He saw her, toes off the edge, staring into the waves, hair fluttering in the wind, and he supposed a bridge was an appropriate place to kill yourself: the threshold between one place and another.
The water below was gray, glossed in silver like liquid moonlight, but the waves that crested the pale sand were as gray as clouds, and the air felt very white.
He stood up, sliding on his callused jacket, because the hard-edged air that blew off the sharp tips of the gray water bit your neck, reddened your cheeks.
It had begun to rain, gently, pebbling the asphalt water, like the clouds were skipping rocks.
It was such a particularly gray day that nobody milled about: no tourists with cameras, or toddlers with cotton candy, or bored teenagers with headphones.
He climbed up. It wasn’t hard. He wondered if they built some bridges harder to climb, so they found less bodies in the water.
His thin-fingered hands clung to the wiring, and he stood next to her, watching the silvery waves.
“How old are you?” he asked conversationally.
This was unexpected. Startled, she blinked, then replied, “Seventeen.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” There was a soft silence between the concrete voice of the rain. “I guess you’re going to talk me out of it.” she said.
He shrugged. “No. Life is very long.” With one hand still wound around the wiring, he reached into his pocket, and withdrew a half-empty pack of cigarettes.
He offered her one. She wrinkled her nose.
“Come on.” he said. “You haven’t got much longer, anyway. Might as well enjoy some of the beauties of life before you die.”
Hesitantly, she nodded, sticking the thin cigarette between her teeth.
He placed one in his mouth, then pocketed the pack, withdrew a battered lighter, and lit them both.
He smoked contemplatively for a moment, then blew out a halo of silver.
She sucked on hers, resisting the desire to cough. It tasted like old house fires. She wondered suddenly why smokers always smelled like fire, like they had something burning between their ribcage.
“Why?” he asked at last, listening to the sea and the sound of her breathing.
“Everyone hates me.” Even then, she wasn’t quite sure it was true. All she could think of, though, was the sharp-cornered letters of all the things she told herself, the chewed fingernails, the hot tears in the bathroom, the blood in the sink, and the gray, gauzy fog of being alone.
Again, it was a while before he said anything. “That’s quite a general statement.”
Her mouth tasted terrible. The wind picked up.
“Do you think it’ll hurt?” he asked her, and she could hear the smoke in his voice.
“I don’t know. Maybe not.”
“I wonder what the water will taste like.” he mused. “Like, when you were a kid, did you ever get soda up your nose? Maybe like that. Except you’re drowning.”
She felt scared for the first time, then hurriedly tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Did you do all the things you wanted to?” he asked her.
“What?”
“I mean, did you do all the things you thought you would when you were five?”
She wasn’t sure. She could hardly remember the things she had wanted when she was five, the way the world looked in a stained-glass lens. “I guess.” She added quickly, “No one wants me around.”
He shrugged. “Probably they do. People are just terrible at saying how they feel. Did you get a tattoo?”
“Well, no.” she said softly. “I always kind of wanted one on my neck, like, a couple of birds, maybe.”
“That sounds nice.” he agreed. “I’ve got one. Last line of Gatsby. You know, about the boats? On my ankle. Got it when I was fifteen.”
“Really?”
“I like books.” Suddenly, she could imagine him at fifteen, all long lanky legs and bangs, his feet on the chair, underlining words and scribbling notes in the margins of old dog-eared books.
A seagull cawed softly in the distance.
“There’s a reason we’re here, you know.”
She laughed, brittle. “Yeah? Because God put us here, or some other lie we tell ourselves?”
He shook his head. “No. We’re here so you can give the guy on the side of the highway a dollar for booze, to help your kid sister do her math homework, to write poetry that makes people think, to make someone laugh, to think of something no one ever thought of, to fall in love and smoke cigarettes and listen to the ocean.”
She was silent.
“What do you think your mom is going to say at your funeral?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think your mom is going to cry.” he said.
“You know,” he said, and she felt unshed tear press against her lids, so she closed her eyes, letting the rain soak her hair. “We’re all dying, anyway. You might as well wait it out. There are too many poems left unwritten, too many cigarettes left unsmoked, and too many people will cry over you.”
For a few minutes they simply stood, quiet silhouettes, watching the rippling gray water and the rain tear holes in the clouds, letting water slide down from their hairlines to their chins.
And then without a sound, she began to cry, and he helped her down.