The scent of dead fish clings to the air. The sun is hidden before the still-sleeping city, and nothing can be heard but the whispers of working men and shorewater lapping at stone. The wooden port on which Misha stands stretches far into the distance, and fishers have just begun to unload their catches, laying out buckets of salmon on tarped planks while the rest of the city remains gray and lifeless. Gillnetters and trawlers line the port shore, swaying gently on the water as Misha walks down the length of the pier beside each fisherman's catch.

The fish are laid out in rows, mouths agape, eyes dead and gray. But each is draped with a brilliant coat of crimson scales, glittering beneath the muted sky. In another age, men may have warred over such treasure. But Misha is careful not to let his eyes wander toward the flashing heaps of redfish that slide in and out of his periphery as he passes. Instead, he locks his gaze onto the planks under his feet, sickened. The back of his neck is beginning to ache when a voice calls out to him.

“You again! Huge catch today, come, come!”

The layered accent belongs to the fisherman at the end of the port, whose name Misha has long since forgotten. The old man stamps out his cigarette as Misha approaches.

“Again you choose correct, I am glad! Look how fat my fish are, beautiful! Best on the port– ignore the rest. How many for you today?” He gestures toward his tarp, his false teeth glinting.

Misha finds it difficult to believe that the fish before him even belong to the same species as those of the other fishermen. The scales of the salmon, whether by age or some cruel genetic defect, are bleached to a sickly gray. Misha is vaguely amused by how miserably they seem to lay on the tarp, each more pale and stunted than the last.

“A couple pounds, please.” Misha says.

The old man fails to hide a smile as begins to toss the halfway-decomposed fish into a large styrofoam box.

“You’ll come back next week as well, hm?” says the man, slipping the last of his salmon into the box and capping it.

“Hm. Count your blessings.”

Misha presses a wad of cash into the man’s outstretched palms, then lifts the hefty box of fish as he begins to head back down the port. He walks briskly toward the northern end of the dock, where the pavement overtakes the wooden planks under his feet. Each step further drowns out the chatter of fishermen, and soon, nothing can be heard but car horns and the drumbeat of a thousand shoe soles against concrete.

* * *

The morning chill cuts through Misha’s jacket as he turns onto 6th Street. On every side, hulking skyscrapers stab into the bleak sky. Soggy newspapers line the street, fluttering to the tempo of passing cars. A bus pulls over to the curb in front of Misha and wheezes as it rumbles to a halt. A double-file line of passengers steps off and joins the march of pedestrian traffic, heads bent and suitcases in hand. From the roof of a tall building or a plane, Misha thinks, the city must look like one massive anthill. A million ants, bustling along streets, constantly busying themselves with groceries and nine-to-fives and oh-shit-did-I-leave-the-

stove-on-agains. Again and again, day after day. But maybe this drudgery for the best– an ox is nothing without the burden of a plow. Misha knows this better, perhaps, than anyone.

The wide sidewalk becomes more and more congested as Misha nears the subway station at the intersection of Sixth and King. If the city is an anthill, then its subway system is its underground nest. Hundreds of intertwining tunnels snake underneath the city, linking every precinct, tourist destination, and bagel shop. Anyone who wishes to get anywhere without a car must first take the subway, and soon, Misha finds himself among dozens of pedestrians descending concrete stairs into the labyrinth below.

After several flights, Misha steps into a ticketing area. He balances the box of fish on one hand and swipes his card with the other, then pushes a steel bar aside as the turnstile beside him chirps reassuringly. He’s faced with three circular tunnels and briskly heads into the leftmost one. More stairs. Down, down he goes. He feels the ground hum, hears trains hurtling through tunnels underneath his feet.

Another opening. He’s almost at his platform, now. All he needs to do is go through the corridor on the south wall and take the stairs to the right. But today, something is different. A small crowd has formed by the center of the open area. Its members face inward, toward something in the middle of the circle which Misha can’t yet make out. Then, he hears the sound.

