Man In Black

A nightjar flitted across the river. Dad’s face vanished in the ripples. I blinked. He was gone. But I thought I knew what he was talking about. Yes, I still had something to do. I had to find out how Dad died. I was going to talk to Mom about this. I had so many questions. But it seemed that she had already moved on. I wiped away my tears. Dad was right. I couldn’t jump. Not now. Not until I found out the truth about his death. I took a deep breath and one last look at the dark waters below. Forty metres now seemed like a scary height. It was almost sixteen stories. ‘So, you want to talk about it?’ I thought I was hallucinating again, but the voice didn’t sound like Dad’s. I turned to my left. A man was sitting on the ledge beside me. He was dressed from head to toe in black—black cap, black jacket, black pants, black leather shoes. I thought I was looking at an extra from the set of ‘Men In Black.’ The only part of him that wasn’t black was the glowing tip of a cigarette held between his fingers. I almost reached out a hand to push him, just to see if he was real. But the nicotine smell told me he was. When did he sit down? ‘Here.’ He handed me the cigarette. ‘I don’t smoke.’ My voice was scratchy. ‘Because smoking kills? But you’re going to die anyway. Why not give it a try?’ The voice was definitely not Dad’s. Dad had what I liked to call a professorial voice—low, slow, measured. This man’s voice was just as low, but it had a kind of musical cadence to it, unlike Dad’s didactic one. It was mellifluous and smooth, like aged wine. The cap hid most of his face. I could see his chin and his lips, which were thin and curved into a lazy smile. They kind of reminded me of Adam Levine’s famous lips. I pondered what he said and decided that he was right. YOLO, right? So I took the cigarette with two fingers like I saw men do in movies. I stuck the filter into my mouth. I took a drag. And I coughed immediately. The nicotine had smelled pleasant enough when it was at a distance. But the chemical was aggressive. It went straight through my mouth, shot down my throat and attacked my lungs. My eyes watered. I coughed so hard that my entire body shook. ‘Whoa, don’t lean forward.’ He clasped my wrist with one hand and stroked my back with the other. When I finally got the coughing under control and could breathe again, he removed his hand and retrieved his cigarette. He laughed. ‘Tsk.’ He inspected the filter. ‘I said smoke, not spit. You got the tip all wet.’ His tone was accusatory. Yet he took a drag anyway. ‘So, now do you want to talk about it?’ he said after he finished the cigarette. He tossed the butt into the river below. ‘Talk about what?’ I wondered if the nameless monster would be disappointed to catch a cigarette butt for dinner. ‘About why you want to jump off the bridge and become another statistic in this year’s mortality data.’ I followed the trajectory of the little red dot as it flew outward and then downward. It didn’t make a splash, of course. It was too small. But I bet I’d make a big mighty splash if I dived in after it. ‘Hey.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I’m talking to you.’ The red dot disappeared. I turned my head to face him. ‘My husband can’t do it.’ ‘Do what?’ I thought I detected a hint of a smile in his voice, but maybe I heard it wrong. There was nothing funny about what I said. ‘It. You know, the thing men do in the bedroom.’ ‘Oh, that.’ He laughed out loud this time. And he went on laughing. He threw his head back and laughed. His shoulders trembled. If there was more space on the ledge, I suspected he would be rolling on the floor. His laughter was just as musical as his voice, but it annoyed me. Was my pain amusing to him? He finally stopped a full minute later. I was no longer looking at him. I focused my attention on an indistinct black blob bobbing up and down in the river. It could be tape grass, or flotsam, or trash, but at least it wasn’t laughing at me. He heaved a long sigh, the kind of sigh heaved after a hearty laugh. ‘Are you that horny?’ he asked. The smile was back in his voice. ‘You’re going to jump into the river because your husband can’t have sex with you?’ He shook his head. ‘As far as suicide reasons go, this has to be the lamest one I’ve heard yet.’ I blew a raspberry. The man sounded like he was speaking from experience. Had he heard many suicide reasons before? Who was he to judge? His derision irked me, so I decided to drop another bombshell on the stranger. ‘You’re right. That’s not a good enough reason for suicide. How about this, then? He cheated on me.’ I paused for dramatic effect. ‘With my mother.’ If he suffered a dropped jaw from this, it would serve him right. Who told him to laugh at my misery, hmm? It was his comeuppance. I got the reaction I wanted. He wasn’t laughing anymore. I couldn’t see his eyes under that cap, but I just knew he was staring at me. His gaze had an almost physical intensity. It was impossible to ignore. ‘That is…I have to say, a good enough reason to jump.’ That was all he got? He sat there thinking so hard for so long, I thought he’d come up with something profound. It was my turn to laugh. My life was such a campy drama, right? He stood up, swung his legs over the guardrail, climbed up and jumped down from the other side. ‘Come on.’ He extended an arm to me.