Rockaway Read Online Free Page A

of her sketchpad, rips it off, hands it to him. She wonders if Marty will be hungry in an hour.
    â€œWhat’s this?” Julius asks.
    â€œThe phone number.”
    â€œThis’s the house number. My brother, he’s married to Rose eighteen years, you think I don’t know Pearl’s telephone number?” Julius takes the scrap from her and passes it to Marty. “Here. You keep that.” Marty shrugs, and puts it in the pocket of his sweatsuit. He nods at her, turns, and strolls away, heading back along the shoreline toward the Rockaway homes. Julius takes out his phone. “Gimme your cell. I’ll program it in mine. See? We can do this now. Look how good this works.”
    Julius doesn’t call until seven-thirty, at which point Bernadette and Avery have already taken over the kitchen with some kind of stew, are banging pots, bellowing at and around each other. Julius’s first-person pronouns indicate he’s coming to pick her up alone. She’s hungry, and the yelling in the kitchen is giving her a headache. She decides to go to dinner, but also decides, at least, that she will partly stick to her resolution and not wash her hair. An assertion of indifference.
    â€œDo you know Julius?” she inquires of Avery as he pours out basmati rice from a massive burlap sack he and Bernadette keep in the storeroom off the kitchen.
    â€œAh, Julius. Yes, he is uncle to Susan, I think. You are going out?” He seems very pleased, relieved almost, that she will not be having her dinner alone.
    I have been eating my dinner alone by choice, she wantsto tell him, but says nothing. She just smiles, nods, and exits by the kitchen door to wait outside the house.
    â€œWe will be keeping the light on for you, yes?” he booms after her.

    WHEN SHE GETS into Julius’s car, a metallic gold Jaguar, she breathes in air freshly sweetened with men’s cologne; it troubles her for being as unperfumed as she is, and also for its scent of expectation.
    They leave Rockaway, and, as they drive across the Marine Parkway Bridge, he asks her if she’s ever been married. She says no, and then decides it’s blatantly rude not to return the question.
    â€œNope. Lived with a lady for twelve years, though. Moira. Irish Catholic girl, there you go. Should find me a nice Jewish girl. Have kids. Not too late for me, huh?”
    She smiles, nods, peers out the window. “Hey, Flatbush Avenue,” she says. “I guess I am officially in Brooklyn. Looks like a big field.”
    â€œYeah,” he says. “We’re going through Marine Park now. That’s Bennett Field, over there. Lots of famous places around here. I’ll drive you by Coney Island, later. Brighton Beach. Better in the day, though.”
    At Lundy’s he propels her to the oyster bar and announces his plan to just begin the evening here, for cocktails and appetizers. A chalkboard listing freshly caught options hangs on fishnet over their heads. Julius orders from the bartender—a guy dressed as a pirate, briskly quartering lemons—vodka martinis and a half dozen each of littleneck and topneck clams, and Wellfleet oysters. She has never heard of Wellfleet and decides to look up their classification in her book when she gets home. Julius cocks back his head and lets an oyster slide from shell to throat; she instead uses her tiny fork to rip free the oyster’s last clinging shred and transfer it primly to her mouth.
    â€œThey’d make good spoons, wouldn’t they?” she says, replacing the empty oyster shell in its berth of crushed ice. “I’ve been collecting them on the beach. I feel like I’m choosing flatware for my bridal registration.”
    â€œWhat, honey?”
    â€œOh, nothing.” She touches her lips to her martini, and reaches for a littleneck. The oyster pirate brings her another martini at Julius’s crooked finger, then, smiling, shucks oyster after