Bridge over Icy Water

by Jeff Isaacson

  I also learned that the pressure was really on me. There were at least twenty tables. All of the tables were full. So there were at least twenty teams, and only the top three would place and win a prize.

  The prizes that week were nothing great. First prize was a one hundred dollar gift card to this club. Second prize got a fifty dollar gift card. Third prize got a twenty-five dollar gift card.

  Thad, Jace, and Dave had a tradition. Before the start of each contest, one of them would select a shot for all of them to drink.

  “It’s Dave’s turn to call the shot,” Thad declared.

  “It’s going to be four Jim Beams,” Dave smiled.

  “Again,” Jace whined. “I hate bourbon.”

  “He has to act like he’s a big tough, straight man,” Thad joked.

  “He’s going to make America great again,” Jace followed. “He’s going to hang some American flag truck nuts off of the back of his ten speed.”

  “Hey, I can’t help it that I’m the only one here who cares about mother earth, alright? And I’m a middle aged, white guy. Of course I voted for Trump,” Dave joked. “It doesn’t change the fact that you’re all going to do a shot of bourbon, and you’re going to like it.”

  They were beginning to grow on me.

  And trivia began to grow on me. At first, it was super boring. “Who was Henry VIII’s first wife?” Who cares?

  But after I followed that bump of bourbon with several strong, craft beers, I began to care.

  And I came through in spades.

  “What are the three measurements of the angles in an isosceles, right triangle?” was one of the ridiculously easy questions that I was there to answer because none of those comedians knew.

  (The answer is obviously forty-five degrees, forty-five degrees, and ninety degrees.)

  “What is the chemical symbol for the element lead?”

  (The answer is Pb.)

  And Jace, Thad, and Dave got so excited when I got one right. All of a sudden, I found myself getting excited when they got one right too. And we were nearly perfect and in the lead going into the ninth round.

  “This is the second to last round, boys and girls,” Thad admonished us. “Let’s keep this up and drink free next Monday.”

  We toasted that like he had just told us to win one for the Gipper.

  Then we found out the category for the ninth round. It was the dreaded sports category.

  They all looked at me.

  “We’re sunk,” I sighed.

  I knew one. It was bittersweet, but I knew that one.

  “What team did Cristiano Ronaldo transfer to from Real Madrid?”

  (The answer was obviously Juventus.)

  We went from first to fourth.

  Round ten was for all the marbles. The category was puns.

  Thad can add one more area of expertise to his description when he introduces everybody to the person who replaces me because they know math, science, AND sports. He was a wizard at puns and we got five out of five.

  It was just enough to bump us back up into third place by a point.

  “We did it!” Jace yelled.

  We all toasted.

  “Great kidnapping, Thad!” Dave insisted.

  We basked in the glow of a third place finish for a while. Then we dared to dream bigger dreams. We decided that one of us would have to learn sports so we could easily win the glory, the bigger gift card, and a chance to take the test for a spot in the regional trivia tournament next week.

  I finished yet another craft beer and made my slightly unsteady way to the little girl’s room in my heels. The little girl’s room was right by a back door that was propped open.

  I went through that door expecting to find an alleyway. Instead there was a nice, but freezing cold patio area. Two smokers were shaking and sucking down as much of a cigarette as they could with each inhalation. I turned around to step back inside of the club. I turned around, and I walked into a wall.

  He was tall and muscular. He had a shaved head and wore a United States Marine Corps t-shirt so tight that it left little to the imagination. Same with his jeans. His thighs and glutes strained against the denim. He had the look of a Norwegian super soldier.

  “You look like a woman who is fascinated by death,” he hissed.

  I laughed a gargling, drunken laugh.

  “I used to think that a man literally telling me that I had a modicum of attractiveness was the worst pick up line that I ever heard,” I guffawed. “But we have a new winner.”

  “Alright,” he said in an almost apologetic tone. “I guess I was wrong.”

  He turned to walk away.

  “Wait,” I blurted.

  He took two more deliberate paces before turning around again.

  I walked up to him, almost tripping.

  “You have a funny way of asking for a date,” I observed.

  His glowing blue eyes turned intense. There was something about him just then. I don’t know if it was charisma, charm, or something more ethereal and unquantifiable. He had some strange magnetism, some strange power that I couldn’t explain.

  “Who said anything about a date,” he hissed.

  I stepped back as if I were dodging an unexpected punch, staggering and a little drunk. I felt my eyes open wide.

  It was a simple proposition.

  “I’m leaving,” the man said. “If you want to come with me, meet me in five minutes over on the corner of Fifth and Marquette.”

  “Can’t you just pick me up out front?” I demanded.

  “I would, but that side of Marquette is for busses only,” he declared.

  I nodded. I had forgotten that.

  “So you’ll be there?” he asked, maybe slightly solicitous, as if I had some small amount of power.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  He smiled.

  If I hadn’t had all those beers and that shot. If I hadn’t worn my shortest skirt. If I hadn’t worn my cutest heels. If anything had been different. I would never have considered Norway’s ultimate soldier.

