never even dropped his cigarette as they strolled down the boards. When Tommy drove away from my house for the last time, I took pictures of our tracks in the white driveway. The spot where our feet met. I tried to remember the moment that I knew he was the wrong man. The moment I decided to keep it going anyway. By the edge of the water the police broke into barrels with axes. Only five of them swung. Eight more stood around with their hands in their pockets, watching the beer hiss into the sky. My dad introduced me to two women after he left my mother. I saw the eyes of at least three more on me at parties and across the room at restaurants. Do you know that woman? I would ask. Should I order an appetizer? He would answer. I saw a picture of Flossie Osbeck, Nucky’s wife, cutting into her wedding cake. She looked just like Kat, my dad’s new fiancé. Same far-away look, knowing that her husband was about to be put away. My dad met Kat at the Borgata. He told me that he met Donna Summer there too, in the seventies, when he was putting wires into the shell of some new casino. I pictured him thin, dusty lightcolored jeans, hardhat, no idea what he was about to do. The first Miss America was from D.C. She had a boxy nose and front teeth that were squared off at the sides. They called the girls Bathers, paraded them up and down the boardwalk in sashes. A girl I knew in college won the title of Miss New Jersey in 2012, but didn’t get past the first round of Miss America. Her face was too circular, her eyes too small. For a whole year she brought Ziploc bags full of carrots out to the bars. She ate them in dark corners. Watched our wine glasses. Watched the lines in our lips stripe red. During the Depression many hotels were shut down or turned into brothels, drug dens, and nursing homes.
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