Beach Strip Read online

  “Mrs. Marshall.”

  Because I saw no one, I believed no one was there, and I’d be damned if I would stand on a bridge late at night talking to no one.

  “I know what happened,” the voice said. “Listen to me. I know what happened.”

  I saw a shadow within shadows below me, faint light reflected off a fainter image of a man, craning his neck to look up at me.

  I was about to speak. Or maybe walk—no, run like hell—off the bridge and return home. I’m not sure because, before I could do either, I was almost knocked backwards by a blast from a few feet away, aimed directly at me.

  11.

  A sign on the bridge warns: caution—loud horn may sound at any time. The horn looks like the ones mounted on top of transport trucks that kids on highway overpasses want the truckers to blast on their way by, but it’s bigger and louder, set about six feet above the walkway. The bridge operator sounds the horn to warn pedestrians, cyclists, and dawdlers that the bridge is about to rise. I hear it several times a day from our house a hundred yards down the strip and from almost anywhere on the beach, always at a distance.

  It blasted at me within arm’s reach, so loud it was painful and so startling that I dropped the tin box to bring my hands to my ears. My instinct was to run from the sound and off the bridge, and I did, even while the horn kept blasting. When it finally stopped, the near-silence was like the rush of a narcotic, a freedom from agony, and the softly ringing bell marking the lowering of wooden barriers to block traffic across the bridge was a soothing release.

  I was off the bridge and stumbling down the incline. A pickup truck slowed as it approached the barrier, and the driver grinned at me when I passed and said, “What’s your hurry, sweetheart?” I didn’t stop running until I reached the bottom of the incline, where I leaned against a wooden bench to catch my breath and wait for my body to stop shaking.

  The bell kept ringing over various metallic creaks, groans, and snapping sounds. The bridge was beginning to rise. I turned to watch and ensure that whoever had spoken to me from beneath the bridge was not following me. I saw only the driver of the pickup truck as he lit a cigarette and prepared to wait ten, perhaps fifteen minutes for the approaching ship, which looked like a village floating on the lake, to enter the extended mouth of the canal and move into the bay. Two more cars slowed as they approached the bridge barriers, and their presence, along with the steady ringing of the bell and complaints from the aged bridge as it rose high into the night air, were comforting.

  My hands felt unnaturally empty. The tin that had contained Gabe’s ashes was now out of reach on the rising bridge or out of sight in the shadows beneath it. Either way, I had no intention of retrieving it, and I turned my back just as the bridge reached its height and the freighter, about to enter the canal, sounded its horn, deep-voiced and friendly like a grandfather’s greeting, and distant.

  MY EARS WERE STILL RINGING and my hands were shaking when I arrived home and stood at the door, fumbling for my keys. I was no longer thinking of the voice I heard, or believed I heard, from the shadows under the bridge, or even the realization that Gabe’s ashes were at that moment being stirred among the waters of the canal by some rusting hulk from Slovenia or Panama. I wanted only to be within my own house, our house, Gabe’s and mine, with the door locked behind me.

  And I was. I snapped the deadlock into place, switched on the living-room light, walked through to the kitchen, turned on the lights there as well, and slumped in a chair. I considered pouring myself a brandy. That’s what people in movies do when they need strength or something to calm their nerves. But the idea of pouring neat brandy into my stomach, which continued to move as though it were a trampoline under a herd of gerbils, repelled me. Coffee might be good, but coffee meant walking to the cupboard and performing the rest of that ritual, which had once been comforting but now seemed risky. So I remained where I was, sitting with my arms folded and my chin up, for about as long as it took me to remember the song about whistling a happy tune whenever I feel afraid. Then I placed my elbows on the table, my head in my hands, and settled my mind in that uncertain space between fear and anger while the tears flowed.

