THE COURTSHIP OF WINDS

Mark Wagstaff​

​

The Man on DeKalb

 

Yesterday I thought I won. You know I play. Couple tickets. Couple times a month. Check the numbers. Maybe something distracts me. Maybe thinking of those I love. Before I call. Before I place my long-distance voice on the wire. I got to straighten what I tell you. You know this city. Your dad right here.
     So I say, I wait by the counter till the old ladies get their milk and cigarette papers, that old lady shuffle. You know I was serious when I said to you give time to old people. You got to be old yourself some day. The other choice ain’t much. So I say to the Spanish guy, I say: check my numbers. And he checks. He checks where I checked. We check the ticket. And he tells me: chief, it’s a daily mistake. That number’s always misread. In the print, he tells me. The dots of the print. So you see, Olivia, I’m not wasting time.
     If I call after sun up, it’s lunch where you are. You get good lunch at school? I don’t know what people there eat. Roast beef, they like that? Fried fish? It’s all good. You know that place we like on DeKalb? I just went by. It’s meshed with scaffold – they’re working on the Brooklyn Tower again. They put all the stores behind wire. Cross Flatbush and there’s the old movie barn. They cleaned it: still grey. Better grey. I don’t want you forget the geography of your birthplace. When you’re three thousand miles away. Read the intersections for me, honey: Flatbush. Hudson, Rockwell. So the least I know, you’re still a Brooklyn girl. When they try to fit you them hoity English manners, say: Flatbush, Hudson, Rockwell. Ashland. St. Felix Street.
     Walking used to exhilarate, not exhaust me. I walk tonight, honey. To think what I tell you. To straighten my mind. You know they keep striving at this place. It used to be grit and gas and creeps jumping out to sell you paradise for a dollar. Now they have bicycle priority at intersections. You should see them delivery guys hog the line.

     Fort Greene Park. Busy noise. Kids climb the wall, clamber that slope like explorers. Kids move all directions. Before life gets flat. Fort Greene where your mom showed us tennis. She nudged that ball off the rim of her racket and you’d whale on it, two-fisting it over the net. What I saw with your mom was refinement. I not seen it much but I know how it moves. A lot of people bag the accessories but Karen knew class as the tilt of a wrist playing tennis. She wanted so nice a family. Guess you play tennis. I see those English schools as all tennis and stout behavior. You got class, Olivia. You’re Karen’s girl.
     These brownstones on the park. Remember you told me to buy one? So we could be always at the park. Too young to know money. People buy brownstones. They buy the whole building. It’s not beyond possible. I couldn’t tell you how there’s so many guys above me. Even today, I’m not the skipper. This one, corner lot, with the major stoop, it’s what I should have bought you. Double door. Fussy cement. What a swell family we’d have been.
     Before I call you up, I’ll call your aunt to arrange when I call you. I don’t like that detour but it’s right to keep her sweet. I’m not saying this to upset you. You’re old enough to understand when your aunt looks at you bad times come back. Why else are you there. I’m not saying this because in any way I have bad blood with your aunt. She’s fair. I would say kind. It’s understanding what paint you choose for the picture. The picture is what it is. We choose the paint. In my average day, blunt talk is where you begin. That’s why your mom’s refinement stole my breath. I thought I’d have good chance to say so. I’m sure you learned that lesson.
     These streets, not so much quiet as tactful. Behavior goes on but the blinds hang low. Monsters disguised as footling figures, their horror contagious, roam the intersection. Each and all of these stiffs looks me over. Low-rollers. Ready to go. I know your aunt will tell you: keep yourself safe. I know it’s tough for the young woman you are. Karen was a lioness when you were small. She let not one thing near you. She fought germs. Wrestled their scrawny chemistry. And your aunt is fair and kind. Three thousand miles away.
