by Mark Dawson
6
He was approaching the Aquarium for the second time when he saw the woman with the dog standing by the barrier next to the beach. She was shielding her eyes with a hand and gazing out to sea. Milton slowed and looked in the same direction.
He saw it: an arm waving frantically from a hundred feet off shore.
He veered across to the barrier and slowed to a stop. It would have been easy to miss. The swimmer was way out, beyond the outreached arms of the rocky groynes. Milton couldn’t make out the detail from where he was, but he knew it was the girl that he had seen earlier. He heard her cry, a desperate yell that was quickly obscured by the cawing of the fat gulls that whirled on the thermals overhead.
The old woman heard him approaching. “You see that?”
“Call 911,” Milton said.
He put his hands on the top rail and leapt over it, landing on the sand and setting off toward the water at a flat sprint. The tide was all the way back, and Milton soon felt his thighs burning from the effort of punching in and out of the loose furrows that had been stirred up by the tractor and its rake. He focused on the girl and aimed directly for her. He could see a little more clearly now. She was struggling to stay afloat, her cries for help louder now that he was closer to her.
“Help me! Help!”
She disappeared for a moment, obscured by a wave that rolled right over the top of her.
It was a riptide. Milton could see the channel of churning, frothing water, and knew that she had been caught in it and hurled out farther than she wanted to go. Fighting a rip was pointless. It was best to swim parallel to shore until you were at the edge of the current and then swim back. It looked as if she was fighting it. Milton knew that would kill her.
“Try to float!” he yelled. “Don’t fight it. I’m coming.”
Milton yanked out the earbuds and his phone and dumped them on the sand. He reached the water’s edge and ploughed through it until it was up to his thighs. He dived forward, slicing through the surf and kicking out until he was deep enough to stroke out toward her. He was right: it was a riptide and it was strong, greedily sucking him farther out. The water was cold, too, quickly chilling his bones until they throbbed with a dull ache. He wasn’t surprised that she had got into difficulty. He was a strong swimmer, and he would never have chosen to risk coming out as deep as this with the current so strong and the water so cold.
He took a breath and looked forward as he crashed through a breaking wave.
He couldn’t see her.
She had been right ahead of him and now she wasn’t.
And then he saw her again.
Her head broke the water, arms splashing frantically on either side of it, before she sank beneath the surface once again.
Milton’s lungs were burning, but he pressed again, as hard as he could manage.
He reached the spot where he had last seen her, gulped in as much air as he could take, and dived down, staring into the dim green water for any sight of her. There she was: she was struggling again, trying weakly to kick up, but her legs and arms seemed limp and lifeless.
Milton reached out for her, his fingers brushing against her shoulder and then fastening around her elbow. He dragged her up, righted himself and started to thrust up for the surface. He burst out of the water just as a wave crashed over the top of him, water rushing into his mouth and nostrils. He gagged on it, the salt stinging his throat, swallowed it down and took a breath. He dragged the girl up, locking his arms around her waist.
Another wave rushed out, strong enough to pull them both under. Milton held on tight until the force dissipated and they surfaced once more.
The girl spluttered and then coughed.
“Are you okay?” Milton asked.
“We’re gonna drown!”
“No, we’re not. Just relax. We need to let it take us a little farther out.”
“What?”
“It’s a riptide. We won’t be able to fight it. You have to trust me.”
She started to wriggle, trying to get her legs ahead of her so that she could try to kick them back to shore. Milton gripped her tightly, and she soon kicked herself out.
“You have to trust me,” he repeated. “Do you trust me?”
She slumped in his grip. “Yes.”
Milton knew what he needed to do. He turned onto his back so that he could keep her head above the water and let the current push them farther out. They drifted another twenty feet until he felt the current slacken. He turned his head to get his bearings and then kicked, stroking the water easily so that they started to traverse parallel to the shore. He looked back to the boardwalk and saw a group of people. Two men were running toward the water; Milton hoped they were wise enough to recognise the rip and stay out.
He drifted west for a minute and then decided to try the current. He turned until his shoulders faced the beach and then kicked. They started to slide back toward the shore. Milton’s legs felt empty. He didn’t know if he would have the strength to make it all the way back, but there was nothing else for it but to try. It was early in the morning; he had no idea how long it would take the Coast Guard to show up, and that was assuming someone had remembered to call them. The water was too cold for them to stay in it for much longer. They would be dead before a boat could get out to them.
He heard the sound of voices from the shore. There were shouts of encouragement and then splashing as more than one person crashed through the surf to get closer to them. He craned his head all the way back until it was almost upside down and glanced toward the beach. There were two men, both fully clothed, the water up to their chests.
“Nearly there, man,” one of them yelled out. “Keep kicking.”
Milton did. He closed the distance until he guessed he might be able to stand and put his legs down. His toes brushed against the bottom. He kicked again, and, when he put his feet down for a second time, he was able to stand with the water up to his neck. He put one hand beneath the girl’s back and the other beneath her head and struggled through the tide until he was close enough to the two men to pass her over.
