Gravesend

by Boyle, William

  Still nothing from Zombie Ray Boy. Prison quiet.

  She started to walk away and then stopped. “What happened back there?” she said. “You seemed upset by what your buddies were saying.”

  “They’re not my buddies,” Ray Boy said, looking up.

  “They’re not?”

  “Listen, what do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything.”

  “Then leave me alone.” He lit another cigarette.

  “Sorry,” Alessandra said. She bowed her head, embarrassed. She headed back the way she came and wondered if he’d call her back over to apologize. But he said nothing. She looked over her shoulder at him. He wasn’t the same as everyone else. He was ruined past the point of repair.

  Ray Boy got up and started walking in the other direction, toward the Verrazano.

  Alessandra lost him in the darkness and walked away from the water slowly, her head down.

  Alessandra wandered up and down blocks she hadn’t walked since high school on the way home and found another bar. Murphy’s Irish. It looked like some nightmare sports bar. Techno blared and ESPN was up on all the screens. She went in anyway. The one gin-and-tonic hadn’t done enough for her. And now, fresh from being turned away by Ray Boy, she wanted to pick someone up. But what were her options? Where did you go after being ignored by Ray Boy Calabrese? Running to the arms of some chubby plumber, all ass crack and double chins? Or to some manic depressive electrician with back hair? Weren’t many rungs on the ladder lower than the hate crime-perpetrating, hangdog ex-con. She was open to women, but here they were scarier than the men: balding, scraggly, leathery from tanning beds.

  She sat on a duct-taped stool at the bar and ordered a gimlet from the bartender. He had too much gel in his hair. He didn’t know what a gimlet was. Even if he did or even if she told him how to make it, it would be terrible. The guy wouldn’t have the ambition to use real limes instead of Rose’s. She was desperately missing her L.A. bartenders again. She figured she’d have to go Downtown Brooklyn or to Manhattan. Here it was just dough-eyed guidos that couldn’t even yank a beer the right way. She thought twice, running through a list of what this guy could maybe pull off. Martini? Probably not. Manhattan? Doubtful. She just ordered a double Beefeater on the rocks, going all in, figuring she’d try to make herself blurry drunk to dull the shittiness of everything around her.

  “What kind of music you into?” the bartender said.

  She worked on her double Beefeater and didn’t answer him.

  The guy shrugged and went back to other end of the bar, pouring a drink for a guido who could’ve been his twin.

  There wasn’t anyone in the bar she could find any hope in. Couple of tight T-shirt jokers on the Megatouch. A bearded dude eating mangled fries at the bar and washing them down with a wet-labeled Coors Light. A table of Russians acting way too Russian. Clammy waitresses who looked prego or drugged out.

  Better to go home and dream of Ray Boy as he was in high school. Just focus on his face, his eyes, the mechanic’s jacket. Block everything—even poor Duncan—out.

  She downed the double gin and ordered another. She tipped the bartender for keeping quiet. Then she got up and walked home. A little gin stagger in her step now. The El overhead didn’t seem real.

  Six

  Conway had gotten off his shift at Rite Aid, the whole day passing in a hangover blur, and he was driving around in his Civic with a paper cup of coffee that was burning his hand, when he saw Ray Boy trudging along. It took him a second because Ray Boy had his hoodie up. Conway followed him down to the water. He parked near Best Buy and hoofed it. He kept at a safe distance and ducked behind a fence on the other side of the tennis courts. Ray Boy sat on a bench and lit a cigarette. Conway couldn’t believe it, couldn’t fucking believe it, when he saw Alessandra Biagini walk up to Ray Boy, somber and respectful, like she was presenting the gifts to the monsignor during Mass. He couldn’t see what they were saying to each other, but his blood was rattling, and he wanted to charge them. He wanted to throw Ray Boy down. Maybe even throw Alessandra down.

  When Alessandra left, he thought about following her, but he didn’t. He wanted to keep tabs on Ray Boy, who was walking in the dark to the bridge.

  Conway walked parallel to Ray Boy, staying behind the tennis courts and little league fields as long as he could. Then there was no cover, so he hung back and walked in place until Ray Boy was about a hundred paces ahead.

  Conway had come down here the night Duncan was killed. He’d walked the whole length of the promenade back and forth until the sun came up, proving that the world wasn’t going to be dark for the rest of time.

  He and Duncan had come down to the water often as kids, riding their bikes to and from the Sixty-Ninth Street Pier, weaving in and out of the bike lane, sweeping by pedestrians, tossing rocks out into the water from their bikes, trying not to lose balance, swerving to avoid smashed rats. Duncan loved to stop once they got under the Verrazano and look out at the Narrows, small boats and big boats dotting the water, and tell Conway stories about killer whirlpools that would suck you down if you ever fell into the water. Conway always asked how deep it was and Duncan always had different answers. A hundred feet. A thousand feet. Neverendingly deep. Duncan said the water got blacker and blacker the deeper you went and that there were whole races of albino fish that lived down there, white-skinned with beady yellow eyes. If they stood there long enough, Duncan would start to talk about all the people who jumped off the bridge. He’d imagine out loud what it’d be like to hit the water, probably like hitting cement leaping from that height, what it’d do to your insides. Conway never got tired of listening to his brother talk.

