The Sea Beach Line (15 page)

Alojzy's rig had eight water boxes and two three-foot-long card tables on it. I later learned to space the tables out and fill the gaps with plywood, to get the legal maximum of eight feet, but for my first day six feet was more than enough. The boxes were labeled by category: two “Fiction,” two “History,” one “Drama,” one “Philosophy/theory/religion,” one “Art and oversize,” and one “Misc.” Except for the hardbacks in “Art and oversize,” and a stack of mass-market thrillers in one of the “Fiction” boxes, Alojzy seemed to focus primarily on trade paperbacks.

As expected, the supplies bag held a stack of sheet-metal bookends. Following the way I'd seen Mendy arrange his table, I put fiction and drama in the first rows, closer to the sidewalk traffic, and put history and “Philosophy/theory/religion” farther back, where more rigorous searchers could find them. Within each category, the books were alphabetized by the author's last name, and I maintained that order. The rows of different-colored spines looked beautiful, like a mosaic, and I was proud of the setup. To improve the display, I scattered some of the “Art and oversize” books around the table.

It wasn't difficult for me to interact with the customers. I had always felt comfortable discussing books. Many of the customers were college students, and I had been one recently enough to know what they needed.

“Is there more than one
Norton Anthology of English Literature
?” a student in a zipped-up fleece asked. “Because this doesn't look right.”

“Yes. What class do you need it for?”

“English.”

“I figured . . . but what are you studying?”

“Oh, eighteenth-century lit. Which is what this is supposed to be. But why isn't Blake in here?” I smiled. English literature didn't speak to me, generally, but I could understand Blake's visions.

“He's in the next one, the Romantic one, not the Restoration one.”

“Do you have that one?”

“No. But I have
Blake's Complete Poetry & Prose
. That should have what you need in it . . .”

It went on like that for the rest of the day. Even though I felt like an imposter, someone pretending to be a street vendor, customers treated me like the real thing, so I ran with it. Alojzy had penciled prices onto the first pages of his books—this seemed to be standard on West Fourth Street—so I knew what to charge. I tried to make a record of everything I sold, like Mendy did, as well as the prices to get a sense of what would needed replenishing and how to price books in the future.

The day followed the same ebb and flow as the day I'd spent with Mendy. The slow uptick of the morning followed by the lunchtime rush, the afternoon lull, and then the after-work rush. The other booksellers were accustomed to this flow, and planned their days accordingly.

Working a table on my own for the first time was no small task, and I was already tired by the time the lunchtime rush ended, and exhausted after the after-work crowd. In just six hours, I'd made sixty-two dollars. Since I didn't know how much Alojzy had paid for the books, I couldn't know how much was profit. Still, it had been a good day, and I'd be back soon.

Andrew came by Becca's apartment the next evening, and we walked down to a lounge on Second Avenue. We got there before his friends and ordered a couple of craft beers. Andrew handed his credit card to the bartender when he came back.

“On me,” he said.

“Thanks.” We sipped in silence for a couple minutes. Down on the other end of the bar, three women in their midtwenties were laughing and drinking martinis. Their clothes and hair were done up for the night. They looked good.

“How the New York City girls treating you so far?” Andrew asked me.

“I haven't really been out socializing much since I've been here. I've been taking care of things. Family stuff, and business stuff.”

“Yeah, I understand that,” he said, though I could tell my vagueness was frustrating him. He tried again. “Becca said you had a girlfriend at school? Not still pining after her, are you?”

“Mariam? No. I mean, I liked her a lot, but we'd been broken up for a while when I left school. I've been through a lot since then. I don't think I was in love with her or anything. Though sometimes I do miss spending time with her.” I didn't realize I'd missed her at all until I started talking. Even then, it was more nostalgia than ache. Time was twisted around in my mind, and I felt as if I'd seen Alojzy more recently than I'd seen Mariam. “She lived off campus, and we'd spend whole weekends in her room, smoking weed and listening to records. She was into all this old indie rock and drone stuff.”

“Doesn't sound like too bad of a way to spend a weekend.”

“It wasn't. But it was silly, just a college kid thing. Anyway, it seems like you and Becca are pretty happy.”

“Yeah, man. I love your sister.” He smiled. “I'm going to marry that girl.” He finished his beer. “You and I are going to be brothers-in-law.” He raised his beer, and we clinked glasses. “So you said ‘business' stuff. Is it that thing you mentioned last night? What kind of a job was it?” It was true, we were going to be brothers, under the law. We were going to be family. He was making an effort to reach out to me, and I should reciprocate.

“It's more of a gig than a job. Pretty informal. But I'll be selling books downtown in the Village.” It felt good to say that out loud, but I also knew I had to follow through, and really try my hand at running Alojzy's business. The two days I'd spent on the street so far were just a start.

“Like at one of the Barnes and Nobles?” he asked.

“No, used books.”

“Ah, gotcha. You don't mind doing retail work?”

“No,” I said, though I hadn't really thought of street vending as retail. It was, in a way, but I associated retail work with a shift and a
manager. Selling on the street was more direct and independent than that. “It's honest,” I said. “A straightforward transaction. I appreciate that.”

“I used to work at my dad's hardware shop on Long Island, when I was in high school.” This didn't quite fit with my image of Andrew.

“Your dad owns a hardware store? I thought he was a dentist or something.”

