A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself

by William Boyle

  “Stop,” Rena says, opening her eyes, the feeling of needing to puke hitting her again.

  “I’m getting carried away?”

  Rena turns and throws up again.

  “You poor thing,” Wolfstein says.

  “I’m sorry,” Rena says.

  “It’s okay. You get the point. Me and Marty Savage and Paul Newman steaming up that little dream bathroom.”

  “I was enjoying it.” Rena says it just to say it at first, but then she realizes it’s true.

  “You were?”

  “I was, I think.” Rena again rips off another square of toilet paper and scrunches it against her lips.

  “You want me to finish?” Wolfstein asks.

  Rena nods.

  Wolfstein starts talking again, continuing the fantasy, talking about her and Paul Newman and this Marty Savage taking off what’s left of one another’s clothes and touching and kissing and seeing it reflected all to forever in the mirrors. The plane hits turbulence at one point. Another flight attendant squeezes into the bathroom, and it’s sweet little Ginny McRae with her velvety lips and chirpy laugh. They’re one body with eight hands. Everything smells like Paul Newman’s rosemary beard. She seems to know when to hold off from going too far. She knows her audience.

  Rena’s not sure if it’s just the act of listening or the fantasy itself or Wolfstein’s sense of humor that’s gripped her. Whatever it is, she feels a little better.

  Wolfstein describes the climax with bravado: “Me and Paul are balling against the mirror, while Ginny and Marty watch. The plane crashes on a desert island. We’re the only four survivors. We live happily ever after.”

  “Wow, that’s something,” Rena says.

  “Right? I like imagining things. That’s why I liked the movies so much.” A beat. “Tell me yours.”

  “My what?”

  “Your fantasy.”

  “I told you already: I don’t think like that.”

  “Make one up. Have fun. It’ll help clear your head.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Just start somewhere.”

  Rena searches her memories. She thinks of Vic at Gershwin’s. She thinks of Vic coming out of the shower, wearing a towel. She thinks of how they were before Adrienne was born. She thinks of the night Adrienne was conceived, those silk sheets, the chandelier in their bedroom turned down low. She thinks of a morning not long before Vic was killed—they weren’t sleeping together much at this point—when they were in the cellar together and he came over while she was putting clothes in the wash and pushed down the pajama bottoms she was wearing. She felt so young. It was short, two minutes or less, a quick thrumming against the washing machine, and then Vic kissed her on each shoulder and pulled up his pants and buckled his belt and disappeared upstairs. She’d hummed while she put the wash in.

  But these are just memories; none are fantasies.

  She tries to remember what her desires were like before Vic, what excited her. She remembers loving the story “The Little Mermaid.” She’d read some beautiful illustrated version as a girl, and it got her interested in mermaids. She read anything she could that had mermaids. She’d go to the beach in Coney Island and wonder if they were out there, swimming under the pier, lounging hidden behind rock jetties. She remembers that she used to daydream about being a mermaid, about being naked in the water, glistening with scales, smooth all over, hung with seaweed. As she grew up, she forgot all about it. Much later, when she’d been married for a while, that Daryl Hannah movie came out. Splash. Tom Hanks was in it, too. Rena saw it alone at the Loew’s Oriental. It made her remember. So, for a couple of weeks in her forties, her secret desire to be a mermaid returned.

  “I’m a mermaid,” Rena says now.

  “That’s good,” Wolfstein says. “Mermaids are sexy. What happens? Where are you?”

  “I’m just poking my head out of the water. The water is really cold. I can see all the stars in the sky. I’m not wearing anything. I have long hair and a long tail, and my skin is glittery.”

  “Perfect. See, you’re doing great. And who comes swimming up? Gentle Vic? Maybe a young Al Pacino?”

  Rena closes her eyes again and puts herself in the fantasy. She’s seeing and feeling as if she’s in the water, in this big expansive ocean, the stars peppered overhead. She’s seeing it all. “No one. I’m here alone. It’s quiet. It’s perfect. The water feels so good.”

  “Okay,” Wolfstein says. “It’s your fantasy.”

