City of Margins

by William Boyle

  Her feet are in wet, dark sand now. She sees a horseshoe crab scurrying, feels the pinch of a broken shell against the bottoms of her toes. She has her shoes under her arm. She finishes her cigarette and tosses the butt behind her in the general direction of an orange garbage can, missing to the left. She takes a few more steps forward and lets the waves break around her feet. It’s cold. Colder than she expected. The surf comes in faster and harder now and sloshes up at her ankles, wetting the cuffs of her slacks.

  The sun glows on the ocean.

  Ava thinks of her grandparents. All four of them came over from Italy. Her mother’s parents from Naples. Her father’s mother from Calabria. Her father’s father from Sicily. Ava knows the names of the places, but she can’t picture them. Italy is just a word. She remembers wishing, as a girl, that she’d been born there. She still wishes she spoke Italian. Her father spoke some with his parents, her mother more with hers. Neither of them taught her a word. She picked up a few expressions but that’s it. She wonders what it means to be from a place but not to know the place at all. This makes her sad. All she’s done is look at the ocean, and now she’s heartbroken about Italy.

  She steps back and immediately regrets having put her feet in the water. They’re caked in dry sand. She trudges back to the boardwalk.

  She sits on the first bench she comes to—a different one than before because she’s entered via a ramp a little ways up the beach—and knocks the sand from her feet. She looks over at Sea Crest. The place where she’s worked for too long. She’s so tired of it. She can’t imagine that humans were intended to just grind away their days at jobs that make them feel empty. She thinks about Italy again. She’ll never get there.

  Nathan’s it is. She puts her shoes on and walks back the way she came with Nick, mostly staring out at the pier. Seems like there’s a party going on, early as it is. A Puerto Rican flag. Some camping chairs. A boombox blasting salsa music. Men in speedos, dancing. Women who could be twenty-five or forty-five pointing and laughing.

  Leaving the boardwalk, she passes the freak show. A man out front—top hat, neck tattoos—barks at her. She keeps walking. At Nathan’s, there’s no line. She orders an orangeade and a frank with sauerkraut and sweet onions. She waits and then takes her food over to one of the green tables under an umbrella. The orangeade is perfect. So is the hot dog.

  She chews. She dabs at her mouth with a yellow napkin. She watches people at the other tables. Families in bathing suits. Drunks. A high school kid with a droopy backpack and a Walkman. A leathery, toothless woman in a wide-brim straw sun hat.

  An Olds Cutlass Ciera, imagine that. She shakes her head.

  Ava feels unburdened. She decides not to go back to work. She can stop at a payphone and call over there and tell them she’s not feeling well. They won’t think twice. They know she doesn’t call in or leave unless something’s really up. Straleen can just take over for the day.

  After the hot dog, Ava walks to the Wonder Wheel. She wants to be up in the air, looking out over Coney Island, seeing everything. She’s never up in the air.

  People are milling around by the kiddie rides in Deno’s. A small crowd having nothing to do with the rides. Something must’ve happened. A fight, maybe. She stands next to a woman wearing a green tracksuit, the zipper open on the jacket over a Lady Liberty bikini top. The woman’s breasts threaten to flop out each time she moves her arms or takes a breath.

  “What’s going on?” Ava says.

  The woman shrugs. “Something with the cops. Now everybody’s talking. When it happened, nobody gave a shit.”

  Ava takes a quick glance at the woman’s breasts. She wishes she felt free enough to walk around in the world like that.

  The woman notices. “Ain’t a free show,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” Ava says.

  “They’re massive. They’re impressive. I know.”

  “I admire your guts.”

  “We can go under the boardwalk and you can suck on them for ten bucks.”

  Ava smiles. She can’t tell if the woman’s joking or not. She doesn’t respond.

  “You got a cigarette?” the woman says.

  Ava takes out her Viceroys and hands the woman one.

  The woman tucks it behind her ear. “Thanks, doll,” she says. “I’m saving it for my first cold beer.” She walks away from the scene, out onto the boardwalk, where she takes off her track jacket and starts doing a series of strange stretches while leaning against the railing. Her breasts are pendulous, bound to fall loose.

