Warren Adler 2009 Short Story Contest Finalists

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Christina Forlani was there the day that the Tobin Bridge collapsed into the Mystic River. Older generations called it the Mystic River Bridge; the word mystic derived from the Native American word, "missi-tuk," meaning "great river whose waters are driven by waves." At times, the currents of the Mystic River are said to flow in both directions at once. The bridge came to be known by this more romantic name again after it fell. Pieces of the bridge floated down the murky waters, mingling with car engines and clothing, relics of a tragedy. Christina was there. She felt the rumble. She heard the groaning steel.

The day was August 25th, 2015. Christina crossed the bridge three times that day. Once on her way to work at the Ye Olde Trolley Tours Co., once on her way back home to Revere and a final time, fleeing to the apartment of a friend who was going to save her. The second time, on her way back to Revere, her arms trembled, clutching the steering wheel of her car as she recited her speech. Christina was planning on ending a longtime relationship with her boyfriend, "Ex", and she'd never been one for confrontation.

A hot wind whistled through the windows of her car as she drove over the bridge. She fidgeted with the radio stations, pretending it mattered what song was on as she planned her liberation. Most of the stations were abuzz with outraged callers and enthusiastic advocates responding to the first successful human clone. Christina was sick of hearing about it and her pale finger jabbed at the dial and she settled for a loud reggae beat that almost drowned out the foreboding thump, thump, thump of her heart.

Ex's truck was not in the driveway. This was a rare occurrence since Ex did not go to work often. He was supposed be on one of the Big Dig projects downtown, a greenway that replaced the raised highways that were now underground tunnels. Big Dig had begun almost thirty-five years ago but had stopped almost completely after the Zakim Bridge went up due to lawsuits and the use of faulty materials. First, ceiling panels from the tunnel going over the Interstate. That was twelve tons of concrete. After that, it only got worse. Two new Big Dig tunnels collapsed completely, one of which had already been opened to the public. The death toll rose and the public outcry had been close to anarchistic. The greenway was one of the minor projects that they were slowly chipping away at. Christina suspected that Ex had been fired from the job when he claimed that he wasn't needed on a day to day basis. As she pulled up, what she thought of as dumb luck made Christina's limbs tingle wit!
h relief. She was short of breath and meek cries escaped her as she strode the rocky driveway.

She entered the dark house, running up and down the brown-carpeted stairs, deeply inhaling the rank odor of cigarettes and kitty litter as if perhaps she would miss the smell one day. She threw her clothes haphazardly into a duffle bag. She took only the jewelry that meant anything to her, most importantly, her mother's silver charm bracelet. The shiny artist's pallet, the silhouette of Mt. Washington, and the rolled up diploma with the Bunker Hill Community College engraving knocked up against the rest of the charms as she carried the bracelet through the room. Christina never wore the bracelet since the charms represented things that she herself had never accomplished, though she hoped that one day she could wear it.

She took her favorite book by Harper Lee, luckily she had learned her favorite passages by heart since chunks of pages had been ripped out by Ex during a spat. Christina took a photo of her and Ex in their happier days. It was a picture of the two of them in front of Kelly's Roast Beef, seagulls littering the air around them. Perhaps in five or ten years, she might care enough to remember what he looked like. But Ex looked healthier in the old photo, more muscular. His brown hair was almost down to his shoulders, slightly curled at the end in the way she used to love, not the short buzz cut that he wore now. Christina admitted that she'd looked better in the old picture, too. It was high school, which was almost eight years ago, after all. She was skinnier and her dirty blonde hair looked thick in the two braids falling down her shoulders. She was grinning, looking right at the camera. Ex's big, dark eyes were looking down at her, his arm pulling her body against his. S!
he still could remember the feeling of his hand up against the small of her back and the protection that it promised.

She dug through drawers looking for her silk robe with poppies on it, which had been a gift from her mother. It was the only item she owned that made her feel sexy. She'd tucked it deep in her dresser to save it from being ripped to shreds or hacked apart with Ex's shears. She pulled a roll of cash (her tips from the Trolley Tours that she always hid) from her box of tampons under the bathroom sink. Ex would never look there. She scrawled the words that had been in her head all day onto the back of an unpaid electric bill on the kitchen table. She scribbled furiously until her hand cramped and her skin was smeared with black ink. "Your manic behavior, your distorted vision of what love really is. All of this is a fallacy, Ex. One day you will realize that violence and passion are not the same and that honesty does not always come in the form of an insult. When you do, I will be far beyond your reach," she wrote. These final words made her proud and she underlined the la!
st sentence for emphasis.

