The Sea Beach Line (30 page)

“I had never been able to get any acid in the suburbs, so I went into the city with two guys I hung out with, Mike and Adam, because Adam had an older brother at NYU who could hook us up. We took the Long Island Rail Road into Manhattan and went down to his dorm on Third Avenue. We all chewed two tabs but nothing happened, and we sat on the edges of the two dorm beds. We smoked a couple bong loads with Adam's brother's friends to bring us up. It still felt like nothing was happening, but I guess we started to come up or at least get rambunctious because they kicked us out.”

The train came to Grand Central, and passengers poured off. People going to the Upper East Side, to East Harlem, or to the Bronx were still on the train, but three-quarters of the riders had been heading to Midtown. Rayna seemed to breathe easier once the car was less crowded, and no stranger was sitting too close to her. She still clutched her laundry bag to her chest. Mine rested on the floor of the car.

“We headed back to the subway. The day was a bust and we figured we'd just get the train back home. I picked a busted yellow plastic radio up off the street by Union Square. Mike and Adam made fun of me for carrying a piece of garbage around, but to me it was beautiful and giant, like a boom box from a real live 1970s ghetto, and I could actually see the music notes coming out of the speaker. On the subway, I realized I could control the speed of the train with the volume knob of the radio. For that moment, I had complete power over my environment. I made the train go faster and faster, then slowed it down.” Our own train sped up. The conductor announced it was going express, and the next stop would not be until Eighty-Sixth Street.

“We were all peaking by the time we got off the train at Herald Square, and instead of going to Penn Station we ended up walking all the way up to Central Park, where there was slush on the ground and our feet froze. We were too gone to understand that the feeling was coldness. We spent the next three hours running through the Ramble, believing we were being pursued by the police.” The same, paranoid feeling of being pursued by the police was with me again, and had been for the past four days since the fire.

“Were they really chasing you?” Rayna asked.

“No,” I said, “it was just in our minds. We all believed it, though. It was real to us.”

Becca's apartment had a nice shower with a big shower head, a sliding glass door, and a dial so you could get the water to just the right temperature. The shower felt wonderful after weeks of washing up with a sponge in an industrial sink at the storage facility. There was a combination washer and dryer next to the treadmill in the little alcove where I slept when I first came back to the city. The machine was small, but neither Rayna nor I had very many clothes to wash.

I wasn't a huge fan of the Internet or the TV, and was glad they weren't a part of my daily life, but after being on the street, it was fun to put on a music channel and check my e-mail and the news on Becca's desktop computer. I had several e-mails from my mom and sent her back a brief note, saying that I was fine, that I was working at an independent bookstore in the Village, and dating a nice Jewish girl. Rayna knew what TV and the Internet were, but she'd never really used either before. She was excited by them, but she also remained a little suspicious. Overall, Becca's apartment in the sky offered a refuge from the street. We were far from all the problems down there.

There was an e-mail from Becca too, time stamped from right after I moved downtown.

She had also left a note for me on the kitchen table, dated ten days ago. That's the kind of thing you could count on Becca for, to date a note so you'd know when it was written.

            
Izzy—

                 
I don't know when you will see this, but I missed you when you stopped by the other time, and I'm sure you'll stop by at some other inconvenient time.

                 
I did get your postcard, but didn't know where to write back to. Anyway, hello, you don't use your e-mail?

                 
There are extra clean towels in the closet, but please put them in the hamper when you are done.

                 
What are you doing? Where are you staying? I don't know exactly where you are. Leave the address of the bookstore so I can come by if I get a chance. You are still working there, I presume?

                 
Call me. Don't call this number, I'm never here. You have my office number, I think, or just call my cell. But first, call Mom, she's worried.

                 
I thought you were going to stay here longer than you did. I hope you didn't feel run off. You know you're welcome here.

—Becca

Even though Becca was just laying it on thick in her note, I did feel badly about mooching off her apartment and then ignoring her, so I called her office. She was busy, and only had a minute to talk, but we made plans to meet for dinner the coming Monday evening. She said Andrew should be able to come too, and to my surprise I found myself looking forward to seeing both of them.

Rayna was taking a long shower, surely enjoying the feeling of hot water on her skin. The newly constructed building always had hot water, so you could stay in the shower as long as you liked.

While our clothes dried, I sat on the couch with a towel around my waist, reading
Knickerbocker Avenue
. When Arturo returns to Brooklyn, he is a different man. No longer interested in the quiet life of a baker or store proprietor, he joins Don Niccolo's crew. Applying the violence, efficiency, and leadership skills he gained in Vietnam, Arturo quickly establishes himself in the organization. Niccolo is impressed with the increased revenue that comes in under Arturo's watch, and Arturo rises to become Niccolo's chief lieutenant. Niccolo's former lieutenant, Agastino, is not happy with this shift, but when he and an accomplice try to shoot Arturo, Arturo kills them both with his bare hands. Having secured his position, Arturo marries Niccolo's daughter, Isabella. Don Niccolo holds a lavish wedding feast for the young couple, inviting the entire neighborhood.