  Ava walks down the tunnel to the Wonder Wheel and buys a ticket and waits in a short line for the next go-round. When the time comes, she climbs into a stationary car and the attendant closes the door behind her. The swinging cars make her nervous. She remembers them well even though she only went on once as a newlywed. Her and Anthony. The swinging cars slide on rails as the wheel makes its rotation. She was afraid she was going to throw up. She felt like they would just be ejected out onto the pavement below and they would splatter there like bugs. Anthony laughed at her. “This is the safest ride in the world,” he’d said. They’d kissed after that. He’d put his hand inside her shirt. It was romantic.

  The Wonder Wheel begins to move.

  Ava thinks of Anthony kissing her in that swinging car. Thirty years ago. Nick was conceived around then. Maybe she should’ve gone in one of the swinging cars on the off chance it was the same car she’d been in with Anthony. Aside from a fresh coat of paint, she bets they’re all still the same. Maybe the car holds the ghost of her good memory. Newlyweds. How young they were. How she loved Anthony. His callused hand inside her shirt. His lips on her neck, the scratchiness of his two-day beard. The smell of him. Coffee and aftershave. She wishes he was here with her now.

  As her car rises, she looks out at the water and the beach first. The sun’s reflection stretched out. Then she looks all around. The Parachute Jump. The Cyclone. Roofs of buildings with their uneven lines of slathered black tar. Seagulls and pigeons peppering the air. The streets getting more crowded. Faint thrum of that salsa music from the pier.

  She thinks of the woman in the Lady Liberty bikini top. She was hard-looking, sure, but Ava bets she knows how to take real pleasure in things. And not just that bummed cigarette and the cold beer she was going to get. Letting someone kiss her and touch her and suck on her.

  She remembers her shower the night before and lets her thoughts stray back to Don. If Nick hadn’t interrupted her, she might have taken her own pleasure there with the water beating down on her head. She wonders if she should resume high above Coney Island like this. That’s what Lady Liberty with all her great openness and freedom would do, no doubt. No one can see into her car. There’s hardly anyone else on the ride right now. A couple in one of the swinging cars. A mother and her three daughters in another one. At the top of the turn, the wheel will pause and she’ll have a swaying minute or two to get lost in her dream.

  She traces her hand down under the waistband of her slacks. She undoes the top button to give herself more room. She pushes her hand into her blue-striped cotton underwear. She’s looking out over Coney Island. She’s hearing all the sounds, terrible and strange and wonderful, rides whirring, plunging screams from the Cyclone, more of the seagulls squawking, that distant salsa, kids crying and laughing and howling. She imagines Anthony touching her and then he’s replaced by Don. She can’t stop her mind from going there.

  The car pauses high up. There’s a breeze. Her breathing quickens. Her hand moves faster in her underwear. She watches the small movements in her forearm as she strokes. She forgets about the view. She thinks of all that she likes and has ever liked about her own body. She steadies herself with her other hand on the bench and squeezes her legs together tightly and then a kind of shiver goes up her spine and she tilts her head back and exhales.

  She lights a cigarette for the descent.

  She can’t believe she’s done what she’s just done. She pulls her hand back a
nd buttons her pants. Here, out in the open, on the Wonder Wheel, a ride for kids. She’s never done anything like this. Not in public. Not really. Once, before Anthony, in a dressing room at Woolworths she saw herself in the mirror in her bra and underwear and was similarly moved. That was so many years ago. She was a girl. It was fast, too. An experiment. She just liked watching herself in the mirror. The way her neck tensed up. But the dressing room still seemed private. It didn’t matter that no one could see her now.

  And, she asks herself, what if someone could? What if someone had a clear view of her somehow? Binoculars, a telescope, her mind going wild. A woman in her fifties, alone on the Wonder Wheel, pleasuring herself. She wonders if she could be arrested for that. She feels like a vagrant now, the Catholic guilt hitting home like a brick. She adjusts her blouse and her slacks. At least she wasn’t naked or exposed in any way. It was just a hand down the front of her pants. She ashes on the floor of the car. She thinks of God, licking the tip of His pencil, marking this one down on her record. That’s how she thinks of God, as some sort of accountant with a big notebook full of sins.