There is almost ethereal quality to the saxophone music that fills the room. Notes swim through the air as more and more people gather around the musician. Some members of the crowd are weeping. Others sway. Misha finds himself pushing through the audience to see the musician’s face. This sudden compulsion, too, remains a mystery. All the while, the saxophone continues to sing its delicate song. As Misha jostles through the mass of spectators, using his box of fish as a makeshift prod, he begins to envision what the sax player might look like. A professional musician on his way to concert practice, or an elegant woman? Or perhaps a child prodigy– that would explain the crowd. At last, a thin gap forms between onlookers, and Misha seizes the opportunity to squeeze through.

In the middle of the circle, on a cheap metal chair, sits an old man. His eyes, unlit and glassy, remind Misha of the fish in his box. An overturned hat lies on the ground in front of him, half full of spare change. A few plastic bags droop from the chair, filled with spare possessions. The man’s long, grey hair is thickly tangled, and ragged clothes drape his hunched back.

But Misha has never heard anyone play such beautiful music.

The man’s hands flit up and down the length of the brass saxophone as the music dances from low-pitched to high, then back to low. His fingers kiss each key in perfect tempo. Soon, and without a trace of conscious effort, Misha’s mind is drifting alongside the glassy notes that circle the room.

Misha thinks of cold stone. He thinks of stillness in the air, snowfall, ungloved hands. A bridge.

The music quickens. The musician carefully stands up, saxophone swinging from a strap around his neck. The notes become shorter. The tempo rises and the tone of the music deepens. Faster. Faster. His fingers are flying, now. Staccato. The man’s back arches as he blows into the saxophone with shorter and shorter breaths. The pace is now dangerously taxing. A single faulty note would ruin it all, break the spell. Someone in the audience gasps.

Stop, Misha wants to tell him. Leave it alone.

The sound of the sax resounds back and forth throughout the concrete room. Misha leans forward, holding his breath, as though the musician were walking on a tightrope strung a thousand feet above the ground. Any trace of a subtlety is now gone. Only sharp notes ring out, powerful and fast and too much. The man is sweating, face red with the strain of keeping up this savage pace.

I said stop, Misha screams wordlessly. Fuck you, you need to stop.

Misha’s mind jolts to a frozen riverside, austere and dead. He remembers the silence, the whiteness everywhere, the frost between his fingers. He remembers the feeling of being weightless.

The blind man strains as the song reaches its crescendo. But then, as Misha has foreseen a dozen times over, the man misses a note. The perfect rhythm shatters. The man continues to play the broken music, but Misha knows that the sin cannot be undone. Another missed note shrieks out, then another. With an enormous breath, the man blasts into the saxophone once more before he sinks down into his chair, exhausted.

Silence hangs in the air.

Misha grimaces.

But the crowd explodes into applause. Businesspeople, construction workers, and graffiti artists alike, caught together for a single moment in this subway intersection, cheer and whoop for the saxophone player. “Holy shit,” mutters a woman next to Misha, awed. The man’s cap is overflowing with change– almost a week’s worth of fast food. He bows humbly with a small smile on his face amidst the cheering audience.

But why? It was as though the audience were clapping for a trapeze artist who fell off a tightrope; applauding the crippled, bloody heap left on the ground.

Slowly, the metallic rumble of trainwork overtakes the sound of fanfare as, one by one, the audience members go about their way, toward whatever bar or office cubicle in which they had planned to spend their day. The musician, too, begins to pack up his saxophone and spare belongings. Misha suddenly becomes aware of the ache in his hands. He’s been clenching the sides of the box of fish as he listened, his fingernails gouging crescent-shaped scars deep into the styrofoam. Time to go. He steadies his grip, then hastens toward his platform, head still swimming. He’s unsure if he wants to hit something, or weep.

* * *

The cold box of fish presses uncomfortably into Misha’s lap through the duration of his nap. Four stops later, he gets off at Western and Olive, a block away from the shop where he works. Closer to downtown, the subway passages on this end are even more lively than before, bustling with frantic movement as the hour hand nears nine. Misha can smell nothing but hastily-sprayed cologne while he clambers up stairway after stairway alongside hordes of fellow late commuters.

He arrives at the marketplace just in time, and weaves through aisles of over-the-counter shops to reach his own store on the east side of the square. Esmeralda, the old shop owner, is already waiting behind the glass-paned counter when Misha shuffles through the narrow entrance, still holding the box of fish. Knees wobbling, she turns to face him, all of her weight balanced on a gnarled pinewood cane.