  But that night I found Thad. I told him that I found a ride home. I tried not to reveal too much, but I knew that Thad knew.

  “Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do,” were Thad’s parting words.

  I was out on the corner of Fifth and Marquette at the appointed time. I stood out there in a weird foggy night that was just warm enough for a light mist to fall as rain rather than fat, fluttering snowflakes.

  The fog was so thick that I couldn’t even see the super soldier’s black SUV when it arrived. He had to honk. He saw me.

  I stepped into the spacious vehicle and I looked around. The vehicle smelled of citronella. It was probably from a candle in the mess of stuff in the rear of the vehicle. He had what looked like a tent, a bucket of softballs with a glove on top, two softball bats, a bag of soccer balls, climbing gear, a bag of footballs, a camping stove, and on and on.

  “Why do you have so much junk in your trunk?” I sassed.

  “Your place or mine?” he asked.

  “Mine, I’ll tell you just how to get there,” I said heroically.

  At that point, I heard a cell phone ring, and I was so drunk that I thought it was mine. I tried to answer a call that I didn’t have and persisted until I heard my temporary ultimate soldier man talking.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got reservations. Same place as last time,” he said.

  Then he listened for a while. He sighed.

  “No, of course,” he said.

  He listened more.

  “No, of course, we’ll do it your way. I’ll cancel the reservations. I’ll leave the reservations up to you,” he exclaimed.

  Then he hung up.

  “My sister,” he explained. “She’s a control freak. She is coming into town tomorrow night and we’re meeting for dinner. I thought I’d get away with just reserving a spot at the exact same restaurant she loved last time that she was in town, but no. But I don’t want to bitch about my family.
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  Where do I go?”

  I directed us back to my place. There was no conversation.

  As soon as we got in the door he jumped me like a lioness on a gazelle. Except that I kind of like the feeling of being a gazelle in the paws of a ferocious lioness.

  That night I felt like a hedgehog under a lioness. That strange magnetism that he had haunted me. I couldn’t escape it. It seemed to emanate from every part of his body and fill me with dread.

  I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t relax to the point that it was painful at times, and not in a good way. And I bristled like a hedgehog.

  I’m sure my performance was perfunctory and somewhat out of the body at best. But he didn’t seem to care. He just thrashed away until, at long last, he was finally satisfied. He flopped off of me. He rolled over. And within seconds, he was snoring.

  But my night was just beginning. I sat up in bed. I wondered. Has it really come to this? Picking up some strange man whose name you don’t even know? Giving into him and then not being able to at least enjoy the sex? And to think, you fell for the dumbest line. Of course you’re fascinated by death. Everyone is. It’s like a horoscope or a fortune cookie. And you fell for it. .

  In the middle of my morass of anxiety and vague guilt, I looked at the man next to me.

  Whatever powerful magnetism he had in his waking hours vanished when he slept. He just looked peaceful and childlike.

  I felt this powerful urge as I looked down on him. I was enraged that he was sleeping away without a care in the world, and I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him right there in his sleep. It would be easy. It would be so easy.

  I turned away. What had become of me? It was bad enough that I was giving it away to some anonymous guy who always keeps a bag of soccer balls handy in his SUV in case he gets called into manage Juventus or something. Now I wanted to kill him?

  My hands were shaking. I tried to lay down. I don’t think that I would have ever gone to sleep if I hadn’t been so drunk.

  The next morning I wished that I had been drunk enough to forget that last night.

  At least he was gone when I woke up.

  Paranoid, I looked around for things like my checkbook, my cash, my computers, especially my work one. But everything seemed to be in order.

  It was almost like he hadn’t even been there.

  I checked my phone. There was a text from Thad.

  It read, “Btw, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do.”

  I laughed. At least he understood. Maybe that night hadn’t been that bad. Maybe I would keep doing the bar trivia with those weirdos. Just next time I’d do it in a casual sweater, jeans, and sensible shoes that hopefully wouldn’t attract anyone.

  10

  At least I was finally able to play journalist again. I was finally able to look into this Reggie White. I was finally able to look into the only Reggie who worked at Club Canoodle at the time of Faith’s mysterious semi-suicide.

  I reflected on my meeting with Mark in the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center. I hadn’t thought much of how ready he was with a response for my question about a Reginald when I was interviewing him. I was channeling a secret service agent. I was focusing almost entirely on listening to what he was saying and trying to identify any microexpressions. (I didn’t identify any.) I wasn’t reflecting nearly as much on the content of what he was saying. I was really just trying to vacuum up all of his words and reflect on them later.

  It was later. And I realized something as I reflected on his ready response to Reginald. I realized that the cops had beat me to Mark.

  I was furious for a moment. I was like a reporter who had just been scooped.

  Then I thought about the case in general.

  It wasn’t like it took secret agent experience in dead drops and ciphers to make out the name Reginald Cab or Capp in the fat fingered text message that Faith had sent to her sister. And the police had probably seen that text message days after Faith’s death, not months later like I did.

  And of course the police would question the Club Canoodle employees, owners, and patrons. That all probably happened within a few days, certainly within a week or so after Faith had been identified.