  Rena sucks some water up into her mouth or imagines sucking it up into her mouth, and she feels her body under the water. She feels how free she is, how her body is not clobbered by worry or fear or anything. Then she starts to feel self-conscious. She’s sitting on the floor of a bathroom in a sad motel, having just vomited twice. She opens her eyes.

  “You lost it?” Wolfstein asks.

  “I’m no good at this.”

  “The hell you’re not. Being a mermaid was a good start.”

  A ringing echoes from the nightstand. At first, Rena assumes it’s the room phone, and she wonders who might be calling. Maybe the front desk. But then she realizes it’s the phone she bought at the bus station. She jumps up and makes a beeline for it. She fumbles it for a second, but then manages to snap it open and palm it up against her ear. “Hello?” she says into the air, at first thinking this itself must be some fantasy.

  But then she hears the voice. “Grandma Rena, it’s me,” Lucia says. “I need you.”

  LUCIA

  When Walt opens the door of his Brooklyn apartment, Lucia is surprised by how he looks. He’s shockingly thin, with a wispy beard and bad teeth. His skin is almost gray, as if he’s sick. He’s a little bald on top, but he’s got a ponytail, and it’s held in place with one of those wiry twist ties typically used on bread bags. He’s wearing an oversize T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. The shirt is white and features a black silhouette of a leggy pole dancer; next to that, in big bubbly script, it reads SUPPORT SINGLE MOMS. A tattoo on his upper arm seems to be of a rat riding a rocket. He’s got on saggy brown cargo shorts, and she can see his white boxers puffing out of his waistline. “There’s my Lucia,” he says.

  Lucia hesitates. She’s immediately sorry she didn’t tell her upstate cabbie, Justin, to wait a few minutes. The ride down had been nice, relaxing. Justin had been easy to talk to. She hadn’t thought too much about a backup plan. She’d memorized the number for Grandma Rena’s new phone just in case, but she didn’t like to think she might have to call in desperation. Now, here she is, all the money in the world right there on her back, about to walk into the apartment of her sketchy-seeming old man.

  “Hi,” she says.

  Walt pulls her in close for a hug. He smells of cigarettes and Vaseline. His shirt seems like it hasn’t been washed in ages. She sees what looks like the crumbs of Cheez Doodles powdered across his belly. He releases her and then puts his hands on her shoulders and leans toward her. “Let me get a good look at you. You’re a beauty, that’s for sure. Mostly your mother, but I see a little of me in your features.”

  Lucia sees none of him in her. She absolutely can’t imagine that this is her blood father. She’d at least hoped, after talking to him on the phone, that he was handsome in a dangerous way. She could see herself being the daughter of a man like that.

  “You’re not too impressed with me, I can tell,” Walt says.

  Lucia looks over her shoulder and retraces the way she came in: heavy wooden door, dingy staircase, the Laundromat downstairs in full swing.

  Walt continues: “It’s okay. I’m used to it. No one’s ever really impressed with me. Come in. You need to hit the panic button and split, it’s okay with me. No hard feelings.” He smiles, and Lucia gets a better look at just how rotten his teeth are: stumpy, yellow, mangled, at least a few missing.

  “I don’t know,” Lucia says.

  “You’re right to be cautious. That’s using your head. You don’t know me from Adam. I’ve got an id
ea.” He disappears into the apartment.

  Lucia looks inside. She sees a cream-colored couch littered with empty bags of Cheez Doodles and Styrofoam coffee cups, pulled up in front of a black-and-white TV with rabbit ears showing the news. Sealed cardboard boxes are stacked in the corner next to a doorway into the kitchen that’s draped with a moldy, see-through shower curtain. Clothes are piled next to the couch. Walt’s disappeared out of her sightline.

  When he returns, he’s holding a big kitchen knife. It’s got a black handle and a sharp eight- or nine-inch blade.

  Lucia takes a few steps back, headed for the stairs but not taking her eyes off Walt. She pauses at the top of the staircase.

  “Whoa! It’s for you!” Walt explains, holding the knife down at his side. “You just hold it. I want you to feel comfortable.”

  “You want me to feel comfortable holding a knife?”

  “Sure. This way, I try anything, you can just stab me.”

  “I don’t want to stab you. I’ve never stabbed anybody.”

  “It’s just for protection. Think of it like mace. Come on, take it.” He holds out the knife, handle first.

