My ex-girlfriend once told me that she could never take any guy seriously who still had a roommate in his thirties, so after we broke up, and I could no longer afford to live in Manhattan without her, I moved to Brooklyn. I knew two married couples there who praised their Cobble Hill neighborhood and promised that people from Manhattan would even consent to visit me there. I found a one bedroom in a brownstone on Cheever Place and became the single guy at their dinner parties and board game nights.
One Saturday night in February about a month after I moved in, I crossed over the BQE to the Columbia Street Waterfront District, which was dotted with a few restaurants and bars. On a corner across from the rarely-used shipping yard stood a tall brick bar with curved lanterns. It was just a hundred feet or so from the shoreline, so it could only be a final destination since it wasn’t on the way to anywhere else. It was about 10 o’clock and the bar was nearly deserted on account of the nor’easter that had been forecasted. The windows behind the bar framed the lower Manhattan skyline with the Empire State Building in the distance and the green cranes of the shipping yard in the foreground. It was a dead end with a view of it all though the first flurries of a snowstorm.
I ordered a beer, took out my book and read a few lines, then preoccupied myself with the trinkets on the mantel. My friends’ wives were mad at me for keeping their husbands out late the night before. They were hungover and useless in the morning, so the errands didn’t get done. It would be weeks before they’d be allowed out unchaperoned again. I would have to start cultivating the art of drinking alone. The most important thing, I figured, was to never seem lonely, or else to have some sort of prop that people will ask you about, so that you soon won’t be.
About twenty minutes later, a man with an Alaskan-style hat lined with rabbit fur came in shaking off the snow, which had started to accumulate on the street. He was tall and skinny, in his mid forties with a threadbare scalp, and the lonely look about him. He ordered a pint of Brooklyn Lager, same as me. As the bartender set it on a coaster in front of him, he unzipped a fanny pack on his belly and began pulling out green army men. He carefully positioned a dozen of them around his glass of beer, then balled up several napkins into tiny barricades for the ones in shooting postures to crouch behind. Then he let a splash of his beer spill on the bar to serve as body of water and set boats in it made from folded napkins. He worked quietly for several minutes and when the battle scene was set he took a long satisfied drink of his beer.
I opened my book and read a few more lines. It was a history of my new neighborhood that I’d taken out of the tiny local library that afternoon. I read about how Cobble Hill had been a Dutch farming village and was named after the cobble stones in the soil, which made it tough to turnover. A fort was eventually built on the corner of Atlantic and Court and because of the elevated view of the East River they call it Cobble Hill Fort. The name fell out of fashion and for some time the area was considered an extension of Brooklyn Heights. Then in the 1950s, a crafty real estate developer saw it on an old map and resurrected the name for marketing purposes. It worked and by the 1990s the Italianate style brownstones came to fetch over a million dollars.
“Bang! Bang! Bang-Bang!” the guy with the army men began making gunfire noises, then shaking the soldiers in the throes of mortal wounds.
This went on for several minutes and nobody paid much attention. Then, as he got up to go the bathroom, the bartender asked with a playful smile, “So who won, George?”
“Da British, of course,” he said. “Ya can’t change history. Da British always win da Battle of Brooklyn!”
“Right, right,” the bartender said. “Can’t change history.” He laughed and filled his pint glass. “Crazy as a loon,” he told another patron. “Comes in every night and plays with his army men. Says he’s reenacting great battles in history. What do I care? He drinks to celebrate or he drinks to mourn the loss. A fucking whacko, but a good customer.”
“There are worse ways to pass the time,” said the patron, leaning back with a near untouched martini in front of him. “Everyone needs a hobby… I just wish my wife would get one,” he said and they laughed.
I went back to reading my book. It said that the Columbia Street Waterfront district was formed when they built the BQE in 1957, separating a two block by ten block track of land from its now wealthier neighbors. Fearing property depreciation, the dockworker residents fled to be replaced by artists and telecommuters who didn’t have to bear the long walk to the subway every day. Also, it was the closest affordable place for workers at Long Island College Hospital.
A short while later, three overexcited girls burst through the door. They were carrying the joys of some other more festive place into the gloomy taproom. All talking at once, none seemed to hear what the other was saying. They were a self-contained party, carrying the goal and reward of so many other revelers. It was like a shot in the arm to the rest of the room, seeing youth and beauty visit them when a moment ago there was none.
One of them was a little older and weathered looking with a permanent scowl on her face. Perhaps, she should have found a husband long ago and was resentful that all the promiscuousness nights of her youth had not resulted in one. The second one was a tall blonde with a polished demeanor. She waved around an engagement ring as if to say, I don’t need to be here. The third girl was small and cute with reddish hair and little too much make-up. She had all the youth and time to make a thousand mistakes, and every day was still a parade. I imagined it was the tail end of the blonde girl’s bachelorette party and all the remained were her oldest friend and her youngest, who had the most energy.
The youngest girl stepped to the bar to order a drink in the empty space between my stool and the absent historian’s.
“Ooh, army men,” she cooed. “Are these yours?”
“Oh no,” I said, reaching for my book to show I was far too sophisticated to bring toys into a bar. I couldn’t say anything more after that since it usually took me about 4 beers to feel human around strangers. Before that I was just dead wood. Sure, I may have been sitting in my apartment all day watching documentaries about the process by which babies are sometimes made with the keenest of interest—my penis ready to press charges for harassment—but when a real live one came beside me I was a statue.
