Suspension

The cable swayed twenty feet above my head, a steel vein pulsing against the gray San Francisco sky. I'd been climbing these bridge towers for fifteen years, my hands rough with calluses, my marriage rougher. Days like this, when the fog rolled in thick and wet, I wondered why I bothered coming down at all.

"You going to eat that?" Elena asked, pointing at the orange I'd balanced on the maintenance catwalk.

Elena. The word caught in my throat like rust. She'd been my climbing partner for three years, my friend through the divorce, the one who held my hair back when I drank too much at the company Christmas party. But somewhere between the midnight shifts and the close calls in high winds, something had shifted. The way she looked at me now—like I was both a safety harness and a loose wire waiting to snap.

"It's yours," I said, watching her peel it. Her fingers were strong, graceful. The spray of citrus cut through the damp metallic air, sharp and electric.

We'd crossed lines we couldn't uncross. Not physically—God, no, that would have been easier. It was the intimacy of shared danger, the way we trusted each other with our lives twice daily. The way she knew exactly how I took my coffee at 3 AM during tower inspections. The way I noticed she started wearing her hair differently after her girlfriend moved out last month.

She handed me a segment. The juice was cold, shocking.

"My lease is up," she said, not meeting my eyes. "Thinking about moving to Portland."

The wind picked up, and the cable sang its low, mournful note. I wanted to tell her that Portland had no bridges worth climbing, that the fog there was all wrong, that she couldn't just cable-drop out of my life like this. Instead I swallowed the orange, bitter and sweet on my tongue, and wondered how long I'd been nothing more than a temporary suspension system for someone else's life.

"You'd love it," I said, and meant it. "The rain."