As the '70s go on, Bushwick changes. Many of the old Italian families and businesses move to Queens or Long Island, leaving only
the poorest, roughest Italian families. Black and Puerto Rican families move into the neighborhood, bringing with them teenage gangs that have no respect for the old Italian organized crime networks. Newer Sicilian immigrants begin to move in as well. The Sicilians have none of the older mafiosos' objections to peddling heroin, and sell it through the street gangs.

I heard Rayna open the bathroom door. Out of the corner of my eye—the part not on the page—I saw that she was brushing her hair.

“What story are you reading?” she asked.

“This same crime one, from before.” I looked up at her. She wore one of Becca's purple towels around her body. Her head was tilted to the side as she struggled to get the knots out of her long, wet hair, and the side of her neck stretched taught and smooth. Her breasts were normally suppressed in her high blouses, but now I could see the shape of them, full and flush, threatening to tumble out of the top of the poorly wrapped towel.

Rayna and I frequently kissed and hugged now, and held each other's hands. At night, we would often kiss passionately for a few minutes, but it never went further than that. We never got naked, let alone had sex. It was clear that Rayna didn't want to do that, at least not yet, though we never explicitly discussed our physical relationship. I didn't exactly understand the problems that Rayna had left behind, but I understood the limitations of our relationship, and didn't want to ruin what we had. But then I saw her in the towel and was overcome with the most lustful thoughts.

Rayna turned so she was facing me. What she saw was plain. She stepped toward me, and I stood up. Our bodies were being drawn together. Then Rayna jumped back and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her. It was three-quarters of an hour before she came back out, fully dressed. “I was cutting my hair,” she explained. This was evident; her hair had been hacked unevenly shorter. We folded the laundry together in silence, and headed back downtown.

The next day, the weather radio forecast a thirty percent chance of rain. “Chance” meant how much of a chance were we going to take by going out on the street. Best-case scenario, the thirty percent would be enough to scare off other sellers, but not enough to actually rain us out, and we'd have more of the market share. Worst case, a storm would come too quickly for us to cover our books with a tarp, and the rain would ruin them. When I asked Rayna what she thought we should do, she shrugged and said we should wait.

We hung out for a while outside the storage space. By the time we knew it wouldn't rain, it was too late to go out on the street and get a full selling day in. After a while, Rayna said she was going to go take a walk. I'd given Rayna a set of spare keys I found in the storage space, so we didn't have to worry about coordinating anymore. I worried about Rayna when she went out by herself, and wondered where she walked. Each time she walked out the door, part of me was afraid that I'd never see her again. But she could go where she wanted.

I decided to sort through a box of books I'd bought off a woman a couple days earlier. They had been her late father's, and she'd sold me the whole box for twenty bucks, which was a good deal considering the books were in excellent condition for their age. There were a few I knew I couldn't sell and would have to throw out—no one wanted old legal books, they became outdated quickly—but at that price it was easier to just buy them all and recycle the junk.

The box had several Jewish-interest books from the '70s: Koestler's
The Thirteenth Tribe
, a psychology book about the
Akeda
, analyzing Isaac as a victim of child abuse, and a memoir by a sabra who'd served in the Haganah. The man has some never fully explained falling-out with the Haganah leadership, and is marked for execution in 1946. The hit squad, made up of his old comrades, comes to his flat in Jerusalem, but he manages to escape to Cairo, where he lives until the 1953 revolution, when he has to escape again. He goes to Mexico City and from there, eventually, to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he lives under an assumed name. In constant fear that Mossad agents will come for him, he purchases firearms and keeps his eyes on the windows and doors.

Was that what life felt like for Al, wherever he was hiding? He had to be somewhere. If he'd taken a bus from Port Authority, where had he ended up? Most likely in some city to the west. Chicago? Las Vegas? A smaller city, like Bismarck, North Dakota? Was he relaxing with a new, local girlfriend at a bar, or nervously gripping an SKS he'd bought at a gun show, peeking out through the motel-room blinds? Could he imagine me waiting for him here?

I fell asleep reading, drifting into a dream. The images were in and out, but the emotion of the dream, the strong feelings of constriction and fear, stuck with me when I woke. Was there a reason I had these feelings, or was the book lingering in my subconscious? I thought often of Akiva and Aher, but I understood Ben Zoma, who could never make sense of what he'd seen and lost his mind. I tried to order the images in my own mind. Rayna left, and eager IDF volunteers from my high school battered the door. Terror filled me, and I couldn't move. A life raft bobbed in the ocean. Was I on the raft, or watching it from land? How did these things fit together?

I decided to go out for a walk too. A couple of Zoya's girls were folding shirts in the corridor, but Zoya herself wasn't around. Mendy was sitting on the concrete loading dock outside the storage space. His luggage cart, with cardboard boxes and plastic bags strapped on as always, rested beside him. He looked lost in thought. I thought about walking by and letting him be, but I needed to talk to someone. “Mendy,” I called out from several feet away so as not to startle him.

“Izzy,” he said, looking up. “How you doing?”

“I'm okay. You decided to sit out the iffy weather too, huh?”

“Yeah, you know how it is. I made a decision—it's all subjective, I mean, it's more your own comfort level than a meteorological reality—I made a decision not to go out. Not to risk it. The weather radio was saying thirty percent this morning. Other times, in the past, I might have gone out in those kind of conditions. But not today.”