  Lucia moves toward Walt and takes the knife, afraid for a moment that he’ll tug it away from her. He doesn’t. It’s rusty and even sharper-seeming than she’d first thought. She holds it in front of her with both hands, as if she’s never held a knife before.

  “Hey, nice kicks,” Walt says, pointing at her sneakers. “New?”

  She gulps and nods.

  “Come on in, sweetie. Welcome to my humble abode. ‘Walt’s Vault,’ I call it. Where all the magic happens.”

  Lucia follows him inside and sits on the gross couch. She keeps the knife in her lap, pointing upward, and keeps the backpack on, forcing her to sit awkwardly.

  Walt moves over by the window and turns a folding chair around, placing his legs on either side and using the back of the chair as an armrest. The window doesn’t have curtains. It looks down on the street. Lucia has a clear view of the lingerie shop that Walt said on the phone is a front for a brothel. This stretch of Thirteenth Avenue is all storefronts, hunched buses, people walking with purpose out of banks and delis.

  Lucia takes in the apartment. The walls are yellow from age and neglect and water damage. A clothespin is stuffed into a slot on the front of the TV in place of a missing knob. She imagines that he uses the clothespin somehow to change the channels. The rabbit ears are bent, and the picture on the screen is fuzzy. The boxes stacked by the doorway are sealed shut with packing tape. Names are written on the sides of the boxes in Sharpie: TOMMY G., DURANTE, CLAM MAN, CHUB, TONY, GILLY, SLAM BAM. The pile of clothes on the floor next to the couch smells funky.

  “Tell me all about Lucia,” Walt says. “I never would’ve named you that, by the way. I had any say in it, I would’ve pushed for Debbie or Cindy or even Kelly.”

  “There’s not much to tell,” Lucia says.

  “There’s an inheritance, right?”

  “It’s not much.”

  “Not much is more than I got. You got a bank card or something?”

  “I’ve got this knife.”

  Walt laughs. “That’s good, that’s good.” He pauses. “You’ve got a little of me in you, that’s for sure.”

  Coming here was such a bad move. What does she want with a father anyway? She doesn’t need one. She’s never needed one. What she was looking for, she guesses, was the fantasy of a father. This gross creature in front of her—like Gollum in that Lord of the Rings movie—he’s nothing to her, and he’ll never be.

  “Where do you go to school? What’s your favorite color? You have a boyfriend?” Walt puts his hands up. “See, I’m good at this old-man shit. You want a Capri Sun? I got one in the fridge. I was saving it for later, but it’s yours if you want it.”

  “I’m good.”

  Lucia’s wondering what to do now, where she can possibly go. Maybe she’ll call Grandma Rena, and maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll just ride the train from Brooklyn to the Bronx, back and forth. Yeah, real smart, carrying all this money around. Maybe she’ll go back to the Bronx and get an apartment near Yankee Stadium and put all the money in a safe deposit box at some bank and then she can go to every home game and get Derek Jeter’s autograph again and again and again.

  “I can take you to the whorehouse across the street,” Walt says. “Introduce you to some of my pals.”

  “I’ll pass,” Lucia says, angling the knife in his direction.

  “Looking at me, I bet you’re wondering why your old lady ever threw a lay on me.” He brushes his hand over the bald spot on the top of his head. “I had a full head of hair. My teeth weren’t bad. I was in a metal band called Lapse of Sanity. We even played at L’Amour. La-Morz. You heard of that place? ‘Rock Capital of Brooklyn.’ We opened for White Lion once, that was our big accomplishment. Vito Bratta, he was the best guitarist ever, man. Your mother was deep into metal. And, Jesus Christ, was she hot. She’d wear this little Catholic schoolgirl skirt and a band T-shirt just like that GNR shirt you’ve got on. She had the hair. It was her secret world nobody really knew about.” His eyes wander out the window. “I played guitar. I gave it up. The scene changed.”

  Lucia is trying to process this new information about Adrienne. She knew her mother had liked a few of those bands—Guns N’ Roses, of course; Cinderella; Skid Row; Mötley Crüe—but she never knew there was a whole other her that sort of existed in that world, one that’d even go to shows. She tries to picture this trashy metal groupie version of Adrienne and can’t.