  Some creep under the bridge knew my name. What was he doing there so late at night? Looking up my skirt, if I had been wearing a skirt? And what did he want me to do, walk under the bridge and join him there? It was probably the pervert from the garden shed. If he knew enough about me to jerk off in the tool shed whenever I appeared at a window, he might know my name. If it was him. The pervert in the tool shed. Which made me curious.

  I rose from the table and walked to the rear door leading to the garden. Gabe had installed lights shining from the house into the garden and toward the beach after we found kids drinking beer among the flowers and shrubs one night. On summer evenings we would turn the lights on before going to bed, persuading the kids to find some other garden for their drinking and puking.

  I turned the lights on now and looked across at the garden shed, whose door stood open. The door had been closed that afternoon, locked with the simple metal closure Gabe had installed, long before Tina departed for the airport with Alex. Long before Gabe’s ashes arrived. Someone had opened the shed door and no doubt entered, and left without closing it again.

  The rear door was locked, but I had left the kitchen window open to catch the breeze. The screen was attached and intact, which meant little. Anyone could have entered from the garden and replaced the screen. I closed and locked the window, then remembered that the window in the dining room was open as well, and closed and locked it.

  I sat on one of the dining-room chairs. Sat there in the dark. Sat thinking that I was alone in a house with every door and window locked. Sat and realized that if anyone had entered the house in my absence, he and I—it was always a man, wasn’t it?—were now sealed inside a locked house together. And upstairs it was very dark.

  I had never feared being alone in our house before, but I had always had Gabe to protect me, even from a distance.

  I tried being logical. If someone was in the house with me, and it had anything to do with the open garden shed—because isn’t that what triggered this whole panic thing?—it must be The Pervert. But wasn’t he the guy who spoke to me, if anyone had spoken to me, from beneath the bridge? It had to be him. Maybe he had been in the garden shed. Maybe he followed me to the canal and hid under the bridge. Who was this little shit anyway, this creep who got his jollies peeping at me, and who had the nerve to call me Mrs. Marshall?

  I went into the kitchen and took the flashlight from the shelf in the broom closet. Then, leaving all the lights on in the lower floor of the house, and taking care to lock the front door behind me, I walked across Beach Boulevard and toward the lift bridge. I had no intention of confronting some lecher who had called to me from the shadows under the bridge. I wanted the tin box back, the one that had held Gabe’s ashes. If it had fallen onto the walkway of the lift bridge when the horn startled me, I would bring it home. If it had fallen onto the walkway of the canal, I would at least be able to see it with the flashlight. And if I spotted the pervert—if that’s who had called up to me—I would satisfy my curiosity. Or maybe I just wanted to get the hell out of a darkened house where I no longer felt safe.

  There was even less traffic on Beach Boulevard than before. I crossed the road and stroked the broken concrete pole as I passed it. I felt safer in the open air. Ahead of me, I saw the light shining from the bridge operator’s high window. A car approached, crossing the lift bridge, its windows darkened and thumping with the bass beat of hip-hop music.

  The bridge had settled back into place after the freighter passed through the canal and entered the bay, and I could see the ship’s hulk across the bay, approaching the steel plants. At the foot of the incline leading to the bridge, I glanced up at the window, where the bridge operator was looking down at me with some curiosity. I wondered if his work was as boring as it appeared. He enjoyed job security, at least, because t
he federal government owned and operated the bridge. Another kind of security, I suspected, was being locked in a well-lit room, maybe with a radio or TV to keep you company. It all went together. Boredom and security. Salt and pepper. Love and marriage. Me and Gabe.

  The sight of the bridge operator watching me made me feel better, and when I stepped onto the bridge I made a point of remaining where he could see me, instead of concealing myself behind the steel pillar as I had earlier. I turned the flashlight on and shone it into the shadows beneath the bridge, searching for the metal box.

