Dying Breath. Wendy Corsi Staub

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      Slipping back onto a stool at the long bar, Ike tilts the icy brown bottle to his lips and swigs a fresh beer.

      All the doors and windows are open to let in the salty night air and the live music out back. A new band has taken the stage—a couple of kids who just graduated from college and decided to launch careers as musicians.

      Yeah, good luck with that, Ike thinks, setting the beer on a cardboard coaster. In this day and age, it’s not easy.

      Was it ever?

      Probably not.

      But for Ike it sure seemed that way. He dropped out of high school to become a busboy at a supper club in Fort Lee, back when the swing orchestra and crooner scene was going strong. Pearl Bailey, Dean Martin, a kid named Frank Sinatra who hailed from right down the Palisades, in Hoboken. There were countless lesser—if not completely un—known acts, too.

      It was a lesser-known who taught Ike to play the drums after-hours, and told him he had talent.

      By the time he was twenty, he believed it, a cocky son of a bitch. Hitched a ride down to the beach one summer night that changed his life.

      That was the early fifties; doo-wop music was taking hold in Philly, spreading to the Jersey Shore. Ike was great with harmony. Classic case of right place, right time. Someone asked him to sit in on the drums, sing a little backup. He did, and a star was born.

      Ha. That’s what he thought.

      Yeah, but he wasn’t the only one.

      He had quite a following, right from the start.

      Easy-breezy.

      Then he met Bren in Beach Haven.

      She was just a kid then, genuine jailbait. But Ike wasn’t old enough—or maybe just not smart enough, or strong enough—to know better. He took one look at Brenda Ann Johnson on the beach in that not-so-virginal white bikini and he fell hard. Got her name tattooed on his right forearm a few days later, rimmed by a heart. Knocked her up in no time, and felt obligated to settle down and support a family.

      Sure as hell not easy to do on a rented drum set and a dream.

      God knows he tried, though. For her, for his precious baby Ava, and later, for Camden, who Bren always called their “midlife crisis surprise.”

      But Cam turned out to be Ike’s salvation. If he didn’t have Cam after he lost everything else, he’d have had nothing to live for.

      Then again, if he didn’t have Cam, maybe he’d still have his Brenda.

      Cut it out!

      Ike guiltily steers his brain away from that particular thought process, though not as effectively as he used to.

      When Cam was a little girl, it was much easier for him to focus on her many needs and not on his own devastation—or what might have been. For a long time, Ike was able to ignore the truth: it was the second pregnancy that did Brenda in.

      She went off her medication, afraid of what it might do to the baby. And she never went back on it—not that he knew, anyway.

      So if Cam had never been born, he’d still have Brenda. Sometimes, in his aging, irrationally resentful mind, it’s that simple.

      “Yo, Ike, what d’ya think of the new digs out back? Nice, huh?” Billy, one of the bartenders, asks as he materializes at this end of the bar to load a blender with ice.

      “Nice,” Ike agrees, forcing himself back to the present, away from the futile what if’s.

      “You guys sounded good tonight.”

      “We always sound good.”

      “Better on the new stage, though, right?” Billy’s bare, muscular, tattooed arms reach for some kind of blue liqueur, some berries, pineapple. He tosses it all into the plastic pitcher with the ice, then flips the switch.

      “What the hell kind of drink are you making?” Ike asks above the blender, the chatter, the wailing guitars out back.

      “This here? It’s for them.” Billy indicates a couple of clean-cut guys down the bar.

      They’re wearing pastel polo shirts, shorts, no socks—cologne, too, Ike’s willing to bet. He knows their kind; he’s been seeing more and more of them around here lately, and fewer rockers, bikers, working-class types.

      Billy pours the fruity slush into a pair of glasses—real ones, not plastic—then plunks in a pair of straws and paper umbrellas, garnishing the whole thing with a wedge of pineapple on the rim.

      “Cripes, Billy, a fancy stage, girl drinks…next thing I know you’ll be wearing a tux.”

      “That ain’t gonna happen.”

      “Don’t be so sure. I think Jerry’s trying to change the image of the place, attract a different kind of crowd, like what they tried to do up in Asbury Park.”

      Billy smirks and heads off down the bar with his girl drinks, leaving Ike to drink his beer and reminisce about the glory days here on the South Jersey Shore.

      He keeps an eye on the crowd, though—still looking for Brenda.

      In case he really did see what he thought he saw earlier, from the stage.