Jimmy walked five dark blocks to the boardwalk alone. Unlocked the gate that led to the pier. Oil and rust, fresh paint and turpentine; smells he could depend on. Cool steel, spokes and gears. Predictable things machines; they made sense. You see an engine, take it apart and put it back together. There’s logic to that. Funland was so still he could hear the ocean quiet, then crash under the boards below him. When was the last time he swam there?
However, like many gifted writers, the voyage was actually fraught with the kind of challenge, rejection, and failure not visible from a jacket inset. If asked, Maksik might describe his journey more like a seat on the 5pm Local.
Once, I scraped a dead bird off our sidewalk. Its wing was broken, and brittle claws all clenched up. The beak had dropped open, unhinged. You could see its bird tongue. Eyes still wide. I didn’t say it to Carla, but it went through my head. It’s true what they say—some people just can’t think straight when they haven’t slept.
Right here. A one-bedroom apartment six blocks from the beach where Ruby can hear the ocean through a cracked window at the quietest hour of the morning. Right here is a slip of an island on the South Jersey shore where Joe is a third generation roofer in his family’s business. Just a shell’s toss from her bedroom in the back office apartment of her parents’ motel. Grade school down the street, high school up the block. Marriage instead of college. A honeymoon in Atlantic City. Twenty-five years of Right Here.
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