Free Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival by Giovanni Iacobucci

about that, I'm sure." He paused for a moment, glanced at
his feet and then back at her. "With all of your, ah, construction
duties, how will you have time to prepare the decorum?"
    Susanna gave no visible reaction. "Leave that
to Mayor Sheldon's wife," she said in a plainly dismissive tone.
"We can cart her in here at the eleventh hour to, I dunno, string
up some ribbons or something." Then she laughed, a big laugh that
was an invitation for the sheriff to laugh as well.
    Susanna, One, Backwards Entrenched Gender
Roles, Zero.
    "I must say," the sheriff began, "If any man
should doubt your abilities, he need only lay eyes upon what you've
accomplished here."
    "Who's doubting my abilities?" She raised an
eyebrow.
    The sheriff stammered. "Well, no one in
particular, I mean, you just know how people are." Then he leaned
in, and spoke in a hush. "It's a bit unusual, is all."
    "What is?"
    White was more flustered by
the moment; Susanna only smirked as he continued. "Well,
a... woman ...foreman, Mrs. Cole. A forewoman. Not to put to fine a
point on it."
    Susanna, dryly: "Of course not."
    Wayne stepped in to break up the pissing
contest. "Are you through interrogating the Sheriff, Susanna?"
    Susanna shot him a glare the sheriff didn't
see. She didn't need him ganging up on her. She put her work gloves
back on. "The rest will have to wait. Deadlines to meet. Good day,
gentlemen." She made her exit, with an ironic little curtsy.
    Making her way back towards her office, she
spotted the bomb blast's damage from a new angle. It stopped her in
her tracks.
    The irregular, scorched cavity the dynamite
had created formed a kind of archway proscenium. And through it,
calling to her, was Devil's Peak.
    She took a step towards it. And another. And
another.
    A familiar chill shot through her bones.
    The Darkness. The void.
    First her dream, then this—she had the
distinct impression that somehow, the mountain was calling her.
    She stepped through the twisted wreckage of
the blast site, and continued walking in the direction of the mesa.
She wasn't sure why.
    In her five years since she was transported
here, she'd never returned to the mountain. She had never tried to
find that narrow passageway leading to its hollow heart, nor sought
out the mystic waters at its core. It was so full of secrets that
these people, the people of Bridgetown, were completely oblivious
to. Even Wayne, who thought he was the smartest man on earth
because fate had given him the chance to steal from the greatest
inventors of his time, didn't know what lay at the heart of Devil's
Peak.
    Only Susanna did. And, somewhere, Jesse.
    But neither of them understood it.
    She stopped walking a hundred or so paces
from the factory, Devil's Peak still far in the distance. She fell
to her knees, kneeling before it like a pilgrim facing her mecca,
and let the high desert wind blow through her hair.
    It was quiet, when she got far enough away
from the factory. Quiet enough to think. It reminded her of that
last night at the commune site.
    "Please," she whispered. "Tell me why I feel
this way."
     
    On the hill that Wayne's ranch house sat
upon, the same winds whistled through dry California brush, as
Jesse walked past. The sun was starting to set, the sky a champagne
tint.
    Footprints in honeycomb patterns cut through
the hills, their illegible Chuck Taylor logo stamped in the dirt
hundreds of times in a breadcrumb trail along the path.
    The modern ranch house was long, flat, and
unlike the other Neoclassical mansions beside it. Jesse had no
doubt that this was the palace his brother called home.
    How could this have happened? How did Jesse
end up so far removed from his two companions? He dared not think
what might have transpired between her and Wayne. A house like the
one before him wasn't built in a few weeks. That meant a lot of
long nights spent missing home, with only one set of sympathetic
ears who could possibly understand her plight. This Modernist
structure, out of place and