  She shouldn’t feel shame, though. That’s ridiculous. Think of Lady Liberty.

  When the car comes back down to the bottom, she gets out and someone says something to her about not smoking, but she just rushes away, flushed, breathing hard for a different reason. She heads up the ramp, tossing her butt on the floor and stomping it out. She decides she’ll head back for the train. Maybe she will go to Flash Auto and pick up the Olds. First, she needs to stop at a payphone and call over to work and tell them she’s done for the day.

  NICK BIFULCO

  Spanky’s Lounge is on Cropsey Avenue, not far from the Baldini house, edging back toward Coney Island. Nick guides Antonina there now, trailing his hand behind him like he’s trying to coax a puppy to eat something good or shit somewhere appropriate. He’s never had a puppy, but he always wanted one. Anthony hated dogs. Ava’s no fan either. Alice had a dog, Sully. It died of cancer. It, he, whatever. Had these massive lumps all over that made him look misshapen. Could barely walk straight toward the end. Just slept in his dog bed while his lumps heaved. Nick’s thrilled to be walking with Antonina, even if she’s not giving him much yet. He’s thinking about who will play her in his movie. Drew Barrymore would be good. She could do Italian. Alyssa Milano’s the more obvious choice, but he wonders if she has the chops for it.

  “When we get to Spanky’s,” Nick says to Antonina, “they’ll have a phone booth. I’m gonna call Phil Puzzo. You heard of him? He’s a neighborhood god. He’s on his book jacket in a wife-beater with his arms crossed. His bio says, ‘Philip Puzzo was raised on the mean streets of Gravesend and Bensonhurst.’”

  “That’s the guy who writes about mobsters and shit?” Antonina says.

  “Right. That’s him. He’s gonna help me get my movie made. We’ll worry about Mikey later.”

  “I think my mom blew him before she married my dad.”

  “Your mom blew Phil Puzzo?”

  “She claims to have blown him. I don’t know. She might’ve just made it up.”

  They wander into Spanky’s Lounge, a dark little dive. Nick was here with Alice once, and they got pretty drunk and loud, daring each other to sing along to whatever was playing on the jukebox.

  “My kind of joint,” Nick says.

  “This is so depressing,” Antonina says.

  The bartender is a scruffy little guy with bloodshot eyes.

  “Are you Spanky?” Nick says, smiling.

  “I’m Gibson,” the bartender says. “What do you want?”

  “Two cans of Schaefer.”

  He gets two cans of Schaefer out of the cooler and pushes them to Nick across the bar. No questions about Antonina’s age, no request for ID. Gibson doesn’t even look at the girl. Nick pays and leaves a buck tip.

  He carries the beers and guides Antonina to a wobbly table back by a Knight Rider pinball machine. Michael and KITT loom brightly over them. Nick pulls out Antonina’s chair for her, and she sits reluctantly, tucking her hair behind her ears. The jukebox, he notices, is unplugged.

  “So,” Nick says, “what were you doing at Mikey’s?”

  “I was warning him about you,” Antonina says, without missing a beat.

  “You still see each other regularly?”

  “No.” She takes a long slug off her beer.

  “But you wanted to warn him about me? Wow. You know, I’m on to something here. Who’s gonna play you in the movie, that’s what I’m asking myself. Drew Barrymore? Maybe Winona Ryder. I’m gonna tell Phil Puzzo the whole deal. My bet is he gets right on the phone with someone”—Nick miming talking into a phone—“and says, ‘You’ve gotta fucking hear this guy’s story.’ The people he knows, I wouldn’t be surprised if I walked away with a movie deal.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  Nick drinks some beer. “You know what? Maybe I am crazy. I think being crazy pays off. I think you’ve gotta be crazy.” He pauses. “Tell me what it was like that night.”

  “It was Donnie being a tough guy, thinking he was protecting me,” Antonina says, drinking more.

  “What do you know about him working for Big Time Tommy? Where’d you hear that?”

  “Around.”

  “You want another beer? I’ll get you another.” He goes to the bar and comes back with another can of Schaefer and two shots of tequila.

