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much of a Jew, hafta say, Julius says with a laugh. Now, Marty, that’s a Jew, a real Jew. He’s started keeping kosher, the whole bit. Getting conservative on me these days.
    Marty bobs his head in good-humored acknowledgment.
    â€œYou Jewish?” Julius asks her.
    â€œYes. But not much of one, either,” she says.
    Now Julius is a stockbroker in Manhattan. He still keeps in touch, though; he manages a Cuban musician and twice a month flies to Havana for club dates and banana daiquiris at one of Hemingway’s favorite bars.
    â€œSeventeen dollars for a daiquiri!” he says. “You gotta come sometime.”
    â€œAre you still in music?” she asks Marty.
    â€œI play around a little,” he tells her.
    â€œHe still tours,” Julius says. “He’s got a doo-wop group, they do revival, you gotta hear ’em sometime. And he scores movies. They’re filming a big movie over in Brooklyn,” Julius says. “Marty’s on the set every day.”
    â€œThat sounds interesting.”
    Marty shrugs. “I mostly produce for friends, do some mixing.” He glances at, then away from her. “Whatever.”
    They pass one of the decaying old buildings she has wondered about, three stories of smashed windows and graffiti’d brick, a chain-link fence. “What is that, do you know?” she asks. “It’s horrible-looking.”
    â€œOld age home,” says Julius. “Been here forever. They got it shut down, now.”
    â€œIt’s like some Dickensian orphanage.”
    â€œMarty, you had someone in there, right? Your uncle?”
    â€œYeah.” He nods. “Old guy. Died in there when I was a kid.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Sarah says. “That’s so sad.” She smiles in sympathy, envisions a lonely old man, abandoned by family and friends, lying on a cot, withering away to the unrelenting sound of seagulls and crashing waves, the smell of aging bodies and industrial disinfectant. Marty doesn’t look especially sad, however, or say anything more, and her words sound insipid, hanging there. “So . . . are they going to tear it down?”
    â€œNo, they’re re-doing it,” he says. “It’ll be a community center or something. Maybe a new school. There’s good stuff coming, here.”
    â€œYeah, he keeps saying.” Julius nudges her. “This whole place went to hell a while back. Great when we were kids, but the late sixties, the seventies, you know, economy tanked and people got the hell outta here. I been trying for years to get this guy to move to the city. You gotta move to the city, I keep telling him.”
    Marty nods good-naturedly.
    â€œHe won’t budge. Says it’s all coming back these days. It’s your life, I tell him.”
    After another hour of walking, Julius says he’s hungry. It is now late in the afternoon, the sun has sloped, and it’s too late, she thinks regretfully, to paint.
    â€œWhat’s that place you were talking about around here, Marty? The seafood place?” Julius asks.
    â€œLundy’s. But that’s in Sheepshead Bay. We go after shooting, sometimes.”
    â€œLet’s go. You like seafood? I’m starving.”
    â€œYou know, I’ve never been to Brooklyn,” she says. “I picture it like in movies. Moonstruck . Goodfellas . Woody Allen stuff.” She glances at Marty, to include him.
    â€œI don’t want to eat yet,” says Marty.
    â€œYou want to come for dinner?” Julius asks her; she hesitates, unsure whether Marty has merely postponed the dinner, or declined his inclusion entirely.
    â€œI don’t know . . . I should still get a few hours’ work done.” There’s spinach left, she thinks, and pasta waiting for her. I might open a can of tuna.
    â€œTell you what, gimme your number, I’ll call you in an hour.”
    â€œOkay . . .” She scribbles on a page