One evening, after Delancey had gone to sleep and both daughters had been put to bed, Price sat with a glass of wine and happened upon an article from the New York Times about how the steel netting which had been attached to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge had resulted in an entire year without a single suicide reported. Before the netting, an average of thirty people a year leapt to their deaths from the bridge.  

Price had joked several times, sardonically at dinner parties, that the netting had ruined things for everyone. Of course he didn’t believe this, though he could not deny—as he’d gotten older, and the political and social climates had shifted—that he was often unable to commit to anything he’d once held to be a firm belief.  

What he believed, what he still thought he believed, was that the netting was a good and a decent and a humane thing, but he was surprised to find, after finishing the article and wading into the comments, that this sentiment was not widely shared. 

Many, in fact most, comments wrote off the nets as an unnecessary expense, arguing that anyone who wanted to kill themselves would find an alternate method of doing so. Other detractors pointed out how much therapy the suicidal could have received with the money spent on the nets. 

Price closed his laptop and went into the kitchen to smoke a joint. Through the many windows in the kitchen of their hillside home the moon was full and shining against a sheet of thin clouds. Not far beyond the hills was the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. 

***

The comments made Price think of Maggie and Dave, a couple he knew but did not know well, whose lives had somehow made a larger impression at a distance than they ever had in person. 

He met Delancey in Denver, which was also where he met Maggie and Dave. Maggie had invited them to a dinner party. It became clear to Price, only later, that Delancey had long been serial dating in Denver and was, essentially, shopping for a husband in the rigid and controlled way one might purchase a winter jacket. 

As a result, Price—perhaps by way of Delancey’s pressuring or perhaps by way of her friends’ curiosities—often found himself being paraded into the middle of those friends’ lives like more of an arrived-upon accessory than a flesh-and-blood living partner.  

Price assumed the dinner party would involve several couples, but when they arrived it was only Maggie and her fiancé, Dave. Maggie was still in loungewear and had only just started to prep dinner. Price stood by the front door, holding his coat, as Delancey and Maggie chatted awkwardly. Dave eventually appeared, disheveled, but overly committed to his role as host, which made Price realize he and Maggie had been quarreling just before they arrived. 

This suspicion was only strengthened as they went at each other throughout the evening as if he and Delancey were not there. The uneasiness reaching a fever pitch during dinner when a story about a trip they’d taken to South Africa turned into a violent clash over the lingering effects of apartheid. 

After dinner, in the car outside, Price looked over at Delancey and, without either of them having to say anything, they began to laugh. 

***

In their bedroom, Delancey’s soft snores were barely discernible over the crashing waves from the baby’s sound machine. On the camera app on his phone his eldest daughter slept soundly. 

Price climbed into the family 4Runner and drove in silence out of San Anselmo and through Ross and Kentfield then Greenbrae before veering onto the 101 south toward San Francisco. 

Cocooned in the car, Price could think of few places quieter than the freeway at night. As he came out of the Robin Williams Tunnel, the city spread out before him, lit up brilliantly across the bay. He took the last exit before the bridge and parked.

Late as it was, a surprising number of people were walking or biking across the bridge. Price walked the length of the Pacific side and over to the Bay side. A thick layer of fog shrouded the bridge, and the bay could not be seen below, which gave a feeling of being much higher than Price knew he was. 

Price passed a man walking a bearded terrier and said, “The fog is wonderful, isn’t it?” 

“The fog isn’t real,” the man said, and kept walking. 

Price laughed. “How about the nets?” 

“There aren’t any nets.” 

“Uh huh,” Price said, walking over to the bridge railing. “Right.” 

He peered down. Through the fog and the darkness, he could not make out the netting. From somewhere beneath the fog blanket a tugboat whistle rang out. The sky above had grown clear, and the full moon bathed the bay in soft light. Beyond the dark blot of Alcatraz, the Bay Bridge rolled out to the distant sprawl of the East Bay. 

Price continued walking until he slowed, approaching a man wearing a tie-dyed cape and a top hat who was pacing and muttering to himself. Sensing Price’s presence, he stopped and spoke, “What, you don’t think I’ll do it, buddy?” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Price said. 

“You don’t think I’ll jump.” 

“It doesn’t matter if you do.” 

“You go to hell.” 

“I just mean the nets.” 

“Fuck the nets.” 

“Have a nice evening,” Price said, trying to put some distance between himself and the man as he passed. 

“I’ll jump off the fucking net,” Price heard the man say as he continued on. 

***

Six months after the dinner party, Price and Delancey flew to Boston, rented a car and drove up to New Hampshire for Maggie and Dave’s wedding. 

Leaving Boston, the northbound freeway accordioned out to eight lanes, with cars zigzagging wildly at 90 then contracted almost instantly into a standstill at tiny booths with actual people in them. 

