摘要：

Coney Island Boardwalk. A gray Sunday morning, maybe 10:00 a.m. The boardwalk is impossibly empty, which helps indicate that this moment doesn't really exist. A man, STUIE, MY FATHER, sits on a bench facing the water, the closed-down booth that still has the "Bearded Lady" sign behind him. He's reading the sports section of the Daily News. In front of him, two seagulls fight over a used diaper. A very fat man, JOEL, HIS FATHER, MY GRANDFATHER, sits next to him, to his right, pulling his slacks up at the thigh. He's smoking a cigarette, Lucky Strike. The), look near the same age, STUIE a little older. Same broad face, the kind of face that makes for cute boys and boyish men. Same upper lip, a bit too big. STUIE: It's a boring story, really. [ Pause .] Maybe that's not the best choice of words. It's just a story we've heard before. That doesn't make it bad, right? It's just, you know, I'm old. It's harder to feign patience. JOEL: [ Gesticulating, always .] Mr. Showoff. Mr. Twilight -of-My- Life. I'm so old . STUIE: I'm telling a story, Pop. And you're a ghost. JOEL: Hallucination, maybe. We don't believe in ghosts. We don't even believe in the resurrection. STUIE: That's funny. You're funny. I think I forgot that. There is a pause, a tightening of both men's bodies at the word "forgot." JOEL stares at the ocean. STUIE looks apologetic, head down, silent for a moment. STUIE: I'm trying to tell a story my boy told me. He thinks it's the most important story in the world. It's about young men making choices and becoming grownups. Real meaty, classic kinds of themes. JOEL: He looks like a lumberjack, your son. STUIE: That's significant. Would you let me get to that? It reveals a lot about him. On the night I'm talking about, he'd dressed carefully, but he pretended he was just throwing clothes on. He wore old work boots, Timberland, the kind people wear in Oregon or Ohio or other places we'll never go. On the right boot, there's a stain that looks pretty good--like mud, so good in that way. But I can tell you that it's really peanut sauce from the time he tried to eat chicken pad thai too fast and dropped it all on his feet. I said, Ugh, you need new shoes . And he said, Don't worry about it . JOEL: Disgusting. JOEL delivers a noise somewhere between a laugh and a grunt. He waves his hand dismissively. STUIE is stuck by how familiar the motion is, still. STUIE: I know, for this I buy him pants? So he's there with the boots and then these old blue jeans. I say, It's the holidays, let me buy you a new pair. He won't hear it. And the jacket? It was his brother's. Filthy. Been in the closet five years. Smells old, you know? One of those lumpy, coarse, brown things that's made...

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