Catch the Brass Ring

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IT WAS A STICKY hot carnival day, the sun sweating down on Surf Avenue, Coney Island, through a murky sky and wringing people out like wet washrags. Even the fat blue-bellied flies swam through the heavy air in slow circles before homing in on the watermelon rinds and corn cobs in the gutter.

It was the kind of day you wanted to shut your ears to the clattering el trains, the carousel organs brassily gargling Lathi music and waltzes, the clanging gongs, the rat-tat-tat from shooting galleries, the staccato chants of the pitchmen, the steady throbbing hum of a million perspiring people dragging themselves from one fun house to the next.

Unless you were feeling great you wished you could pull down God’s window shade and then lift it and look out on a different, cleaner world. I was feeling great.

I found a bar and grill sandwiched between a freak show which offered a thousand-dollar reward if you failed to see Trina the Turtle Girl as advertised and a gift shop crammed with feathers and cheap jewelry glaring out at the street with pinwheel eyes. Inside, the bar had a cool beer smell and I started chasing gin and tonics with gin and tonics and I was feeling better all the time.

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