I
pushed myself off the bench and started walking. I looked up at the Casino,
the letters of the word were split into frames: CA/SI/NO. Above the name and
a row of windows were green seahorses and above them the green roof: a cro
wn
anchored by statues of Atlas, condemned by Zeus to hold up the world forever.
Inside the Casino, the carousel revolved as fast as an old 78. It was all
show, for any child that mounted would be hurled into the sea. I walked around
the carousel several times, as if I might see more, and then laughed aloud
at my stupidity. Before the spinning figures made me sick, I hurried out of
the carousel room and into the main hall of the Casino, where there was an
exhibit of World War II photographs. Soldiers hunkered down. Waves broke over
the bows of warships. Concentration camps with bodies heaped up like piles
of tires at a junkyard. This was an exhibit they would only show in winter.
Who could eat cotton candy and look at this?
Wesley
Lake
The sun was a red rind in the west as I guided Julie onto the swan. I stepped
into my body and she stepped into hers. What remained of ti
me
fled like dark from light, as I held her hand and the swan glided from the
dock along the invisible track. All the Beatles songs rolled into one played
on Wesley Lake. She leaned against me, real. I glanced from her face to
the Ferris wheel traveling across the Palace roof, its lights flickering
on the deep green water. A rectangle floated before us, dangling along the
swan’s side. A postcard of Asbury Park, I thought, reaching over the
swan to save it. My hand sunk into the warm stream that swept the postcard
into my hand. As I lifted the postcard, I saw the words as the paper came
apart, melting through my fingers.
The following
morning, I sat on the back of a bench on the boardwalk in Asbury Park
alternately drinking black coffee and Snappy Tom. I watched the Atlantic
smash the Fourth Avenue jetty, sending saliva-colored plumes twenty feet
above the black rocks. Once in awhile, a breeze would carry a few cool
droplets to my face, but mostly I had to rely on the spiced juice to devour
my hangover. I had managed not to look at my face, my fingertips on my
cheek wer
e
telling me plenty. I closed my eyes and the pale sun burned red on my
eyelids. Behind me, music dripped from concession stand speakers—
music for paraded elephants and women balanced on horses’ spines.
I slept until a hacking shadow woke me, a green gob glowing at my feet.
I moved on with the gang of old men walking the chevroned planks, mumbling
of their dreams and numbly gazing at the ocean as it chewed the shore.
A couple of stray dogs chased seagulls, licked at wrappers and pissed
on the guardrail. Under storm-cloud Afros, two black kids raced by on
bicycles, legs pumping furiously, jackets spread out like wings, lifting
off as they approached the Convention Hall and soaring over the roof.
Before me, sand swirled and rose in puffs of smoke. I pushed through dancing
kelp and met the doubled eyes of a fluke embedded on the seabed like a fossil.
I swallowed back the used air in my throat, swam another twenty feet and released.
I broke the surface into the face of a wave and had to turn my head as I blew
out the air, holding for another second as the wave passed. I sucked in air,
treading water and staring into the sun, forgetting everything. My breath
back, I swam parallel to the jetty until I had reached the end. I turned north
and started slowly swimming toward the next jetty. It had been years since
I had swum at distance, so that halfway there my shoulders ached and I turned
back to shore. On the following day, I swam to the end of the second jetty,
crawling across the half-submerged boulders until I nested in a chimney in
the rocks, resting while the waves roared and smashed above me, tendrils of
water poking me, rock crabs scuttling in and out of crevices.