Lost Cargo by Hollister Ann Grant, Gene Thomson Page B

islands and pick the best one. Some little patch of sand with miles of sky and stars without a single apartment building in the way.”
    “What, no picket fence?”
    “Sure, I’ll have a grass hut with a picket fence. What about you?”
    She said if she didn’t have to manage a store for somebody else, she would still need something to do, so if she won the lottery she’d have a restaurant in the city, a place where she could bake bread and make soup, convert an old brownstone with a turret, a bay window, and working fireplaces. She’d put plush couches and vintage armchairs around the hearths, the tables would have linen tablecloths, and in the summer she’d serve desserts in a courtyard with climbing roses.
    “If you buy an island,” she teased, “we won’t see each other anymore.”
    He kissed her. “You can open your restaurant on my island.”
    “And you’ll be the only one who eats there, you and the fish.”
    The couple left the pubs and shops behind and crossed a dark side street to a neglected bridge. Streetlights with clouded lamps cast their dim light over a wooded gorge. Rock Creek Park. In the daytime old wine bottles and slabs of cardboard the homeless slept on showed up in the weeds, but night masked the city’s harsh realities.
    They moved on. The avenue grew brighter. Tiny shops, restaurants, and art galleries appeared. Connecticut Avenue began to run downhill. Beyond the Calvert Street crossroads the Taft Bridge spanned another chasm of black trees, Rock Creek Park again. Stone lions guarded the bridge, their heavy heads lifted as if they were sniffing the night.
    Monroe and Annie ducked inside a cafe, a sliver of a place with floor to ceiling paintings, dark wood tables, and Bentwood chairs.
    “Let’s get married,” he said over coffee.
    She smiled and cast her eyes down. “That’s the third time you’ve said that.”
    “Let’s do it. Let’s get married.”
    “We don’t have the money for a wedding.”
    “We’ll have it later,” he told her. “Let’s get married at the courthouse.”
    She bit back her smile. “Let’s have a baby.”
    “Later,” he said. “We’ll have twenty-five if you want. Just not now.”
    “Seventeen then,” she said.
    He closed his hand over her fingers. “Later. Seventeen kids later on, and fourteen bulldogs.”
    A tiny furrow appeared on her brow. “No, seriously, Monroe, I want a child.”
    “I have to finish law school first,” he said.
    The bell on the door rang. More people crowded into the narrow cafe. Monroe and Annie went back into the cold, crossed the avenue, and passed arm in arm under the stone lions onto the bridge.
    There were no buildings here to break the force of the wind. It howled over the chasm and wrapped Annie’s long hair around her face. Laughing, she tried to brush the strands from her eyes, but the wind blew it all back. Halfway across, the lovers ignored the cold to share a kiss and gaze at the far lights of Georgetown.
    They had left the bridge and started up the avenue when Monroe saw something from the corner of his eye. Disturbed, he turned around.
    A huge gray shape squatted on the rail behind one of the stone lions on the opposite side of the bridge. Monroe gripped Annie’s shoulder, trying to understand what he was seeing. The shape billowed in the fierce wind, peeled away from the statue, spread itself out, plummeted over the edge, and disappeared without a sound into the dark wooded chasm.
    “I think somebody just jumped off the bridge,” he said.
    “You saw it?” she gasped. “You think it was a suicide?”
    “I don’t know… I don’t know what I saw.” Maybe some poor soul had just ended their miserable existence, or maybe not. Maybe the wind had blown something over the rail. City charities handed out coarse gray blankets to the homeless. His mind scrambled. That had to be it. One of those blankets. It didn’t look like a blanket, though. He met Annie’s eyes. Traffic rumbled by as the wind