CHAPTER TWO: A CITY BY THE SHORE

     It was 1969 when Simon Socorro was born. It happened in Atlantic City, 
but he grew up in a house outside of it. Families like his family didn’t live 
in the city. Simply no one lived in it at all. It seemed its people had 
gathered up quarters and dimes only days before every day, and had come down 
the expressway, sighing, “smell the ocean,” as if it were a new thing. Some 
from Philadelphia. Some from New York. Some from Paris. They all came to 
Atlantic, and they all left Atlantic. Sure, some stayed and inhabited a space, 
or owned a building, but they didn’t live in what the place really was. They 
lived in some house outside of it, too.
     Atlantic City was about coming and going. Its people broke like the 
tides. The comings and goings of its people were as magical and dependable as 
the comings and goings of its waves. Though, while the ocean wore away at the 
coast, the people wore away at themselves.
     In childhood, Simon went to the shore almost every day of spring. 
Unlike his parents, he thought it was better than in summer, because of the 
coolness, and because of the greenheads never coming out until the heat got 
worse. But then, when he was old enough to stay out late, he found the night 
was cool too, and the bugs were fewer still. And then, at night, summer was 
better, because there were more people pulsing on the boards. 
     When he’d grown tired of the waves, he watched the breaking of the 
people, putting their trust in luck. They came to the city, to the boardwalk, 
to the casinos, and they gave their money, their hopes, to Fate. Some in great 
handfuls, some in little bits over a long time. They did it because they 
thought they’d get what they thought they deserved. They thought that Fate 
would pull them through, because it was their time, because it was their night 
to win, after losing for so long, it was meant to be.
     There were the lucky ones coming from the casinos, sometimes. Simon 
didn’t see them, he never noticed them, but they had the most peaceful looks. 
The lucky ones seemed to be coming, not going. They didn’t make much noise. 
They went home by the Garden State Parkway, went home sighing, “smell the 
ocean,” as if it were going to vanish tomorrow. The lucky ones had broken 
even, and were so happy to have what they’d always had. The lucky ones never 
gambled again.
     But in general, when the people came, they had faces of all kinds: they 
were glad, or frightened, or confident, or solemn. And when they left, there 
were only two kinds. As regular as the seasons, as constant as the waves, 
people of all kinds went in to play, but only two kinds left: they were the 
happy, and the sad. Sometimes the poor were happy. Sometimes the rich were sad. 
Sometimes, it was the other way around.
     But, no matter what, the next day they were gone. Left behind, the 
ocean kept beating against the coast, and the people kept beating against 
themselves. Life went on.
     
     Once, a card dealer, a friend of the family, an employee of Trump Plaza 
most of his life, told Simon, “There’s no God in games, son. It’s as random as 
anything you can think of.” As random as dust in the air. As random as grass 
on a hillside. “As random as lottery balls.”
     The dealer’s name was Jim Lexington. He was Uncle Lex, and he was drunk 
in the Socorro family room, at Christmas. Simon was eleven.
     “Well, you wouldn’t think that, talking to the winners.”
     “Listen,” he said to Simon’s father. “The only ones more sappy than 
the winners is the losers.”
     “Um,” Tom said.
     “The winners are all about how God or Fate finally came through for 
‘em. How it was meant to be, how it was written in the stars. And the losers, 
they’re all ‘Why can’t I ever win anything? Why am I always the loser? Where’s 
my fucking prize? Ain’t it my turn now?’ Well, I ain’t either of them ways – 
and Simon, don’t you grow up to be that way either.”
     “Jim, please, it’s Christmas.”
     “There ain’t stars, or Gods, or Fate. You get what you get from dumb, 
blind luck. ‘Cause it’s just dice. It’s ten decks, all shuffled up. It’s 82-
card pick up.” He swung his arms wide, sweeping the room. Simon could picture 
the cards falling like snowflakes. “It’s nothin.”
     “Jim—”
     “Maybe it’s just too complicated for us to understand,” Simon’s 
mother interjected. 
     “And them that break even,” Jim pushed on. “They’re just as bad, 
boy. They’re the real fools, really. They’re the real jerks. They think they’ve 
been taught some lesson. They think they know not to throw their bone in the 
river.”
     What Lex meant was, there’s a story of a little dog who had a bone. In 
the story, the little dog was crossing a bridge, and he looked over the edge. 