     DeKalb, of laundromats and nail bars. I’m around when I can. When business allows. I got gifted in Manhattan. I’ll tell you, when I call. A couple hotel nights, auxiliary to matters I won’t explain. I don’t want your aunt growing more furrows. A place by Wall Street, on the shore. Below Midtown everyone’s serious. They wear firm shoes. I walk in the hotel. Clean windows. Black walls. Columns and walls, all black. Marble the color of cork. They tell me I’m okay for dinner. I’m comped for dinner. They got this fusion menu, they cook bits of everything. Chinese. Remember Chinese? We’d be at the rink or Central Park, your mom too generous to cook. We’d walk down to the store, that guy with the Bruce Lee pictures. He’d take that stance. Enter The Dragon. We’d fall about. All the noodles and duck and sweet sauces. Walk back to the apartment, a leaking bag of heavy goodness in one hand. Your hand in the other. And I’d feel rich, Olivia. Richer than those Wall Street guys. Richer than Tuxedo Park. For that moment, that sunset, I’d feel I might take a desk in Hudson Yards. Little brokerage. Little finessing of trade. Work routine hours. Keep evenings and weekends for home. I was on the cusp, Olivia. At the plate.
     That hotel restaurant. Lonely chairs and tables in scatterplot. They say not to eat at hotels, but I was comped. Sat alone, everyone eats and shoots. I saw them turn one table three times. The ceiling too high for lights, each table got its white globe. The cast of the lamp. The flavor of the rice. The skinny, bit-part waitress airbrushed for service. I’m a good guy, Olivia. Not sentimental. But that rice bowl, that saucer of dip, the whalebone beef and snap peas seemed hospitable living. Here, by Waverley, these brownstone Spanish castles, any mouth-breathing cyclist or long pants jogger could direct me at better food. Any super knows great paella. This hotel was tiptop. I got comped. For matters my walk don’t explain. Does your aunt take you to eat? Guess you go all the places. London’s big, huh? Not big like New York. Sturdy. Guess your aunt might spring for Chinese. Summer nights. When heat’s in the sidewalk. When the air’s gasolene.
     These stores along here. This store. By St. James Place. Green drab and tagged boards. Don’t know it’s working or dead. I don’t know the mind of store people. Each coin in the dish a triumph. Just to be their own boss. But they’re not. The bank is their boss. The credit agent. The warehouse guy riding his invoice. That’s your boss, buddy. So you pin on an apron and play shop.
     And I ate my rice and whatever in sauce. Then there’s two guys round me. Pushy one says he’s Charlie. Thought I knew every Charlie. And the other I can’t call Dave. It’s such a name. I’ll tell you, Olivia, so you understand, I was asked to that place. I was comped. We do business in these places. Fine hotels by the shore. There’s a booth in the bar where they fold me tight with the shadows. To the finance tourists we look three pally guys. Sharing liquor. Reminiscing. Watching half the game through armpits. I won’t say on the phone the upshot. I won’t tell you anyway. Not when, finally, we meet. Would you like that, Olivia? To see your old man. I won’t ask that way. Not at all.
     Big towers float high after dark. Little capsules, twenty, thirty stories above the garbage. I like to be in spitting touch of the ground. Living that height, think how a man gets trapped. Fire. Fractured walkways. Hot words beside open windows. You live high off the dirt you rely on things not going wrong. You live Pollyanna: trusting to good in everything. Where I live now I could jump, if I had to. Maybe just bust a leg or two.
     This public school, closed up and peaceful. Got a sign out front says We Are Crew Not Passengers. Think about that. A passenger got his own interests. He wants his seat, his journey. Takes a lot of failure to make passengers think as one. In a crew you think for each other, you got shared skin. You got to hold your spot, where passengers weigh you down. And next to the school, we find the cops. You told me your school’s fancy, that time I called. You sent that picture in your uniform. Nice jacket, nice buttons. That old timey badge. Suits you, your hair brushed out that way. A real young lady. You’re what now, Olivia? Ten? You told me that one girl in your class never rode a rollercoaster. How can someone not ride a coaster? You said two in your class were left handers and one could do both. One girl could do a cartwheel, legs straight. We had that talk about who’s the legitimate child. You know it don’t matter. It’s good you get to visit galleries and museums. Guess London’s no end of keen junk. Don’t be in a rush to make choices. You’ll move up to high school or whatever they call it. Then college someplace. You got years to face the insistence of the future. Maybe your aunt might let you come over, one vacation. We could walk around. See stuff.
