Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25240
the structure of the bridge. We do. Stooping and holding still while a D train rattles toward downtown, we resume our promenade, step over paint buckets, unconnected wires, rags, and what look like oversize Erector Set parts. Below us, framed by the bridge's geometry, the East River is a turpentine smear of black and green oils, something painted by a severely depressed Monet. The city, behind us and winking, is a grid of silver and gold pen lights. Once at the Manhattan tower, Law disappears into the bridge. When he returns, he calls the climb off. The only safe passage is too exposed. The other path is too tricky for the first-time climbers. We're stuck. Law suggests we finish our nocturnal escapade by walking to center-span, taking in the views, and heading home. As we walk, I try to shake off the disappointment of not reaching the top, and consider that this is why I trust Law: his talent is not only for engineering the outrageous, but making sure peo- ple live to tell about it. Not that everyone has. Though he wasn't responsible for either of their deaths, Law has lost two of his partners in crime over the years, and surviving them hasn't been easy. The first was his mentor, Gary Warne, a pulp novel and trivia buff also known as the "Answer Man." Warne co-founded the Suicide Club, a predecessor to the Cacophony Society, in San Francisco in the mid-1970s. He got Law off the street and gave him the creative outlet he's been plugged into ever since. When Warne, at 35, died in 1983 of a heart attack brought on by phlebitis, Law, per Warne's will, spent an early dawn painting his ashes into the north- ern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. The second loss was more recent. Law's buddy Michael Furey got wasted and jumped on his headlightless motor bike one night just before Burning Man in 1996. He took off on the playa alongside the Burning Man encampment. Law found him with his head caved in after he'd lost a game of chicken with a Ford van. That Burning Man was his last. Now, at the middle of the bridge, Law looks at us and suggests we try the Brooklyn tower and see if there's a safe ascent. He's met with unanimous consent. Later,