Bridge

She is walking the path for the first time. In the darkness, it's a struggle to find her footing on the unknown ground. She has to think hard about each step, consider every move in the split second before she makes it.

He was the one who chose it, she thought. If it had been up to her, she would have preferred somewhere less isolated. Perhaps a restaurant.

The bridge looms ahead of her, arching away from the road like a gymnast, its dark silhouette graceful and smooth. To be honest, the bridge scares her. It's so isolated, and she feels so alone and so obvious whilst she waits for him. It's almost as though he wants people to see her. After all, what normal person stands alone on a bridge in the dead of night?

A car drives past. The headlights reflect off the puddles in the road, casting fragmented shadows on the pavement, but only for a moment. The driver glances at her briefly in his rear view mirror, and then forgets about her. There's nothing memorable about her.

Finally, her feet touch the concrete of the bridge, and she suddenly becomes aware that she's no longer on solid ground. This scares her too. She doesn't like the idea that there is barely three feet of concrete between her and the fast-flowing river below. Nevertheless, she swallows her fears and continues, stopping only when she reaches the centre. Now she waits.

It is perhaps five minutes until he arrives. She hears him before she sees him; his strong, assured footsteps pound on the concrete of the bridge. She imagines the bridge crumbling away beneath them at the tenacity of his pace. But nothing happens.

He stops maybe five feet away from her, and now she can smell him too. He reeks of aftershave and cigarettes. The smell makes her feel queasy.

"You're late," she says softly. She can't help but feel that as soon as the words have left her mouth, they are swallowed up by the river below.

"You were early," the man counters, his own voice as booming and confident as his footsteps, "Does your husband know that you're here?"

The woman doesn't reply. Instead, she conjures up the words in her mind, and then rolls them around her tongue, testing how they feel. She's just that sort of person.

"You know he doesn't," she murmurs. She thinks briefly of her husband; he is bear-like, with a roar instead of a voice, not unlike this man stood in front of her.

"Well then, we'd better make this quick," the man says, gently now. He takes a step forward, his potato-coloured coat rustling around his shoulders. The smell nearly overpowers her.

"Do you have it?" he asks, bending his head so as to look at her unremarkable face properly.

Once again, she doesn't answer, but rather presses her thin lips together and reaches into her bag. Her hand gropes in the darkness for a few seconds, before closing on the smooth paper of the brown envelope. She glances over her shoulder. There are no cars. There are no people. They are completely alone.

His eyes watch her hands greedily, drinking the sight of the envelope in. He snatches it off her, eager to inspect his payment. However, when it comes to opening it, he is tender, like a mother with a young child.

She has to breathe through her mouth so as to block out the stench that emanates from him. It's as though he's sweating tobacco. She hates cigarettes. Her husband smokes twenty a day, and has the teeth to match.

"Looks good," the man grunts, satisfied. She merely nods. After all, she had known that everything was in order before she had come here.

"And you're sure about this?" he asks, though she knows that he doesn't really care about her answer.

"Yes," she responds, her narrow-set eyes intense. I want this, she says to herself.

"Good," the man smiles, revealing a set of yellow and cracked teeth. She is reminded of the tiles in a public bathroom.

Finally, he walks away from her. She breathes through her nose again, relishing the scent of the fresh night air. She is relaxed now, happy that the transaction is over. She leans on the side of the branch. The night's activities have worn her out.

The water below is a murky grey, monochrome in the moonlight. It rushes by, flowing past with no regard for her. Why should it? She is nobody. That is what her husband tells her anyway. She is nothing, not even worth the mud on the riverbank.

She sighs. She wants so badly to be something. She thinks of his face, ugly and sneering at her, his short nose wrinkled in disgust. His cracked-tile teeth snarl at her.

As she walks away from the bridge, she thinks of all the millions of cigarettes her husband must have smoked during his lifetime. And she laughs.

Well, she thinks, at least it won't be the lung cancer that kills him.