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I walked the fifteen blocks from the subway to Peter’s house, enjoying the abandoned resort-town feeling that comes over Rockaway in the fall, after the mass of day-trippers from Manhattan and Brooklyn have stopped coming to its beaches.
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Peering down, I could make out a flat treeless landscape, with a few derelict buildings, a ferry slip, and a couple of trenches with a handful of men standing around them, apparently working: New York City’s potter’s field, the most populous cemetery in America.
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Clarence phones to give the good news: he has landed a job as motorman on the New York City subway, the consummation of a lifelong romance with trains. “I’ve been operating for five months, but I didn’t want to call you till I was certain the job was mine.”