  Walt continues: “That was her shirt, huh? We saw Guns N’ Roses at L’Amour in October ’87. Ten bucks. What a night. We were kids.”

  “I should go,” Lucia says.

  “Where you gonna go? You’re practically an orphan. I can take care of you. The money you got, however much, it can get us off and running. I’ve got places to invest, ways to double it, triple it, even. We could move out of this dive, me and you, get a nice joint. I’m not gonna be the kind of old man who rides your ass. No curfew, no lectures on drugs, you can smoke and drink and screw to your heart’s content. You like to screw? You’ve got a little boyfriend, I bet.”

  Lucia stands, the knife at her side now.

  “Come on, kid. You came here because you wanted a relationship, right? I’m offering you one.”

  “I don’t know why I came here.”

  “I know I’m not the guy you wanted or expected, but I’ll clean up my act, I swear. I’ve got a reason to finally. I’ve been looking for a reason.” Walt’s on his feet now, approaching her. He’s close, just a couple of feet away. He reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes, touching the strap of her backpack longingly.

  Lucia winces, pulls away.

  Walt moves closer. “Give me a hug, huh? A nice hug, that’s all I’m asking for.”

  With one hand, Lucia pushes him back. She raises the knife in the other and shows it to him, keeps him at a distance. “Don’t touch me,” she says.

  “I gave you that knife,” Walt says, retreating, putting his hands in the air to prove he’s harmless. “I’m not stupid. I just wanted a little hug from my long-lost daughter, that’s it. You want to listen to music? I’ve got all these old tapes where I’m playing along to the radio. Show you how good I was on guitar.”

  “Just don’t touch me. I’ve gotta think.”

  “What’s in the backpack?” Walt asks, putting his hands behind his head and clasping his fingers together. “You haven’t taken it off the whole time. You got something in there you don’t want to lose?”

  “Shut up!”

  He makes a move for her again, snapping both arms quickly in her direction, and she’s honestly not sure if he’s going for a hug or trying to rip the backpack off her shoulders.

  She dodges him and raises the knife and thrusts it forward, stabbing him in the forearm. She lets her grip slacken on the handle and then drops the knife to the floor.

  Walt fall
s back on his ass, his mouth open, staring up at her. He looks down at the slash. He takes off his shirt and wraps it around the wound, clutching his arm to his chest. “You fucking stabbed me, you little shit,” he says.

  “I told you not to touch me,” she says.

  “I didn’t think you would. I’m bleeding. It really hurts. Can you call someone? Call Gilly. He’ll bring his cousin over; she’s a medic. His number’s in the junk drawer over there.” He thrusts his elbow toward the kitchen.

  Lucia is breathing hard. She looks out the window, looks all over the apartment. She isn’t sure what to do with her eyes or her hands or even her feet. She avoids Walt, who’s whimpering now. Lucia sits on the couch and rocks back and forth. She knocks her knees together. Just leave, she thinks. This isn’t happening.

  Walt coughs. “I’m feeling a little light-headed. Just call Gilly. He’ll know what to do.”

  Lucia stands again. She looks at her hands. They’re shaking. She looks at Walt. It’s a strange feeling to have stabbed someone. He won’t die. It’s just a cut on his arm. He shouldn’t have given her the knife. He shouldn’t have touched her. The panic she’s experiencing has more to do with anger and fear than guilt.

  She moves toward the kitchen, pushing back the moldy shower curtain. Walt’s refrigerator is wide-open. A Capri Sun is on the top shelf next to an uncapped jar of mayonnaise. Takeout boxes are overturned on the bottom shelf. The sink is full of dirty dishes. An overflowing garbage can flowers up under a small window looking out at a brown brick wall. Lucia takes a few deep breaths. She wants a glass of water, but she’s sure there are no clean glasses, and she’s not sure she’d even be able to fit a glass under the faucet with the mess in the sink. Her mouth is dry. She doesn’t touch anything. She opens the junk drawer under the counter next to the fridge and finds a yellow legal pad. Funny there’s a junk drawer when the whole place is junk. She finds Gilly’s number but doesn’t make a move to call him. Instead, she takes out her phone and dials the number she has for Grandma Rena.