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Can I get you something, sir? Coffee while you wait?
Waiting for? Your wife. We sent a car for her. She'll be here shortly.
Oh no. You shouldn't...you didn't need to...no need, you didn't need to do that.
She was glad to get the call. She was very worried.
Well, she is a worrier, that one.
Do you know how long you were gone?
I don't know.
Fifteen, ten minutes? I'm bad with time.
She said you went to the corner to mail a letter.
Oh yeah, that's right, a letter. Did I mail it?
I don't know, sir. Officer Freeman said when you flagged him down, you asked him to take you to the bridge.
Oh, yeah. Well I wasn't thinking that, see, I thought he was a cabbie.
The middle of the bridge, he said.
Did I break a law? Do I need a lawyer? No, no, nothing like that.
Cause I have a lawyer. Max Mancuso. He's a shark. Best tax lawyer in California. Although...
He might be dead. I knew a lot of lawyers who are dead.
Well that must be upsetting. Really? You know many lawyers?
Good point. Um, can I ask you your age, Mr. Rappaport?
Yeah, you can ask. I'm, uh, eighty-f...eighty-one, maybe?
You're not sure?
Well, to be honest, I haven't been sure for years. See, I always needed to do the math. Now I can't do the math.
Your wife, she mentioned that you received some news lately. News?
Medical news. Yeah.
Yeah, well it's nothing I didn't already know. But it's harder for her to hear.
Diagnosis?
Yeah, um. A word, a...
A name. Um...
I'm sorry, I've forgotten it. There's irony for you.
Why'd you want to go the bridge, Mr. Rappaport? The middle of the bridge?
There's a reason why people go to the middle of a bridge.
Remember the first time you ever set foot on that bridge?
I do. It was October 17, 1945. Six a.m., I was a radioman third class, on the U.S.S. Olmstead.
The war ended and we were heading, heading home to the Golden Gate, to discharge a couple hundred of us.
What a night we had, wow. It was just carousing and...
Next morning, a few of us got up at the break of dawn and headed back up to the bridge.
And we stood there, right in the middle, and watched our ship pass underneath. Headed back to the South Pacific.
And we were waving at the guys down on deck. And they were looking back at us. We're looking, we're looking down at them.
And it was...well we were just boys, waving to each other.
I'd never been to San Francisco before, never been west of the Allegheny before I enlisted.
But there I was, I was just so happy to be alive! Standing there in the middle of that amazing structure.
Looking out at this beautiful city. And I remember I said, I said to the fellas, I said, "I am gonna live here, one day."
And I knew it. I knew it the way you just know anything. The way you know that, who you're going to marry, that woman you're...
The way you...
The way you, know your, your little girl's face.
Took me nearly eighteen years, but I got back here, I did.
It all started right here, in that moment. When that ship passed underneath.
Did you think I was gonna jump?
I had to ask.
I wasn't, I wasn't gonna jump. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here until...
Until I'm not.
What little pieces of it are, little bits and pieces. And disappearing.
This morning, I had that piece, just...clear as could be.
Boys waving and their whole lives ahead of them. My whole life, ahead of me.
I just wanted to go back there, to that spot.
To hold onto it for...one more moment.
Till it was all gone.
Do you blame me?