We ride our bikes up the grade of the old Skyway Bridge, well past the night fishermen, those lonely sentries hunched over their fluorescent lines, to the fence closing the roadway to the fallen span.
I lean my bike against the fence and climb over. My girlfriend hands over my backpack and follows. I glimpse her tall, lean body, a swimmer's body, coming down the locked gate with ease.
We are alone on our own million-dollar promenade, illuminated by the full moon and spotlights from the new bridge beside us. The double yellow lines and orange reflectors lead us toward the ledge, a country mile away, but we're too eager to look down, so we run to the railings. There is nothing below but a blanket of green sea and sparks of white foam as the water breaks against the pylons. I breathe in the sensations, the salt and sea suspended in the air.
We blithely stroll on, up the steel hillside, her slender fingers in mine. In sight is the destruction, the broken cantilevers and precipice from the collision. A bridge to nowhere, but a gangway to someplace in my tender youth where I've never been.
Thrilled but not awed we walk closer to the edge. It is a stage set for us, two adventurers in league, motivated by summertime idleness. It is simply a thing to do when you are young, when there is no reason to say no.
From my bag I take a camera and tripod and frame the yellow triangles of the new bridge in the viewfinder. The clouds part for us. Holding my breath, I depress the extension of the shutter release and leave it wide open for 15, then 30 seconds; then one minute. From that point on, my memories become little color-saturated frames . . .
At the railing she waits for me. I show her what I see through the lens. Miniaturized and focused, it becomes a novelty, but much more dear.
I put the gear away and we walk to, and then kneel at the edge, the very edge, staring at the gray megaliths that once supported those fated thousand feet of bridge. We stare down from the skyscraper heights into the emerald oblivion, the eternal sea. We are fascinated, but not afraid. I expect the sea to call out to me, but I hear nothing but the swells.
She gets up first, heady and smiling, and walks to the railing. I follow. She stops and leans into me. I know what is coming next. We kiss because it is the thing to do in such a strange place. Her hands feel for more. It is the prerogative of youth to make love. But I know that this is not the time nor place. So I weave my fingers through her hair, cut for the summer into a handy bob, and hold her as the wind reaches up to find us. The bridge is ours. The bay is ours.
But our summer is coming to an end. Therefore, so must we. This summer of open-air concerts and dollar movies, of darting between the counties on causeways and interstates, of drives along the beach towns. A summer of kissing under bleachers and behind band shells, of midnight swims in the alma mater pool. Of her courageous attempts to teach me how to work a clutch. All stories taken from the night. All from an era before I drank, before I could even drive, before I caught a glimpse of what was in the insides of people. An era almost impossible to remember now.
She walks in front of me, Nordic blond and slender in her bicycle shorts. How did I come to be here with her? This toned and tanned woman, older than I, older than I can even say? She waits for me to climb the fence and hands my bag over. Then she comes over to my side. We kiss to congratulate each other, relieved not to be caught, happy that our unchained bikes are still there.
We coast down the bridge, and pedal along the causeway between the fishermen leaning against the streetlights. We help each other load the bikes into her car and then secure the trunk. Although I am not sure of myself, I am sure of one thing. As sure as I can be at 15 in my billowy, borrowed clothes. She closes my door and by the time she reaches hers, I know that this is our last night together.
- Brian Christian, a Florida native, is a travel writer and screenwriting consultant living in Los Angeles.
