It was 9am when Officer Onion strolled up Union Street in his new sweat-wicking shorts. They showed off his big, pasty calves. By the way he moved across the weather-chewed pavement, you could tell he knew how good his glutes looked; like onions encased in soft nylon. He was part of a rookie class of cops who had petitioned the department for the shorts, as soon as he found out this year’s beach season had all the makings of a party. Along with the Onion, the rest of the rookies were polished, pressed and hesitant to engage in any of the after hours outings on the precinct’s calendar. Events like the cops vs. kids street hockey jamboree at the youth center or the pancake breakfast at Franco-American Club. The Onion didn’t join the gang for that.
Fish Flake Hill smelled like low-tide, sounded like seagulls, and tasted like brine. The neighborhood was a tangled web of streets whose layout made no sense – Fossa Terrace, Bartlett Place, Ropes Lane, Riggs Street, Benedetti Way, Arbella Way. One of the apartment houses on Union Street had about thirty bright yellow lobster traps stacked in the driveway. Some of the shaker shingle homes had those plaques fastened next to the front door naming the first owner: Hezekiah Coffin, 1734, Habberdasher. Clothes hung dry on the banisters of wooden fire escapes. The mailboxes had been blown with so much salt air you could take a bite out of them.
A Bruce Springsteen tune played over the gables, chimneys, under the eaves and around the widow watches. As the Onion scoured the street through his black department-issued Ray-Bans, he pretended to do what he did best: dishing out parking tickets to the good people of the neighborhood. Hitched to his waist, the handheld gadget that could write the tickets as soon as he pointed it at a license plate and pulled the trigger sat loosely in its holster. Meanwhile, right in front of him, an Audi obstructed the entire crosswalk unchecked.
He wasn’t here to ticket the vehicles of these beautiful beach people. All these beach bunnies stepping out of their Lexuses had his head on a swivel. “Man,” he said, like he had a friend he was saying it to, but he didn’t. Behind those shades, his eyes could do whatever he wanted them to do.
The source of the Bruce tune that played throughout the neighborhood must have been closer. The music grew louder. The Onion’s right hand snapped the best it could to find its basic rhythm. The source of the tune, a rusted out champagne-colored Corolla from 1994, pulled on to Union from Rantoul Street. Behind the wheel, immediately breaking the Onion’s chill morning, our guy Nate Saint-Pierre slung his big elbow out the driver’s side window. A Carlton Menthol 100 smoked in his mouth and a nearly disintegrated Dunkin Donuts styrofoam cup sat snug in a cup holder of his center console. He was too big for the car. The fingers on his left hand snapped hard enough to break a pencil, on perfect rhythm with the music.
He’d opened all the windows to his apartment before he left. Once he got within range of his building, Nate switched from Bruce to his girlfriend’s favorite song, a Billy Joel track, and turned it up.
The Onion stopped trying to snap and grabbed his gadget. Nate’s testicles detracted into his stomach when he found the shameless cop standing in the middle of the street, staring at all these passersby in their sherbet-colored beachwear.
Nate ripped the last half-inch of the cigarette, swigged the remaining contents of the Dunks cup and popped three Altoids; the Altoids were a new addition to his life, part of an overall personal clean up. He glanced around the floor of his car to make sure no stray empty nips had rolled out from underneath the seats, again. Leftovers from his past life. He’d just moved out of his parents house and into his first ever apartment here at 14 Union Street. As it was, he was trying to get settled and have a nice summer with the love of his life. Steel Reserve was in the old Dunks cup. He’d always found beer, even malted beers, painfully slow. But this was the Summer of Love. The summer of getting normal, and that meant he’d drunk zero liquor in the past 11 days. Become normal. Improve his self. Chill out. Get normal. In order to reach these goals, he’d chosen to model his life after the song Cheeseburger in Paradise. Be cool, he kept telling himself. Listen to Jimmy Buffet. It was the first time he’d ever taken so many suggestions from anyone.
Cheeseburgers for dinner and Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. In between, sunshine, bone-dancing and good tunes. On the passenger seat, a tray of their morning caffeine: large black coffee for him, medium black tea with steamed milk for her. Bacon, egg and cheese on everything bagels for breakfast. Eat your bagel, smell the ocean, sip your beer, feel those rays, keep the tunes turned up, kiss your gal.
“Mr. Saint-Pierre, I think your car is covered in birdshit,” the Onion said.