     This choice is deliberate. This school on DeKalb next to the precinct on Classon. There’s something absurd to cop cars, parked and cold. Parked untidy, right around the block. Cruisers and vans. Dormant till the next action. Those kids in school, how many times do their lessons get roiled by a sudden waking of sirens. Cops chasing off around Bedford, up to the Navy Yard. Roast a few lives. Make things less certain. I never like them at my door nor near my interests. That was it with Dave and Charlie. I won’t tell you, Olivia. But none of that meal sat easy the whole night I was awake.
     Where you are, I know it’s past regular hours. Guess you’re in bed, maybe dreaming. What does a young woman dream. Here, it’s the time responsible guys get drunk. Guys who work in glass cubes. Jackets fitted to their shoulders. More stores look closed and dead. Pharmacies and doggy daycare. An old guy in balloon pants shouts at his phone. A woman with a sling wears a whole baby. Your aunt never had kids. Now she has you. It’s a shift in a person’s life. Do you know what she gave up to make time. I never knew her. Karen was always polite about her sister. That’s a sure clue to bad blood. But it was out of my hands, Olivia. They kept my hands busy. 
     The air is cool and still. The sky smogged up. Dry cold. Dark at seven. The baby has its head in her chest, listening. Little arms in a hug, though the sling takes its weight. See a baby on the front of a woman, makes you see what apes we are. I meet guys on the job who are fresh out the tree. Those guys at the hotel, two halves of a whole dumbass. But I was the one sleepless. The demands they cash. Their reveling in make-work. Don’t rush to decisions, Olivia. Build yourself slow.
     People string lights through the trees. I’ve no clue who does that. Maybe gives the rats something to ponder. I wait at the corner of Franklin. The Franklin Building is a sight to see. I’ll tell you the story someday. And that pizza place and the Dutch restaurant. I won’t ask do you remember life downtown. Your face to the glass on the 3 train. When I call I might hear your accent loosened some. As you become that English lady. When I call I’ll tell you how well I’m doing. You make sure to tell your aunt that. Got a place by Carroll Park when business came good. Sweet rent, for that neighborhood. Better than when I lived topsides, over Astoria. LaGuardia in my ear each living day. That Astoria place: I was never so scared of a toilet. It made tidal noise the night through. The flush would stop. No water came down. But somewheres in the pipe it was occurring. Striving to flush again and again. That empty complaint, rumbling through the apartment. When I finally speak with the agent, damn plumber they send took a shower. I called them up, I told them: I got the wet towels right here. They denied it. Made like I was the problem. Your aunt owns a house, I remember that. She got the cash.
     Last of the daytime runners. I keep steady when I walk. Steady pace. Firm direction. I plot my swerves. I roll to a stop at the curb. These runners do anything not to lose momentum. They charge the crowd, elbows out. Hop sideways. They deploy fitness like precedent. She’s done running. A luxury walk, all idleness paid for. A silky, sleeveless sky-blue top and black shorts. White socks. Black sneakers. Wet hair beneath pale lights. I like a woman in sweat. When Karen took time at the gym, I’d say to her: don’t shower till you get home. She called that disgusting. Said she’d stink out the bus. Like your mom would be the worst stink on a Brooklyn bus. The woman saunters across the avenue to a gate between store fronts, their rollers down and tagged. The gate is unpainted metal, rainwater brown. There’s metal bars of three gauges in layers up to the lintel. She works the locks, the gate opens, complaining. Too dark to see inside. Above, there’s lit and dark windows, all barred. Wait a second but I don’t see her. I know with confidence that’s the only time I’ll see her. I could walk DeKalb every night. I won’t see her again. As she grows her career, changes her shape, cuts her hair long and short. As she moves across town, as she runs through Manhattan, her life will continue and mine will continue and not intersect again. 