Though never an orator, Christina had always considered herself eloquent. Her mother kept poems she'd written on napkins as a child and framed them in the living room of their old home. She'd gotten A's in English class throughout high school and in the years before she died, her mother had been saving money for her to go to a writing retreat in the Berkshires. Still, on introspective rainy days, Christina would call up the organization that held the retreats and ask to be sent application forms. She'd filled out at least five without ever sending them in. She never let Ex see them. He'd have had a good laugh at her expense. Christina thought that perhaps one day Ex would be framing the goodbye note she'd fervently written to him in the midst of her escape. It might be worth money someday. She allowed herself to grin at the thought of this.

Christina turned wildly through the streets of her chain-linked neighborhood, letting the reggae blast on the radio, truly triumphant this time. She took her left hand off the wheel to glance at the pink, calloused burns on her palm, remembering the way Bert at the Trolley Tours had massaged it slowly in the driver's lounge saying, "No, it's not right, Christina. You don't deserve this, Christina." Bert was a few years younger than her, but this did not matter. He was fragile and he was kind. His eyes were a clear blue and he always had a layer of sweat beading up on his forehead from the summer heat that hung in the driver's lounge. Bert was a manager at Ye Olde Trolley Tours Co. and he'd been the one to train Christina once she'd been granted her license to drive the trolleys. He'd been patient and precise as they drove through Boston together, her repeating the language of the tour after him slowly, pointing to the monuments and clumsily fumbling with the dates and p!
roper names of the attractions the trolley highlighted. Christina had been to his apartment a few times. It was small and plain, not a single picture or poster hung on the walls. Bert said that it could use a female's touch. Bert's apartment was in South Boston, seven minutes closer to the Trolley Co. than her residence with Ex. Bert never left hickeys on her neck when he kissed her.

Christina felt giddiness rushing through her as she approached the Tobin Bridge and the Boston skyline spread out before her. She was so very high up and had never had such a clear view without the dread of rush hour lingering like a knot in her stomach. The USS Constitution with its high masts looked statelier than ever, even as it rested motionless in Charlestown harbor, and the Prudential building glimmered in the evening sun. The Zakim Bridge spread out horizontally before her, its towers and spindles moving like a cat's cradle in the distance. The city became a beautiful bulls eye as Christina's car approached, the soaring arrow, a toll the only obstacle in its path. She barely slowed down, flying through the Fastlane, unaware of any other car on the bridge. The road gently sloped, easing her into the city, the last gasp of daylight gathering itself into orange and pink clouds on the horizon.

Christina thought it was her nerves acting up when the ground beneath her car rumbled and the pavement buckled. She bit her bottom lip hard and gushed blood that tasted like iron. Her car shook violently and the roar of crunching metal drowned out the beat of her triumphant reggae. Christina's hands were off the wheel now as her car slid backwards, and she watched a stretch of bridge split ten feet before her. Pavement became quicksand. Her car was sucked backwards and the Boston skyline was swallowed up by snapping rods of steel. As her car went vertical and fell, the view through the cracking windshield was all sky. Dimpled clouds, purple, orange and a hazy yellow, were broken up by the geometric lines of the fractured glass. The sound was a long, piercing groan followed by the splashing water of the murky Mystic River.

Two days later, Ex pulled a piece of the Mystic River Bridge from the water. A piece of the bridge was not what he had come to find. He searched in vain for a poppy robe. He could remember the feeling of its silk on his skin when she rubbed against him. He saw clearly now an image from months ago, the way that it undulated, rising and falling in the breeze that had trailed in from the open window behind their bed. He perched on the bank of the river hoping to see the bright silk floating through the sludge, a seductive beacon that might curb the sore in his chest.

One could follow the muddy path made by the treads of his tires down to this barren stretch of riverbank, to find him still as a gargoyle, watching over the river, well into the night.