The Sea Beach Line (20 page)

The dead soldier appeared in the notebook alongside Roman and Timur in three different places, including the dock picture, so he had to be connected to them in some way. They appeared several times without him too. Roman and Timur were clearly important figures in Al's life, and I had to learn more from them. They were holders of secrets. I had to study them like a text to try to find the
remez
and the
sod
beneath their statements and assignments.

Around this time, Zoya, the T-shirt tsarina, knocked on the door of my storage unit. She held a cell phone in her hand.

“
Malchik
,” she said. “You can do for me a favor.” I didn't hear a question mark at the end of the sentence.

“What kind of favor?” I asked. She handed me the phone.

“Hello?” I said.

“Izzy. Roman. You are well?”

“I'm fine. Yourself?”

“
Slushai
. I mean, listen.” He had been talking to Zoya in Russian, and was grinding back into English. “There are some boxes in Zoya's possession which need storing. It is not prudent for her to hold them in her unit. Perhaps you could hold them in yours for few days?”

“Absolutely. I'm happy to help.”

“Great.” The phone went dead. Grabbing a luggage dolly, I followed Zoya back to her unit. Zoya wielded tremendous power over her girls, and I thought of her as a witch, but that was none of my business. I was happy to be able to help Roman and Timur, and work my way closer to the truth. There were three bankers boxes, taped up with packing tape. From the way the contents shifted when I loaded them on the dolly, it felt like they were full of paper files, like you'd find at a doctor's or lawyer's office.

I took them back to my unit and stacked them without looking inside, though I wondered what they held. Most likely it was evidence that needed to be hidden while the police searched a business connected to some crime, like Medicaid fraud. Or maybe they were stolen files being used to blackmail someone, or sink a lawsuit. It was exciting to participate in the hustle, but I needed to mind my business, to show Timur and Roman they could trust me. Even if I resealed the boxes, Zoya might be able to somehow tell that I had looked inside them. I didn't want Timur to have any reason not to trust me. A few days later, Zoya and a young Russian guy came and picked them up.

I kept watch for the girl from the Galuth painting, and when I saw her on the sidewalk, five days after her first visit, I was ready.

“Hey,” I called, turning my back on the customer I'd been speaking with, and trying not to show how excited I was. She gave me a shy little wave, but kept walking.

“Come on over,” I said. After a moment's hesitation, she complied.

“Hello again,” she said warily.

“I was just about to eat lunch. Did you want to join me?”

“No, you don't have to keep—”

“It's no problem. You'd be doing me a kindness. I'd rather not eat alone.”

“All right.” She smiled, and came around the table to sit with me. “Thank you. I've been walking all day.”

“To where?” I asked.

“Nowhere. Just around.” I couldn't mention the picture in the notebook to her. If there was some hidden, even supernatural connection, I needed to figure it out before I spoke about it. And whether it really was something hidden or something mundane and coincidental, I didn't want to come on too strong and drive her off. As a result, we barely spoke after our initial exchange. After eating and sitting for a while, she abruptly rose to leave.

“Come see me again soon,” I said. “When you want to sit and rest for a while.”

She returned the very next day. On this visit, she told me her name was Rayna.

“The other men,” she said, “they call you Izzy.” She had heard me speaking with Mendy and Hafid.

“Yes.”

“Is that your real name?”

“It's short for Isaac.”

“Isaac is a better name. I will call you Isaac.” I liked hearing her say my name.

She started coming by often, and sitting for longer and longer before she'd disappear. I rarely saw her leave, just like I rarely saw her approach. It was more that she'd fade into the air when I turned my back. I started buying extra food in the morning, just in case she'd show up. She liked bread and bananas.

I wanted to maintain a connection to her, in case she knew something about Al, or could lead me to someone who knew something. She was also very pretty. The drugs had killed my libido, but it was
returning, and this was the first time since Mariam I'd found myself so strongly attracted to a woman. But I also just wanted to help her out; she didn't seem to have anywhere to go, or any way to support herself.

Rayna didn't speak much at first, other than to ask if she could help with anything. I showed her how to clean the books and straighten them on the table. Gradually, she got over her shyness, and she became more talkative. Her voice possessed a tinge that was familiar but from across a great distance. A perfume they didn't make anymore. It somehow reminded me of my mother's mother, who had died when I was a kid. As she started speaking more, I realized what it was: despite being so young, she had a slight Yiddish accent.

“Do you enjoy being around all of these books?” Rayna asked me one day, while she cleaned brown smoke off of book spines with rubbing alcohol.

“Yeah. I like them okay. They're my dad's, not mine, mostly. I'm selling them for him until he gets back. Have you ever met my father?” I'd been waiting for days to ask the question.