     But you know, so I don’t need tell you, your mom was the one for me. I never looked at another woman. Maybe that one in the juice ad. That ad. For juice. You were just little, there was this ad for cranberry health drink. With a healthy young woman on front. I said one time, just once, the girl looked healthy. And six months in, Karen still teased me for it. When I bought cranberry, she asked was it for my girlfriend. Even after that campaign finished, she teased me. So I bought different juice and, slowly, she let the thing drop. Your aunt has that, the ability to turn a background thing into a defining trait. Like your aunt might ask after someone I had business with years ago. Like if they still wear shades at night or carry a single golf club to social occasions. This belief what happened still happens. Like New York streets are layered with lives repeating.
     Across Bedford, I get back my rhythm. They made these avenues long and straight. Don’t guess they made London that way. You have… what they call it? Alleys. No grid, don’t know where you are. There’s no surprise to these streets. They’re wholly enchanting. I look off, left and right, where cross-streets vanish in haze. There’s an endlessness, it’s appealing. Each intersection looks to the next, to the next. Repeated brownstone stoops, multiply to distance. Multiple chances to try again. If not this avenue, two blocks over. If not this street, then one to the north, ten to the south, on and on. If I can’t find everything in New York, what use is time on Earth. But you, Olivia. You’re not here.
     Best answer was live with your aunt. She was in Greenpoint. It made sense. Next thing she’s explaining they made her a transfer to London. She takes it because she’s corporate. It’s what corporates do. For about the length of a heart attack I think she’s thawed enough to give you back. I kept to the deal. I unwound things. But she tells me there’s no review to our arrangements. So we had those grotesque hours at JFK. I was proud you held it together. A proper lady. When I call her, to ask when to call you, I’ll water that seed about paying a visit. You coming here. My passport won’t get further than Ozone Park.
     Your aunt likes to forget I met her sister in course of successful business. Business that shines a man’s name. I had hopes – I won’t lie – of advancement. A reliable hand, I had hopes good guys would see me. You know Karen advised at the bank. Business loans, credit bridging. Had angels on speed dial.  I had to get paperwork. There was a line. She said she could help with a range of matters. I know I told you before: you should never give up, because even a mess of creased linen like me can meet the one from his dreams. First date was an ice cream lounge. She got pistachio. I played safe with vanilla.
     East of Spencer is grey. Grey cubes. Wired-off parking. This big box where people get trained in protective service and culinary arts. It’s two hours’ walking and, here, the dark sticks. This frosty scaffold of emptiness and industry at the Nostrand intersection. I pity the tourist. You can’t explain these streets. Little restaurants tucked in the bellies of housing. Empty, tree-slit lots. Blind windows, rigged construction that makes a man walk on the tar. I feel the ache. The strike of my feet on the sidewalk. The chewed up in-out of my breath.
     Cars head west. They know what I’m coming to. They move toward what I’ve seen. Apartments above are cozy with dinner hour. Some people cook. They move through steam. Your mom cooked. Not well, but with ambition, which is better. She wanted our apartment warm and homely. Guess you know I regret those nights I didn’t get back till morning. Guess you figured regret means nothing. Your aunt showed you where I fall short. She’s right to do that. I wish you could see this, Olivia. Walk DeKalb with me. See night close in on fire stairs and barred windows. London won’t show you a route like this. I search pictures of London. Not the big remains. The ticky-tack apartments. Everything there looks built by a kid with a thumb in his eye. I don’t want you to lose you’re from here. The straight-edge city.
     Trash bags line the street. Someone saved this spot. To load or unload. To park right here. Surprised no one tore them. That happens. My building, the super took the garbage at seven. Now he takes it at six. What do I got to do? Change, that’s what. I can’t leave it out all night. These creeps, they search garbage. That happen in London? Creeps in garbage? Those hallways to my building, they’re no more than the street. When I call your aunt, she’ll ask am I dating. It’s not a thing, but she asks. I don’t ask her. I don’t want to imagine her make cow eyes at some English goonie. I don’t foresee a woman could even fill the shadow of Karen. Even when I try – that once or twice I tried – I’m gawping in some woman’s eyes and all I see is Karen at the casino, on that game to shoot digital fish. That plastic bucket of quarters at her elbow and blue neon veins. Not even a game to win cash. To get her name on the board, with high schoolers and idle-ass waiters. She’d seek me out in the poker room, long enough to bless my losing hand and say she’d a marvelous time. That soft-shuffle hair intersecting her eyes and those rocket launch sneakers. Remember I ordered you mom that personal sweatshirt? I had them print Mom Of The Year. But they screwed it. They printed Mom Of The Yeah. She loved that. She wore it always.
