For the first time since she climbed up, Thora looks down. Santi is right: the city by night is a marvel, a planet riven by glowing fissures. Directly below, the cobbled square gleams, the fountain in the center a puff of silver mist. To her left, the twin spires of the cathedral point like Gothic rockets to heaven. From the square at its feet, mismatched buildings trail down toward the river. Thora breathes out a smoke-cold breath and inhales the city, bomb-scarred and rebuilt, endlessly under construction. Her eyes follow the Hohenzollernbrücke stretching across the Rhine, lights reflected in the water like another version of it lies there drowned.

She points down at the bridge. “You know that whole thing’s covered in padlocks?”

“Yeah, I walked across. It’s impressive.”

Thora snorts. “It’s stupid, is what it is. What couple says, Hey, let’s celebrate the uniqueness of our love by doing the exact same thing thousands of other couples have done?”

“Not just couples,” Santi says. “I read the messages. There are locks there with the names of parents, children, friends.”

“That’s even worse! Great, let’s make every human relationship equally trite!”

He throws her a teasing look. “You don’t think that’s beautiful? How universal it is?”

“Two tons. That’s how much extra weight everyone’s universal gestures add up to.” She shakes her head. “One of these days the whole bridge is going to fall into the river.”

“But think about the symbolism,” Santi says in an awestruck tone. “A miracle of engineering, borne down by the weight of human love.”

He’s definitely teasing her. “I’m sure the people who symbolically die when the bridge symbolically collapses underneath them will appreciate it.”

He laughs, high and exultant: the kind of laugh a boy might be mocked for. That he kept on laughing it anyway tells her something important about him.

Thora has been sitting still for too long: there is more to explore here, more to discover. She gets to her feet and steps around the opening in the floor to examine the rusted mechanism of the clock.

Santi stands up. “Need some light?”

“No, I’ve got it.” She pulls out her lighter and flicks it on.

“You smoke?” Santi sounds surprised.

“God, no. My mum chain-smoked my whole childhood. That leaves a mark.”

Santi steps closer as she holds the light up to the gears. “Think we can fix it?”

Thora puts her weight to one of the gears and tries to shove it backward. “No,” she says, after a few seconds. “I’m afraid time has stopped.”

Santi tries to push the gear in the other direction. Giving up, he steps back. “I guess it has.” He smiles at her sideways in the flickering light. “Welcome to forever.”