  Gabe had purchased the flashlight in the spring and, Gabe being Gabe, he couldn’t buy an ordinary light. He chose one with a battery the size of a small loaf of bread, with something that looked like a headlight from our car mounted on top. Gabe wanted a powerful light that he could shine from our garden across the beach to the water’s edge. He was always worried that somebody, some summer’s night, would arrive pounding on our back door, screaming that someone was in trouble out in the water. “You need a serious light at times like that,” Gabe said. “This is a serious light.” It was also the weight of a large bag of potatoes, and my arm was aching when I lifted the light to the top of the walkway rail and aimed it at the edge of the canal, directly beneath my feet, expecting it to reveal the empty metal box or the shining eyes of our neighbourhood pervert. But it showed nothing beyond a crumpled paper coffee cup, a newspaper, and assorted cigarette butts.

  The box might have fallen and bounced out of sight, so I walked toward the centre of the bridge, where, by leaning over the railing, I could look back beneath it. I swept the beam wider. Everything within the circle of its light appeared as bright as day. I passed it back and forth across the concrete walkway, from the edge of the wire fence to the painted yellow strip where the edge of the walkway met the canal waters.

  Seeing nothing, I turned the light back to the edge of the fence itself, holding it on a place where the fence had been detached from the metal pole supporting it, creating an opening. I remembered the stories of boys clambering beneath the bridge to leave pennies on the metal platform when the bridge was raised, and returning after it had lowered and been raised again to retrieve the coins, flat and thin and misshapen. The fence had been built to keep them out, but I have always believed very little can keep twelve-year-old boys from entering anything they choose to enter.

  I kept the light moving until I saw the metal box lying among the trash and gravel inside the fence, where it could not possibly have fallen. Someone had carried it there, and at the edge of the circle of light, I saw who it might have been.

  Actually, I saw a pair of shoes, and I moved the light as far up the rest of the man, who was lying on his stomach, as I could. He was near the base of the bridge supports, which rose three or four feet above him. There was something awkward and unnatural about the way he was lying there. Nobody’s legs stretched out at those angles, even in a deep sleep, although I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping because I was unable to see beyond his shoulders.

  I suspected it was the pervert, but even perverts deserve consideration. I kept shining the light back and forth to get the man’s attention, without success. Leave him for somebody else to find in the morning, I thought. Or do something now. Which is what Gabe would do. Which is what I did.

  I walked to the end of the bridge and aimed the light up at the bridge operator’s window. He seemed to be reading a book or newspaper, and it took several sweeps of the light across the window before he looked down at me with more curiosity than before. I began waving at him, launching one of the more inane conversations I have had with a man.

  Swinging the window open, he leaned out, and I shouted over the sound of the trucks passing above us on the high level bridges, “Hey!”

  He, naturally, answered, “What?”

  “There’s a guy down here.”

  “A what?”

  “Some man.”

  “A can?”

  “A man. A guy.”

  “Who?”

  “What?”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. But I think he’s in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “I think he’s sick.”

  “You think it’s a trick?”

  “Sick! Sick!”

  “What, he’s puking?”

  “No, he’s sleeping.”

  “Is he drunk?”

  “Is he what?”

  “Hey, are you drunk?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “What’re you doing all alone on the bridge at this time of night? You were just here half an hour ago. You gonna jump or what?”

  “Thanks for your concern. Look, there is something wrong with this guy. At least call the cops or an ambulance.”

  The bridge operator gave that some thought. I saw him reach for what I assumed was a telephone. “Where is he?” he called down.

  “He’s inside the fence.”

  “Where?”

  “Inside the fence. There’s a hole there.”

  “There’s not supposed to be anybody in there.”

  “Well, he’s not supposed to be looking like he’s dead, either. But he does.”

  “Like he’s what?”

  “Dead. I mean, maybe he isn’t, but—”

  “What’s he wearing?”

  “Blue plaid shirt, khaki pants—”

  “He’s not dead.” The operator leaned back inside his office, brought the receiver to his mouth, said a few words into it, then stuck his head out the window again. “I’ve told that guy a dozen times to stay the hell out. Wait there. I’ll be right down.”

