Chapter 10 #3
‘Here at Bridgespan,’ he says slickly, as if in an advertisement, ‘we are focused on making informed and effective decisions on the operation, maintenance, preservation, replacement and improvement of bridges, to ensure optimal management of the national road structure.’
‘Nice,’ she smiles and applauds.
‘So, how can I help you, Melody Yates?’ His voice is gentle as he looks down at her, she only reaches to his chest.
‘Oh. My. God.’
Melody turns around to see a fashionable, cool young woman with a blunt bleached bob and pink dungarees at the open door with a coffee in one hand and a pile of envelopes in the other. She grins, revealing pink train tracks. ‘Melody Yates.’
‘Yes,’ Melody says, with a laugh.
‘How about I take that steaming cup of coffee from you so you don’t burn yourself,’ Al says, manoeuvring round the desk to take it from her. She barely blinks. ‘This is Natasha, my office assistant.’
‘Nice to meet you.’
‘I’m a massive fan. Are you here about the love locks? I made him listen to your podcast. He subscribed and everything.’
‘Did he?’ Melody looks at him.
He rolls his eyes dramatically and sips his coffee.
‘Would you like a coffee?’ Natasha asks.
‘I’d love one, thank you. I’ve been up most the night.’
‘Were you gigging?’ Natasha asks, leaning against the doorframe, not getting the coffee.
‘I was in Limerick. Student night at Greedy Guts.’ She feels self-conscious with Al’s eyes on her. From the corner of her eye she feels him do a further sweep of her from head to toe as she focuses on Natasha.
‘I’ve been there. You must meet some madzers with your job.’
‘She sure does,’ Al says, good-naturedly trying to move it on.
‘Are you trying to get the love locks back off him? I already tried that. Me and my fella had a lock on the bridge as well.’ Her voice wobbles, and she fans her eyes so she doesn’t cry. ‘I swear I’m finished crying over that gobshite.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Thanks. I think your theory is right, by the way. Me and Pedro never had a problem until he took the locks off.’ She nods her head in Al’s direction with a scowl on her face.
‘Natasha,’ Al says in a sing-song voice.
‘Right. Coffee. Milk, sugar?’
‘Just black thanks.’
‘Oh, and I almost forgot. More fan mail from the love lock people. Thanks to you for that,’ Natasha says with a wink to Melody while she places the pile of envelopes on Al’s desk. ‘There’s one there from someone in Gotham City.’
‘That should be interesting,’ Al says, tossing the letters aside, and waving Natasha out.
‘So,’ Al sits down at his desk and motions for her to sit. ‘Really, how can I help you?’
Melody thinks. ‘If you could be one bridge, any bridge in the world, which one would it be?’
He laughs again, as if against his own wishes. He’s trying to be professional here, but he licks his lips and she can’t take her eyes off them. She tries to centre herself.
‘Sorry. Okay. As you know, we talked about the love locks on the podcast.’
‘Yes, apparently I’m the bridge guy, the man after your own stone frozen cold heart.’ He messes with a fidget spinner while he watches her.
‘Right,’ she smiles, cheeks blushing suddenly. ‘I can’t tell you how many messages I’ve received from listeners all around the world who had locks on the bridge who have since broken up.’
‘Is it forty? Because that’s how many letters I’ve received.’
She doesn’t feel even the tiniest bit guilty.
‘There were thousands of locks on that bridge,’ Al says. ‘I’d say the odds of relationships ending are pretty high.’
‘True. But all of the relationships ended on the same day. The day you removed the locks.’
‘The forty-second day of January?’
‘Correct,’ she grins. ‘It’s been a long month.’
‘You have no idea.’
He sighs so deeply, a change in his character, she’s intrigued and wants to ask him more but tries to stay on topic.
‘I’ve been responding to people all morning and I put the question out on social media and most of the answers I’ve received all say the same date.’
‘So they say, on social media. Because people wouldn’t lie, on social media.’
‘Well why would they lie about this?’
‘For attention? To feel less alone? Or to feed into this nice romantic story?’
‘Romantic?’ Melody asks, face twisting. ‘No, it’s anti-romantic. That’s my role on the podcast. I talk about how it’s a dumb idea to use love locks.’
‘I agree. People in love are dumb. And people in love who put locks on bridges are even more dumb.’
She laughs, and he joins in. She enjoys his childish humour. Are they flirting? She feels like they’re flirting. Flirting about how dumb love is, clearly that’s the way to her heart.
‘But for someone who doesn’t believe in love, you seem pretty invested in the story.’
