Gravesend (3 page)

Alessandra took a front door key and kissed her father on the head and walked up the block to what she hoped was where Stephanie still lived. Chances were she’d moved out years ago, but you never knew around here. People lived with their parents forever. Scary thought. Alessandra had only been back for a few hours and she was already itching to find her own place.

Alessandra walked into the yard and knocked on the front door. The mailbox still said Dirello.

“You’re who?” Stephanie’s mother said, opening up, right on top of it, as if she’d been waiting for a knock.

Alessandra said, “Hey, Mrs. Dirello, I’m Alessandra Biagini. You remember me? From up the block? I went to school with Stephanie.”

“It’s late.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just eight. I got home today and I thought I’d see if Stephanie still lived here.”

“Of course she lives here. She’s gonna go where?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Dirello. Can I talk to her?”

Mrs. Dirello looked at her through slitty eyes. She was wearing a housecoat, and Alessandra noticed liver spots on her arms and all of these little brown moles that drooped from her skin like withered worms and networks of varicose veins that tattooed her calves. “You’re who?”

“Alessandra from the block. You don’t remember me?”

“Stephanie!” Mrs. Dirello said over her shoulder. Then to Alessandra: “You stay out there.”

“Okay,” Alessandra said. “Thanks so much.”

“You trying to sell us something? I don’t need those chocolate bars. I buy chocolate from Chinese Mary’s son.”

“I’m not selling chocolate.”

Stephanie appeared behind her mother. She was wearing an over-sized sweatshirt and jean shorts. She looked pretty much the same except she didn’t have braces. Her hair was frizzed out and she wore cheapo glasses probably from the Eyeglass Factory on West Twelfth. She still had a thin mustache too, had never taken the time to wax it or pluck it. Maybe Alessandra could help her out, give her a makeover. The possibilities. “Hi, Steph,” Alessandra said. “Been a long time.”

“Alessandra?” Stephanie said. “Wow. What’re you doing here?”

“Trying to sell us something, I think,” Mrs. Dirello said.

Stephanie pushed past her mother. “Give us a second here, Ma,” she said. Mrs. Dirello huffed back into the house, and Stephanie opened the door. “You look great, Alessandra. Wow. You really look like an actress.”

“Thanks. You look great, too. Haven’t changed.”

Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Guys are knocking down the door, trying to get under my big sweatshirt.”

Alessandra laughed. She’d forgotten Stephanie could be really funny. And that accent. Man, Alessandra was happy she’d lost hers. Stephanie’s was thick, cruddy. “I just got home today. Haven’t been here in a long time.”

“Your mother,” Stephanie said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“She used to talk about you all the time. I’d see her where I work, she’d be picking up your dad’s blood pressure pills, and she’d talk about you. ‘Alessandra’s starring in this movie, she’s doing this commercial.’ She was really proud of you. And she was such a character. She’d go around with her shopping cart, just pushing people out of the way.”

“I miss her, yeah. I didn’t get home, but we talked a lot.”

Stephanie lowered her voice. “My mother’s half-a-psycho. She doesn’t leave the house. It’s making her crazy.”

Alessandra shrugged. “You want to come out, get a drink?”

“I don’t really drink.”

“Just for the company then. I need a drink out, I want to catch up.”

“Where?”

“Not many options. Wrong Number?”

Stephanie said, “Heck. Let me go up, change clothes. Come in and sit down.”

“I’ll wait out here,” Alessandra said.

Stephanie disappeared up a back staircase and Mrs. Dirello followed fast on her heels. Alessandra could hear her, saying she better not think she was going out, what did she think she was doing, this girl out front was all whored up and looking for trouble.

Girl was twenty-nine. Imagine. Living like she was still fourteen. Alessandra couldn’t get over it.

Stephanie came out a few minutes later, wearing jeans that rode high above her waist and a pink blouse with ruffled shoulders. She’d put some rouge on her cheeks, with a spray gun it looked like, and her lipstick squiggled out at the corners. “I’m ready,” she said. “
Voila
. Watch them line up.” She curtsied.

Alessandra laughed again.

