Tallie could see Bridge was wearing a white undershirt beneath his flannel, the gold chain of a necklace peeking out. She would ask him his name again later, but perhaps if she talked to him more, he’d offer it up on his own. She used the same technique with her clients, the ones who arrived an hour early but then clammed up when they came into her office. The ones who would talk about their mothers but not their fathers. The ones who would talk about everyone else but not themselves. She sometimes turned down the lights or played soft classical music if the clients preferred. Bach’s cello suites were disarming. Chopin, Mozart, Liszt, Haydn.
She had dark chocolate with almonds and hard candy in a sheesham wood bowl handcrafted by Indian women. She’d bought several for the office, and the money went to ending sex trafficking. She made a mental note to donate to the cause again as soon as she was in front of her computer. Those poor girls. Maybe Bridge was one of those disgusting creeps who bought little girls. Those guys could be anywhere. It sickened her, thinking about it.
She considered herself a decent judge of character when she trusted her instincts. She gave him a hard look to gauge his energy, tried to decide if he really had the face of a man who wanted to die. He had kind, redwood-brown eyes. Redwood called up cedar, her favorite smell. She’d bought Joel an expensive cedar-based cologne for their last anniversary. He wore it once and told her he didn’t think he could wear it anymore because it got all over him. “It was everywhere,” he’d said, and she’d thought, That’s the point. She’d loved the day he smelled like it, when it was everywhere. She still had the bottle at home: a glass rectangle the color of sunlit bourbon. She wished she could give it to Bridge, tell him the cedar scent matched his eyes. Maybe he’d understand what that meant. Maybe his senses infused one another, too, leaked out, left stains. Like how the rain could make her go gray-blue and how the gray-blue left her with the cloying taste of blueberries in her mouth.
The coffee shop was warm and crowded, everyone busy on their phones or laptops or with their books or children or boyfriends or girlfriends or friends or cakes or cappuccinos. She’d gladly pay for his coffee and a snack if he was hungry. Did Bridge have money? A phone?
“So you’ll drink a coffee if I buy you one? Or would you like a pop or a milk?” Tallie asked him as they walked to the counter together. His boots squeaked, the cuffs of his jacket dripped.
“I’ll drink a coffee,” he said, nodding.
“Black?”
He nodded again. She convinced herself she’d imagined his creepy smile. He didn’t seem creepy in that coffee shop. His eyes were delicate, crinkled in the corners. He couldn’t have been in his twenties. Definitely thirties. He seemed like a smoker, although he didn’t smell like it. Smoker’s energy, she knew it well. Her mom had it bad.
She couldn’t text her best girlfriend, Aisha, because she was out of town on an unplugged Thursday-to-Sunday hippie yoga retreat. Tallie considered texting her brother, Lionel, to say hi and casually let someone know where she was, just in case. But she couldn’t tell him about Bridge. He’d get really angry. He’d said something to her about being careless in the past week because she’d gone to visit him, parked in his steep driveway, forgot to pull the emergency brake. When she came out, she saw that her car had rolled down the driveway and into the grass, narrowly avoiding the front line of trees edging his property. “Sometimes you’re so careless,” her big brother had said. But Tallie wasn’t careless. Lionel was obsessed with perfection, leaving no room for honest mistakes. Her mother and brother often insisted on saying what didn’t need to be said. Hurtful things. It was one of the reasons Tallie had become a therapist—to help people be kinder to themselves and others. To make the world a safer, sweeter place.
Once when Tallie was ten and playing in her room by herself, content and humming, her mother had told her she was a lonely little girl. She’d never forgotten it. What an awful thing to say. Maybe someone had told Bridge he was a lonely little boy once.
“Did you want something to eat? Would probably be a good idea,” she said. She stood at the counter and ordered two coffees from the barista after exchanging hellos. Bridge looked down at the glass pastry case. Without waiting for an answer, she ordered the last two old-fashioned pumpkin doughnuts they had left. She paid and went to the condiment station to pour soy milk in her cup, a small shake of raw sugar. Bridge followed her, and they found a table together. They sat in the corner next to a pole with white twinkle lights wrapped around it, their atomic halos softening everything in their glow. He peeled off his jacket. Thanked her for the coffee, the doughnut.
His shirt seemed dry. He had nice hands, coffin-square shoulders. A light brown-reddish beard that matched his freckles. He slicked his damp hair back, rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves. She waited for him to take a drink of his coffee. When he took a drink of his coffee, they could begin. This was a therapy session whether he knew it or not. He had to expect her to ask a lot of questions. They’d met under extraordinary circumstances; they were in this together. He sipped his coffee, broke off a piece of doughnut and ate it. He was very neat, careful to keep the crumbs on the plate.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I need to take my medicine,” he said after he’d chewed, swallowed.
Antidepressants? That’s all this was. The chemicals in his brain were off-kilter, and his medicine would fix it. She’d had clients who went off their meds, and it wasn’t until they had an extreme wake-up call that they realized how much they needed their prescriptions. Had the bridge woken Bridge up? She could take him to get his meds, pay for them.
“Where is your medicine?”
“My backpack,” he said, tilting his head toward his feet, where it was. He kept eating. She mirrored him, dug into her doughnut, a treat she allowed herself only every now and then, but tonight was obviously different. The crumbs were sticking to her fingers, and she wiggled them to shake them off.
“We could get a bottled water. And um, is there someone you can stay with? Do you think you need to go to a hospital? I could take you there,” she said. There were people she could call. She had connections. Doctors, a fireman who used to be a neighbor. She could piece a rescue together. Didn’t he need to be rescued?
“Antihistamines. It’s my allergy medicine,” he said after he drank more of his coffee. Like, Look, lady, why would I go to a hospital for allergy medicine? You are being crazy. I am fine. Please stop being crazy and let me drink my dark blend in peace.
“Well, I mean because of the bridge.” Hospital because you were going to jump to your death. That’s why hospital.
“That was then. This is a new moment.”
“Still important to discuss, though, don’t you think?”
“I’m not from here. My family’s from Clementine,” he said. Tallie had heard of it, knew Clementine was a small city in southeastern Kentucky, about three hours away.
“You’re half black? I don’t imagine there are a lot of us in Clementine,” Tallie said, leaning forward. She’d never seen a face like Bridge’s before. Mixed with a million things—his thick, Kennedy-like dark blond hair blushed with red.
“My grandmother was black. And no, you’re right. Not a lot of us, no,” he said.