“He sold in this spot before me?”

“No.” She shook her head. “The first time I saw you was the first time I came here.” If Rayna had never been to West Fourth Street when Al was selling, he couldn't have sketched her face on the street. Maybe she really was the girl from Galuth's painting.

“Well, they're his books. I have to sell them for him until he gets back. I'm not attached to them. But I do like them.”

“By my dad were a lot of books too.” She had never mentioned anything about her background before.

“Yeah? Like these?”

“No. They weren't so colorful. And none had paper covers.”

“What kind of covers did they have?”

“Black and leather mostly,” she said. “Some of them were red, or green. But black mostly, brown and black.”

“Were they novels?”

“I don't know.”

“I mean, were they storybooks? Or scientific books? Did they have pictures?” Normally, I didn't ask so many questions, worried she would
disappear if I said the wrong thing, but she intrigued me. I wanted to know more about her and where she came from.

“No. No stories. No science. No pictures. Law.” Was her father a lawyer or judge, maybe? Between her Yiddish accent, her long sleeves, and her reluctance to eat treif meat, I gathered she was from an Orthodox household. So maybe law meant Talmud, and he was a rabbi. I wanted to ask more, but was interrupted by a customer interested in buying a fifteen-dollar Dalí book. Over the course of the past few weeks, I'd decided to make a go at the business and turn a profit, not just for Al's sake but so I could finally support myself. The guy didn't buy the book, and when I turned back around, Rayna was gone.

It rained the following day, so I didn't go out, and instead took care of a few things in the storage unit. I wondered about Rayna and hoped she wasn't out in the rain, although it wasn't my concern. Everyone had to look after himself. My mother and Becca barely knew where I was.

When the rain let up, I went out and ran a few errands. It had been a couple weeks since my brief conversation with Roman on Zoya's phone, and I didn't want to let Roman and Timur forget about me, so on my way back into the storage space I called Roman on the pay phone.

“Izzy,” Roman said, curtly but not unkindly. “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to check in. See, you know, if you'd heard anything about Alojzy.”

“I am afraid not. But from Zoya I heard good things about you.”

“I'm glad. If you ever need me for anything else . . .” I wanted Roman and Timur to see me as valuable and trustworthy so I could learn more from them.

“You would be willing to do some more serious tasks for us?”

“If you need me.” I wanted him to understand I was serious about following in Al's footsteps.

“Very good. I will keep this in mind.”

“And if you do hear anything about Alojzy . . .”

“Of course.” He hung up. I was taken aback by the shortness of the call, and couldn't shake the feeling that Roman was obstructing me. But he had taken my call, and not rejected my offer outright. Roman was clearly the underling, Timur's lieutenant or aide, but I had to work my way up the hierarchy. How did Al fit into their dynamic? Was he a henchman like Roman? No, he was no one's dog. He was more independent than Roman. There were so many questions. But I needed to be patient, and keep working. Akiva studied for twenty-four years, but I had only been down on the street for twenty-four days. Answers would come. I would find Al.

I sat on the loading dock and read more
Knickerbocker Avenue
. Arturo idolizes the bakery's owner, the local mafia boss, Don Niccolo. He dreams of having the flashy life of Niccolo and his associates. What's more, he is enamored with Don Niccolo's daughter, Isabella. Niccolo takes a shine to Arturo, but advises him to stay on the straight path, so he can one day became a legitimate business owner, instead of a wise guy. Before Arturo decides what to do, he is drafted into the army, and sent to Vietnam in 1967.

The rain lasted for two days. Rayna came by West Fourth Street the first day I was back out selling. She had been caught in the rain and now had a cold. I bought her a cup of chicken noodle soup, and gave her one of Al's old sweaters.

Her visits soon became a daily occurrence. She'd usually show up in the afternoon, after the lunchtime rush, and help me straighten and restock the table. We'd eat a late lunch on the curb, and she'd tell me the strangest and most wondrous things she'd seen in the city that day. Always, she focused on the present day, never again mentioning her father or speaking of things from her past.

Though I couldn't stop wondering about her past or her connection to the Galuth painting, her visits were about more than that. I hadn't
realized how lonely I was, how badly I needed someone to talk to. It wasn't that I didn't have others in my life. Mendy was always kind to me, I'd shared many jokes with the other street vendors, and if need be Becca was just a subway ride away. Still, nothing compared to spending time with Rayna. At night, I kicked myself for not interrogating her about her connection to the sketchbooks, but when I was with her, those concerns disappeared. I was happy. Her visits were the highlight of my day, and I wasn't going to jeopardize them.