Page 58 - In Five Years

I pull out my phone. Did I (do I?) buy this apartment? I make good money,
more than most of my peers, but a two-million-dollar one-bedroom loft seems
out of my price range. At least in the next six months. And it doesn’t make any
logistical sense. We have our dream place in Gramercy, big enough to put a kid

in, someday. Why would I want to be here?
My stomach starts to rumble, and I walk west to see if I can find somewhere

to grab an apple or a bagel, and think. I turn up Bridge Street and after a few
blocks I find a deli with a black awning—Bridge Coffee Shop. It’s a tiny place,
with a counter deli and a board menu. There’s a police officer there; that’s how
you know it’s good. A woman with a wide smile stands behind the counter and

converses in Spanish with a young mother with a sleeping baby. When they spot
me, they wave goodbye to each other and the woman wheels her baby out. I hold

the door open for her.
I order a bagel with whitefish salad, my usual. The woman behind the counter
nods in solidarity with my order.

A man comes in and pays for a coffee. Two teenagers get bagels with cream
cheese. Everyone here is a regular. Everyone says hello.
My sandwich comes up for pickup. I take the white paper bag, thank the

woman, and make my way back down toward the water. Brooklyn Bridge Park
is less a park and more a stretch of grass. The benches are full, and I pop down
on a rock, right by the water’s edge. I open up my sandwich and take a bite. It’s

good, really good. Surprisingly close to Sarge’s.
I look out over the water—I’ve always loved the water. I’ve had little of it
over the course of my life, but when I was younger, we used to spend July

Fourth week at the Jersey Shore in Margate, a beach town that is practically an
extended suburb of Philadelphia if you go by population. My parents would rent
a condo, and for seven blissful days we’d eat shave ice and run the crowded

shores with hundreds of other kids, our parents happily situated in their beach
chairs, watching from the sand. There was the night in Ocean City, on the rides,
spinning on the Sizzler or riding the bumper cars. The dinner at Mack & Manco

Pizza and cheese hoagies from Sack O’ Subs, dripping in oil and red wine
vinegar, opened in paper at the beach.
Michael, my brother, gave me my first cigarette there, smoked under the

boardwalk, nothing but the taste of freedom between us and our fingertips.