Marine Park: Stories (10 page)

That night Lise and I climbed out her window onto the roof. One of the German émigrés was playing Tchaikovsky two buildings over. She wanted to dance, and we did, and it was good to be doing something, getting the motion out of our veins. The dust was still coming down at the edge of the horizon, and it was still colored green and purple and pink from the radiation. The thing just blew. I wanted to jump, or pound my fist on the rooftops, or cover Lise with my entire life up to now. Something happened. Something had changed. When Lise pulled off my belt, I almost ripped the top of her blouse. The chipped paint scratched up my back. Later, she asked, Was that your first time? And I lied.

We heard the news about the Gadget going overseas in the morning. There were loudspeakers set up around the compound on top of telephone poles. They played the national anthem and then a sober-voiced man said the tests had worked as well as our wildest dreams. There was champagne at the laboratory benches. Someone was pouring bourbon from imported bottles into beakers, and we toasted.

Lise was with the observation team that was going over to help the crew's training for three weeks. We put a chair under the doorknob in her bathroom and her roommate just knocked and knocked. When she tried to get out, I threw her back against the shower again and again. Her eyes got wide and then wider. We ran to the landing strip, which they'd doubled in size over two weekends. They dressed the observational team in fatigues, and a lot of us, including Oppenheimer, went to wave the plane good-bye.

 • • • 

During that time we played a lot of pickup baseball on the compound. We were waiting for the OK to get started on the new project, working with hydrogen, 400,000 times more powerful. Everyone was banging on the chalkboards to get going, but Washington said wait. Oppenheimer was traveling back and forth from the East Coast.

The field was yellow with half straw at this heat in August, though the Army Corps people watered the diamond every other week. There was a layer of fine sand over the infield base paths, which made it easy to get grounders. You could just sit back and wait for them to die and swirl in the dust. I liked taking rounds and rounds with the number theorists and some privates, switching off who would hit and then getting in line, seeing who would let the ball through their legs first. It was a game my father would play with other handymen, in the one part of the park that had dry dirt. I had a letter from him, and the un-blacked-out part said,
Double-decker boardwalk canceled, from — to — Island. No more restaurants on the top half —
I didn't read the rest. It didn't feel right in letters. The bat was made of aspen wood from a tree on the compound, and some genius had carved on the power spot,
Los Alamos, Home of Explosions
. We spent long afternoons there, lying in the dusty outfield, looking at the sun. It was a pulsing, living thing that summer, its image burned into our retinas while we waited.

When Lise came back I went to meet the plane, and I asked her if she wanted to go to the cantina for a drink. The particle physicist from the office next to hers was holding a banner, and they were pumping music through the loudspeakers. I tried to press the khaki of her shirt against my chest. But she pushed me off and went to her room. When she came out she was in civilian clothes and she wanted to get dinner. In town we were stopped at a green light waiting for jeeps to go by, and she told me she wasn't going to stay.

We argued. We sat against somebody else's fence and never made it to dinner. I said that technically the military police could get involved. She said that the second bomb had shattered the trees rather than blowing them over. I told her she had an obligation to her country and her brother, a Marine in the Fifth. She said there were shadows of spiral staircases on walls where the staircases were gone. That the
Enola Gay
flew through a late moon in the east. That there were eight ships in Hiroshima Harbor. That she hadn't slept since somewhere over the Pacific. I stopped her and touched her hand and asked if she remembered the night of Trinity, and she sneered, I hardly remember. Really? I said. Grow up, she said, and I slammed my hand through the fence. She got up and walked away slowly while some mother came out and started to squawk.

It took a week for her clearance to be revoked, and for all the papers to come in for her statements to be signed. She ate dinner with me once, but she wouldn't dance afterward. She stayed inside with a handful of other scientists who were leaving while we toasted, in the middle of the street, next to the pagoda the Army Corps had just finished installing. We went for walks and sat on the bench in the dugout when the baseball field was empty, and for a while she was almost like always. But then that Friday she wouldn't say a word, and she didn't want me to touch her shoulders. I gave it up. You have to leave some behind.

Two days later she was gone and we got the go-ahead to get the H-bomb up and running. The war was over but the Russians were working on their own Gadget, and it was only a matter of time before this one mattered. Everyone was ecstatic. We worked twelve-hour days, talked only about fusion. I dropped metal from the rooftops to measure the lateral drift. She left and I hated that she had, with all this going on. It started again, the nights in the cantina, the days in underground labs. The military men played baseball, but we had a war on here. Sometimes I caught myself panting in the middle of drafting, and I'd have to take a beaker of bourbon before starting again. I knew guys who had to be hospitalized for refusing to sleep. There was talk of changing our sleep schedules to make a twenty-six-hour day. Day and night became interchangeable. Lise wrote a letter, saying she was somewhere in Arizona and trying to live. I threw it out. I wanted to see it again, the cloud coming over the desert. So loud that the deaf heard something outrageous and the blind asked if this was white. I went into her office, pored over her papers, sat in the plush chair behind her desk. I began to think that she took the answer with her. She knew how it could be done. There was a secret and it was lost to me. She was gone and we were waiting for inspiration to strike.

