision blurring, only half hearing what was being said. Her head was thick with a heavy buzz of pain.
But Hope is stronger.
Moira wasn’t sure if she’d actually heard that, the sweet scent of blossoms clearing her heart of Despair’s dust, or if it came from within herself—something she wanted—had to believe. But it overrode Despair’s dry voice. She no longer fo
ught the vertigo, but just let it take her away.
Moira was suddenly aware that she was on her hands and knees, with dirty wood under her. Where
... ?
Then she remembered: Walking across the covered bridge. The city. Hope and Despair.
She sat back on her haunches and looked around herself. She was back in her own world. Back—if she’d ever even gone anywhere in the first place.
A sudden roaring filled her head. Lights blinded her as a car came rushing up on the far side of the bridge. She remembered Eddie, her fear of some redneck hillbillies, but there was nowhere to run to. The car screeched to a halt on the wood, a door opened. A man stepped out onto the roadway of the bridge and came towards her.
Backlit by the car’s headbeams, he seemed huge—a monstrous shape. She wanted to bolt. She wanted to scream. She couldn’t seem to move, not even enough to reach into her purse for her switchblade.
“Jesus!” the stranger said. “Are you okay?”
He was bent down beside her now, features pulled tight with concern.
She nodded slowly. “I just ... felt dizzy, I guess.”
“Here. Let me help you up.”
She allowed him to do that. She let him walk her to his car. He opened up the passenger’s door and she sank gratefully onto the seat. The man looked down to the end of the bridge by which she’d entered it what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Did you have some car trouble?” the man asked.
“You could say that,” she said. “The guy I was with dumped me from his car a few miles back.”
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. “Just my feelings.”
“Jesus. What a crappy thing to do.”
“Yeah. Thanks for stopping.”
“No problem. Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
Moira shook her head. “I’m going back to Newford. I think that’s a little far out of your way.”
“Well, I’m not just going to leave you here by yourself.” Before she could protest, he closed the door and went back around to the driver’s side.
“Don’t worry,” he said as he got behind the wheel. “After what you’ve been through, a guy’d have to be a real heel to—well, you know.”
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