Nate discreetly clasped the lid on the styrofoam shut to limit the residue smell of the beer. He didn’t care for the smell of the swill anyway.
Last year, there was no Officer Onion, there wasn’t even a “beach season” and suddenly at the start of this one, his summer of all summers, strangers had begun to crawl out of the Boston woodwork, driving twenty miles North for what? Beaches that were the size of basketball courts, mountains of seaweed, an ocean full of rocks, and gnarly old pier pylons destroyed over the generations by hurricanes, blizzards, and Nor’Easters. You want to bask on this dingy coast? You want to shred your left nipple off on some barnacles like Nate had twenty years ago? Suit yourself. But Nate needed his parking. Despite the whole city being worn-out, salty, and brine-blown, his neighborhood had been named that year’s Gem of the Atlantic, a bestowment with which Boston Magazine ruined one coastal locale every summer, sometimes permanently. But Nate, like just about everyone else on Fish Flake Hill, didn’t read Boston Magazine. All he knew is that his paradise summer with Jess was ruined as of two weeks ago, when all these people showed up.
Most of their back windshields were covered in stickers from private universities throughout New England. Nate had memorized the alphabet backwards to avoid DUI’s, but beyond that he hadn’t been academic in nearly ten years.
“What’ll it be, Natro Saint-Pete? That Dunks cup is looking a little beat up.”
Nate gripped the steering wheel so hard it felt like the leather would rip. It be that he could use a real drink.
“Just trying to park my car and bring my wifey her breakfast,” Nate said.
“Your move, big dog.”
But there was no move. Every possible space had been taken by a Beemer, Mercedes, or some other vehicle from the upper crust.
“Onion,” Nate said, finally. “I’m already strapped because of these tickets.” A hundred and eighty dollars worth of tickets sat rolled up in his other cupholder. At this rate, he’d miss August rent.
“You got kids?”
“No,” Nate said. Jess would be up by now. Between the music and the fact that he hadn’t bought any shades for the apartment, he didn’t know how she couldn’t be. He looked at the front of their big old shaker shingle apartment house. Their bedroom had three large East-facing windows, and they didn’t have curtains yet. He restarted her favorite song and turned it up. This was supposed to be a fun morning, if it weren’t for the Onion and these yuppies.
They were in their mid-twenties and only recently discovered they’d had crushes on each other in high school. For Nate and Jess, that summer would be the one that never was, he hoped. His imaginary summer with the angry-looking girl from Sociology class. In his very own apartment.
Zoned out, looking at the bedroom windows, he couldn’t believe she laid in his bed, in his place, waiting for him. When she rolled over, she expected to find all two hundred and eighty pounds of him. He vibrated at the thought.
He had no intentions of losing Jess, again.
“I need to get in there,” he said, holding up the greasy bag from Dunkin Donuts. “My lady is diabetic and I have her… bag of needles.”
“Maybe you should keep the car put tomorow, Natro Saint-Pete. It’s summer. Relax. Do you,” the Onion said. He walked away, swaying his ass to whatever tune played in his head, following whatever vision he had for his own summer.
A move, any move, needed to be made, so Nate used his neighbor’s driveway to access his building’s front lawn and park the Corolla on the grass. He cut the engine and threw his head out the window. He could hear their shower running inside. Good news. Jess was up. Showering. Home. Now he just needed to feed her. The Onion said something about gems, raising rents, urban renewal, and evictions. “This whole neighborhood is gonna be leveled and beveled, Natro Saint-Pete. I hope you’re paying a mortgage and not renting that apartment.”
Nate turned on the car, turned up his tunes, and idled out of the front yard, bisecting a group of young ladies clad in pastel beachwear, straw hats, and Barbie teeth. He threw the Corolla into reverse and parallel parked in front of Union Street’s only fire hydrant, like he’d done so many times already this summer.
“You can’t ticket me, Onion. My hazards are on.”
The sherbet ladies asked Nate for directions to a beach they had written the name of on a Post-It, but he had to keep on, jogging heavily, holding the greasy bag of Jess’ breakfast. A little cloud of pity formed when he left the ladies in the care of the Onion. But he had his own romance to focus on.
