A Bridge of Years

But mornings were good, too. This was a good morning. It was good to wake up and feel the city waking up around her. Since she had lived in New York the rhythm of the city had become a stabilizing pattern. She had learned to distinguish the sound of morning traffic from the sound of afternoon traffic, both distinct from the lonelier siren sound of the traffic late at night. Morning traffic woke her with promises. She did not dislike the city until noon; at noon it was coarse, loud, unruly, plain, and chokingly dull. Lunch hours at Macy’s she had written songs about the night and morning city, little spells against the crudity of midday.

Tom was still asleep on the sofa. Joyce was faintly surprised by this. She had imagined him vanished in the morning, like a dream, like smoke. But here he was: substantial in his rumpled clothes. She heard the clank and moan of the bathroom plumbing; he stepped into the kitchen with his face freshly washed and his eyes as wide and dazed as they had been the day before.

“New York,” he said. “Nineteen sixty-two.”

“Congratulations.”

“It’s amazing,” he said.

“You really are from out of town.”

“You could say that.” His grin was big and a little silly. “Feeling better this morning?”

“Better. Giddy, in fact.”

“Uh-huh. Well, don’t get too giddy. You probably need breakfast.”

“Probably.” He added, “I’m still broke.”

“Well—I can buy us breakfast. But I have to meet Lawrence at noon. Lawrence might not appreciate knowing you slept here.” Tom nodded his acceptance without asking who Lawrence might be—very courteous, Joyce thought.

She locked up and they descended to the street. The sky was bright and the air was almost warm—which was good, because Tom didn’t have a coat to throw over his cotton shirt. She started to recommend a thrift shop she knew about —“Once you get some cash.” But he shrugged off the problem. “I’ll worry about money later.”

“That’s a good attitude.”

“First I have to see about getting home.”

“You don’t need money for that?”

“Money’s not the problem.”

“So what is the problem?”

“The laws of physics. Mechanical mice.” Joyce smiled in spite of herself. He went on, “I can’t explain. Maybe I will someday. If I find my way back here.”

She met his eyes. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

She ordered up a coffee-shop breakfast for both of them. Cutting into her budget a little—but what was money for? Tom insisted on buying a newspaper and then he sat marveling at it, turning the pages reverently … not reading it so much as inspecting it, Joyce thought. Personally, she hadn’t picked up a paper since the John Gle

“I’ve never been accused of poetry before.”

“What you said about mechanical mice. And, hey, this is the Village. Poets are like cockroaches around here.”

“My God, it is, isn’t it? ‘The Village.’ ” He looked up from the paper. “You play music?”

“Sometimes,” Joyce allowed.

“I noticed your guitar back at the apartment. Twelve-string Hohner. Not too shabby.”

“You play?”

“A little bit. From college. It’s been a few years, though.”

“We should play sometime. If you come back.”

“Guitar players must be as common as poets around here.”

“Well, they’re like snowflakes. No two the same.” She smiled. “Seriously, if you come around this way again …”

“Thank you.” He looked at his watch and stood up. “You’ve been awesomely generous.”

“De nada. Besides, I like you.”

He touched her hand for a moment. The touch was fleeting but warm, and she felt a little internal tingle—mysterious, unexpected.

“I might be back,” he said.

“Goodbye, Tom Winter.”

He walked into the pale sunlight, wavered a moment in the doorway, then headed unsteadily east.

Find what you’re looking for, she thought. A parting wish. Though it didn’t seem too likely.

Probably, she thought, I’ll never see him again.

She sipped her coffee and glanced at the paper, but it was all bad news: two men had been murdered in an alley not a block from her apartment. While she slept, Death had been out walking the streets.

This was a shivery thought and she looked up once more, craned her neck to spot Tom down the street; but he was already gone, lost in the morning traffic and out of reach.

Five

The desk clerk glanced at the ledger as he handed her the key. “Room 312, Mrs. Winter.”

Barbara was startled. Had she really signed that name? She took the key and shot a sidelong glance at the page where she had, yes, written Mrs. Barbara Winter in neat script.

The motel was a three-story brick bivouac set back from a dismal stretch of highway maybe an hour’s drive from Belltower. She had considered driving straight through; but Tony’s call had reached her this afternoon at a conference in Victoria, B.C., and it was late now; she was tired; her car was tired, too. So she had stopped at this bleak roadside place at 10:30 p.m. in a light rain and signed her married name to the register.

Room 312 smelled of dry heat and disinfectant. The bed creaked and the window blinds opened on a view of the neon vacancy sign reflected in the slick wet parking lot. Cars and trucks passed on the highway in clusters of three or four, their tires hissing in the rain.

Maybe it’s stupid to see him.

The thought was unavoidable. She’d been having it intermittently since she climbed into the car. It echoed as she shrugged out of her jeans and blouse and stepped into the shower stall, washing away road dirt.

Maybe it was stupid to see him; maybe useless, too. Rafe had taken it well, with a minimum of pouting; but Rafe, twenty-three years old, saw the six-year gap between them as a chasm, was threatened by the notion of her lingering affection for Tom. She had obliged him by keeping contacts to a minimum … until now.

It was stupid to risk her relationship with Rafe—which was all the relationship she had at the moment, and one she was desperate not to lose. But she remembered what Tony had said on the phone:

I can’t do anything for him this time.

The words had gone through her like a shot of cold air.

“Please,” she said out loud. “Please, Tom, you dumb bastard, please be okay.”

Then she climbed under the cold motel sheets and slept till dawn.

In the morning, she tried the phone. He didn’t answer.

She panicked at first. Scolded herself for having spent the night here: it wouldn’t have been that much farther to drive. She could have gone on, could have knocked at his door, saved him from—

What?

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? The great unanswered question.

She checked out, stowed her luggage in the trunk of the car, pulled into the sparse dawn traffic droning down the highway.

Since she left Tom she had spoken to his brother Tony exactly twice. On both occasions he had asked for her help with Tom.

The first call had been months ago. Tom had been drinking, the job had fallen through, he owed back rent on his apartment. If Barbara had known she might have tried to help … but by the time Tony put in his call the situation was nearly resolved; Tony had arranged for a job in Belltower and Tom had dried out. “I don’t think there’s anything I could do to help,” she’d said.

“You could come back to him,” Tony had said. “Much as it pains me to say so. I think that would help.”

“Tony, you know I can’t do that.”

“Why the hell not? For Tom’s sake, I mean.”

“We broke up for a reason. I have another relationship.”

“You’re shacked up with some teenage anarchist. I heard about it.”

“This isn’t helping, Tony.”