“Barely on time as usual, Misha. I almost had to run and get the damn fish myself,” she says with her sandpaper voice.

“Good morning, Esmeralda. No need to worry; I’ve got just enough time to set up.” Misha bends over and slides open the back of the counter, then begins to lay out the recently purchased redfish. “You should go see a doctor about those knees of yours.”

“You sound just like my idiot son-in-law,” she rasps, “I’ll see one when I damn well– hey!”

Misha looks up, fish in hand.

“Didn’t I tell you to pick out some healthier looking fish? They look like they’re falling apart!” she rasps.

It’s true– the fish somehow look even worse under the dim market lighting than they did atop the old man’s tarp. Misha inhales.

“No can do, Esmeralda. The fishermen are still complaining about the waters recently. I’m hoping they have better luck next week.” Misha turns back toward the counter to conceal a wince.

“God damn it, again? It’s been more than a month since the last time we sold anything even half-presentable. It’s a blessing we’re the only ones here selling the fucking salmon.” Esmeralda reaches underneath her crimson-sequined shawl and pulls out a box of cigarettes as she fails to suppress a cough. “God help me. Alright then, Misha, I’ll be in the back. Call if you need anything.”

Misha exhales with relief, but there’s little time to relax– shoppers have already begun to pour in. Misha throws the last of the fish into the glass display and straightens up behind the register. The passing trickle of customers becomes a stream as the marketplace fills up with housewives, tourists, and the unemployed.

Misha often loses track of time while he stands behind the counter, and today he finds it especially difficult to concentrate. A couple times, a customer comes running back to the shop holding an incorrectly packaged order. Salmon, not mackerel. Four fish, not three, you dolt. But all that circles through Misha’s head is the blind man and his saxophone. Misha remembers the grace with which the man played his instrument. He remembers the flawless delicacy of the song, so fragile, so gem-like. He remembers its cutting poignancy, the things it stirred, the frozen riverside. Above all, Misha remembers the moment right before the man finished, when the song was at its fastest and most dangerous. The way the man had stumbled. How the faulty notes, so few in number, had wailed, shattering the entire performance into a million ugly pieces. The second-hand agony Misha had felt, as though the man were Jesus and Misha were a disciple watching him bleed to death naked on the cross.

How infuriating the cheering had been, then. The clapping rang in Misha’s ears even more loudly than the fucked-up notes themselves. By what right did the man deserve to be applauded? Something rears its head deep within Misha, far beneath the rage that cloaks it. It shudders as it twists about. A terrible jealousy, black and bubbling.

“Hello? You okay?”

Misha comes to. There’s a middle-aged lady facing him on the other side of the counter, her gloved hand waving in front of his face.

“Finally awake! Thought you were half-dead for a second, the way your eyes were glazed over, like this cod here.” The woman prods a finger toward a fish on display underneath the glass.

“Salmon,” Misha says.

“What was that?”

“The fish there. It’s salmon, not cod.”

The woman scowls. “You a fisher, too?”

Misha pauses before sliding open the glass screen behind the counter. “What can I get for you today?”

“Let’s see...five pounds would be a decent start.”

* * *

The journey back home is uneventful. No music reverberates throughout the tunnels, nor do any crowds form around the area where the blind man had performed in the morning. Misha takes comfort in returning to this refuge of predictability. He climbs up the final flight of concrete stairs leading up to the surface, then trundles home through the biting cold, eyes averted down and away from the murky, unforgiving sky above.

His apartment is one among the hundreds of identical red-brick housing units that make up Third Street. He opens the main entrance with a light kick, then walks down the length of the maroon-wallpapered hallway that greets him. A left turn and then a right take him to his apartment unit. Keys jangle as he opens the front door, which then shuts behind him.

The apartment before him is a small space, but would look much larger had Misha bothered to fully unpack his belongings when he moved in a month ago. Instead, towers of unopened cardboard boxes loom over nearly every square inch of the flooring, a poorly-played game of three dimensional Tetris. But there’s comfort to be found among all these still-sealed boxes.

