The Sea Beach Line (26 page)

“We can't do anything about it?” I asked. “There's no legal recourse?”

“There were some lawsuits by a group of vendors in the '90s. So now, in New York, sometimes you can have your First Amendment rights. Unless they throw the lawsuit papers in the trash truck too.” Mendy took off his glasses and cleaned them on his dirty undershirt. “That's why NYU security waits until the books are unattended, and calls the city to send the sanitation guys. This way, it's not written up as a vendor issue, with tickets issued, and a voucher for the seized merchandise.” Mendy hated college professors, but he often sounded like one. “If your books are vouchered, they send them to this storage facility in Queens where you can go claim them. Theoretically. It's the same place bicycles go, when the police clip locks. They're classified as seized property, so there are some personal property rights still intact with that. But if they decide to call it refuse, rather than merchandise, then it's no longer an issue of personal property or a First Amendment issue for them. Then it's a waste disposal issue. That's how they always saw it from the start, I guess.”

“So what can we do?” I said. I'd grown up thinking I had rights. Mendy would have called that “class privilege.” My father, who had endured the indignities of both communist Poland and service in the IDF, had tried to disabuse me of this notion, but Long Island provides a powerful illusion for its inhabitants.

“We can't do anything. The First Amendment offers you nothing. It is predicated upon the Second Amendment, which also we don't have. Gun control is not a right-wing/left-wing thing. It's a rich/poor thing. Us working people, they took our guns from us, now they can take our books. I remember when Mayor Lindsay banned rifles.” I was no longer following everything Mendy was saying. He gestured with his arms as he spoke. “I couldn't believe the trade unions didn't protest. Ludlow, for God's sake! Rockefeller killed two dozen people when the miners' union tried to fight back. They would have killed more if the miners didn't have rifles.” Mendy was agitated. His milk crate was a
soapbox. Many street people were like this, even the saner ones. They fixated on one thing and went on and on about it, hour after hour, day after day.

“You don't have to look so far to see the slaughter. Go two blocks that way”—he pointed up toward Washington Place—“and you'll find the old Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
Twelve dozen
dead. They've always taken our labor. That's why they hate us booksellers. Because we don't work for them. They can't stand to leave you with nothing of your own. Nothing.”

“But still,” said Rayna. “They should leave the books alone.”

“Yes,” said Mendy, hopping down to the sidewalk. “They should.”

A curse had been cast on the street. By three in the afternoon, we'd only made forty dollars and decided to pack it in. Mendy stuck around.

Two days later, I saw Roberto walking down Fourth Street from Sixth Avenue.

“Something happened to your stuff, man,” I told him. “The other day.” He was walking with his head up, like he was enjoying the warm sunshine on his skin. From the way he looked, I guessed he hadn't heard, and I wanted to head him off and break the news before he got to his corner. “They're all gone.”

“Huh? Oh, my books.” He took off his sunglasses. When he turned toward me I saw that there were deep scratches on his right cheek. For some reason they were half covered with scotch tape and pieces of tissue, not Band-Aids. Evidently, there were other struggles in Roberto's life aside from some lost stock.

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “Snap, crackle, pop.” He said it like a joke, but he didn't smile. It occurred to me that there could be a deep anger or despair bubbling just under the levity and indifference. You can never tell what's going on inside a person.

“You're not upset?” I asked. I would be livid. There would be no hiding it. It wouldn't even be anger, but a complete destabilization. If our books were suddenly gone, I felt Rayna and I might disappear as well, just like Al had.

“I guess I could be upset,” Roberto said. “I mean, yeah, it sucks. But hey, easy come, easy go.” It was true, Roberto's books were for the most part curb salvages. He hadn't put much money into acquiring his stock. He found what he could, sold what he could, and ditched the rest. He didn't hoard and catalog books like I did. But Al had walked away from his good stock without looking back. Maybe when you had no choice but to walk away, you did.

Roberto noticed Rayna and winked at her, but she looked away. He looked pained. I was afraid that Rayna had offended him, but it was probably just the loss of his books.

“What're you going to do now, Roberto?” I asked.

“Oh, shit, I don't even know. I guess maybe it's about time I headed back down to Florida. I got a sister down there. I ain't seen her in two, no, three years. I hope she's still living in the same place.” His comment reminded me that I hadn't seen my own sister for well over a month. “I don't know, though. I really don't know.” He surveyed the street and the park, then put his shades back on. He stuck out his hand. “Well, if I don't see you.” We shook hands, and he bopped on down the street. I never did see him again. The streets were like that. People were there, and then they were gone.

My own books spent their nights safe and sound with us in the storage space, thanks to Timur and Roman. The business was going well enough to become self-sustaining and cover the storage costs, but I didn't see any reason to sever ties with them. If anything, I needed to actively strengthen my ties with Timur and Roman.

The next time I called Roman, he thanked me for this most recent favor, and said he was glad I called, because he had just recently heard some information of interest to me. I waited with bated breath for him to speak.

“I have heard that Al left town by bus from Port Authority three months ago.” Finally, a sighting! It wasn't a current one, but it made me feel less like I was chasing shadows.