“Well done, brother,” one of them said, reaching for Milton’s hand. He took it and allowed himself to be tugged back toward the beach.
He stumbled out of the surf and collapsed to his knees. He was exhausted. He hadn’t realised quite how much it had taken out of him.
The girl was lying on her side. She had been covered with two coats, and bystanders hovered over her anxiously.
“Is she okay?” Milton asked.
The man who had helped Milton out of the water came over to him. “She’s breathing,” he said. “But she’s very cold.”
“Get her to a hospital.”
The words had barely left his lips as Milton saw the flashing lights of an ambulance on the boardwalk. He slumped back on the sand, staring up into the powdery blue sky. Gulls continued to ride the wind, turning in graceful arcs high overhead. He heard the sound of the ambulance doors as they were opened and closed, and then the sound of raised voices as the medics ran across the sand toward them.
7
Milton went back to his apartment, stripped out of his sodden clothes, and stood under the shower for twenty minutes. The flow was feeble, but at least the water was hot; he let it wash over him, driving out the cold that had seeped into his bones and washing the salt from his skin. The EMTs had suggested that he ought to go and get checked out, but he had politely declined. He knew the symptoms of hypothermia—shivering, slurred speech, confusion—and he wasn’t showing any of them. After that, a news reporter from a local station showed up and asked to speak to him. That was confirmation that it was time to leave.
He shaved away two days’ worth of stubble, dried himself off, and—finally feeling a little warmth—dressed in a pair of black denim jeans, a black polo neck and the Red Wing boots that he had picked up from a thrift store on Atlantic Avenue. He went to his dresser and picked up the bundle of bills that he had taken from the dealer.
They were held together by a rubber band; he took it off and counted out fifteen fifty-dollar bills. He secured the remainder with the band and hid it inside his pillowcase together with the Beretta that he had taken.
He picked up his leather jacket and his helmet, opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. He locked the door and made his way down to the street. He had things that he needed to do.
Milton walked around the kids’ playground that had been erected inside a fenced area at the foot of the block and made his way to West 24th Street again. He had parked his bike on the road, at a diagonal with the sidewalk and in the space between a white van stencilled with the logo for Sebco Laundry Systems and the Honda Civic behind it. It was a Triumph T120 Bonneville. He had seen it advertised on Craigslist and had immediately made an appointment to see it. It was the 1971 model, with chrome pipes, a gold and cream two-tone tank and gold mudguards. The Triumph logo was emblazoned proudly on the side of the tank; Milton had run his fingers over it and had immediately been cast back nearly forty years to a childhood that he could only vaguely remember. His father had had the Bonneville, too, the exact same model; he had lavished attention on it, forbidding Milton to touch it and only driving it at weekends, when he would race around the country lanes near their property. That was where the similarity ended, though. Milton’s father’s bike was kept in pristine condition; this one had been allowed to fall into almost terminal disrepair.
Milton bought it anyway.
The state that it was in was the only reason that he had been able to afford it, and the prospect of spending the time to bring it back to life was an appealing one. It ran, at least most of the time, and the shabby appearance would, he hoped, make it less likely that anyone would be tempted to try to steal it.
Milton unchained the bike. He lowered the helmet over his head, straddled the seat and then reached down to turn on the fuel. He opened the choke, turned the ignition on and stomped down on the kick-starter. It spluttered once and then twice before it grumbled to life.
He negotiated his way out of the space and onto the road and set off.
It was fresh and bright and Milton enjoyed the ride. He headed east onto the Belt Parkway. It was outside the rush hour and the road was quiet enough for Milton to open the throttle up a little. The engine grumbled but cooperated, and Milton was soon able to push it up to fifty and feel the cool air whipping around him, icy fingers reaching inside the open collar of his jacket. He continued to the east, and, after twenty minutes, he saw the signage for the mall at Kings Plaza and turned off. He left the bike in the garage and took the elevator up to the ground floor.
He went to Foot Locker. He attracted the attention of one of the store assistants.
“I’m looking for a pair of Adidas trainers,” he said, with no real idea what he was talking about.
“Trainers? You mean sneakers?”
“Yes,” he said. “Sneakers. Sorry, I’m English.”
“No problem. Which ones? We have plenty.”
“They’re special editions.” He tried to remember what the guy had said in the meeting he had been to three days ago. “There’s a designer,” he said, fumbling.
“Rick Owens?”
“That’s it. R.O.”
“Probably the Mastodon Pro—think that could be the one?”
“The anniversary edition?”
The assistant nodded. “You got good taste, man.”
“It’s not for me,” Milton said. “Do you have any?”
“You might be in luck,” he said. “Think we still got one pair. What size?”
Milton struck out. He had no idea what size he needed. “I don’t know. It’s for a young lad.”