The water was over the edge. It was sunny, and in it, he saw a big dog with a 
much bigger bone. So he dropped his bone in the river, and tried to pick up the 
bigger one. But the bigger one was just a reflection, so it vanished, just the 
same as the little one did. Suddenly, there was just a big dog with a sad face, 
looking up at a little dog with a hard lesson.
     “Did the dog blame Fate? Did he think his loss was the mysterious work 
of God, getting him ready for bigger and better bones?” Jim asked. “No. And 
maybe that dog was smarter than us, with our fancy toys for Christmas.” He was 
looking at Simon’s computer, in pieces beside its box.
     “I can’t see how this matters, Jim,” Tom said flatly. “I can’t see 
how any of this is necessary on Christmas night.”
     “The dog probably starved,” Uncle Lex said, locking eyes with Simon. 
“He probably starved and died. He should have kept the bone, that’s for sure. 
And folks who break-even, they think they break-even ‘cause they’re so, 
fucking, smart. But they break-even ‘cause of nothing. They break-even ‘cause 
of dice, and shit. They crossed the bridge, but they didn’t look in the 
water.”
     “We’ve heard this before Jim,” Tom insisted, leaning back into the 
beige couch. He was drinking 7-UP. “The rant gets fancier every time, but it 
doesn’t make any sense telling an eleven-year-old on Christmas night.”
     “Maybe he’ll listen, ‘cause you never do.” 
     Simon didn’t look up or say anything. He was fiddling with a new board 
game. It had numbers and patterns on it. It had colored dice, and Simon was 
turning them over and over in his hand, watching them as if they were curious 
insects crawling on his palm.
     “Maybe the boy’s smarter than you think he is, Tom.”
     “Enough.”
     “Maybe he’ll listen to me. He doesn’t think I’m stupid. You sure don’t 
listen to me. You think I’m an idiot.”
     “No I don’t.”
     “We certainly don’t think you’re an—”
      “You do. You do. You don’t agree with a word I say.”
     “No, we don’t agree with you. But that doesn’t mean we think you’re an 
idiot. We just have different lives than you is all.”
     “Yeah. You sure do. You’re winners, and I’m a loser, ‘cause I tried 
for something more, ‘cause I played the dice and lost. Well fuck – just cause 
you won on your first roll.”
     “Jim – this has nothing to do with –”
     “Jesus Christ! It’s Christmas!”
     “I don’t care when it is! What does that matter?” he demanded, 
cracking his drink down on the glass table. Simon looked up again when the 
drink made its sound against the glass. He was thought that Lex had broken the 
table. Simon was always afraid that he’d break the table himself. He hoped Lex 
had done it instead. “You know what – I say fuck you both!”
     “Jim!” Simon’s mother gasped.
     “Have a Merry Christmas, with your happy family!”
     With nothing more to say, Uncle Lex marched out of the living room, his 
shoulders and head down, out onto the gravel driveway. He sunk into his 
Corvette and drove away, crunching, much faster than the speed limit. It was a 
cold night, and there was rain on the road. It was a dangerous thing to do. He 
was very drunk.
     But, he didn’t die on Christmas, 1980. Jim Lexington lived from 1943 to 
1997. He was born in August, and he died in September. He would ask to be 
cremated, and his ashes would be lost in beach sand, as he desired.
     As the dice would have it, what he did do on Christmas, 1980, was 
paralyze himself against an overpass, somewhere around four in the morning. 
     He never regretted drinking and driving, and he never regretted 
storming out. What he regretted was having not died that night. He wished he’d 
been going faster when he hit the concrete, since life without legs didn’t suit 
him. At least, that’s what he told Simon, drunk again, on his own 54th 
birthday.
     “Now, I’m very careful to say, Simon,” he murmured at the end, when 
everyone was leaving, “that I wish I’d died that night. You’ll never hear me 
saying that I was supposed to die that night. You’ll never hear me saying that 
anything’s meant to be.”
     “It’s you’re birthday, Jim. Relax for a change.”
     “No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “You always used 
to listen to me. You listened right to me. How about you listen now.”
     “Don’t be bitter, and preach, and I’ll listen.”
