Building+Bridges+Cloze

Ahead, in the distance, stood the Brooklyn Bridge. This was the best spot in Brooklyn’s Red Hook section for seeing the bridge. I’d come to this corner and studied the bridge a million times. And on every one of those times, I was taken with what I’d come to call Brooklyn Belle.

I never got tired of looking out at its steel girders and iron cables—at its beautiful crisscross rafters that had started out in somebody’s imagination, had been put to paper, formalized in an engineer’s plans, then woven together, bolt by bolt. Now Belle was a powerful giant who carried all kinds of people to all kinds of places, day after day. At night Belle was dressed in tiny lights <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">that spanned her limbs. On a cloudless night <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">like this one, she was a sight like no other sight <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">in the whole city. Jeweled in light. //<span style="font-family: 'Minion-Italic','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Beautiful //<span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">.

<span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">My fingers had tensed into fists at my <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">sides, fists full of strength and eagerness. I <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">uncurled my knuckles and shook them free <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">of their strain. Then I reached into my jacket <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">pocket—where my consent form for the bridge <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">project had been neatly folded for days—and <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">pulled out my pencil. Slowly, I flipped through <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the pages of my sketchbook. I’d drawn Belle in <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the high-noon light, at sunset, on snowy days, <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">and on foggy twilight mornings. My favorite <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">sketches were those of Belle during rush hour, <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">when cars and taxis danced like trinkets along <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">her outstretched beams.

<span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Tonight I’d draw Belle with her lighted <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">cape. I sketched slowly at first, then faster, <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">my pencil working with the speed of my <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">excitement—the thrill that worked me over <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">every time I sketched that bridge. <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">I was proud of my drawings (I liked to <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">think of them as portraits), but with each <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">page they showed a sad truth about Belle: She <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">needed repair. She was some forty years older <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">than Mama Lil. And as lovely as she was, she <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">had some serious rough spots—corroded <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">cables, rust, chipped paint, and plain old grit <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">that had built up over the decades. That bridge <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">renovation project needed me; and I needed it, <span style="font-family: 'Minion-Regular','serif'; font-size: 16px;">in more ways than I could count.