“Never could figure out how to make myself look nice,” Stephanie said.

“You do look nice,” Alessandra said.

“So acting and lying are pretty much the same thing, right?”

The Wrong Number wasn’t as much of a dive as she remembered. Or maybe they’d cleaned it up. It wasn’t a big glossy sports bar by any stretch, but it also wasn’t an end-of-the-world shithole. Alessandra ordered a gin-and-tonic from the bartender with the aped-out chest and waxy chin and Stephanie got a ginger ale with a lime wedge. They sat at a booth in the back by a jukebox and talked over a Budweiser bottle corked with a low-burning pumpkin-scented candle. “It’s just crazy to be back,” Alessandra said. “So crazy.”

“I can’t imagine,” Stephanie said.

“So, you’re what? A pharmacist?”

“At Rite Aid over on Twenty-Fifth Avenue. Conway D’Innocenzio works there. You remember him?”

“Sat behind me in homeroom for nine years.”

“He’s a stock boy. Works the register sometimes.”

“We were out at the cemetery today, visiting my mother, and we saw Duncan’s grave. Made me remember the whole thing. Hadn’t thought of it in years.”

Stephanie said, “Family never got over that. Conway lived in the Bronx for a few years but he got into drugs pretty bad and wound up coming home. Frankie’s just a shell. Mother’s gone, just whoosh, disappeared one day.” She looked over at the bartender and nodded in his direction. He was pulling a draft for a hook-nosed old timer in a Yankees cap with a flat brim. “You know who that is?”

“The bartender?” Alessandra said.

“Teemo. Ran with Ray Boy Calabrese. He got out years ago. You remember the trial and everything?”

“I could forget?” Alessandra paused. “You got any cigarettes?”

“I don’t,” Stephanie said.

“Christ, it’s weird to be home.”

Teemo came over to the table with a dishrag over his shoulder. “You ladies okay?” he said, only looking at Alessandra.

“Fine,” Stephanie said.

He smelled like ten different kinds of shitty cologne and wore designer jeans with pre-ripped holes and a frayed waistband and had a fake tan that had left orange run marks on his neck and arms. His white sneakers were spotless. “Just checking in,” he said, getting closer to Alessandra. “Don’t want you ladies to be thirsty.”

Alessandra said nothing, ignored him.

“I know you?” he said to her.

“No,” Alessandra said, though they’d been at the same parties hanging out a dozen times in high school. She didn’t really know him, hadn’t hooked up with him or anything, because he was a few years older, but they’d been around each other a lot. She was glad he didn’t totally recognize her, didn’t remember her name.

“You look real familiar.”

“I don’t know you,” she said. “Let it go.”

“End of the night, you’ll be begging for my number,” Teemo said, shrugging. He walked back to the bar slowly, showing Alessandra his ass in the tight jeans and laughing. “Begging!”

Alessandra lifted her drink. “This guy,” she said to Stephanie. “You believe him?”

Stephanie said, “He’s always been awful.”

They finished their drinks and left, reluctant to order another round from Teemo. They walked around the neighborhood instead, and Stephanie told Alessandra what had become of everyone. Joanne Galbo was living in Bay Ridge, teaching Biology at Our Lady of the Narrows. Mary DiMaggio worked for a urologist in Dyker Heights. Melissa Sanchez was a cop, you believe that? And Melissa Murphy died on 9/11, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 101st floor of Tower One. Adrienne Marra and Vinny Sorrento were married and had boinked six snot-nosed kids into existence. Andy Pascione worked construction, hurt his back on a site, and was hooked on pain meds—his wife and daughter had left him and moved to Florida and he just rented pornos from the last video store in the neighborhood and stayed inside with a box of tissues and the shades drawn.

Alessandra felt exhausted.

Back by Stephanie’s house now, they stopped outside the front gate and Alessandra could see Mrs. Dirello framed in an upstairs window, watching them.

“I’m glad you came by to see me,” Stephanie said. “I’m happy you’re back.”

“Your mom’s watching us,” Alessandra said.

“She’s got nothing better to do. Forget it.”

“It’s creepy.”

“Sorry,” Stephanie said, and she reached out to hug Alessandra.

