SHE STANDS IN FRONT of the roiling Brooklyn sea. Alone. A devastated girl of eighteen. But she is timeless. Ageless. She is a Queen. Almost two years after having lost her baby, not long after losing the love of her life, her gorgeous Jesus-boy, her Hero, her Coney Island King, she rises up from the December sand battered and shivering and weak. Behind her, the amusement park rides sleep, tucked and tarped and snoring. Before the frozen day she had lost her King, death was something she’d only experienced with the messy slaughter of dirty backyard animals. Chickens squawking, goats bleating, pigs screaming. Like her broken heart. Flapping and jerking and bleeding and ready to stop beating. Forever. Her toes touch the frigid water. The starving ocean opens its salty mouth and bears its foamy teeth.