  She downs her shot without waiting for him to make a toast and then finishes the first can of beer, quickly moving on to the second.

  It’s not that Nick’s trying to get Antonina wasted. She’s as old as one of his students. Or as young as one of his students. He just wants her to talk more, to work through and process what she’s seen and what she knows about Donnie. He wants to know about the night in the schoolyard, sure, but she’s Donnie’s neighbor, so she must have other important insights into his character. Nick also thinks she’s free-spirited and totally unpredictable, and he wouldn’t mind seeing how that turns out. She’s playing coy now, but she reminds him of a younger version of Melanie Griffith in Something Wild. He pictures himself traipsing after her in the city, her swinging from lampposts and pulling up her shirt to flash taxi drivers and taking him to some shithole Times Square motel where he could feel the electric crackle of her youth. Alice fades into a far corner of his mind. He thinks how Antonina would snap on him like a glove. Those lithe legs of hers. That face full of beautiful damage. He’d lick her pink hair, and it’d taste like sugar.

  Nick smiles, digs around in his pocket, and comes out with a quarter. “I’m gonna go use the phone. I’m gonna call Phil’s folks and see if they’ll hook us up. If I get in touch with him and he says he’ll meet, maybe you’d like to come along?” He stands, looks around for a phone booth. It’s nudged back between the bathrooms, its glass door slashed with graffiti. “Just think about it.”

  “You have another quarter?” Antonina says. “I want to play pinball.”

  “Sure,” Nick says. He takes out another quarter—he’s got two more left—and plunks it down on the table in front of Antonina. She grabs it, gets up, and goes to the pinball machine, dropping the quarter in and hip-checking the machine to loosen a stuck ball or something. As he struts to the phone booth, chest out, carrying his beer with him, he keeps his head turned, staring at Antonina in the golden glow coming off the machine, all that litheness and tightness, that cotton candy pinkness.

  He knows Paulie and Nina’s number by heart the way you know the numbers of neighbors who you might need to tell to move a car because of alternate-side parking or because someone’s blocking their driveway and you saw the guy go into the Laundromat across the street or because the mailman delivered something of theirs to your house. They’re good folks, Paulie spending summers shirtless in the front yard, listening to Bob Grant and ballgames, hosing down his car, mowing his little lawn, trimming his little hedges, tending to his tomatoes. Nina’s hard and boozy with a great Kathleen Turner voice.
She plays bingo at the church a lot and goes to Atlantic City twice a week on a big gray bus that leaves from near Seth Low Playground. She smokes two packs of Pall Malls a day. She calls the kids on the block turds. She says their parents spoil the hell out of them. Paulie and Nina love their son. They love being the parents of a big-shot writer. They love that he drops names of friends like De Niro and Danza. Nick punches in the number.

  Nina picks up after one ring. “Who’s this?” she says.

  “Nina, it’s Nick Bifulco.”

  “Well, what the fulco do you want?” she says, laughing at her own inane joke. As if he hasn’t heard it all from the kids at school. Mr. Bifucko. “Mr. Bi, are you bi?” High school kids can do almost anything with any name, but his is especially well-suited to cheap jokes.

  “I was wondering, hoping really, that you could put me in touch with Phil. I’d like to talk shop with him. Writer to writer.”

  “You write? I didn’t know that.”

  “I do. I mean, I’m just getting started on this movie script. It’s about the neighborhood. I was hoping I could just ask him a few questions, get his feedback.”

  Silence on the other end. Then the rasping sounds of a lighter. Nina inhaling. “You want what, his number?”

  “That’d be great.”

  “He’s got a lot on his plate. He’s working on a new book.”

  “I understand. I just need a few minutes of his time.”

  “How’s Ava?”

  “She’s good.”

  “At church, I see her in the back. She leaves right after Communion. I don’t get to chat with her. I told Father Borzumato, she must have places to be. Busy woman, I says. You don’t go to church, Nick?”

  “I go in Bay Ridge with my girlfriend,” Nick says, which he did do once or twice with Alice and her folks.

  “You still with that hot-to-trot number?”

  “Alice, yeah,” Nick says, rubbing between his eyes, unsure of how to reel the conversation back in.