Dumbo, short for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, used to be a ferry landing and still has an industrial feel. Large warehouse buildings mix with overpriced grocer markets and all-glass apartment buildings. As my breathing slows, I realize I should have done a search before I came down. Apartment views, open listings. I could have make a spreadsheet and gone through it—why didn’t I think of that?
I stop in front of Brooklyn Bridge Park, in front of a brick-and-glass building that takes up the entire block. Not it.
I pull out my phone. Did I (do I?) buy this apartment? I make good money, more than most of my peers, but a two-million-dollar one-bedroom loft seems out of my price range. At least in the next six months. And it doesn’t make any logistical sense. We have our dream place in Gramercy, big enough to put a kid in, someday. Why would I want to be here?
My stomach starts to rumble, and I walk west to see if I can find somewhere to grab an apple or a bagel, and think. I turn up Bridge Street and after a few blocks I find a deli with a black awning—Bridge Coffee Shop. It’s a tiny place, with a counter deli and a board menu. There’s a police officer there; that’s how you know it’s good. A woman with a wide smile stands behind the counter and converses in Spanish with a young mother with a sleeping baby. When they spot me, they wave goodbye to each other and the woman wheels her baby out. I hold the door open for her.
I order a bagel with whitefish salad, my usual. The woman behind the counter nods in solidarity with my order.
A man comes in and pays for a coffee. Two teenagers get bagels with cream cheese. Everyone here is a regular. Everyone says hello.
My sandwich comes up for pickup. I take the white paper bag, thank the woman, and make my way back down toward the water. Brooklyn Bridge Park is less a park and more a stretch of grass. The benches are full, and I pop down on a rock, right by the water’s edge. I open up my sandwich and take a bite. It’s good, really good. Surprisingly close to Sarge’s.
I look out over the water—I’ve always loved the water. I’ve had little of it over the course of my life, but when I was younger, we used to spend July Fourth week at the Jersey Shore in Margate, a beach town that is practically an extended suburb of Philadelphia if you go by population. My parents would rent a condo, and for seven blissful days we’d eat shave ice and run the crowded shores with hundreds of other kids, our parents happily situated in their beach chairs, watching from the sand. There was the night in Ocean City, on the rides, spinning on the Sizzler or riding the bumper cars. The dinner at Mack & Manco Pizza and cheese hoagies from Sack O’ Subs, dripping in oil and red wine vinegar, opened in paper at the beach.
Michael, my brother, gave me my first cigarette there, smoked under the boardwalk, nothing but the taste of freedom between us and our fingertips.
We stopped going after we lost him. I’m not sure why, except that everything that felt familial, that seemed to tie us together, was intolerable. Like our joy or unity was a betrayal of him, his life.
“Dannie?”
I close my eyes and open them again. When I look up, I see him standing above me in a bike helmet, half on his seat. Aaron. You’ve got to be kidding me.
Chapter Nine
“Hi. Wow.” I scramble to my feet, shoving my sandwich back into the bag. “What are you doing down here?”
He’s wearing a blue T-shirt and khaki pants, a brown leather messenger bag slung over his chest.
“It’s my weekend bike route.” He gestures to his bag, shakes his head. “No, Bella actually sent me on an errand this morning.”
“Oh yeah?”
Aaron unclips his helmet. The line of his hair is wet and matted down with sweat. “You seem to be feeling better.”
I put my hands on my hips. “I am.”
He smiles. “Good. You want to come?”
“Where?”
He scoots himself closer. “I’m looking at an apartment.”
Of course he is. I didn’t need a Google search. I just needed Aaron to show up, right now, and lead me there.
“Let me guess,” I say. “Plymouth Street?”
“Close,” he says. “Bridge.”
This is insane. This is not happening. “Yes,” I say. “I’ll come.”
“Great.”
He loops his helmet over his handlebars and we start walking.
“You’re a runner?” he asks me.
“I used to be,” I say. I can feel the sting in my left knee and hip as we walk, a product of not enough stretching, and no squats before taking off.
“I know. I don’t get on my bike as much as I’d like anymore, either.”
“Why isn’t Bella here?” I ask.
“She had to go into the gallery,” he says. “She asked me to check it out. You’ll get it when you see it, I think. Hang on.” We’re at a crosswalk and he holds his hand back as two bikers speed by. “Try not to die on my watch, huh?”
I blink back at him in the sunlight. I should have worn sunglasses.
“Okay, now we can go.”
We cross the street and then we’re making our way up Plymouth until we get right to where it meets Bridge, running perpendicular. Just where I came from. And then I see it. I missed it on my walk just now, blinded by my search for a sandwich. It’s the redbrick event space with the barn door. I recognize it now. But not just from that night. I was at a wedding here three years ago. David’s friends Brianne and Andrea from Wharton Business School. It’s the old Galapagos Art Space, and it’s what I saw out the window that night, four and a half years ago. And behind me, across the street, at 37 Bridge, is the building Aaron is about to lead me into.
“Watch your step,” he says, as we cross the street and make our way to the door. Sure enough, I’m right. It’s a brick-and-concrete building, less industrial than some surrounding it.
There’s no lobby, just a buzzer and a padlock, and Aaron takes a ring of keys from his messenger bag and begins trying them. The first two don’t work, and then on the third the lock swings open, the chain coming undone in his hands. The steel door swings open to reveal the side of a freight elevator. Aaron uses a second key to call it down for us—this time on the first try.
“They’re expecting you?” I ask.
Aaron nods. “A buddy of mine is a broker and gave me the keys. Said we could check it out today.”
We. Bella.
The elevator lumbers down. Aaron holds the door open and I step inside, then he wheels his bike in after us. He hits floor four and we’re making our way upward, the mechanics of the freight heaving and sputtering as we go.