Price was startled by the beauty of the young woman who took his money. What was she doing out there? Where had she come from? 

Price and Delancey stopped for lunch at a roadside gem called the Crown and Anchor. From there they drove three hours to Maggie’s hometown, over an endless procession of hills and through what Price could only describe as quintessential New England. At some point, partly because of the monotony and partly because of the excitement, he reached over and pressed his hand between Delancey’s legs. For the last hour of the drive, he kept his hand there as she teased herself. 

In typical Delancey fashion she’d managed to persuade Maggie to let them stay the first night in their penthouse at the local inn which, because of various hosting obligations, Maggie and Dave wouldn’t need until the following evening. 

Immediately upon checking into the room, which had a wide window that overlooked the town square, Delancey disrobed, hopped onto the bed on all fours and commanded Price to take her from behind. 

It was one of his favorite memories of Delancey. One of his favorite memories of them. And one he would hold close—as they grew older, and apart, and back together again, and into parents of not one, but two daughters—as evidence of who they’d been when questions arose as to who they’d become. 

***

Price glanced around before leaning against the bridge railing and lighting a joint. 

“Excuse me, sir,” a man’s voice said. 

Price dropped the joint and turned into the pointed beam of a flashlight. 

“Jesus,” Price said. “You scared me.” 

The man lowered the flashlight. He was bridge security, older, probably a retired San Francisco police officer standing beside a repurposed three-wheeled police scooter. 

“What in the hell are you doing out here at this hour?” the security guard said. 

“Just taking a walk,” Price said. 

“Just taking a walk.” 

“That’s right,” Price said. “Is that a crime?” 

“Don’t you go getting smart with me now.” 

“What are you going to do?” Price said. “Flashlight me to death?” 

“I could crack your skull wide open with the butt of this flashlight,” the security guard said. “But I won’t.” 

“Well, I appreciate that.”  

“What are you doing out here?” 

“Taking a walk.” 

“Nah,” the security guard said. “You aren’t the type comes out here late at night. At least not anymore. Used to be, I saw a fella like you out here at this hour, I was radioing my supervisor and telling him we had a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to speculate.” 

“You wouldn’t?” 

“No, sir.” 

“You’ve got the wrong idea about me.” 

“Why don’t you head on home,” the security guard said. “It’s getting cold out.” 

Price watched the man climb onto the scooter and drive away. 

***

Years after the wedding, Delancey met up with Maggie on a business trip to New York City. The marriage barely lasted a year. Price wasn’t surprised, but he was surprised to hear the bride’s father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. 

The news returned him to the wedding. Maggie’s parents’ home and grounds were a Kennedy-esque compound with rolling views of endless green hills and sunflowers that grew to twice his height. Maggie’s father had danced the night away under the massive tent erected in the backyard and Price remembered his happiness in a singular way. Almost as if he were the happiest person there. 

Several months after Delancey told him all this, Price discovered Maggie’s Instagram and found an emotional post with a lengthy caption and photos of Maggie, from childhood to the present, with her father. Through the caption he learned the father had decided to fly to Switzerland for a legal assisted suicide. Because of the strict rules of the procedure, most notably the “sound mind” portion, he chose to go some time before his sound mind left him. Leaving nothing to chance. 

The caption concluded with Maggie recounting the pain of witnessing her father’s death while praising the courage and dignity with which he’d managed his mortality. 

Price was moved. Not just existentially, but politically. It had been late at night. Delancey long asleep. He was drinking but couldn’t remember what. He couldn’t remember if he’d stopped smoking then or where he and Delancey were living. Maybe Denver, maybe Asheville, maybe California. Though he couldn’t rule out if they’d been on vacation. Geneva, Kauai, Costa Rica, New Orleans, La Paz, Tokyo, the Amalfi Coast. It was such a charmed life they lived. 

One of the photos stuck out more than the others. Maggie, who he’d only known as an adult, was eleven or twelve, in a canoe with her father on a mountain lake. Her hair was up in pigtails, and she had braces at that painfully awkward age between childhood and adolescence. Bulky orange life preservers. Very dated. The kind of photo you would be embarrassed of right up until the point that it becomes precious because the other person in it is no longer there. 

***

Back at home Price entered through the front door, locked the deadbolt behind him and slid the chain into place. He turned off the outside lights and peeked into his daughter’s room, where she slept soundly. In the living room, he stopped to watch a replay of the Warriors' loss to Brooklyn. He stood in his bedroom doorway and listened to Delancey snore softly. The baby slept silent in the bassinet. He went back into the living room where his computer was still open to the comments. He started to respond to one, to give the commenter a real piece of his mind. But after reading over what he’d written, he deleted it. He put his computer to sleep and plugged in the charging cord. He made sure all the lights in the house were out, except the lamp by the window they kept on to light a path to the bathroom. He filled a glass of water from the sink and took a long drink. He crawled under the covers and into bed.