Misha hangs his thick coat on a wall-mounted hook by the couch before opening the fridge in search of the evening’s microwavable dinner. Surely chow mein and black beans don’t pair well, but Misha doesn’t mind, and soundly falls asleep in his chair shortly after gulping down the last bite of mush.

It is well past midnight when he finally wakes, still seated. Flickering lamplights outside throw weak shadows across the dining table, which dance before his eyes. Without a yawn, he stands up slowly and peers out the half-open window beside the fridge. Not a single car, nor person, moves along the street. The city slumbers. Then, without a sound, Misha reaches for his coat and lets the front door slam shut behind him as he leaves. He strides down the hallway, then slips out into the deadness of the night.

It’s close to freezing outside, exacerbated by piercing gusts of wind. For a short while, Misha meanders about, from intersection to intersection. He wanders around Windsor Square, through the silent park on Melrose, by the dollar stores across the street. He walks until the city’s skyscrapers disappear behind black clouds. The pavement grows mossier and more cracked before it vanishes altogether, replaced by hardened dirt. Still Misha wanders. And unknowingly, as he has done every night for the past thirty nights, he gravitates toward Lincoln Bridge.

He never expects to recognize the smoothly curved stonework of the bridge beneath his feet. Bewildered, he looks about, as though a blindfold has just been lifted from eyes. The bridge stretches outward in front of him, sloping gently over the roaring river below. Rows of dilapidated houses, for years unoccupied, flank the river. Not far from the west bank stands a church, and even in the darkness it is solemn.

Misha walks halfway down the length of the wide bridge, stopping at the highest point above the water’s surface. He watches the way the currents churn in the pale moonlight below, as they thrash and rip at one another. Even from this distance, the sound of crashing water shudders in the air, and for a moment Misha listens. He listens to the beating waves, the symphony of seething and frothing. Sirensong in his ears, he leans against the short granite wall that runs along the side of the bridge and shifts his gaze toward the riverside. It has only recently thawed out from winter’s icy clutch. Spring has come quickly, melting the half-frozen river, freeing the fish, letting tides accumulate into the frenzy that roars below.

But on that morning, so many days ago, the water was gentle. Misha remembers the delicate pace at which it flowed around the splintered sheets of ice beneath the river’s surface. He was standing on the bridge as he is now, watching the water. He recalls the thick coat he had on, too heavy for the light snowfall that floated in the air. Every paved stone on the bridge’s surface was clothed in a soft white, glimmering beneath unbroken clouds. There was not a single person in sight. Misha yawned while he continued to stare at a shock of red below by the frozen riverside, the sight with which he had been occupied for the past half hour. From this distance, it almost looked like a coat of redfish scales– what a pretty color! And how strange the thing looked as it glimmered behind the curtains of snowfall, bobbing in the freezing water by the shore. Misha watched while it twisted gently in the water, its underside now revealed. A zipper, barely distinguishable from this distance. A torn sleeve. Locks of brown hair.

Through the tears which were beginning to well in his eyes, Misha could hardly make out its small, colorless face.

A gale of wind forces Misha to shiver, and the cacophony of the crashing water returns. His mind splits across a thousand lines as he leans toward the edge of the bridge. Only a few stones bar him from oblivion, now. For an instant, he pauses while the river churns below. He considers, and reconsiders.

Then he turns and walks down the length of the bridge, numb fingers buried in his pockets. His clothing clings to his body, wind-buffeted and far too thin to support the long walk back. He finds his way to Elm Street. Knotted trees bound the sidewalk, nearly hiding the subway station at the corner. He descends its entrance steps three at a time, reaching the ticketing area within seconds. A green light emanates from a knob on the turnstile– the station is still open. Misha swipes his card and the machine’s iron cylinders relinquish their hold on the third try, turning to let him pass. On a lit-up wall to the left flickers a map of the city and the train lines that stretch across it. Misha scans it– the red line will take him to Wilshire, and he can ride the purple the rest of the way.

He hastens toward the red platform, located at the very deepest level of the station, clambering down one staircase after the other. Diverging tunnels open their mouths before him as he passes, agape like the mouths of dead fish. A sickly orange glow emanates from the ceiling lights. It duplicates Misha’s outline in a ring around his feet, eightfold, so that a troupe of swaying shadows seems to march alongside him.