     This building, alone in rough space. What they call that? Nail houses? The ones that don’t quit. There was something here before and will be again. But for now it’s five apartments, marooned in empty lot. Empty and busy. Kids hang by to drop dope. You know I told you, Olivia. No capsules nor pills of blind chalk nor baggies of shrub from the margin. That’s for the bums, the tweakers. Consumers, with just their last dollar to give. Let junk put shoes on your feet and give it wide distance. Your aunt keeps you clear of business. She’s right to do that. What she says about me is most likely believable.
     The intersection at Throop has too much dark. Grass-bitten lots and low-rise closeout centers. Each item some blanked-out number or less. At root, the actual price, the real worth of a thing, is less than a monkey’s bare balls. The crashes and liquidations that brought these goods together stripped the margin, the premium and left just base cost mattresses, chairs, these black dresses hung shapeless on crooked nails. The cashflow of retail is water. Catch that, you can keep it. And these cowering buildings and vacant parking bring too much dark to ground. Makes me poorer for this distance I travel. The farther we go, the closer we get to zero. My legs ache and it’s late. My jaw hurts where I chew it around. If I speak out loud, no one hears. They got buds. They focus on pushing their walkers. These casualties, lost to my trade, they don’t even see me. They go step on step. Open barred doors. Get home. Feel the momentary wonder of rest when tired muscles stop moving. Do tomorrow what they did today. In this royal planet they call DeKalb. I walk on. A moment forgotten.
     When I call your aunt, she’ll say you do well at school. Say it in a way to suggest I shouldn’t make a fuck of it for you. Of course she lets you talk to your daddy. But it’s daddy as she creates me. And you been gone a while, Olivia. You’re growing to be a young lady. Don’t doubt I know I land worse than the average man. I ask after your friends, you say Molly rides horses, Betsy does tap, Penny is good and creative. Lady Somesuch treated you all the most perfect supper. You ask after mine, I say Sam’s got good shooting, Tom’s got okay shooting, Ronnie’s got terrible shooting. Mr. Breeze, when he hits town, has a mediocre time in a straight bar. I don’t want that you forget those things I told you from when I was a kid round the way. Getting chased off that old man’s stoop, squawking and cussing. The tread of dad’s weejuns and mom pulling tight the drapes on snow-bricked windows. Scalding July afternoons. Bugs in the screen. Playing war in the street. The fire plug our Trevi, for unfunded wishes.
     None of these hundreds on thousands of brains in these towers each corner of Lewis thinks right now what I’m thinking. They got their issues, divorce and cancer, that fragile spine, that call she went on the stairwell to take. Their kid doing not good at school or doing too good. That little tax snafu. Their dealer bailed. Their insurance ran out. They cry and don’t know why. But they don’t have this unease. Your aunt may know me more than I do. Her cold-fact warnings might be the best advice. That troubles me because you bind me to Karen. It was us three. Then two. Then you went away. You remember things only I remember. I need you for that. When your bones and language harden, maybe you’ll come back.
     Some place around Stuyvesant. The streets don’t change. The blocks go on. Sun terrace roofs, folded for fall. Slim-door churches beneath white blinds. The gated lots. The stepped-back stoops. The shuttered medical center, a guy on a rollator outside, head clamped to his phone. Bars across neon Jesus. And I keep walking.
     My back feels it. High tens, heading into elevens. A different world since Fulton but the same city. Same shapes. Same smells. The J train’s rusty limbs straddle Broadway. The track twelve feet from people’s light. Imagine those men, Olivia. They came along here in derby hats, planting surveyor poles. They told these people: we’re stringing a subway right here. For progress. For the general good. We can’t picture such times.
