Brighton Beach afternoon

Even the sky was Russian.

At the end of the line, people from another world shuffle and saunter the streets of Brighton Beach, buying mysterious delights on the corners and in the brightly lit delis and tea shops. Everyone has a potato or meat-filled pastry to offer. Pink lips, rhinestones in the most unlikely locations, fur, fur and more fur. One furrier’s shop window even included a little stuffed dog wearing, of course, fur.

Out on the boardwalk, the water is the same color as the early evening sky, and as far away. The sand is flat and flat, the end of the world crossed with millions of tiny gull prints. A lone figure on the beach works a parasail, as if even he were somewhere else. The water must be cold. Old couples slowly make their way up and back, indistinguishable from each other. Do you take this man? Do you take this woman? A young ruffian whips by, hands-free, on a mountain bike, dangerously close to the boardwalkers, and nobody, including me, flinches.

Sated on strong Russian beer (no. 9), sea bombs and meat donuts, our pockets full of strange candies and tea, we tramp back up the boards to the train while Coney Island rears its cold dark bones in the distance and the sea gulls circle and call their eternal goodbyes.