Over The Bridge

When they said Iowa was “just over the bridge”, they meant it. Kyle had been in downtown Omaha before - the place was a harrowing maze of one-way streets. The grid was at its most perfect downtown, all parallel streets and perfect right angles, but the idea that one could simply travel the grid to an intended destination was a fallacy, so Kyle had never ventured below tenth street in his desperation not to get lost.

What he didn’t realize was that Dodge - and Douglas running neatly parallel to it in the other direction - turned into Iowa below tenth street. Omaha went from tenth street to the bridge to a different state entirely.

Kyle could feel it when he crossed the bridge. Drew and the others in the office called Council Bluffs the ghetto, but it wasn’t a ghetto the same way North Omaha wasn’t really a ghetto. Something about the grey tinge to everything - buildings, streets, signs, even the lights - caused Kyle to automatically hunch his shoulders and tighten his grip on the steering wheel as he hunted for the shoe store where Drew’s girlfriend’s shoes were waiting to be picked up.

The sidewalks were disturbingly empty, given that Broadway was supposedly the main drag. Kyle watched the other cars cram the road and tried to figure out what it was that made the place so dingy. He’d rolled up his windows as soon as he hit thirty-second street, because a stench that greatly resembled raw sewage had attacked his car. Perhaps what was most disconcerting was the way none of the buildings were actually on Broadway itself. A dizzying array of dim and flickering signs advertising various establishments crowded for attention above the sidewalk, but everything was set back a ways, and Kyle had to crane his neck to see if the right building was there.

He missed the Payless Shoe Source and had to find a side street to flip around and backtrack. He couldn’t wait to get back over the bridge, but he was sure that once he made it, invisible fingers of unease would claw at the back of his neck until he fell asleep.

(361 words)