Read Online The Sea Beach Line by Ben Nadler - Free Book Online Page B

press them all with questions, but I made sure they knew I was curious about Alojzy’s life, whereabouts, and fate.
    Around one o’clock, customers descended like a wave. The socializing stopped, and everyone went back to his own table to focus on making money.
    â€œThe lunchtime rush,” Mendy explained. I helped out by packing peoples’ purchases into old Gristedes grocery bags while Mendy tallied the prices. He ran up and down the length of the table, connecting with each and every customer who was interested in making a purchase. After a customer left, I straightened out the books they’d disturbed. The people who didn’t buy anything seemed to leave the biggest messes. I referred most questions to Mendy, but after a while I was able to point a few people in the right direction on my own.
    After business slowed down, I bought a quart of macaroni salad and a Diet Coke from the deli and ate it in the park. When I returned, Mendy asked if I would cover the table while he used the restroom and got some food. He handed me a bankroll from his fanny pack of cash to make change with. It seemed strange that he trusted me with his cash, but then I remembered the story about my father and the van. If he could trust Alojzy, he could trust me.
    I sold a couple books and wrote down the names so I could tell Mendy what they were. An NYU coed with sweet brown dates for eyes thumbed through an anthology of d.a. levy’s work. She was looking at the collages, and asked me if I knew him and was he a good poet. I said he was, and told her about the love poem he wrote to the fifteen-year-old girl who turned him into the “subversive squad” of the Cleveland Police Department. The woman went away without buying the book.
    Another wave came down on us at five o’clock, dropping off just at the end of dusk. It got colder as the sun went down, and Mendy put on a big green sweater he pulled from one of his many bags. The sky was hardening, closing in. Between the sky, the pavement, and the brick buildings along the square, I had the strange feeling that this wasn’t the outside, just a giant room.
    Mendy sat down beside me on the curb. “This is the dinnertime lull. There’ll be one more chance to make some good money, starting around eight o’clock or so, then we’ll pack it in.”
    The whole world felt calmer than it had half an hour before. The people had gone off the street into homes and restaurants, or else down into the subway. The air was thicker and lazier. The cabs that had rushed by earlier were now on some other block. Mendy, for his part, was no longer running up and down the length of the table, and had taken out a yogurt container and a metal spoon.
    â€œSo what do you do with yourself, Izzy?” he asked between slurps. “You in college or something?”
    â€œNo. I was there for a while. It didn’t really work out.”
    â€œSure. College wasn’t for me either. I felt—this was in the ’60s, early ’60s, maybe things are different now—they didn’t have anything I wanted. I always think of that scene in Casablanca . The guy says, What brings you to Casablanca? And the other guy, the Humphrey Bogart character, Rick, I think, says, I came for the waters. But, Rick, the guy says, there’s no waters. Oh, he says, I was misinformed. That’s how I felt about the university.”
    â€œI’m not sure I follow.”
    â€œI was misinformed.”
    â€œAh. Yeah. I get you. Before the semester, they give you a little magazine, informing you about the classes, and they were straight with me. I chose the classes I wanted, and I read a lot of books, even if I didn’t write all the papers. I maybe read too many books. But yeah, it wasn’t where I was supposed to be.” I kicked an empty coffee cup away from my foot. “I had to leave, because they threw me out. But it was time for me to go anyway. I’d