Bono

Chapter Thirty-four

BUILDING BRIDGES

To adopt a cat is to invite magic into your life.

Bono greeted his second visitor of the day with interest. He sniffed Philip’s suitcase and watched him unpack. I was pleased when the cat granted Philip a brief chin scratch. He remarked how small Bono was compared to Jonah, who’d gone to stay in Lydia’s flat while he was away.

“But Bono has great personality,” I said, as we watched his tail slide under the bed.

“I can see that,” he said.

“He’ll be friendlier when he gets to know you,” I said, flinging arms around him again to make sure this wasn’t a dream. “What made you come all this way?” I asked.

“Separation anxiety. My hair’s falling out.”

I laughed and stroked his head, which he’d taken to shaving in recent years.

“How is Jonah’s leg?”

“The same. He misses you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” I said.

“What have you missed?” he asked, kissing my nose.

“Tea and toast and bed.”

“Is that all?” he asked, pressing closer against me.

“Maybe a few other things,” I said, kissing his lips.

In fact, I’d missed everything about him—his steadiness, his kindness, his smell. Twenty-two years of shared history couldn’t be erased in a single month.

Much as I’d like to report we spent the whole night entwined in each other’s arms, the bed was too narrow for two adults to lie comfortably beside each other for an extended period. I’d forgotten his tendency to twitch and snore, while I try to sleep in the pose of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Around midnight, I pulled out Lydia’s sheets and we flipped the sofa back into a bed.

Maybe it was the brandy, or the sheer delight of being together again, but I slept more soundly than I had for weeks. I woke next morning to find Bono watching over Philip from the sofa’s back, the way he had with Lydia.

“How come you’re still wearing your ski cap?” I asked.

“This place is freezing,” he said.

He needed time to acclimatize.

Eager to share everything I’d learned to love about the city, I steered him through the traffic across Second Avenue for breakfast at the deli. He didn’t seem to find the company of tired cops and manual workers as magical as I did.

“Do you think maybe next time we could go somewhere we don’t have to weigh our food before we pay for it?” he said, folding his paper napkin and draping it over his half empty plate as if something had died under there.

“Sure,” I said devouring the last of my porridge, scrunching my paper napkin into a ball and dropping it into my empty bowl.

I wanted the day to be perfect for him. Though he tolerates museums, he’s an outdoor man at heart.

“What say we walk the Brooklyn Bridge?” I asked.

“Sounds great,” he said. “There and back should be a good leg stretch.”

“Actually, it’s just over a mile long. And there’ll be all sorts of extra footwork getting on and off the thing,” I said. “How about we do a one-way walk?”

As the cab drove across to the Brooklyn side, I glanced up at the gothic arches raising their great steel ropes. Compared to today’s skyscrapers, the bridge may seem modest. When it was finished in 1883, however, the towers dwarfed every other construction in America, and it was the longest suspension bridge in the world.

The Brooklyn vibe was more intimate and friendly than I’d expected. We strolled through a laid-back neighborhood and stopped for lunch at a hipster café. The whole point of a movement is to offend old people, and in that regard hipster-ism fails. Having grown up in a household that kept chickens (organic because there was no alternative) and where Mum taught us to sew our own clothes, hipster ideals are as familiar as macramé wall hangings.

“Could you imagine living here?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he said after a long pause.

“You could jog across the bridge to work in the mornings. Or maybe catch a ferry.”

I had no idea if there was a ferry, but he’d always loved boats.

“That’s just the point,” he said. “I’d have to find a job here.”

We walked hand in hand along the waterfront as the sun cast shafts of gold on the skyscrapers across the river. I thought of the millions of lives that had poured in and out of those concrete spires. Dreams had been made and shattered there, but the city itself was eternal. It was extraordinary that such an artificial creation could be so beautiful. If human beings can create New York, maybe there’s hope for mankind.

It took a while to find the stairs to the bridge itself. A bridge is a symbolic connection between worlds. I occasionally dream of Sam waving good-bye before he turns away and steps onto a footbridge.

This time, however, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge with Philip felt like the merging of my two existences—with Bono in New York, and with him, Jonah, and our family in Australia.

“Are you serious about living here?” he asked.

“Maybe not forever,” I said, peering up at the towers. “But . . .”

“I know. You’re hooked on Bono. What’s up there?”

“Peregrine falcons,” I said. “I’ve heard they nest on the Brooklyn Bridge.”

A love of birds is something we’ve always shared.

“You’re joking!” he said. “Those things are the fastest animals on earth. They fly at 200 miles per hour. They could live anywhere.”

“I know,” I said. “They have all the freedom in the world, but they choose New York.”

I could identify with those birds soaring across oceans to make their homes here. They nearly died out, but after DDT was banned in the seventies, they returned to the city.

“Falcons roost everywhere in New York—on tall buildings, church spires . . .”

“Have you seen any?” he asked.

“Not yet. I’m still looking.”

“We have them in Melbourne, too, you know,” he said.

“Peregrine falcons, really?”

“They had some roosting on top of Ramon’s office building in the middle of the city,” he said.

The sky turned pink and the wind spiked up as clouds clustered above the Empire State Building. Philip pulled his ski cap over his ears and smiled the way he does when he’s feeling at home out in the elements. Though he’d visited New York a few times, it had always been on business. He’d never had a chance to drink the place in.

“I understand why you love it here,” he said. “And that cat’s pretty special.”

“So, you think you could move here?” I asked.

My husband fell silent. He never says anything without thinking it through.

“We could try and work something out,” he said.

Laughing with relief and love for my husband, I threw myself at him—and knocked him into the path of an approaching jogger.

That night the email came through. Monique wanted to adopt Bono.