B
ecause she is not with you, you get off the train, late one night, and you go to the bar. The bar is on Bergen and off Smith Street. You walk past it every day, on your way to the F train. On the way home at night you walk past it again, with the hordes of other people, all in their black jackets and suits, sometimes blue, for the women. You've done that walk with her, walked by the bar, though she refuses to wear blue. Sorry, Eamon, she'd say. You almost forgot that. Tonight you go in. It is a late night. The white bartender, as you come through the door, gives you the look that he gives to desperate people. We just had last call, he says. Can I get a drink? you say. I'm sorry, says the bartender. Just one, you say, as you slide into an empty stool at the bar, facing the newly exposed red brick. The bartender looks over his shoulder, and then he looks at the door, where a man has just entered, maybe Hispanic, a man who at first looks worn and weather-beaten and then you realize it's just the coat he has on, and the style with which he holds his shoulders. Other than that he is a young man, your age, maybe, no more. The bartender leans close to you and says, Just one. I don't want to create a rush. That's fine, you tell him, as the man settles into the seat next to yours. I'll have the pale ale, you tell him, and you do.

You sip the pale ale like you've never had a drink before, as if it were a religious ceremony. You look at the exposed brick walls. You still have your hood on, and your collar turned up, on the black coat you are wearing.

The bartender comes up to the man sitting next to you and his friends.
Otro?
he asks.
Nada más,
says the man, and the bartender says,
No te preocupas.
You snort, to show you've understood it, and because you have, the man sitting next to you says, You speak Spanish?

And you say,
Solo un poco.

And he says, That's good, that's good.

And you say,
De dónde son ustedes?

And he answers once again in English. From Arizona, he says. Pointing at the young man next to him, he says, Miami. And then the attractive woman at the end of the bar. Guatemala. She nods.

And you? the Arizona man says, in the English version of the
y tu
that you would have understood.

I'm from here, you say—from Brooklyn. Marine Park. Down that way. You point in a vague southerly direction.

Arizona looks surprised.

I've never met anyone who's actually from here before.

You laugh and consider bringing up the E. B. White line that's on the subway posters, but instead you just say, That's the way it is.

It's different from here, down there, you say. He nods. But not so different. There are more things to do in this part. He nods again.

Many things to do here, he says. Many restaurants.

Lots of restaurants, you say. Lots of exposed brick, you add, pointing at the walls. They used to be covered with plaster, you say, as if you know. The woman from Guatemala leans over and says, Plaster? And suddenly you are very tired. Yes, you say, and leave it at that.

You drink more of your pale ale and the two men and woman go back to speaking to each other in low tones in Spanish. The bartender walks out from behind the bar, which is still crowded, and goes out the door. You decide not to look at your cell phone. When the bartender comes back into his bar, he walks by the man from Arizona, and slips a wad of napkins into his coat pocket, his coat still on. There is the smell, suddenly, that overcomes you, like wet earth, like lying on the grass somewhere with trees. The man from Arizona looks at you. You look at him.

It's OK, you say. You're among friends.

Can you smell it? he asks.

Sure, you say.

You need a ziplock bag, his companion says. Do you have a ziplock bag? he asks you.

I don't, you say. But it's fine. I can only smell it because I'm so close, you add. He closes his jacket more and grins at you. David, he says, and extends his hand. You shake it. You tell him your name. We're waiters, he says. But we have money. We live in Carroll Gardens. Me and Andreo. Isabella is in Brooklyn Heights. But Isabella has already stopped paying attention to you and her fellow workers, and is busy looking at her cell phone.

What restaurant? you say. Is it one I might have been to?

Maybe, they say, and they name a restaurant on Smith Street that you have never been to. You never eat in restaurants alone.

I know it, you say. A nice place. A good place.

They nod noncommittally. Yes, David says, but not like Arizona. Andreo agrees.

What do you mean? you say.

No tipping like Arizona, he says. In Arizona they tip 40 percent.

Forty percent, you say, too loud, as if you might have been outraged.

Yes, David says. It is common.

And how about here? you ask.

David thinks for a minute, swilling the wine that is left in his glass. Ten, fifteen. Sometimes twenty, he says. Sometimes five. Sometimes point oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-one percent.

Jesus, you say. So do you know, like, when a table sits down, how much they'll tip you?