     Wait at the curb. My legs resist more distance. You still play soccer, Olivia? Karen took you to soccer. I was busy or tired from busy. I came for the big games, didn’t I? Trophy games. Trying to understand those cluttered rules. Karen lamenting how punished your clothes got. She’d say you wear holes with socks in. See, Olivia? My memory of your mother is pristine. That’s what assails my sweat-stung nights. That, more than business or consequence of business or the likelihood I’ll end by my heels off a bridge. So many ways for this town to teach a guy manners. Behind these shutters, these cement walls, right now a man is reminded of that thing he did or did not do. That promise, made in confidence, repaid in damage.
     Through matted dark, there’s life on the stoop. A family. Mom, dad, older son – dad’s first maybe – and two boys. The young men leave their shirts off, though it’s night. Laundry costs and night air gilds a man’s chest. The young with muscles, with definition, at ease in their skin. Us guys with experience keep our coats tight.
     Bushwick Avenue cuts and displaces. No intersection. A blind-T. Four irritable lanes at the crosswalk. These crawling clowns know nothing about me. They don’t care who they make wait. This urge to step out. Stop traffic. Your mom called mine a bad example. Impatient at intersections. Risky at lights. But if people don’t respect your nerve, they’ll treat you all ways. That goes double in foreign pastures.
     The top of DeKalb is a two-way. Nothing says sticks like a two-way. Veins and arteries flow one direction. Here it’s narrow and facile. I know London streets run narrow. But this is an avenue. And all it is: redbrick one side, concrete the other. No stores. No stoops. Those flat-front houses you see in rinky cities north of the subway. A few thousand families believing this is their idea of home. You bet this grey slab is an orthodontist. What else would it be. I’ll have no piece of them. They want to knock your teeth out. Hard thing, Olivia, to knock a guy’s teeth out. You don’t, unless you hit him side on. Full face and they’re down his gullet. I got bit on the knuckle. A flying molar can bite you. It bled into my cuff. I don’t like to be bloodstained. It feels a mistake. You got blood coming. Your aunt will tell you about it. She’ll bar the creeps from your door. Creeps like me.
     Cold up here. My legs are done. Central Avenue subway is just around here. The M cuts across Myrtle, saggy and old. More crosswalks. More lanes. More DeKalb. All-in loneliness grips these corners. A long road from the rotating signs. From flashlit, gold-thread dresses. I worked with guys who did the thing not for money, not as such. To get invited. Get listed. Get seen on the skinny arm of something pliant. To earn the accolades of strangers. All I wanted was to give my family a life. That’s what I said. When cops got voicey. Spread their mitts on soured tables. Told me: we got this forensic, we pulled that palooka. A playfight of being a cop, before driving to homes like these. A scrap of front yard. Space for a crib. And a view out back on another parking lot.
     Cross Wilson. That deli grill reminds my gut I ain’t eaten. Someone painted this wall like the Brooklyn Bridge. Like some tremendous medicine consigned over gold water. To remind us we’re island people. That all this exists in the maw of sulky channels. And this lengthy island outstretches the city. To harbors and vineyards and lighthouse rocks. The ocean and far-scattered pebble of land that holds you. I’m lined to you, Olivia. Had I wings.
     Knickerbocker is pizza and trucks. Stores selling cheap clothes. A walk of an hour and one half from Fulton. That shouldn’t feel far. Karen walked me all over Manhattan. When business was slow. When she wanted to talk. A cheap date of up-down avenues, back-and-forth cross streets. She walked graceful. You have her grace. Some women are an explosion of limbs. She was liquid. Up in Morningside. Down to SoHo. Alphabet City. Spanish Harlem. We walked miles. Sidewalks rolling beneath my feet. The traffic, the crowd, the performance of streets, just for us. I never wanted to arrive. When you came along I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Two women to share the city. A new set of limbs to educate with New York. 
     In the fifteens. Heavy doors and green trash pails. The castle on Irving. A church, maybe. A one-time relic. It’s stores now. Homes along here echo those arch windows. That placid brick. A bar offers mezcal. I could do that downtown. With Dave and Charlie and guys the same. Pulling our plans into motion.
