day laborer

in memory of last year's labors...

Konstantinos found me before I found him; that is, his camera lens captured the sky above my profile as I leaned against the Coney Island pier. He was, he told me a few minutes later, testing out the capabilities of his new camera, a Nikon whose exact model now eludes me—an unfortunate fact, since its night-light capability was surprisingly superior for such a small camera. He’d just picked up the camera at a flea shop and he made me guess how much he paid. I overestimated.

I suspect that the $300 camera held some pictures of me; I had watched out the corner of my eye as he captured the Coney Island skyline: the languid Ferris wheel, spooling on its endless spindle, the lights, blinking and burning, the Cyclone as it shrieked and rattled its wooden slats. The lens tilted slightly in my direction, and, while flattered, I wondered at a man, alone, slightly plump, with hair glistening and receding like a coastline, who would take pictures of anonymous women. He smiled and asked me to take his picture.

The sunset bruised the sky. It was Labor Day, the final gasp of the season, and figures pasted themselves to the pier and boardwalk, sucking up the last free summer day. Two cops walked the pier like hall monitors, ahead of them, ever so discretely, the craps man stalked up and down, muttering and flailing his stick. He walked, pigeon-like, in short, unsteady bursts, and when he passed by, the craps boards disappeared, the beers slid into plastic bags, and the tips of fishing poles were studied with inspired, if not evangelical, concern. It was a careful choreography, the men reaching for their beers, laughing, as the cops turned away and retreated to the boardwalk. They threw creased pantlegs over motorcycles, revved the engines, and rumbled over the boardwalk like a truncheon on metal bars, braking only slightly when the crowds grew thick.

Konstantinos (he did not pronounce the final “-os”) gave a false, camera-fixed smile. We both turned to look back at the boardwalk. It’s beautiful, he said, and I agreed. He’d come out to see the sunset, all the way from Jamaica, Queens. It was his day off. He worked for a corporate law firm in the city.

He didn’t know what his plans were. Maybe legal work in Greece. “That’s where my family is, you know?” He’s originally from Thessaloníki, in northern Greece. He’d gone home this summer—he visits a lot, and when he’s here he makes extra money by selling jewelry at Greek festivals around New York

Konstantinos exhaled suddenly. “Yeah, I met this girl the other week. Two weeks ago—at a Greek festival upstate. She was really sweet, and we’d been emailing back and forth. But then I hadn’t heard back from her in like four days, and I was getting sort of annoyed, you know?”

I nodded.

“Well, so I found out today that she died.” His voice hung on the final vowels. “She was in a car accident—nobody knows what happened.” Konstantinos fiddled with his camera. “I’d been wondering why she hadn’t emailed. And then I find out she was in this car accident. She was only twenty.”

Dylan’s nasal passages flailed on someone’s radio. “How does it feeeeel? To be on your own, with no direction hommmme?” Konstantinos asked for my name. We shook hands, and he walked back down the pier. I wandered over to buy a corndog, and he appeared again in the crowd. “Can I buy you some food?” he asked. I shook my head, said no, thanks. He hesitated a moment, and then turned and slid into the effervescent Coney Island night.