David nods, but he looks uncomfortable. He is holding his glass just a little above the bar, resting it on his fist. How do you know? you say. Is it racial?

David says yes, when you force him to. Who's worst? you say, triumphant. David looks over his shoulder. Black people, he says. Not all of them, he adds, quickly. There are rules and exceptions.

Of course, you say. How about white people? David shrugs. They're OK. Sometimes they feel bad for us. And Latinos? you ask. Oh, the best, David says. Andreo agrees.

You all look at the wall together, as the bar empties out around you. Isabella, who works in the kitchen, leaves, because she is meeting a man whom the other two don't know, who comes to pick her up in a car. You wonder who owns a car in this neighborhood. You don't. You thought about getting one, the two of you, when she was there, sharing the registration, putting your two names on it. You had talked about the places you could drive. Skiing upstate. You don't know how to ski, she said. A weekend in New Jersey. The Catskills. I'll believe it when it happens, she said. You rarely plan for anything. It seems nice, you like it best, when things carry you along their way. You were never one for omens. Recently you were walking by a billboard near the BQE, and when you looked up, a young man that you knew from elementary school was staring down at you, a smiling senior at St. Francis College. It was an old poster. Some of the center was showing through, so you could see an ad for Kars4Kids. You know it is that ad, because you've seen it many times before. You never get farther than the BQE, but some days, walking by there, hearing the trucks scream by, you think about hitchhiking across the country to see her. It could happen. It could be done.

The smell from David's pocket is still pungent, and it makes you feel vigorous and safe. What do you do? David asks.

You dismiss this with a wave of your hand. This and that, you say. But then you tell them. They nod noncommittally. Their disinterest vaguely alarms you. It reminds you that you are in a bar sitting next to two people who you've never met before. You wonder how long this can go on for. Desperate now, with the pale ale down to its last fingers, and the bartender swabbing the counter with a greasy, heavy rag, you turn to David and Andreo and you say, What are your hopes and dreams?

And they take this question at face value. They nurture it, turn it over in their heads. They mull it like the wine that they are drinking, that they are finishing. Both have double shifts in the morning, starting at nine a.m.

David answers first, and says, I want to work in nonprofits. This you dismiss with your own disinterest, and you say to Andreo, What about you?

Andreo works his hands out of the folds of his coat, and he puts them both in the air, and he says, I want to use these, and he waves them.

What do you mean? you ask him.

I want to be a writer, he says. I want to write news.

And you swell up with a joy that doesn't make sense at the time, as he tells you about enrolling in classes in the CUNY journalism school. Do you know CUNY? he asks. Of course you know CUNY—who doesn't? You want to take his name, his number, watch for his byline in the morning paper, or on Internet updates:
Reporting contributed by Andreo—,
from Brooklyn, Washington, Miami, Kandahar. It will happen, you tell him, you lie to him. It will. And he smiles, and puts his hands back in his pockets, and knows that things will change.

You walk outside and David and Andreo shake hands with you, and they don't offer to share the sweet smell in David's pocket, but they confirm that they do go to this bar often, and you think that maybe you might frequent it, on the way home from work, from your office in the city, riding on the black backs of suits and jackets. Maybe you might stop, have a drink, find Andreo, ask him about his work, before going home to the empty apartment, where the only view is billboards.

You walk home. The lights on Pacific Street are all off. All the streets here are named for oceans, as if the ocean might reclaim them, any day. Inside your apartment, you take off the wet shoes on your feet, the wet socks. You take off your black jacket, your sweatshirt with a hood. You look at the pictures on your walls and find that the drink doesn't help anymore, and you pick up the phone and you make a call across the country.

You hold your breath until she picks up. You haven't talked in a while. Hello? she says. Hello? Eamon, she says, and that lets you speak.

Hello, you say. I missed you. I missed you tonight. She sighs into the speaker, and says that she missed you too. The phone connection isn't enough for you, and you ask her if she has her computer nearby, and you connect to the Internet, and through the magic of machines and cameras she is in front of you, in pajamas, her hair tied on top of her head.

You can't say anything. You don't. You don't want to talk about anything at all anymore. You don't tell her about David or Andreo or the sweet smell or the car that took Isabella away. That is all over now, like another lifetime, and the waiters fade to nothing in your head.

Are you OK? she asks you, and you shake your head, one way and then the other. You're making me upset, she tells you. And because you don't know what else to do, and you don't want to make her upset, you reach a hand out toward the computer screen, even though you know it can't do anything. You reach a hand to where her hand is on her computer screen, as if to hold it. You hold nothing but the hot section of the screen itself, the energy of keeping your pictures alive pumping up out of it, like a stove. You watch her, your hands almost touching, the swirls in her palm visible on the high-definition screen, and it is as close as you can come, or as much as she can give you, for you.