The entrance to the end of the world is protected by one uniformed man in a booth the size of a hall closet. He asks for I.D.’s and intentions. Reasons for our visit. I smile and hand things over. Convinced of our purpose, he gives us directions and let’s us through the gate, raising a padded orange and white barrier. We press forward, Columbus and Martin Pinzón in a black Chevy Cavalier, looking for a tower and a girl.
            We creep through a shifting labyrinth of houses on the verge of collapse. Victorians with cavernous wounds in their sides, the elements slipping through their exposed ribs. Homes held together with ropes and pulleys. There are no Starbucks, no corner bodegas, no Shoprites, no ATM’s. The townsfolk are hidden away and for a moment I speculate aloud if there are any. Could this all be a ruse? An abandoned movie set? Have all people deserted this place – moving inland for security? Convenience? Warmth?
            But we see the girl. We find her beside a large, three-story dwelling. Dressed in colors, she’s the only thing around for miles that’s not grey or beige or broken. We bring her to the edges of things.

            “We come here to see the fireworks on the 4th,” she says as we walk along the water.

            I imagine the tinted boom and crack. The lip of existence lit up and trembling below evaporating mushrooms of fire.

            Here at the end of the world there is also a lighthouse. A long, white column encased in a white metal skeleton, it’s a breathing exclamation point among a cluster of periods. It was cared for by only six men - Thomas Higginbotham, Mike Bailey, Daniel W. Bailey, Herbert Greenwood, Adrien Boisvert and
Frank Shubert – before it was completely handed over to the custody of the Coast Guard and machines. Shubert overlooked it for 43 years, spending most of his time in a house huddled next to the tower. Each day he took care of the soaring pillar, climbing its 87 steps, painting its 1890 body, regulating and adjusting the burst and beat of a revolving, exposed, 1,000-watt heart. He was the last of them when he died here a few years ago - the final civilian lighthouse keeper in the country. Close-up, Shubert’s structure appears so much larger than one would imagine. Plunked down in the midst of tiny things, this might as well be the coast of Alexandria, the tower a seventh wonder.
            The three of us find our spot between liquid and artificial light. In seconds the girl has scaled a stone fence. The wind is pushing with purpose, rushing to that somewhere else it’s always searching for. Behind us the sea is wide-awake and livid, all caps and frothy curls, clawing and chewing. A chalk moon dangles above like a watchful holy ghost. Olga Karmansky, a 19 year-old gymnast from Moldova, stands before us, posed on one slender limb - an elastic flamingo on a white, rock barrier. Her leg and her torso hold still, resisting everything. Seconds later she is twisting in the air, a poised weather vane, defying nature, laughing at the airstream, 4,140 nautical miles from her European homeland. A preposterous 4 A.M. dream splintered in two by consciousness. I wonder silently if she could balance atop a tornado, or perhaps an eyelash.
            I’m looking at this immigrant and this house holding light and the dramatic swatch of sky and water and I’m trying to pin the metaphors I’m conjuring to the skin of my palms and the insides of my lips, but all I can think about is how startling this all is. It hurts to know there are so many secrets embedded in the tiniest spaces of this city – things we will never see or photograph or write about. Hidden behind gates and uniformed men. Locked up in the remnants of crumbling houses. Teetering, with such poise, such staggering grace, on the abyss.