If I had been on my fourth or fifth beer, I might have asked if she “liked to play with toys,” lifting my brow with innuendo.
“I love these,” she picked up two and directed their rifles at each other making clumsy gunfire sounds, “Pat-choo! Pat-choo!” Then she laid one dead soldier on the bar and imitated the trumpet noises of “Taps,” for half a refrain. As she raised the other soldier in victory, her short coat lifted to reveal flat belly so small a side salad with extra croutons could fill her up.
“Hey whatchya doin’?” the owner of the army men called out angrily from behind her.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said timidly. “Are these yours? I didn’t mean to disturb them.”
Seeing her grow fearful, the man laid into her.
“Whatchya gotta go touching people’s stuff for just because dey go to da can? How’d ya like it if I went through your purse when you’re in da can?”
“I’m sorry,” she squeaked and looked ready to cry. “I just like them so much. My brother had ones just like this when I was a kid. My parents couldn’t afford Barbie dolls, so I used to play with them.” Her bottom lip hung bashfully low.
“Ah, it’s no big deal,” he softened. “It’s just dat I was reenacting a rather important battle… in, um, history.”
“Eww, which one? I love history!” she chirped, leaning on one hip with the innocence dangling out.
He began setting the scene of the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. The Declaration of Independence had just been signed. The British came into the bay followed by a German brigade. The Americans were vastly outnumbered, so Washington had taken his troops to Brooklyn because he believed they would attack Manhattan first.
The historian painted a picture with admirable detail. She could look out on the waterfront where he’d filled it with triple-masted gunships. The smoke of cannon fire blotted out the skyscrapers. The world suddenly became more expansive.
She was soaking it up. Maybe he had her grandfather’s eyes. Maybe she’d been getting hit on by empty-headed hipsters all night and was grateful to hear someone with a little knowledge speak.
George Washington was hiding out in Brooklyn Heights. The Americans were defeated at what’s now Prospect Park. Three hundred blue coat corpses were rotting in August sun. They could have been wiped out entirely, but at the last minute Washington crept across the river in the dead of night to regroup in Manhattan. The city was dark but for torches. They fled through New Jersey to Pennsylvania. Eventually, Washington defeated the British at Trenton to turn the tide of the war.
“Udderwise, we’d all be British,” he pronounced. “And dey probably would a closed the borders to keep control.”
“And to think, my grandfather might never have left Italy, and I wouldn’t have been born in Bay Ridge,” the girl said.
“Didja know it was originally called Yellow Hook?” the toy historian interjected. “On account of da color of da soil and da shape of da land.”
“Oh really, you know so much,” she rested her hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah,” he continued all puffed up. “But, after yellow fever broke out dey changed da name so’s people would move dere. And da soil in Red Hook is red. Some people wanted to change da name during da Cold War cause they was worried people’d tink it was a place for commies.”
The toy historian had drawn the link from the little army men on the bar to the finely crafted belly beside him. She was at the center of it all now, and everything he said was interesting.
“Didja know Al Capone got his start as a petty crook in Red Hook?”
“Really?”
“Sure, he was born in Park Slope. It was tough neighborhood then—not like now.”
The girl suddenly reached over and snatched up one of the army men.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” Then she marched off to the bathroom.
The toy historian looked fearful of losing one of his toys. He sat restlessly tapping his fingers against the bar waiting for her to return.
Finally, the door opened and she come out a little flushed in the cheeks. Placing the shiny toy back on the bar she said with a cruel smile, “You know where that’s been?”
The toy historian was white as sheet. She leaned in closer so her lips were just above the bridge of his nose. “I shoved him in me,” she told him, then made him smell it. “I fucked your little soldier!” she cackled, then rubbed the helmet on his lips. “Don’t you wish you could be this little green man when he’s inside of me?”
She sank her teeth into the soldier’s neck, then draped one leg over the toy historian’s knee, pushing her rib cage out to give him a peek at her small breasts.
Suddenly, the man let out a strange squawking noise and backed up his stool. He was shaking visibly. He grabbed his army men and scooped them into his fanny pack, then ran out of the bar. There was a moment of silence after barreled out the door, then her friends began laughing loudly.
“Scared off another one,” bellowed the weathered-looking girl.
“Oh, couldn’t you let the poor guy be,” the blonde said.
A little while later she came back to the bar to order another drink. I gulped down the last sip of my third beer then turned to her and said, “So you’re a history buff, huh?”
She looked at me dryly and said, “No, I work in a fucking toy store.”
I took the long way home. Instead of turning down Hicks, I went up Union and across Court Street to look at the fresh blanket of snow on my new neighborhood. In the restaurants, there were couples in their early forties lingering over bottles of wine on white table clothes. I turned up Kane Street where cushions of white covered the curly iron railings making their delicate embroidery more pronounced. The tree branches hung over the road sucking up the streetlight to make every single twig discernable.
At the corner of Clinton and Kane, I crossed the street to look at an ancient church. With the snow covering the cars, the block looked transported back in time. Suddenly, there was a cracking noise on the other side of the street and large tree branch fell to the sidewalk with a thud. It landed just a few footsteps ahead of my pace. It had broken loose under the weight of all that beauty and if I hadn’t been spurred to cross to the other side of the street, it surely would have clobbered me dead. Just dumb luck. For a few blocks, I wondered about the coincidence of it all. Then nestling cozily in my bed, I thought how this would soon pass too.
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