He’s almost reached the platform when a silent voice begins to croon at him. Why is he putting himself through this? Just to go back to the bridge the next night? The whispering seems to multiply in the silence, in the stillness between the narrow concrete walls. Is there really any shame in submitting, at long last, to this terrible heaviness? Hardly. He is no Atlas.

Then something disrupts the cadence of his thoughts. A half-familiar sound, barely loud enough to be heard. It slips out from the end of the tunnel ahead as it echoes, a beautiful, lilted tune. The music of a saxophone. Misha freezes. He pauses for a short moment, ear turned toward the sound– but it’s unmistakable. He begins to inch down the length of the tunnel. The end of the passageway pivots to the left and presumably leads into the subway platform, judging from the white light that pours in from behind the curve. The sound of the saxophone intensifies as Misha approaches. He’s right by the turn, now, just before the opening. Terrified of being seen, of disrupting the performance, Misha steadies himself. Then he leans outward, and looks.

The blind man sits on the opposite side of the platform, across the chasm of the railway. His hair, still grey and straggly, hangs at shoulder’s length. A blue-black flannel hangs over his frame, thin and forested with lint. He lives in the subway, Misha realizes. His saxophone glistens in his hands, and music, soft and full, swims through the air around him. And although the man plays a different song, the inexplicable grasp it holds over Misha is the same. Once more, that winter morning returns, but the song of the saxophone continues, as though the homeless man had been there that day, watching it all unfold.

Misha remembers how slippery the stones were. He would have tripped had he not caught himself on the short wall of the bridge. He gave himself time to breathe– the walk from the fishermen’s dock had been arduous. But now, alone, Misha had a moment to look around at the snow, the perfect sky, the ice in the river. At the motionless girl, bobbing in the black water. Inside, Misha screams. He can’t afford to go back again. Still tucked behind the corner of the tunnel, he wrenches himself away from the memory. He needs to go home.

But the homeless man rises from his seat, just as he did earlier in the day. He inhales deeply, as though he were preparing to set off for some great war, glassy eyes open. Then the music quickens. Louder, louder. It expands into every remote corner of the room, sweeping and rolling as the musician’s hands flutter across the neck of the instrument. Misha’s heartbeat seems to match the rising tempo, beating against his ribs, a desperate creature rattling the bars of its bony cage. Misha tries to recede back into the tunnel, but his legs refuse. And the music soars as he remembers the coldness of snowfall on his knuckles.

* * *

“What happened to Mom?”

“Get down here. I won’t ask you again.”

The two of them were crossing a bridge.

A small girl swayed on the short wall along the bridge’s edge, slender arms outstretched to her side. Her red parka seemed to shine amidst the gleam of the snow, through the gray of the stones on which she stepped.

Misha trudged alongside her, eyes tired and raw. Although he was tall, there was a certain diminutiveness to his posture, to the way he carried himself as he failed, again and again, to summon the girl down from the bridge’s wall.

“I won’t get down until you tell me about Mom.”

“What about her?”

“Where did she go?”

“Listen, if you come walk next to me, I’ll take you fishing next week. How’s that?”

Years ago, Misha had taken the girl to a bay by the edge of the city. He still thinks back to the way his wife and daughter cheered when he yanked a bass from the water, their fits of laughter as it flopped about on the deck. He had snapped a photograph of them, caught mid-shriek while the fish jerked around their feet.

“I hate fishing.”

His wife had left a week ago. She vanished overnight, without a whisper, her cheap jewelry left on the nightstand.

“Listen. Mom is coming back– she just left for a little trip, that’s all.”

“I heard you shouting at her,” she said, still tiptoeing atop the bridge’s walled edge. Aside from their footsteps, there is nothing but silence. A great, icy river slumbers below.

“We were just talking, that’s all. Me and Mom were having a conversation, like we’re having now. Nothing wrong with that. Now, please come down here– aren’t I asking nicely?”

The girl didn’t respond. She was focused on keeping her balance, leaning to the left and right in response to the wind. Below her and to her left awaited the freezing water.