“Who did you hear that from? Can I talk to them?”

“Just a mutual acquaintance whom I spoke to. He gave Al the ride to Port Authority. Edel had his one suitcase with him. He was vague about where he was headed, but said he'd be back in town soon enough, when things ‘calmed down.' The man didn't know anything else, and he doesn't like talking to strangers. But I promise you, I'll keep my ears open.”

“Fine.” I was frustrated Roman hadn't pushed the lead further and I suspected he was holding something back. Why couldn't I talk to the witness myself? But I didn't want to seem ungrateful for this morsel. And I was happy for further confirmation that Al was alive, that he had just skipped town for a minute and was coming back, sooner or later.

“While I am keeping my ears open for you, Izzy,” Roman said, “perhaps you can keep your eyes open for me.”

“Absolutely.” This sounded like a fair exchange.

Roman gave me the street names of four drug dealers, including Malachi, asking me to keep track of when they were in the park, and how active they seemed to me. He didn't refer to them as drug dealers on the phone, but I understood what he meant.

I knew three of the men by name, and Sonya pointed out the fourth to me. I made sure to take note every day of which dealers were in the park. The four men Roman had asked about were working almost every day that I was, and doing a good amount of business.

I repeated the few details Roman had given me about Al's departure over and over in my head. The timing made sense; it would have been right after Al mailed the postcard to me. He left with one suitcase, which meant he either left quickly or didn't intend to stay gone long. Or both. It did sound like he had left in a rush, especially if he was asking for a ride at the last minute. This fit the theory that he was running from someone. But there was still something I was missing. Even if Roman wasn't actually keeping something from me, surely more information could be gained from the story. I needed to talk to the driver. All the more reason to keep currying Roman and Timur's favor.

Asher reappeared on West Fourth Street that week, after an absence of ten days or so. He usually walked by me without any acknowledgment, but today he walked right up to me. His eyes gripped mine completely.

“I was up in Central Park,” he said. “Up there in the park, near the pond and the path and the path and the pond. I was all set up.”

“You were selling up there?” I asked. Sometimes booksellers tried out different locations where there was no established market, but also no competition.

“Selling. Yeah. Selling everything. The people walked by, they looked at me. They looked at, you know, what I had, they didn't understand what I had. All these things. For my mother.”

“You were selling things for your mother?” I didn't understand what he was talking about.

“What the fuck do you know about my mother, man? I mean, who told you about her?”

The paranoia flashed in his eyes for a moment. “Look, man, the shrine. Okay, it was a shrine for my mother. I built it up for her. But I wanted to be pure, so I sold some things. Some other things are left. I need to get rid of all of them.” He began to pull objects out of his pocket. A handful of pens. Some string. A piece of fabric that looked like it had been ripped off his flannel overshirt. Then he pulled off the shirt, almost losing his balance as he worked each arm out of its sleeve, and threw the whole thing on the ground. He tried his pockets again, but nothing was left. “There's no money. You can't have money. You can't. You can't handle it. And you have to rent your shirt.”

“Rent your shirt?” I wondered if Asher had ended up on the street because he was insane, or if his years on the street were what had driven him insane.

“Rent it? Fuck no. Sell it! Give it away!” He reached his hand into one of the holes in his Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt and pulled, ripping the shirt nearly in half. His hand got tangled up in the fabric. Frustrated,
he pulled the whole shirt off and threw it on the ground. Standing bare-chested, he proclaimed, “I have to go to my storage space and get the rest of her stuff.” His unit was in the same facility as mine, up on a higher floor. “I have to get rid of all of it. It all has to be pure for her. I'm going to sell everything. All these things. For my mother. I'm going to build her a shrine. I haven't slept for two days. I don't sleep. You sleep on the floor, by the coffin. No mattress allowed. I have to build the shrine. For my mother.”

“Asher,” I said. “Maybe you should get some rest before you try to build anything.”

“What? What?” He looked at me sharply. The loop had been broken, for a moment, and I felt guilty for interfering. “What the fuck do you want, Al? Always with a dumb question or a smart comment.” So he thought I was Al. It pleased me to think I'd stepped so fully into my father's shoes that others mistook me for him. But this was only true in Asher's confused mind.

“Don't tell me to go to sleep, Al. Don't tell me what to do. I can only sleep on the ground. I have to rent the garments. I'm sitting shiva for my mother. I don't care if you don't respect tradition; some of us do. I'm going to build my mother a shrine. Up at Central Park. Are you paying your respects?”

“Yes,” I said. “I pay my respects to your mother.”

“Asher,” Rayna said. She had shied away when Asher first approached, but now she stood beside me. I didn't know if she'd ever spoken to Asher before. “I know you are sad. But this is not the right way to mourn. If you are sitting shiva, you need to be home with your family. Your mother does not want you in the streets like this.” Rayna stared over Asher's shoulder, at something I couldn't see. It seemed she could actually see Asher's mother standing there, and was listening to the ghost's words, not just guessing about the dead woman's desires. I felt, once again, that the afterlife was Rayna's domain.