His boots nearly blew through the old, creaky stairs as he sprinted to his brand new, very old apartment on the second floor of 14 Union. All the lights were off. The sun hung just above the harbor outside. Over the blue water, the morning light softened to a red orange in the windows. “Jesus. That’s nice.” The windows were open, so he could hear Jess’ favorite tune that he intentionally played for her out in the car. Perfectly executed: “…It all depends upon your appetite. I’ll meet you anytime you want at our Italian restaurant…”
Nate poured himself another cup of Steel Reserve from the forty in the fridge. The taste didn’t bother him, but the low-impact of the malt liquor’s alcohol content did.
“Jess? Jess?” He popped his head out a front window to make sure the Onion wasn’t approaching the Corolla. True to form, the cop was talking to some girls who looked barely legal.
Nate had three parking tickets.
He couldn’t get a fourth. A fourth ticket this early in the summer would risk everything.
Five would be a boot. The boot itself would be a sixth ticket he’d have to pay just to get removed. It would give him no chance of making rent. Then what? Back to his parents on Hull Street. Then what? Jess leaves town again, follows her parents down to Virginia and chalks up that month in Cold Marsh as a mistake with a guy whose pockets were a little too shallow to deliver the life she wanted. Billy Joel. Breakfast. What else? Episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. Eating dinner off plates. Trivia night. Complicated board games. Sign him up. He was ready. Let’s be happy. Let’s get normal. Five tickets would be fatal to his vision.
“What?” Jess said from the other room. Nate didn’t even realize he’d been shouting her name. In the bedroom, she was standing in her underwear, rubbing Nivea body lotion all over herself and smoking a Camel Crush. She had tattoos. She had fake eyelashes the size of butterflies. The smoke went in her mouth and left her nose so effortlessly.
“God, babe. Whose bettah than you?” He asked. “I got your… your stuff.”
“Stuff? What kind of stuff?”
“Is everything okay? Comfortable? All you need, you have?”
She looked at the Dunks bag and laughed.
“You’re really sticking to the plan, huh?”
“I think you got enough Cuervo leftover for your day,” he said. Jess’ clean criminal record indicated she was responsible enough to enjoy liquor.
“We could walk down to the beach. Fourth of July weekend. Could be fun. Maybe get some chop suey.”
Chop suey? It felt risky to stray from their night time routine of lettuce, tomato, Heinz 57, french fried potato, kosher, cold draft beer, onion slice, big warm bun, large hunk of meat. The song was specific about that. Are any of those ingredients in chop suey?
“Okay. We’ll see, Jess,” he said. “I’ll just find a parking spot for the car and we’ll weigh our options. You know having the same dinner every night can be nice for stability. Accountability. We both know what to expect. Not a bad idea given how uncertain things are already.”
He remembered a movie or two where an old guy tries to keep up with a young hip girl he’s in love with in order to win her over. But he and Jess were the same age. From the same place.
She puckered her lips for him to kiss her.
“Are you having fun?” He asked.
“I’m getting dressed.”
“Right.”
He wanted to ask again. Was she having fun? Was she good? But he’d ask so many questions for reassurance yesterday, and the day before. How much before it was too much?
She hugged him, rubbed his broad damp back, held his head in her hands, kissed him on the forehead.
He drank the entire Steel Reserve and let out a breath from the bottom of his lungs, poured himself some more from a second bottle. He’d started out with Coors Light, but it was like drinking water all morning.
“I love this song,” she said.
“I know you do.”
Maybe he should have picked Scenes from an Italian Restaurant as the tune to shape their summer. It would open up the dinner menu, and he could be pouring himself wine right now.
Jess sat in the window like a woman in a Will Barnet painting. Her big black hair occupied nearly the entire width of the frame. She held her bagel in one hand.
“I think we should get a dog,” Jess shouted out down at him on the street.
“You got me drooling at your feet already, babs,” he shouted back, leaning back on the car, eating his own bagel.
“But I think we should get a dog.”
“What kind?”
A tall man shaped like an upside down triangle and wearing a tank top that read MIT ambled by walking a Golden Retriever.
“See! Look at how cute that guy is.”
“The guy?”
“The dog.”
Nate glared at the guy. With his mind, he tried to catch his sandal on a pothole.
These men had made him feel so aware of how crummy he dressed. Plaid cargo shorts shot up with cigarette burns, an old Coed Naked badminton shirt, work boots. Work boots in summer. He needed sneakers.
On the front seat of the floor, he found an extra bag of Chewy Sprees he’d forgotten to give her yesterday. He checked if the coast was clear. The Onion was nowhere in sight. With gorilla speed, he was inside and upstairs. “Babs. Babs.”
The lights were off. The apartment was in full view of the sun sitting above the trees.