“Listen to me, I don’t want to ask you again. It’s dangerous up there. You need to get down. We’ll go fishing together, just like we used to.” Misha pleaded, increasingly frustrated. But he was terrified of grabbing at her, of disrupting her precious footing.

“I said I don’t want to go fishing. Leave me alone!”

It was impossible to explain it all to the girl. The terrible fighting, exacerbated by empty bottles and a broken heating system. The screaming, the stomping. The onslaught of unpaid utility bills. The occasional bit of shared laughter, interpreted each time as a glimmer of hope. In reality, the dying throes of the broken family. How could Misha bring himself to tell the girl? Tell her that even with the help of her mother, they had been starving? That soon, he wouldn’t even have enough to write to the landowner, begging for another week at the apartment? That she was killing him?

The mother was bound to flee, sooner or later. If only Misha had left first.

“I’m hungry,” said the girl, for the fourth time that day.

They were at the midway point of the bridge. The ice crunched beneath Misha’s boots as he slowed.

“You have to get down.”

“I won’t,” she said, teetering on the wall with her back to Misha.

All around them, snowflakes continued to dance.

“Listen to me. Your mom’s going to come back, I promise. We were only having a conversation, like the one you and I are having now. I was only frustrated.”

“Then why did you hit her?”

Misha frowned. He had never.

“You shouldn’t lie, even though you’re upset.”

“But I saw it. I saw you hit her, again and again. She had a cut under her eye. You said she ruined the carpet.”

“Get down here. I’m not asking you again.”

Nothing.

“Be a good girl,” he continued, “I’ll take you fishing, didn’t I–”

“I said I hate fishing!” The girl wheeled about on her heels to face him, tiny fists clenched. Then she slipped.

Misha had ample time to react as she fell with her arms outstretched. He leaped forward, mere inches away from her twisting body. His hands met her red parka. In any case, the wall was wide enough, and she had been seesawing on the walkway’s side when she lost her footing. She would have been perfectly safe had Misha let her be. But even though his palms made contact, his numb fingers never curled around her jacket.

Seconds passed as he continued to stare at her, his gaze unbroken and arms still outstretched. From the vantage point of the bridge, she looked just like a bright red balloon, untethered and weightless. Rising in reverse.

* * *

Misha winces. The song is deafening, now, touching its crescendo. The saxophone glistens as the man struggles to keep up the pace. Notes, short and powerful, blast out from the instrument, mirroring the flurry of the man’s hands. His dancing fingers teeter on the keys. Still hidden in the tunnel behind the corner, Misha fights back a strangling compulsion to shout out at the man, yell at him to slow down, avert a horrific catastrophe. But Misha knows that the man will not stop, no matter how many times the scene before him is replayed. He’ll continue to accelerate the tempo while the saxophone quakes. Then, almost deliberately, he’ll miss a note, punching a hole in the song’s wings and giving it the terrible gift of gravity. He will commit that wretched sin.

At last, a mistimed note escapes from the saxophone, breaking the perfect melody as it scrapes against its siblings. The music trails to a halt. Still breathing heavily, the man leans back into his chair. On the other side of the tracks, Misha is motionless, tunnel vision trained on the face of the blind man. Earlier that day, there was applause to shelter the musician from crushing guilt. A distraction from the shame at having desecrated something beautiful. But now, only benches and rusty train tracks populate the empty platform, and Misha stands silently beside them as he scans the man’s tired features for any indication of misery. A head hung low, a defeated sigh– any indication, Misha pleads, of kinship. But instead, the man throws his head back and laughs.

Misha nearly stumbles backward. Nothing was funny, he thinks. The man continues, as if there were some great joy to be found in his transgression. Misha takes a step toward the man, his palms beginning to sweat in his clenched fists. Nothing was fucking funny. Oblivious, the man steadies his saxophone, still smiling as he prepares to play another song. Misha takes another step. He’s suddenly charged by an inexplicable desire to snatch the saxophone away from the man, to feel the brass with his own hands. Maybe then, with his fingertips on the keys, Misha will understand. He takes another step, just a few feet from the edge of the floor. The ravine between the two platforms yawns at him– an ocean of iron beams and jagged rocks. The tracks begin to rattle. There is a ding. Misha takes another step forward.