  So of course the cops would be interested in the only Reggie at Club Canoodle. Maybe he gave a fake last name to Faith. Maybe he was the one who contributed his assisted suicide half to Faith’s death in the form of alcohol and the date rape drug. Of course the cops would have come to the same conclusion that I did.

  I realized that I should’ve been glad. That this was confirmation that I was on the right track. The cops hadn’t scooped me. The cops weren’t doing journalism.

  I also realized that Mark’s ready answer meant that the cops were several steps ahead of me.

  They knew if pulling on the thread of Reggie actually led to something.

  They hadn’t made an arrest. That made me think that Reggie was a dead end. I wondered if it was even worth trying to find the man. It was a potentially daunting task.

  It was possible that I would go on social media, and there would be only a few Reginald Whites. It was possible that the right one might list his hometown. (Hopefully something like Minneapolis.) He might have a resume posted on a career networking site that would easily allow me to identify him with nearly one hundred percent certainty.

  On the other hand, he could have maximum privacy settings on his accounts. In which case, would he let in someone like me who he didn’t know from Eve?

  It was also possible that he wasn’t on social media at all.

  So I decided to search old social media posts from back when it was announced that Club Canoodle closed hoping that he had commented. I did this with a quick search for, “Club Canoodle closes”

  My mouth dropped open until it felt like it was going to hit the kitchen table below me!

  I had seen it before, of course. But it never had any significance before. Now it stole my breath.

  The address for the old Club Canoodle was 542 Marquette Avenue, Minneapolis. I did another search just to be sure. It was.

  The address for Minneapolis Millennium: 2856 was 542 Marquette Avenue!

  I had been in the very club, well, the very building where Faith was last seen alive before staggering onto and off of the Third Avenue Bridge.

  I hit the pause button on Reggie. I channeled Einstein.

  Einstein used to do what he called thought experiments when pondering things like the speed of light. He used to constructively daydream scenarios about the speed of light. The special and general theories of relativity came out of those kinds of imaginings.

  In that spirit, I entered Minneapolis Millennium: 2856 in my mind. But now I wasn’t there to play bar trivia, drink too much, or hook up with someone.

  I was there on a thought experiment.

  And anything could be important.

  I remembered the front door. It was weird. It was frosted, with a fake spider web of cracks in it. It was hardly the door that I expected to walk through when I go to the club eight hundred or so years from now, but it was clear that was the vibe.

  Now obviously that door would have been different when it was the door for Club Canoodle. But how different would it have been?

  I tried to channel the door and have it reveal its secrets.

  Then I thought of something. Club Canoodle closed and this new club, Minneapolis Millennium: 2856, opened just a few months later. They couldn’t have done too much to the space. Yes, the surface level aesthetic was probably very different, but the basic structure of the club had to be pretty much the same. I bet it costs a lot of money to change a door or the location of the door. I’m not even sure that the zoning restrictions would allow them to move it.

  (I don’t know if there’s room for cost and logic in thought experiments. It’s possible that in addition to being a poor journalist, I’m also poor at being Einstein.)

  So that faux spider webbed door was probably in that same spot. The only differences were that
it consisted of a clean, un fake broken piece of glass and instead of saying MM: 2856 it said Club Canoodle or CC or something.

  So I stepped in through the door in my mind. The first thing that I noticed was the dance floor. It looked oddly like a swimming pool. It was silver, round, and recessed. It wasn’t a perfect circle by any means. It almost had the shape of Lake of the Isles. Lake of the Isles is a weird little lake. I run around it sometimes. The thing about Lake of the Isles is that there are like three points where you think that it’s going to end as you run around it. But then it just makes a weird curve and keeps going.

  The dance floor in the club was like that. There was a weird curve in it for a small seating area. There was another weird curve without tables for…standing space? Wallflowers? Then there was a curve for the bar and dining area and another for the kitchen.

  I studied that dance floor for a moment in my mind as if it held some clue. Although David hadn’t said anything about dancing with Faith. He said that they just talked.

  That probably meant that they were in that little curved patch of seating. That was tough to imagine exactly.

  Club Canoodle probably didn’t have the Mylar over most of the support columns and weird panels along the walls, the dangling aliens and cyborg, the full body android, or the paintings of Martians, flying cars, and people soaring into the stratosphere with jet packs, Club Canoodle definitely had different tables than MM: 2856.

  David and Faith were probably at a table for two. They probably sat on bar stools by that little lagoon of a dance floor.

  Where did Reggie come in?

  It was unlikely that Reggie was a bartender. Faith didn’t order a drink there by all accounts. So she would’ve been stuck at the table with David, and Reggie would’ve been stuck behind the bar pouring drinks for people who did want them.

  It was also unlikely that Reggie worked in the kitchen because he would’ve been stuck in the kitchen.

  Granted, I was sure that the bartenders and cooks got breaks. But it would’ve been around dinner rush time at the club. The kitchen would’ve been busy. The bar would’ve been busy. Breaks would have likely been discouraged.

  So that meant that Reggie was either a server, a busboy, or a janitor. Reggie was someone who had at least a limited amount of freedom of movement.