  He emerged from a landing just beyond his window and trotted down metal steps that ended on another landing below the level of the walkway where I stood. He was older than I expected, with a fringe of grey hair above his ears and around the back of his head, making a fuzzy frame. His face was softer and friendlier than it appeared at a distance through the window. He stood at the edge of the stair landing, squinting toward the area beneath the lift bridge before looking back at me. “This place’d drive you nuts. Guys sleeping under the bridge, couples having sex, kids putting pennies on the platforms, last week some guy’s shooting a gun down here.” He dropped his eyes and lifted them back to mine again, having liked, I assumed, what he saw. “Lend me your light, will you?” he said, stretching a hand toward me.

  I walked down the steps to hand it to him. He turned it on, swept it across the rubble inside the fence until he located the man, then began descending to the level of the canal walkway, shouting, “Hey! Hey, you!”

  I followed him. He had my flashlight, after all, and I felt safer with him than standing alone on the bridge.

  “Watch yourself,” he said, and he shone the light on the ground ahead of us. I stayed well back from the edge of the canal, following a few steps behind the bridge operator. When we reached the opening in the chain-link fence, he shook his head and made the same “Tch, tch, tch” sound my grandmother used to make when reading about disasters in the newspaper.

  He knelt and shone the light through the opening in the wire fence and toward the bridge supports until it reflected back from the soles of the man’s shoes. “Hey, Charlie,” the operator called. Did this mean he knew the man’s name? “Hey, asshole. Get up and get moving. The cops are on their way. I warned you about this, damn it.” Bent from the waist, he duck-walked through the opening in the fence. As he stood erect on the other side of the fence, he winced and placed a hand at the small of his back before raising the light again. “You okay?” he said. His voice had lost its commanding tone. “Have you … holy shit.”

  He was standing between me and the man on the rubble, so I moved to one side to see whatever it was that made him respond that way. By the time I did, he had swung the light from the man to the bridge supports, each made of square concrete as wide and high as a refrigerator and topped with thick steel pads. The light climbed up the support directly in
front of the man’s body. Unlike the others alongside it, this one was shiny and red, the blood thicker and congealed among matter at the top, where the weight of the lift bridge rested on it, and I was just understanding what this was, or what it had been, when he swung the light back to the body. This time it wasn’t the shadows, or the angle, or the thick rubble the light illuminated. This time it was clear to me and to the bridge operator, and eventually to the police, whose sirens announced their arrival on the lift bridge above us, that the man was not only dead but headless.

  12.

  “Okay, okay, okay.” I kept repeating the words like a wind-up doll, although nothing was okay. Everything was crazy. Everything was out of control. A man who had spoken to me less than an hour ago was dead, his head crushed into a thin film of jelly beneath hundreds of tons of steel when the bridge descended. I needed time for my brain to catch up with the rest of the world.

  I was in the back seat of a police car, my hands fluttering in front of my face. Tom Grychuk, for that was the name of the bridge operator, sat next to me, staring at the lake, his chin on his hand. Flashing red, yellow and blue lights from a dozen or so cars, ambulances and trucks crowding the parking lot next to the lift bridge lit up the area like a misguided bush party.

  In the front passenger seat of the car, a detective waited for me to finish stuttering. He had introduced himself as Sergeant Harold Hayashida. I remembered Gabe mentioning his name. Gabe thought he was one of the better detectives. When Hayashida arrived ten minutes ago, he looked as though nothing much would excite him, and when he returned from inspecting the body beneath the bridge, he looked more sombre but still not surprised. Beside him, a uniformed patrolman sat at the wheel, writing on a wire-bound pad.

  “Okay,” I said one more time. “You’re telling me that this guy, this man under the bridge, you think he committed suicide? By sticking his head on top of that piece of concrete and waiting for the bridge to come down and crush it like an egg?”