Marine Park: Stories

by Chiusano, Mark

  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.

  FOR YOU

  Because 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 pla
n 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.

  HAIRCUT

  In the afternoon, Andrew went to Marine Park to get a haircut. He’d been at an interview in the morning, for a job that would make him not rich but comfortable, more comfortable than now—with the possibility of riches, of an extra house in the Hamptons, if you followed the curve of the borough out into the Atlantic. At the interview, one partner at the firm had asked if he could tell a little about himself, his fingers hanging from the résumé like bangs, the paper resting on the crook of his arm. Well, Andrew said, I grew up in Brooklyn. Marine Park, he said. The partners nodded. I’ve been working in the city mostly since college. The résumé partner stopped him. That’s funny, he said. How so? Andrew asked. Only a true Brooklynite would say going into the city. The partners grinned together, as if their grins connected into one grin. It’s true, Andrew said.

  The barber’s was nearly empty this late in the afternoon. Andrew had come after work, had driven down Ocean Parkway, past the Q train at Kings Highway, Quentin Road for the last few blocks. He hadn’t told anyone he’d be coming. At the barber’s, Javi, who had been cutting his hair since he was a child, was looking at the sports cycle on the television bolted into the wall above his chair. He was scrolling through his phone. Hey, Andrew said. My friend, said Javi. Have a seat. I have no one. Andrew sat and Javi wrapped the light black tarpaulin of a smock around him. Underneath Andrew felt cool and dry, while Javi went to work, without talking, on his head.

  • • •

  Before Andrew got contacts, he had relished the surprise that came after taking off his glasses at the beginning and staring blankly, unseeingly, at the mirror while Javi worked. The clip of Javi’s scissors vibrated from one ear to another—ever since Andrew had decided that he didn’t want just a buzz cut, that he was looking for something more sophisticated. Buzz cuts had been summer haircuts, for when he and his friends were playing the St. Thomas Aquinas basketball camp near Flatbush, run by Chris Mullen, the archetype of the neighborhood, who’d gotten out in a big way. He’d played for Xaverian, starred there, was a white kid in an era when there were few. He played in a white way, as far as Andrew could remember, even when he was teaching the clinics—jump shots, dribbling drills. Nothing much like inspiration. What Andrew had liked better were the nuns peering over the hedges at the outdoor basketball hoops they set up for those months. While the boys ran bare-chested up and down the asphalt, shouting for the ball, skinning knees, the nuns sat in plastic chairs propped against the thin fences, watching, or continuing their circumnavigations around the garden. The garden looked cool and inviting to Andrew, surrounded by trees, without the heat echo of the basketball courts.

  When he was older, after college, before the time when he returned home to the city, he lived near a lake in New England where he thought about that sort of thing. He had found a job as an executive assistant in the office of an insurance company, next to the lake. In the afternoons, after work, during which he sat mindlessly in the office shuttling emails from one person to another, looking out the window; after that, he’d go to the basketball court, get in as many five-on-fives as he could. The competition wasn’t as good as New York, but it was something. His jump shot, which had never been his strong suit, was back with a vengeance during that time. He found that he could roll off picks, create just the smallest of spaces between him and the defender, make the shot. Midrange Mac is here, some of the regulars said when he showed up in his Camry. Keep
him out past the three-point line.

  But in the mornings, to wake up, to get the resolve he needed before the office back-and-forth started, he went swimming. The office loomed in front of him. It was the type of experience that would become so entrenched later in life that it would be hard to look back at this moment and think of a time when offices were new. They were life now; then they were soul-sucking. Those mornings, he’d drive to a parking spot in the woods, shedding his khakis and blazer on the backseat, and he’d walk down to the empty lake, the tight green around it and the cool air coming off the water. He walked into the water, never ran, swam out as far toward the far-side trees as he could, turned over, looked up. When he was ready he swam back.

  • • •

  At the barber’s Javi was talking to him. It wasn’t usual, that Javi talked to him. There had been a time once when he wanted a conversation with his barber, after having read old stories about barbers singing in your ear, giving all the political conversation. But not after looking at a computer screen all day, reading news reports and industry updates, his only break from the machine when he walked to the bathroom, which his company docked half an hour of pay for each day. They assumed half an hour each day was what people usually spent. They wanted employees to be in their seats, emailing with the companies they represented. After hours of that, Andrew looked forward to the period of useful silence, of animated quiet, that the trip to the barber’s provided. How there was no sound, and he could hibernate in his own head, because someone else was already working.