I bought a rubber boat
I saw in the window of the old A&P on 87th
up from the defunct Madison Avenue Deli,
now Williams-Sonoma.
The unshaven shipping clerk, in scruffy cordovans, you knew to be an impoverished St. A’s aristocrat.
“Didn’t you go to Columbia?” “You’ve caught me unawares,” he answered —
a character out of Melville’s “Bartleby,”
“I would prefer not to.”
The vessel came with a pump and plastic paddle.
It was little more than a toy,
one of those rubber things kids bounce on in a pool.
I took it out onto the Sound
that summer we rented the house facing Gardiner’s Island.
I had stopped drinking.
You were on the shore standing with your grandmother
that July 4th weekend.
I paddled pretty far.
I see the faces of my parents in the windshield
coming at me on Springs-Fireplace Road.
On that sunny morning, running
I am hard pressed to believe,
I could slip again.
It’s hot.
I can’t wait for the session to end so I can go home and sleep all day.
It would take years to unravel.
Who cares?
You can’t count all the cracks in the pavement.
There are lots of streets,
lots of people crossing them on their way to sundry oblivions.
You remember them and after you’ve crossed your last street,
having gotten cash from the teller
at the Chase branch on 86th
descending onto the platform
of the Downtown 6, not even thinking it’s one of the last times
— to triage unspoken flirtations
while wondering when the train will finally come
and your sweat dry off,
if you are lucky enough to get into one of those air-conditioned cars.
There is something eternal about disappointment, a language with no past or future tense.
You take the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, passing Hamilton Avenue to the Cantonese place
under the El
in Bensonhurst
you see the Verrazano-Narrows in the distance
and almost end up in Staten Island
looking for the Mill Basin Deli with its piped in Frank Sinatra
and recused collection of modern art
(you can see the impatient worried look of your only passenger, the well-known writer, in your rearview mirror).
—
Francis Levy is a Wainscott resident. The Italian translation of his novel “Erotomania” will be released in October. His novel “The Wormhole Society” will be released then too, along with a graphic novel version illustrated by Joseph Silver.