Free The Sea Beach Line by Ben Nadler Page B

Alojzy was strong, unyielding. People showed him respect.
    â€œBut at the same time,” Mendy said, “Al wasn’t petty. I’m not saying that your father was going to hurt the little dog because he was petty about the fucking jacket. You asked him for a fucking jacket, he’d give it to you. Matter of fact, this sweater I’m wearing right now . . .” Mendy tugged on the green fabric hanging loosely from his frame . . . “he gave it to me.”
    As the last rush was dying off, we started packing up. The sun was long gone, the moon barely a sliver, but there were enough electric lights for us to see. Mendy had a whole system worked out. The books came off the table in order, row by row, and went into specific, numbered boxes. His handcart folded out into a long four-wheeled cart, and each of the boxes, folded tables, pieces of wood, and plastic bags had their own set places. We were tying the whole rig up with rope when a man built like a scarecrow sidled up to us.
    â€œMendy. Mendy, my man.”
    â€œOh, how you doing, Eye.” Eye was tall and lanky, though his oversized sweatshirt obscured the exact shape of his frame. The most noticeable thing about him was his thin, black, horseshoe mustache. His dark brown skin seemed like it had been weathered by centuries, but I guessed he was about Alojzy’s age.
    â€œYou need some help with the cart tonight?” he asked Mendy.
    â€œNah. Thanks, but I already got this guy here. He’s been helping me all day; I think I’ll just let him see it through.”
    â€œThis squirt here? Who the hell is he?” Something was off about Eye’s gaze; it seemed like he was eyeballing me, but only one eyeballwas actually fixed on me. Then I understood what it was: his left eye was glass.
    â€œOh, sorry. This is Izzy. Izzy, that’s Eye.” I nodded at Eye. He blinked his good eye back at me.
    â€œHe’s Al’s son,” explained Mendy.
    â€œAl? Al Edel? That Russian fuck?”
    â€œPolish,” I said, as if there was some pride in the word for me.
    â€œWhat the fuck I care what kind of Russian your daddy is, boy?”
    â€œI’ll talk to you later, Eye,” Mendy told him.
    I pushed the cart from behind, while Mendy pulled from the front, steering with a little length of rope. Mendy had an established route that he followed. We walked down the middle of the street, out of necessity. I knew that the city streets sloped down on the sides for drainage, but I had never realized how extreme of an arch it was until I had to keep a moving cart from tipping over. We pissed off more than one cab driver, and hearing the honks and shouts right behind me made me nervous. Mendy didn’t seem to notice them at all. He calmly snapped down the mirrors of parked cars threatening to clip us, and maneuvered us around potholes with hardly a glance at the ground. The cart was heavy on the uphill blocks. I wasn’t used to this kind of work.
    At the very end of the route we had to cross Varick Street. It was well past what I thought of as rush hour, but the street was still fully inhabited by the caravan of commuters trying to find their way back to suburban New Jersey through the Holland Tunnel. The idling cars spilled through the intersection. Mendy forced a way across for us, staring drivers down or banging on their hoods until they backed up enough to let us through.
    We cut through a parking lot. Cars were parked four stories high on metal girders, and I couldn’t make sense of the system that raised them up there. Mendy nodded at the parking attendant, who nodded back from his little booth, and we came to the back door of the New York Mini Storage, where two women were arguing in Russian. The only word I could make out was “ dengi .” Money. The woman doing most of the shouting was older, about fifty, and had bleached blondehair. The other woman was about my age, and had black hair. She started to