The midday sun was in my eyes, and through the glare I saw the bridge in the distance. Police blocked entry on either side and were scratching their heads over what to do with commuters trapped in the middle. Panicky policemen were directing people all over the place, but there was too much chaos. One of the bewildered cops seemed to be pointing in the direction of the water.
As I left my cab in the traffic jam, the driver made it clear he didn’t like it that I was ending our relationship so unexpectedly. People in uniforms were pouring in from everywhere. More policemen, firemen, ambulances, and media trucks weaved through parked cars. The emergency services were in a muddle. None of them knew what they were supposed to do. The intended victim was also the alleged perpetrator. It was confusing. On the one hand, he had a gun, but on the other hand, he was only threatening to use it on himself. They wanted to shoot him down, but can you shoot a man threatening suicide? That’s just what he wants.
I ran through the narrow passageway between halted cars and quickly found myself at a line of policemen. I ran right through their long yellow ribbon of tape and explained to the cop screaming at me that I was a close friend of Harry West and might be able to talk him down. In their confusion, they let me through.
I could see him, way up top. He was just a little speck up there, like a little plastic groom on a wedding cake. It was a long way up, but I had to go to him.
A tremendous wind was blowing. It was difficult to hold on. As I climbed, my stomach became the dominant organ, and I could feel nothing but its grind. Below I could see the ocean, the green suburbs, a smattering of houses. The wind made the whole bridge creak and did her best to throw me off balance. I thought: What am I doing here? It’s not my business! I wondered why I didn’t just let him take his big dive. I felt this was my fault, he was my responsibility, as were the people he might kill. But why? How do I fit in? I’m no Christ figure. I don’t have a savior complex. The whole human race could get acute angina for all I care.
Ruminations such as these and the realization that the men in my life, Harry and Terry and Stanley, with their little projects were dragging me with them down into the void, should be kept for after the event, over a mug of hot chocolate, not during the event, at the edge of a terrifying precipice. I had stopped my ascent to contemplate the existential meaning of it all. As usual, I couldn’t help myself. On that shaky metal stepladder I thought: One man’s dream is another man’s anchor. One swims, the other sinks, and in the swimmer’s pool too- a double insult. Meanwhile, the wind was threatening to toss me into the harbor. I knew then and there that pondering the significance of an action in the middle of the action is just not right.
I climbed on. I could hear him now. Harry was yelling, the wind carrying his voice to me before I could even see his face. At least I think it was Harry. Either that or the wind had just called me a bastard.
My shoe slipped. I looked down at the water and trembled from top to bottom. It looked like a flat blue slab of concrete.
“Thanks for the backstab, mate!”
Harry was leaning against a steel rail, the one I was white-knuckled clutching for dear life. To drag his leg all the way up that bridge must have been a nightmare. Maybe it was out of exhaustion that he let himself sway, and nearly topple over, with the wind.
His face was all shriveled up. He’d frowned so much he’d actually broken his face. His worry lines had snapped.
“Harry, it was a mistake!” I shouted.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“But we can fix it! Come down and everyone will know the book is yours!”
“It’s too late, Martin! I’ve seen it!”
“Seen what?”
“The hour of my death!”
“When?”
“What time is it now?”
“Harry, don’t jump!”
“I won’t! I’ll fall! You can’t tell a person not to fall! That’s gravity’s business, not mine!” He was laughing from fear, from hysteria. His eyes were on all those guns pointing up at him from below. His paranoia had finally reached enlightenment. The paranoid fantasies and reality were experiencing absolute fusion.
“I fall…I’m gone…there’s another war…an earthquake…and the return of the Madonna…only now she’s a singer…but still a virgin…and now sexual revolution…and marble-wash jeans…”
His ESP was reaching into the infinite, blinding him to the present. His small, twitchy eyes, which usually darted around in their sockets, had finally frozen solid; they were traveling, exploring and seeing everything. Everything.
“Computers…everyone has one…in their homes…and they’re fat…everyone’s so fat…”
He was out of control, prognosticating like crazy! He could see the whole of human future mapped out. He was flicking through the pages! It was too much for him. “She’s dead! She’s dead!” Who? He couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. “A third world war! A fourth! A fifth! A tenth! It never ends! They’re dead!” Who’s dead? “The astronaut! The president! The princess! Another president! Your wife! Now you! Now your son! Everyone! Everyone!” It went on for hundreds of years, perhaps thousands. So humanity was going to persist after all. His eyes were pushing through space and time. He wasn’t missing a thing.
Harry’s line of communication with the infinite was broken by the wail of sirens starting up again. We looked down and saw the police and the media trucks backing away. Everyone was leaving.
“Where the fuck are you going?” Harry screamed to the world below.
“Hang on,” I said. “I’ll go see.”
Halfway down I ran into a petrified reporter who’d been overcome with vertigo during his climb and couldn’t move up or down the rail.
“What’s going on?”
“Haven’t you heard? They’ve got Terry Dean trapped! He’s taken hostages! There’s going to be a showdown!”
The reporter’s voice was excited, but he had the kind of deadpan face you usually see behind the wheel of a hearse. I climbed back up to Harry.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Terry,” I said, dreading his reaction.
Harry lowered his head, watched wistfully as the last of the reporters sped away.
“Mate,” I said, “I have to go and see if I can help Terry.”
“Fine. Go.”
“I’m sorry, I-”
“Go!”
I climbed down, my eyes focused on the handrail and my feet, and before I reached the bottom I heard the blast of a gun, the sound of a body whistling through the air, and a splash below that was really more of a thud.
That was it.
That was Harry.
Goodbye, Harry.
The police had Terry cornered in a bowling alley. I knew the whole of Australia would be rushing there as if they were water and my brother was the drain, so I jumped in a taxi and promised the driver untold riches if he could get as close to the speed of light as a V6 will get you. When you’re hurrying off to save your brother’s life you don’t fret over pennies, so every time his foot touched the brakes, I threw money in his lap. When he reached for the street directory, I tore exactly one third of my remaining hair out. It’s a bad sign when the driver cranes his head back to look at a street sign he’s just passed.
No directions were necessary, though; a real cavalcade of vehicles and bodies was surging through the streets in one direction: police cars, ambulances, fire engines, army Jeeps, media trucks, ice cream vans, spectators, gardeners, rabbis, anyone in Sydney who owned a radio and wanted to take part in a historical event.