Alessandra took the hug, patting Stephanie on the back. “Okay, sweetie,” she said.

Stephanie ran inside, opening and closing the door gently, and Mrs. Dirello disappeared from the upstairs window. Alessandra walked home, wishing she had her father’s smokes, wishing she’d been born in another place.

Three

Conway was on 17B headed back toward Monticello. There was no noise coming from the trunk. Ray Boy seemed peaceful. Conway held the wheel with his hands at ten and two, going just under the speed limit. He knew the only ones who drove this way were eighty year olds and people who had something to hide. He got pulled over, maybe he could explain it to the cop:
This guy’s responsible for my brother being dead. Let it slide this time
.

None of it made sense. He should’ve just brought Ray Boy into the house. But the tattoo and the crying jag had thrown him off and he’d gotten the idea that he should take Ray Boy back to Brooklyn, to Plumb Beach, and that nothing could stand in his way there, not in the place that Duncan had been killed, and that it would mean more there anyway.

Seemed like the guy wanted to be put out of his misery. It almost made things harder. Conway had always envisioned a fight.

But it was going to have to be an execution.

The movie of the next couple hours played out in Conway’s mind: Ray Boy on his knees at Plumb Beach, eyes closed, the headlights of cars from the Belt flickering over them, Conway pressing the gun up to Ray Boy’s head, pulling the trigger, the fucker’s brains going splash in the dark. Roll credits.

Guts up
, Conway thought.
It’s all been leading to this. Probably this is the way it’s supposed to happen.

He passed an abandoned Hasidic children’s camp and then a strip club called Searchlights that was just a rundown house with a trailer attached to it. He considered, honestly, stopping to get a lap dance. Why not? Ray Boy resting in the trunk, not going anywhere, Conway just letting off a little steam. He thought better of it, though. He was also scared shitless of what he’d find in a trailer trash strip club on a dark-as-hell road between Monticello and Hawk’s Nest. Toothless amputees probably. Obscenely fat women who had to be brought on stage in wheelbarrows and emptied onto the pole. Imagine.

Once he was back on 17, signs called it the Quickway, not a back road anymore but the four-lane that would bring him back to some kind of civilization, he felt better. Lights. Other cars. Town names he remembered from the way up. Wurtsboro. Middletown. Middletown
—
Fuck kind of name was that? Middle of where?

Conway put the radio on because he wanted to hear something. The Yankees were coming in fuzzy and distant, but he listened anyway. The bad reception was full of sizzles and pops. The clawing sound filled the car. He hoped it was loudest in the trunk. Quiet, forgive-me-please Ray Boy getting his ears blown out.

The world outside shot by like a flip book in reverse. Dog name towns. Getting back on 6 over the mountain. That traffic circle like it was Grand Army Plaza or some shit. The narrow Palisades hugged the Civic in the dark. No shoulder. People did seventy-five in a fifty. Deer eyes glowed in the trees. Conway was paranoid of stupid deer and stupid Troopers. At the George Washington, the sign of almost being home, he thanked Christ he had an EZ Pass. All the while, Ray Boy didn’t move. The radio was on loud, getting clearer as they got closer to the city and then all the way clear and booming, the Yankees getting routed by the Blue Jays, Cano hitting two homers and it not being enough, the pitching just not there.

On the West Side Highway, he finally got to jerk the car around a little, no chance of getting pulled over unless he broke a hundred or blasted through a light. He moved from lane to lane, took bumps without braking, and he could hear Ray Boy finally, rattling around, groaning through the tape over his mouth, being lifted into the trunk hatch and then plopped back down.

He took the Battery to the Gowanus and then cut left onto the Belt, the gas light on now, no time for detours to gas up in Dyker Heights, no stopping until Plumb Beach. The Belt was electric, thrumming with zipfast cars, and Conway rolled the window down to let the cold in. He saw his breath in front of him on the windshield.

At Plumb Beach, out of the car and stretching, Conway looked around. No action. He went to the Dumpster, squatted, and scratched a line with a jagged twist of wire he found in a groove of cracked pavement. Then he put an X through his entire tally of visits. This would be his last time coming out here.