“That's my stepdad. He's an orthodontist in Westchester. My dad owned a hardware store. Two locations, actually. My grandfather started the business. It got bought out by Home Depot a few years ago.” He looked pensive for a moment, but then his usual goofy grin returned. “But I'll take what I do now over that kind of honest work any day. Even if they are working me to death. And even if it's not as honest.

“I didn't mean that as a dig . . .” He held up a hand.

“Look, I'm not stupid. We had to read Marx at Binghamton. I get it. The hardware—the hammers and screwdrivers and power tools—someone made all that somewhere, with labor. Taiwan, Vietnam, wherever. At the hardware store, we did add fictional value on top of that—it was capitalism—but you could still see the labor.

“What I do now, with these funds, is so divorced from any labor. It's mystical, it's black magic. It's not tied to anything. There's no labor. There are no hammers. Maybe these financial products started out as hammers a long time ago, but that's ancient history by the time they get to me. And sometimes . . . sometimes I have to push things even further. Abstract them further than is expected.” I didn't quite know what Andrew meant by the last statement, but his tone made it sound like a personal admission of some kind.

“My dad, after he had to sell his store, he ended up getting hired by the Home Depot as an assistant manager. He thinks it's great. He got some money off the sale, his house in Great Neck is paid off, and now he gets a salary and benefits. But damn, he's sixty-three and selling hammers. He wears a nametag. I don't want to sell hammers on Long Island. Especially not for Home Depot. I want to do black
magic and wear a dope suit and live in the clouds.” I wondered how to take Andrew's use of the term “black magic.” It seemed like he knew exactly what he was saying, and that he had made his bargain.

“Wolfie!” The shout from the door let us know that one of Andrew's friends had arrived. There would be no more talk of Marx or black magic.

“Sup, gentlemen?” the guy said, slapping Andrew five. He wore a similar polo shirt to Andrew's, but his was salmon instead of navy. He had a lot of gel in his hair.

“Hey, DC!” Andrew said. “This is Becca's brother, Izzy. Izzy, this is DC.”

“Like the comic books,” DC said. “Short for Dylan Cohen. But call me DC.”

“Nice to meet you, DC,” I said.

“Likewise, my man.” He slapped me five too. “Let's order some shots.” We all drank some Jägermeister.

“What do you do, Izzy?” DC asked. That was the reason I was here, at least in Becca's mind: to talk about my career and future with these guys.

“Izzy's starting a job as a bookseller,” Andrew said, answering for me. “But like I mentioned yesterday, he's keeping his eye out for other stuff. Entry level in a good line.”

“Right,” DC said. “Bookseller? Is that like a bookie? I'll put two hundred on the Giants.” He slapped me on the back. “But seriously, sales, that's good. You know, I can always use sales guys.”

“What business are you in?” I asked. “What do you sell?” I wondered how abstracted it was, whether he was in the world of hammers or the world of derivatives.

“Real estate. The only real industry in New York.” He took a big gulp of the beer that he had ordered to chase the Jäger. “The agency I'm with has a lot of properties in the East Village. That whole area was developed fifteen years ago, but that didn't quite go all the way to Avenue D, because people were scared to live by the projects. I get it; the projects are scary. I get scared there, late at night. But things are calmer now. There's more police, which is good, and everything
is pretty safe.” I was disgusted by the combination of privilege and weakness in this statement. Alojzy had always made it clear that if there were two sides, the police and anyone else, you sided against the police. Police were for people who were soft, who possessed property but couldn't protect themselves.

“So we've been buying up these places that were subsidized housing run by these shady nonprofits—halfway houses, single-room-occupancy-type places—and renovating them. We're not even messing with too many leases. We just get an interior decorator and furnish them ourselves. Then, we can rent them out short-term to people coming from overseas, or who are just in the city for an internship or something. It's good money. We can always use a sales agent.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I'm not a licensed real estate agent or anything.” I wondered where all the old men from the subsidized buildings went. All the men like Alojzy and Mendy, who lived alone and scraped by on their hustles.

“Oh, that's not hard. You just have to sit through a forty-hour class on ethics and stuff. Blah blah blah. Just a formality. And you can actually start working without your pocket card. We just call you an ‘apartment shower' instead of an agent, and don't let you touch the contracts. And pay you less! Let me know.”

DC's entrepreneurial hustle was inherited from the same type of Lower East Side street hustlers he was displacing. Just as Andrew's mystical moneymaking abilities, though purely materialistic in their aims, were descended from the skills of ascetic Talmud masters. Everything contained its opposite. Everything devoured itself. I wanted out of the cycle, but didn't see an exit. One thing was sure, though: I didn't want to take a job where I helped rich interns move into an evicted SRO.

Two more of Andrew's friends showed up. Jason was at the same investment firm as Andrew, Haber Simson Assets Management, and Allan was a friend of his who had just graduated from law school and moved to the city to start a job with a big firm. Someone ordered another round of drinks, and we moved to a booth in the back of a bar. DC showed off a new watch and everyone admired it. The watch
did look cool. Solid gold, clean lines. The conversation turned to the luxury cars their bosses kept at their weekend houses, and my mind drifted off. I pored over Alojzy's sketchbooks in my mind.

“How about you, Izzy?” Allan asked me, abruptly trying to engage me in conversation.