Quentin took some deep breaths and leaned against the splintery wooden railing, which still retained some of the fading heat of the sun. Remember what’s at stake. Julia wouldn’t hesitate. She’d be over the railing like a damn Olympic hurdler. At his request they hadn’t told her they were going tonight, but slipped out after she went to bed. She would have insisted on going in.

“They hardly ever eat people,” Poppy said. “I mean like twice a century. That we know of.”

Quentin didn’t respond to this.

“How deep do you think it is?” Josh said. He dragged on a cigarette. Of the three of them he looked the most nervous.

“Twenty feet maybe,” Quentin said. “I read it on the Internet.”

“Jesus. Well, whatever you do don’t dive.”

“If I break my neck and end up paralyzed just let me drown.”

“Two minutes,” Poppy said. An empty vaporetto churned by underneath them, off duty, lights off except for one in the cozy pilot’s cabin. That water must be ninety percent E. coli, and the rest was probably diesel fuel. This was not a body of water intended for swimming in.

Somebody had carved what might have been a stylized dragon, or just a fancy s, into the wood right at the apex of the bridge.

“Are you going to take off your clothes?” Josh asked.

“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that.”

“Seriously, are you?”

“No.”

Poppy said it at the same time he did.

“Seriously,” she added.

Their little group fell silent. Somewhere far away glass broke. Beer bottle versus wall. Quentin wondered if he was actually going to do this. Maybe he could just drop a note in. Message in a bottle. Call me.

“Hey, remember when that little person called your cell?” he said. “Did you get his number? Maybe we could just—”

“It was blocked.”

“Time!” Poppy said.

“Damn it!”

Just don’t think about it. He backed up to the middle of the bridge, scrunched the papers and the bag with the steak in it up in one hand, ran at the railing, and vaulted over it sidewise. He surprised himself by how spryly he did it. Must be the adrenaline. Even so he almost clipped a sticking-out support beam going down.

Some primal instinct caused him to flap his arms and let go of the steak and the papers in midair. They separated from him and disappeared into the night. So much for that. To his left he caught a glimpse of something falling in parallel with him. Somebody—it was Poppy! She was jumping in too.