He went back to the Civic and got the .22 from the glovebox. He held it at his side. He went around to the trunk and beat on it with his fist. He said, “I’m opening up. You do anything, I’ll just start firing into the trunk.”

Nothing.

He wondered, for a second, if maybe Ray Boy had suffocated.

He opened the trunk, poking the gun in first. Ray Boy was just curled up there with his eyes open, shivering.

“You heard me?” Conway said.

Ray Boy nodded.

“Can you get out?”

Another nod. Ray Boy threw his taped-together legs out of the trunk and stood up in front of Conway. It seemed impossible, twisting his upper body out the way he did. Ray Boy could probably do whatever he wanted to. Break free. Run. Beat Conway down. But he was resigned to his fate. Conway didn’t even need the gun. But he stuck it in Ray Boy’s side anyway and told him to move.

Ray Boy shook his head. He couldn’t walk with the tape around his legs, but Conway wanted to see him try and fall. If the guy was just going to go down like a dog, Conway wanted to humiliate him at least. He pushed him forward with the gun and Ray Boy toppled, face-planting into the glittery blacktop of the lot. He lifted his head up and showed scrapes on his cheeks and chin.

“Can’t walk,” Conway said. “Maybe I should make you wriggle out into traffic.” He paused. Then: “Too good for you. Get up.”

Ray Boy turned over and tried to kick himself into a stand. He couldn’t quite do it and stayed on the ground, looking up at the sky.

Conway wondered if people could see them from the Belt. Probably not, driving by as fast as they were. He took the car key out of his pocket, straddled Ray Boy and cut the tape from his legs. Guy wasn’t going to run, and he needed to get him out to the shoreline.

Ray Boy stood up, his hands still taped behind his back, his mouth taped shut, his upper arms taped to his sides. Tape covered his legs, but there was an open seam that ran from his boxers to his ankles, allowing movement. Ray Boy was shivering harder, his skin red now, and Conway stared at the Duncan tattoo.

Shuffling forward, silent, goose-skinned, Ray Boy had his head down and was walking like a condemned man in shackles.

“I hope you see Duncan out here,” Conway said, behind Ray Boy, the gun fixed on him. “Everywhere you look.” Pause. “You see him?”

Slow nod.

“He’s gonna get some peace tonight. Finally.”

They were out at the shoreline now, the dark beach littered with ocean-soft glass that caught sparks under the moon.

Conway pushed Ray Boy down in the pebbly sand, and he turned over, his eyes open. “You get a tattoo, you think what? All’s forgiven?”

Ray Boy just looked at him.

Enough with the silence. Conway wanted to hear some begging. He stripped the tape from Ray Boy’s mouth.

“You think I should forgive you?” Conway said. “That’s really what you think? ‘Sorry, man. I was a different person then. I made mistakes.’”

Head shake.

“Say something,” Conway said. “Say, ‘No.’”

Ray Boy said, “No. I don’t think that.”

“Good.” Conway got over Ray Boy, just stood over him, and aimed the gun down at his face. He held his other hand out as if he’d block the blowback, the brain splatter, something he’d seen in a movie. “You feel Duncan out here? His spirit?”

“I do,” Ray Boy said.

“He’s happy, I bet.” Conway’s finger was on the trigger, trying to pull it in, trying to screw a bullet into Ray Boy’s eye. If he got the one in, then maybe he could annihilate Ray Boy’s whole face, empty the gun into his mouth and forehead and cheeks, so all that was left when he was done would be a stumpy blob of throat and hair. To have Faceless Ray Boy on the shoreline, washed over in the dark with the tide, that’d be a thing to carry him.

But he couldn’t make his finger do the work.

Ray Boy just waited. He seemed willing to let him figure it out. Ray Boy said, “I deserve it.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Conway said. “You wanna die so bad, why didn’t you just kill yourself?”

No answer.

“Huh?” Conway said.

“Has to be you,” Ray Boy said.

