20. The Crying Room

My grandmother’s brother reportedly spent seven hours wading through that Rockaway sea foam searching for the letter. At some point in the afternoon, the vendor in a cigarette kiosk on the boardwalk, assuming Frank to be a drunk or lunatic, got worried about him and called the cops. A patrol car eventually came along. The officers, not wanting to brave the cold and wind, or to spoil the polish on their shoes, remained in their vehicle and blared its siren at Frank. But he only glanced up at them and waved as if to say he was fine.

The cops decided Frank had to be out of his mind, and feared if they left him to it, by the next morning they’d be dealing with a dead body on the beach—with all the paperwork that involved. They tossed a coin, and the loser went to speak to Frank. After ascertaining Frank was neither shitfaced nor definitely insane, albeit pretty strange, the officer warned about hypothermia. As Frank seemed unconcerned, the cop said if death didn’t worry him, the prospect of the flu should—a nasty strain was going round, and people were ending up bedridden with it for weeks. Frank’s only reply was to ask if the police officer knew where he could buy a fisherman’s landing net. The cop said only fools and divorced men went fishing in this weather, but Frank said he didn’t want it for that. The cop threw up his hands and, heading back to his car, shouted to Frank he better not find out he’s a suicide after all or he’d kill him himself.

Nightfall forced Frank to abandon his search. Before dawn the next day though, determined as ever, he was on the beach again. To his dismay, the sea foam had not survived the night. A king tide had come in and gone out, washing clean the entire strand. Even the big logs and half-buried tree stumps tossed ashore by the nor’easters had vanished. Right up to the boardwalk, the sand was pristine, groomed like on the first day of summer, when the municipality employed men on parole to pull bunker rakes across the beach until it was smooth and level, ready to accommodate thousands of towels and picnic blankets.

In the cold February light, it appeared to Frank as though a sheet of dark snow had settled. Nothing moved on this blank page. Not even a sanderling. Frank didn’t dare set foot on the spotless beach. It was like looking at the beginning of time, a newborn earth. Even a single set of prints across the crisp sand would have broken the illusion, and made it impossible for Frank to dismiss the reality that rising just behind him was the edge of the biggest city in the world. So he simply stared into the brilliant clarity of the sands.

(Continues after paywall for 2500 words)