“We got ’em in sevens,” the man said. “How old’s the kid?”
“Thirteen.”
“Might be lucky, then. You wanna gamble on it? You can bring ’em back if they don’t fit.”
“Yes, please,” Milton said.
The attendant went into the back and came back with a boxed pair of sneakers. He opened the lid and took them out. They were white, made from textured leather and with a chunky rubber sole.
“This is in milk,” the man said, referring to the colour. “You got calf leather upper and goat leather lining. Really nice. You want them?”
“How much are they?”
“Two hundred and fifty bucks.”
“Bag them up, please.”
8
The meeting was at ten. Milton left the mall at nine thirty and hurried north, knowing that he had ten miles to cover and only barely enough time to manage it. The traffic on the Belt Parkway was heavy, but he was able to cut through it on the bike and he made it into the grid of dense streets of East New York with five minutes to spare, parking outside St. Barnabas Church at a minute before ten. The blue and white logo that indicated that a meeting was taking place had been tied to the railings outside the church, the little tag fluttering in the cool wind. Milton took off his helmet, jogged through the open gate and went inside. The lady who brewed the coffee for the morning meeting was just stacking up the dirty cups.
“They just getting started,” she said. “It’s busy, but you got places at the back.”
The door was ajar. Milton pushed it open and slipped inside. The woman was right: the room was almost full, with just a couple of spare seats at the back. Milton quietly apologised as he negotiated the narrow space between the woman sitting next to the aisle and the vacant seats to her right. He sat down, sliding the bagged box of sneakers beneath the seat.
There was a table up at the front of the room, where the secretary sat with the speaker who would be sharing his story. The meeting started with the attendees raising anything that they wanted to get off their chests. The man with his hand raised to indicate that he wanted to speak was one whom Milton recognised. He had spoken at the same meeting last week. His skin was a very light shade of brown, and his soulful eyes shone out from beneath heavy brows. He wore a neatly clipped goatee, and his hair was cut short to his head. Milton guessed that he was in his early forties.
“My name is Manny,” he began, “and I am an alcoholic.”
“Hello, Manny,” the meeting responded.
“I just want to check in with something,” he said. “You know how much I’ve been worrying about the place across the road from me and my boy. There was an old woman in there until they had to take her into a home six weeks ago, and, since then, one of the local scumbag dealers took it over and started selling heroin. Druggies going back and forward, all hours of the day and night, the fights, the cops being called but doing nothing about it, my boy finding syringes on the street and then him getting mugged for his sneakers. I mean, that was the last straw—he’s only thirteen and they pulled a knife on him, made him walk back across the road in his socks.”
The secretary encouraged the man to continue. “But something has changed?”
“When I got back from taking him to school this morning, I saw one of their corner boys outside—I heard him telling the junkies who showed up that the place was closed, and that they needed to go to this new place they’d set up on Ridgewood.”
“You think it was the police?” the secretary asked.
“Might be,” he said, “but if it was, they ain’t never done nothing about it until then, so why would they suddenly do something now?”
“Does it matter?” said one of the other regulars. “They gone.”
“I know,” he said. “And I don’t know how I should be feeling about it.”
“You don’t feel good?”
“Yeah, of course I feel good about it, but it’s more complicated than that. I kinda feel I should’ve done something to make it happen, but I didn’t. They just moved on. I don’t wanna sound like I’m ungrateful, but I used to be in the army before…” He waved his hand around the room. “Before this. Before booze. And before I drank myself into the ground, I would’ve gone over there and sorted it out my own self. I know this is gonna sound stupid, but
I kinda feel like I let my boy down. I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t set him the right example.”
“It’s your Higher Power,” said the woman ahead of Milton. She was particularly fervent in her adoption of the religious underpinning to the fellowship; Milton didn’t buy any of that and had always been pleased that it wasn’t a prerequisite.
“Yeah,” Manny conceded. “Maybe that’s what it is. Look, I know it sounds like I’m ungrateful, but I ain’t. And I ain’t unhappy. I’m pleased they’re gone. It’s a weight off, believe me.” He leaned back and waved his hands. “Ah, fuck it. I’m giving thanks. Good riddance.”
Milton listened intently. It wasn’t the response that he had been hoping for, and now he wondered whether he should follow through with the rest of his idea.
“Thank you for sharing, Manny,” the secretary said.
The meeting proceeded with the share from the morning’s speaker. Milton sat and listened, closing his eyes and putting his anxiety to the back of his mind. He concentrated on finding the meditative, peaceful space that he could only find when he was with others who shared his weaknesses.
9
It was usual for most of the men and women who attended the ten o’clock meeting to go for coffee afterwards. Blendzville Café Inc was a small independent coffee shop a short distance away. Milton rode there, parked his bike on the street outside an old building that had been co-opted as a church—the writing on the awning read Triumphant Church of God, Inc.—took off his helmet and went inside.