“Privacy, Nate,” she said from behind the closed bathroom door.
He stood outside the door looking like he was about to pee his pants, but he was just that restless. He remembered their conversation from a month earlier, when they’d spent all night together on the water.
I can’t believe you were into me in high school.
You were cool. Not by high school standards, but you know. Other standards.
And what are those?
My standards? Well you got a great smile. You laugh. You scowl. You seem like an asshole but you’re not really.
Everyone thought I was mean.
You were just wicked cool.
I don’t want to move to Virginia.
You shouldn’t.
If I stay here I’m worried I’ll never leave.
Why?
This place is a sinkhole.
I don’t know about you, but I plan on being an adult. I’m getting my own place.
Where?
Downtown.
The sinkhole.
I’m gonna be a happy, normal adult. Like beers.
Beers?
Beers and grills. Horseshoes. Stuff that normal people do.
I like Billy Joel.
See? How about Bruce Springsteen?
I hate Bruce Springsteen.
I think we can still be normal.
But you don’t really understand –
This place being a sinkhole? I do. I understand everything about that.
Hot, crowded, the new sounds of Summer continued to swarm him as he leaned back on the Corolla still parked in front of the fire hydrant. Every so often, he turned down the tunes, walked into the front yard and gave an ear to his living room windows, trying to hear what she might be doing. “Jess!”
“Yeah?” she said.
“Okay.”
Some passersby laughed out loud on their way to the sand with their teeth hanging out, navy vizors, looking around saying something in what to him sounded like a foreign language.
“Onion. Where are these people from?”
“Those people? Hats said Michigan.”
“So this is what people from Michigan look like.”
“I think it’s called feeling good and having fun,” the Onion said.
“What is this? Kindergarten?”
“Maybe you should just stay inside, man. You don’t have to be out here.”
Nate stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, chewed the inside of his cheek, rubbed the back of his neck, looking like someone in physical pain.
“I think this is good for me. If this is what is out there, I should see it.”
“Just go inside, man.”
“Go inside so you can give me a fourth ticket? Then five? A boot?”
“Where do you go in the mornings?”
“Richdales or Dunks.”
“Bro. They’re within a half a mile from here. There’s like four Dunks a quarter mile. Why move your car at all?”
“There’s a lot going on in this town over that quarter mile,” Nate said, but the Onion just stared at him. “There’s a lot of distractions between here and there. You don’t want me walking down Rantoul Street.”
Jess called him to the window and dropped the rest of Steel Reserve to him in a Nalgene. Things were getting a little sloppier the longer he stood out there.
He looked at the Onion and asked, “Did my taxes pay for those shorts, Onion?”
“Do you pay taxes?”
Two dudes shaped like upside-down triangles in different shades of eggshell walked by with large sheets of plywood over their shoulders. Holes were punched into each sheet.
“Johnnies,” Nate muttered the local pejorative and brought his Nalgene to his lips only to find it empty. Already. He included an expletive under his breath while wondering out loud what their pieces of wood could be.
“Bags,” one of the tall Johnnies said.
“Yeah it’s called Bags,” the other said. “Or Cornhole.”
They walked right up to Nate, apparently pleased to make his acquaintance, this yocal who was so clearly local.
“But you can call it Bags,” the other said. It felt like they were closing in on him, bags in hand.
Nate stood there breathing out his mouth and drinking them in in a manner that seemed both aggressive and hopeless. The one on the right flicked on a speaker that was attached to his belt. He turned it up.
One of them had a portable speaker, turned it up.
Big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer say good God almighty which way do I steer? For my Cheeseburger in Paradise.
Nate watched the two of them walk away towards the ocean carrying all their things. Bags. Cornhole. Smirnoff Ice. Jimmy Buffet.
“I hate that song,” Nate said.
A brand new fourth ticket sitting under his windshield wiper caught his eye. When he turned to the Onion, the prick had made it all the way to the intersection of Union and Rantoul, where he juked into Giovanni’s Land and Sea. Nate walked up to the window and could hear the sound of New Jersey Housewives screaming at each other. Teresa vs. Danielle. Joe vs. Joe. Danielle vs. Dina.
“Jess,” he shouted. “Jess!”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s get outta here.”
“Alright.”
“Anywhere. I got a quarter tank of gas. We got all day. Bring the Cuervo.”
“For who? You?”
“I don’t know. But we’re not eating cheeseburgers tonight.”