‘Of course I believe in love,’ she says. She thinks of how she felt about Sam, she most definitely loved him. But she’d broken his heart. ‘But I don’t want it. I don’t want the responsibility of it because it can break people. I don’t want to break people.’
He looks at her then, in a long silence. Surprisingly, tears prick the edges of his eyes. And then suddenly tears arrive in her eyes which, like in the trapped revolving door, is an oddly connecting moment.
Why is she talking to the bridge guy about love? Flirting with the bridge guy. Tearing up with the bridge guy. She doesn’t want to leave the office of the bridge guy. She feels right at home here in the low, wide, comfortable, 1950s office chair, a chair she wants to stay in and talk in.
‘Coffee,’ Natasha sings, her arrival breaking the moment. ‘I brought you the best biscuits before the others steal them.’ She sets the tray down on the desk.
‘You never give me biscuits.’
‘Because I hide them for the nice people. By the way, Prunella Maguire just emailed the office. She wants you to do an interview.’
Natasha can barely contain her excitement. She winks at Al and reverses out of the office.
‘She what?’ Melody asks him, though she knows he is none the wiser.
How dare Prunella try to poach Melody’s bridge guy?
Her bridge guy who is grinning at her knowingly, his tongue in his cheek.
He sits back in his chair, long leg crossed over another, lord of his bridge tower. She can’t help but laugh.
‘Prunella wants me on her show,’ he teases. ‘But you don’t want me on your show.’
‘I might want you on my, our, show.’
She laughs at his playfulness, enjoying it. He knows how to push her buttons.
‘I’ve been stabbed in the back by my own colleague,’ she says, trying to be playful but it comes out harder. She is so angry with Prunella for contacting Al behind her back after they’d agreed it was her story.
‘I know how that feels.’ His smile fades, the playfulness, the light in his blue eyes, all immediately gone, it’s like the light has gone out in him.
He seems sad, as if there are two versions of him that rapidly keep switching places.
‘I would love to help you,’ he says earnestly.
‘But I don’t know what you want and frankly I don’t think you do either. ’
If anyone could have hit the nail any harder on the head. His comment stings.
Everyone always says that she doesn’t know what she wants, especially after her break-up with Sam. She knows she wants to be left alone – unless it’s night time and then she very much doesn’t want to be alone. So that’s quite a specific, if slightly impossible, desire.
She stands up, feeling cold, and grabs her coat. ‘Thank you for your time.’
He looks confused and backpedals quickly. ‘I meant yet. You don’t know yet. If you figure out what you wa—’
‘No,’ she says, holding her hand up. ‘Please don’t say that again.’ She leaves. ‘Bye, Natasha, it was nice to meet you.’
She goes directly for the stairs. Al was right, but wrong of course.
She doesn’t know what she wants from him, but she thought she could arrive and figure it out.
Besides, they don’t interview people on the show; it’s discussion-based.
So why had Prunella contacted him? The conniving little …
they had specifically agreed to leave this to Melody.
She thinks of all the things she should have asked the bridge guy – Al – instead of messing around with bridge questions.
He’d distracted her, she hadn’t been able to think straight.
She’d quite fancied him and lost her train of thought, some journalist she is.
She mulls over his comment and the comment that’s frequently echoed by friends and her mum.
She doesn’t know what she wants.
By the time she reaches the ground floor she’s exhausted and feeling every single missed minute of sleep.
She also knows she’s facing a night alone and she hasn’t the energy to make arrangements.
She hopes Filip Wozniak would like to go to a late-night movie at the cinema with no talking at all.
At the end of the stairs Al stands with her scooter in one hand, and her pink helmet in the other.
He lifts the scooter up with one hand, his biceps bulging through his shirt, as if it’s the weight of a tin of beans.
It’s folded and it looks like a child’s scooter in his hands.
She makes the final round of steps while he watches her.
‘You forgot these,’ he says, handing them over.
‘Thank you.’
‘I didn’t mean to offend you. You took off quickly,’ he says, concerned.
‘I know you didn’t.’ She’d gotten offended all by herself. ‘It’s just that everyone I know tells me I don’t know what I want, and to use a word that I think should be removed from the English language, it triggered me.’ She sighs, she’s oversharing, but he’s taken it well.
‘I’m sorry for making the t-word happen to you, I think anyone who uses it should immediately be punched in the face. Not your face, obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
She sighs. She doesn’t want to leave again, why did she leave in the first place? But he doesn’t seem in any rush either. ‘I had six flights of stairs to think of a strategy. I want to help people. I want to get the locks back. Ideally we could put them back on the Grace Plunkett Bridge.’