      “But I am bitter. Of course I am. When I was your age, I thought I 
was a dealer. But I was just a player. And I hate gambling. I hate gambling so 
much. It’s ‘cause I’ve never been lucky. I’ve never been lucky a day in my 
life.”
     “Luck has nothing to do with it. People end up happy and sad, and I 
don’t think it has anything to do with how much they win or lose.”
     “You don’t think there are lucky ones? You think it all made fair 
sense.”
      “I’m just saying there are winners and losers. They all get what they 
earn. God doesn’t play dice with the universe, and there’s nothing else to it. 
There aren’t even people that break-even. Those that break-even, they win or 
lose soon, too.”
     Jim looked up at Simon. “I guess I’m just a loser then, like I always 
said.”
     He blew on a party favor. It uncurled like a carpet, then curled again.
     “If you stop thinking you’re so unlucky, maybe you’d win.”
     “Cause there ain’t any lucky ones,” Jim smiled.
     “No, there aren’t any lucky ones.”
     “Well, I feel pretty full of shit luck, sitting in this fucking 
wheelchair.”
     
     Simon’s parents tried to stop Uncle Lex the night he crushed his legs. 
They followed him to the door, telling him they hadn’t meant he was a loser, 
telling him they hadn’t thought they were winners, telling him that maybe it 
was all luck. They said maybe they were just lucky. But it was half-hearted.
     They only talked about it once that night, and never again. From then 
on, his parents must have thought, there was nothing more to say about poor, 
rich Jim Lexington. All there was to wonder was, “Why does he have to hate us, 
because we’re happy?”
     “He’s a sore loser, Sam,” Simon’s father said, leaving the room, 
carrying some cookies. “Always has been”
     “Oh – don’t say that. You sound just like him,” his mother scolded 
his father.
     Then, she sighed, not listening for an answer from the other room. Her 
husband Tom rustled some papers there, and Samantha Rose Soccoro picked up a 
washcloth, to wipe some crumbs from the countertop into her palm. Simon was 
helping his mother clean up by putting plastic wrap on the cookies. He loved to 
help her.
     “Mom?”
     “Yes?”
     “Can I ask you a question?”
     “Yes.”
     “What does he mean we’re winners?” 
     “Huh?”
     “He has lots more money than us, doesn’t he?”
     “He’s not talking about money, dear. He’s talking about life,” she 
answered.
     He stopped wrapping the cookies. “What do you mean?”
     “Uncle Lex is very lonely.”
     He finished tucking the plastic wrap beneath the Christmas Tree shaped 
plate, and handed it to his mother to put above the refrigerator. “Then why 
did he and Aunt Jan move apart?”
     “Well, it’s because your Uncle Lex thought he was settling for Aunt 
Jan.”
     “Um,” Simon said, climbing up onto the counter.
     “He thought he was in love with someone else. He thought his and Jan’s 
love wasn’t real, all of a sudden, even though they’d been together since high 
school, even though they met in the most beautiful way. Your Uncle just messed 
it up with some girl at the casino.”
     “Oh,” Simon said.
     “He was the dog that threw his bone into the water. That’s why Aunt 
Jan is so sad.”
     “Oh.”
     “He wasn’t really talking about money. Nothing’s really about money.”
     “Oh.”
     “Do you know what I mean, Simon?”
     He looked at the sink, full of pans with caked-on cookie dough. “Um, 
yes,” he said.
     “When you have something that’s meant to be, you don’t throw it away. 
It’s not just dice. A smart man said that God doesn’t play dice with the 
universe. And He doesn’t. Just look at your father and me.”
     “Yeah.”
     “We had a wonderful Christmas, didn’t we?”
     “Yeah.”
     “So, do me a favor, dear,” his mother said, turning to him, rubbing 
her damp hands in a red, white, and green towel. Simon scooted forward, to hop 
off the counter, but she stopped him with a hug. “Just do me a favor, and 
never be like your Uncle Lex.”
     “Um, okay.”
     “You promise?”
     “I promise.”
     “Good,” she said. She helped him down from the countertop. “Now, how 
about we go look at that computer of yours. Your dad’s probably got it all 
hooked up by now. Maybe there’s a game we can play on it.”
     “Yeah,” Simon said. “I like computer games much more than board 
games.”
     “Me too.” She smiled distantly. 
     The computer worked beautifully. 
     And the same game was fun for almost seven years.
     ***
     
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