     Green awhile. Old trees. Front grass. Houses, not apartments. Definitive taste of the burbs. Shadows snap at my weary feet. This is where you migrate for one family occupancy. People get bourgie. Remember, Olivia, I warned you of bourgie. When you went to London I warned you. Take the free snacks, that’s okay. Milk those invitations. But keep your feet in Brooklyn clay. Keep your mind in the grid. Try not to be too ashamed of me. Even if you have to wait for a letter to visit.
     The tennis courts at Seneca, empty and unlit. Their hotly-sweated match points on hiatus. Karen fixed that racket to your fist. She thought tennis bought more social traction than soccer. I told her you couldn’t bear not to run. So do both. Play sports. Keep sharp and keen. I’m proud whatever you do.
     So tired. Blocks and intersections are slabs studded with lights. Dinner done with. Plates on rinse. They take a drink. Stream a show. Postpone tomorrow. They don’t know I walk by their door. What’s to know? A thousand bodies go by each day. I’m a moment they need no concern for. Here, in the high eighteens, nearer the shore than Manhattan, what I represent is fall cold. Grains in the polish. The business of tempered ruffians, miles away.
     Finally, this T is the end to DeKalb, terminated by Woodward. Dark among empty trees, the stones of Linden Hill Methodist line up like prisoners at the wire. Neat marble and granite and slate, silver and gold, washed and green with the seasons. Each marks a box of fragments. Maybe a few spits of jewels, a few treasured nothings, to make these good Christians feel they did well in disposing their dead. These documented dead get a slice of Long Island dirt.
     I walk right around these acres of orderly graves. Along Stanhope, spiraling Grandview, to Metropolitan. This is my aim. Linden Hill Jewish. Splendid inclusivity. Keep the dead together. Not mixed. Of course not that. We segregate our departed. None of this savagery of cremation or cold-handed efficiency of leaving bones to the crows. While Christian graves face the street, Jewish graves turn side-on or reside in little houses. Spick and span for the righteous to ease their limbs. In the murk of dusty streetlamps they huddle like beachfront chalets. That bay sound. The washy music. Sea on stones.
     I come here late at night. Of course there’s no access. No one visits the dead after dark. I’ve no one to visit. Only a moment’s conversation. An idea retrieved from a lifetime’s talk. Karen said to bury her here. Not speaking of death in any practical way. Just decisions that might occur, in comfortable years from now. Pain-free speculation, hashed as a joke. Your mother was never religious. She just wanted a little white house in Queens, within ear of the sea.
     I won’t mention this when I call you, Olivia. I won’t trouble your aunt, when I call for permission to call you. Why would you even want to know I walked the whole length of DeKalb. These hundred times I did it. You were brave. You were right not to cry. People without options cry. And you got the world for the taking. It wasn’t my wish, that sham funeral we had. Everyone said I should draw a line. I dealt with the cream of New York. Went to Jersey. Rode out to New Haven, on a fool’s errand. Not every body that enters the sea gets returned. That’s what they told me. Creeps in suits with muscle martinis. Creeps with tattoos on their skulls. They said these inlets, these sounds, are capricious. A body could go a long time. Maybe for keeps. These bastards I knock elbows with assured me the sea was to blame. There was no malice toward me. No desire to see me cut. Have a nice sham funeral, they told me. It’s closure for your girl.
     But you know, don’t you, Olivia. There’s no beast of the field called closure. There’s no address for closure on the grid. There’s terror, wonder, hate and cold-hearted revenge. These I give you freely. You don’t have to wait till I die.
     Metropolitan Avenue lies sparse and alone. I done my pledge to the six-point star. I’ll call a ride. Enjoy the anticlimax to pain. Love in a fight, Karen called our marriage. She meant the business. All I do outside regular hours. I’ll call you, Olivia. I’ll call your aunt for permission to call you. Meantime my ruined frame will enjoy its defeat. Good to detach. Freefalling again. Watching chances fly like fall leaves. When you come visit, Olivia, we’ll walk DeKalb. I’ll show you what to look out for. How the shapes of it change with the seasons. I’ll teach you the steps. So you know. When you walk here alone.