Wednesday 7am

A gray haze sits over the pale blue water as the charcoal silhouette of a small yacht whips silently past a motorboat along the horizon.  Four burly men are parked around a plastic table at Moscow on the Hudson, smoking cigarettes and beginning the day the same way it will end.  One leans on the rail at the edge of the boardwalk a few feet from me, looking askew across the open landscape, imperturbed.  Stray babushkas make their way in purposeful straight lines towards the ocean, beach chairs held in close by stubby arms.  Others stroll perpendicularly along the boardwalk in floral patterned uniforms.  The Doppler effect of a shirtless old man with a radio secured to his bicycle softly broadcasts smooth jazz behind me, nearing the end of its loop.  Middle-aged men do sit-ups on flat benches.  A few latino and black park employees haphazardly rake litter into a row of loose piles along the edge of the sand.  A young girl returns from the water carrying just her sandals while another with radically dyed orange hair and a fuchsia tennis outfit warms up against a lamp post that waves the flag, “Bay 2″.

The baked and fried dough monger with her unobtrusive sales pitch calling out like a gull swooping across the boardwalk has yet to arrive outside Winter Garden.  All for the best.  Home-Style Kitchen with its street-level fried dough offerings is likewise shuttered.  A plan formulates in my mind for securing the morning’s coffee and khachapuri.  An elegant man with white hair, white mustache, and a white suit picks lint quietly from a folded paper tissue as I take the steps up to the train.

Exiting the train, Malik, my building’s gruff Paki superindendent and I exchange expressionless hellos as he bee-lines for the check cashing store.  I continue on to Leila’s Family Store.  It’s open.  I ask the burly man behind the counter if he has coffee.   “Yes, of course.  You like milk or half and half?”  I pour coffee from the thermos marked “Regular” while he removes the milk from the fridge.  I can see that there is just one khachapuri left from his wife’s early morning batch.  They go quickly.  He pours milk until I say “Ok,” then he returns it to the fridge.  His wife uses the good cheese, kashkaval or sulguni, not the tvorog found elsewhere.  I hope the khachapuri is still warm from the oven.  A fluffy black cat’s head sticks out of a cubby staring at my knees, between boxes of chocolate and imported confections.  “What’s his name?” I ask.  “Kanli,” says the man with the deeply ingrained grimace.  “It means ‘blood’ in Turkish.” He repeats the grimace, “Kanli… ‘blood’ in Turkish.”

Red glove Homecrest, Brooklyn