The Sea Beach Line Read Online Free PDF

about a curse. But it’s a true story, about the life I’ve had to lead.” I didn’t say anything. I was only eleven and didn’t know how to respond to a whole life. “Izzy, buddy,” he said. “We’re friends?”
    â€œSure we’re friends.” I didn’t want him to doubt me.
    â€œBecca couldn’t come with you?”
    â€œNo,” I said, worried he would see through the lie. “She wanted to. She had a school thing she couldn’t miss.”
    â€œOh. Well. Tell her what I tell you.”
    â€œSure.” I knew I wouldn’t, but I wanted to please him.
    â€œBut you and me, fella, we’re friends.”
    â€œYes.” We were. He knew it and I knew it. He clicked the TV back on.
    â€œI was thinking,” he said a few minutes later, “in the morning we could go crabbing?”
    â€œWhat’s crabbing?”
    â€œLike fishing. You know. But for crabs instead.”
    â€œOkay. Sure.” I still didn’t exactly understand what we’d be doing, but other boys’ fathers took them fishing. “That sounds fun.”

    Leaving the bay now, I headed up Shore Parkway, passing a sushi restaurant that had not been there before and an Irish pub that had always been there. Just under the exit ramp from Shore Parkway was a small side street, also called Shore Parkway. This was where my father had lived, all those years ago. I had spent a lot of time here. Becca didn’t come with me very often. It had been an obligation for her, but for me it had been a refuge.
    The street I turned down did not match my memories. Everything looked different. Had I forgotten which block Alojzy lived on? No, this was the right address, and the exit ramp was in the right positionin relation to where I stood. Alojzy’s building was gone. In its place was a new building, a box coated in lumpy plaster, with blue trim and shiny railings on the narrow balconies that faced the ramp.
    I stared at the new building, half hoping that time would run backward if I waited long enough. That the new building would be torn down, my father’s old building rebuilt with a wrecking ball. I pictured the boards falling off the third-floor window and the light flicking on and off, then Alojzy pushing open the front door and inviting me in.
    I remembered waking up in my father’s apartment that first morning, after I fell asleep watching TV with him, how normal it had felt. Waking up on my father’s couch in Brooklyn felt far more natural than waking up in my own bed out on Long Island.

    For breakfast, my father put out slices of black bread. This bread was far denser than the bread I was used to eating, and though it seemed a little stale, he didn’t offer to toast it. I vaguely remembered eating bread like this when I was younger, but I’d grown used to eating fluffy grocery store wheat bread. I smeared on lots of butter—at home we were only allowed margarine—and used all the muscles in my throat to choke the morsels down.
    When we were ready to go, Alojzy hoisted an army surplus pack full of gear onto his back, and handed me an empty cooler to carry.
    â€œWhat about the rods?” I asked.
    â€œRods?”
    â€œWe’re going, like, fishing. Right?”
    â€œNo rods, fella. For crabs you use traps.” He tapped his pack.
    We walked down the Coney Island boardwalk. I’d been there a few times with my family, but only in the afternoon. Families didn’t hang around Coney after dark back then. Now, in the early morning, it was pretty much deserted, aside from a few old Russian women who looked like they were rushing even though they were strolling, a shirtless man drinking a tall can of beer, and some homeless people who’d crawled out from under the boardwalk, squinting at the sunlight.
    We turned off the boardwalk and up the T-shaped fishing pier that stretched much farther out into the Atlantic Ocean than I