by Laura McNeal
Elsewhere: The groundskeeper at Woodlawn Cemetery of Las Vegas, Nevada, sweeps the dice into his hand. They’ve not been moved for a long time and are dusty, cracked, and faded, the sort of grave decoration that makes people feel their loved ones are neglected and lonely, not tended and duly recalled. He means to throw the dice in the trash with all the torn and faded artificial flowers he has collected that day, but to throw out dice seems unlucky, so he puts them in his desk drawer one at a time, sixes up, for luck.
Elsewhere: Awate Mebrahtu’s taxi contains one passenger, a blond woman on her way to Coronado Island. Awate can see all the way to Mexico from the peak of the bridge, and the air coming in through the vents is seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit, a good thirty degrees cooler than Assab this time of year. Awate stays in the inside lane as part of his plan to avoid, always, the lane where a person might pull over and climb out. The woman says she’s on her way to see her teenaged son, who’s been living here since his father died. Because many people tell Awate many things about their lives, whether he understands them or not, he nods and says he’s very sorry for the lost, but it’s a good island, very happy for the weather time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m deeply indebted to the San Diego Medical Examiner and the police officers on and off Coronado Island who spoke to me in detail, but anonymously, about law-enforcement procedures and the corporeal and emotional effects of bridge suicides. The compassion and resilience of those who work on and under the bridge continues to inspire and humble me.
Many thanks are due to the junior sailing program of the Coronado Yacht Club for its inclusive and transformative programs.
To my friend Janet Reich Elsbach, editors Nancy Hinkel and Erin Clarke, husband Tom McNeal, and agent Doug Stewart, who instantly read drafts of this manuscript every time I sent up a signal flag, thank you.
Big thanks to Peter Bulkley for doing a nautical edit and delivering the manuscript to me by bicycle, to Doug and Maggie Skidmore for owning and sharing a Hobie Getaway, to Sam McNeal for reading the whole thing and not disowning me, and to Cara Ryan Irigoyen for stopping to pick up the unbroken sand dollars. Lastly, I think the world would be a more coherent place if my copy editors, Steph Engel and Diana Varvara, were in charge of it.
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