Conway was a pussy. He’d always been a pussy. He was shaking. He was picturing Duncan dead on the Belt, head run over, body mangled and tire-tracked. And here was the guy that did it. Not begging for mercy. Begging for justice, saying Conway had an obligation to execute him. Conway couldn’t. No guts to fire. No strength in the hand that he needed to make it happen, his trigger finger gone fishy, his bones melted under his skin. A coward, that’s all he was. He stepped back from Ray Boy and put the gun in his waistband.

Ray Boy said, “No.”

“I’ll leave you out here,” Conway said. “Maybe you’ll freeze. Or starve.”

Again: “No.”

Conway turned and rushed back to the car, leaving Ray Boy there in the sand. He got in and drove away in the dark. He panted onto the steering wheel, the windows fogging up. Someone flashed him as he merged back onto the Belt, and he snapped the lights on.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” McKenna said. “I should’ve been there.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Conway said.

They were sitting in a booth at Murphy’s Irish, the only joint they went to since Teemo started tending bar at The Wrong Number. The place was awful and bright with five TVs showing ESPN and bartenders that could’ve been Teemo, probably had their own bad histories, greasy, balloon-chested fucks in Nautica gear with Yankee tats on their necks and white date rape caps. But Conway and McKenna didn’t know anything about them and could pretend. McKenna had gotten there before Conway and lined up a few shots of Jack and two pitchers of Bud. Conway was feeling the booze, his clothes sweaty even though he was cold. “I just couldn’t do it. My hand wouldn’t let me.” He pounded his shooting hand on the table and then brought down his other fist on top of it. “As good as broken.”

“Take it easy,” McKenna said. “So you just left him out there?”

“I’m gonna do what else? Give him a ride home?”

“Guy comes after you, what then?”

“He won’t.” Conway shook his hands out.

“That’s for sure?”

“You didn’t see him.”

“This is fucked.” McKenna chugged a cup of beer. “Royally. Now what?”

“Don’t know.”

“You go back to stocking shelves and Ray Boy gets on the first bus back upstate?” McKenna stopped, scratched his chin. “He stays in the neighborhood, what happens? Christ. Ray Boy back around. Scary thought.”

Conway couldn’t even consider it.

McKenna said, “I say we go out there now. Few drinks calmed you down. I’m there, I’ll do it if you can’t.”

“He’s still out there, you think?”

“He’s gonna go where? On the Belt and put out his thumb? Way you tell it, the guy’s just waiting to die.”

“He is,” Conway said, and he stood up, knocking the underside of the table with his knees, sending plastic cups toppling onto the floor.

They were both drunk and McKenna was driving. He got pulled over, he knew what to do. No cop was going to take him in or even give him a ticket. Conway was sweating, the gun clammy against his waist. The defroster in McKenna’s car was throwing off steam, slicking the windows over and making the brake lights ahead of them hazy. Another run, another chance to fail.

“I should just use it on myself,” Conway said. “I’m the one needs to be put out of my misery.”

McKenna said, “Fuck that. What’d this guy do to you? Play some mind game?”

“I off myself, it’s all done. That’s it.”

“You’re talking shit now, Con.” McKenna wiped the windshield with the back of his sleeve, swiping out a clean view. “I ain’t gonna pity you, that’s what you want. Get your shit together. You do this or you don’t, that’s it.”

Conway looked down at his lap. He couldn’t believe it. A chance, finally, and he turned out to be a full-on chump. All those years of lying to himself.

“You were ready when we left Murph’s,” McKenna said.

Conway shook his head, tried to will himself to have strength, tried only to think of Duncan, seventeen forever, his blood scabbed over by grit on the Belt.

Back at Plumb Beach, Conway marked the Dumpster again, on his knees, booze-shaky. McKenna looked at him like he was a total fucking whackjob. Conway etched a little claw onto the right foot of his squat, slashy X. Then they walked to the shoreline, Conway leading, gun drawn, McKenna close behind. Marks in the sand where Ray Boy had been but no Ray Boy. Signs of rolling around. Footsteps. Tape he’d shed.

“Fuck me,” Conway said.

“Free and roaming,” McKenna said. “He played you.”

“That’s not how it went. I just pussied out.” Conway wound up to throw the gun.