  His father used to come down here, too. Just about every day after Duncan died and before his mom ran off. Conway would follow him, the way he was following Ray Boy now, until his father collapsed on a bench, no walk left in him. He’d feed the pigeons, sprinkling stale Italian bread at his feet, wanting the pigeons close to him. Sometimes they’d land on him. It was like pictures Conway had seen of Venice, tourists posing with pigeons on their shoulders and heads. But for Conway’s father it was more about being in hell. That only lasted two or three weeks. Eventually, the old man made a sad fort of the house, hardly ever left.

  Before Conway knew what was happening, Ray Boy was doubling back toward him. Conway tried to find cover, but there wasn’t any. Ray Boy was in his face almost before he could blink. “You need a manual?” Ray Boy said.

  “Huh?” Conway said.

  “We can go somewhere. I’ll draw you a map. Whatever you need.”

  “Why don’t you just kill yourself?”

  “I need you to do it.”

  “Why?”

  Nothing.

  “Why?” Conway said again.

  “It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  Conway nodded.

  Ray Boy said, “So I need you to do it. It’s pretty simple why, I think. However I can accommodate you, let me know. You can’t do it, you feel like you can’t do it, I understand that. You’re not cut out for it. Fine. Pretend you are. Just for a minute. Thirty seconds. Less. That’s all it takes. Pretend you got it in you.”

  Conway said nothing.

  “You want, we’ll go back upstate. Hawk’s Nest. Put me in the trunk, and we’ll go back up. You’re afraid of getting in trouble maybe? You won’t. We’ll put plastic down in the cellar. I’ll show you what to do. How to silence the shot. I’ll show you where to bury me. There’s two hundred acres up the hill behind that house. Trees. Cold ground. Animals. That’s it. I’ll show you the spot to put me in the ground. I’ll help you dig the hole before, you want. Then we go back to the house, do it, bring me back to the hole in a wheelbarrow, dump me in. The hole will be deep. I can’t help you fill it back in. That’ll take some time. Or we just do it out there in the woods to begin with.”

  “Your family?”

  “My family what?”

  “They’ll look for you. Figure it’
s me maybe.”

  “I’ll write them a note, say I’m gone forever. To wherever. They won’t question it.”

  “You know for sure?”

  “I’ll make it so they don’t.”

  Conway said, “What did Alessandra Biagini want with you?”

  “Who?”

  “Girl came up to you on the bench. Alessandra.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know her. Nothing. This a plan?”

  “She didn’t say anything?”

  “She wanted a cigarette.”

  Conway was hung up on the image of Alessandra talking to Ray Boy. But maybe it was just him putting a spin on it that wasn’t there. Could’ve been a coincidence. Long shot, though.

  “It’s a plan,” Conway said, and he turned and started to walk away.

  “Let’s go now,” Ray Boy said. “I want you to do it now.”

  “No, I’ll let you know when,” Conway said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  He drove around the neighborhood, looking for Alessandra. Alessandra Biagini. It was crazy that she sat in front of him all those years in grade school. Pure luck. There was nobody in their homeroom that had a last name starting with C. So there was Alessandra with her small back and dark hair just a foot from him. Sometimes he’d wanted to reach out and touch her hair with its melon shampoo smell. Other times he’d just get lost looking at her neck if she had her hair up, her olive skin, never any pimples like the other girls had. She’d turn around and smile at him, ask him for homework or something, and she had these teeth, shiny white, and these lips that looked freshly-glossed all the time. She chewed gum outside of class, peppermint, and she always had Binaca in class, spraying it on her tongue and then letting out a little sigh. Conway would try to sneak looks between the buttons of her white blouse, catching flashes of flowered pink training bras in fifth and sixth grade and regular-seeming bras, white and black, in seventh and eighth. The way she wore her uniform, the checkered plaid skirt with tights underneath, the white blouse and red tie, neck button never buttoned, soft cardigans in the winter with darker and thicker tights, kept Conway up nights in grade school. He couldn’t draw, but a few times—sitting on his bed on lonesome afternoons, Duncan at some after-school activity, Mom volunteering at the church, Pop at work—Conway tried to draw Alessandra in her uniform, filling pages in spiral notebooks, never getting it right. When it went on for too long he’d try to draw her naked. He was even worse at that, giving her saggy old lady boobs and jutting hips, lumpy legs, a blocky circle head balanced on a peanut of a neck. He’d tear up the drawings and deposit them in garbage cans around the neighborhood, pieces here and pieces there, on different corners.

  No sign of Alessandra. He had the radio off now and was thinking about how Ray Boy made it all sound so easy. He drove by Alessandra’s house. He remembered where her family lived because he’d walked by their house every day as a kid, hoping that one day the shade would be up in Alessandra’s window and she’d be changing, giving him a private show, a little striptease, putting her hair up and puckering out her lips, spraying Binaca on her tongue.

  He thought about knocking on Alessandra’s door and telling her his whole sob story, about how life had been since Duncan died: fucking up, going off the rails, Rite Aid.

  An actress. She’d reach out with sympathy? She’d offer her shampoo smells and Binaca breath to him, a shelf-stocker, a shitheel in a dirty booze-stinking shirt and thrift store coat, living with his old man in a flop house of failure and regret? She’d do that? Doubtful.

  She was what, impressed by Ray Boy, by his turn-around? Maybe that’s why she was talking to him. Maybe she had some Hollywood sense of this guy deserving a new start.

  Conway drove away, passing Stephanie Dirello’s house. Her whackjob mother was outside, sweeping up the front walk in her housedress.

  McKenna called and wanted to get a drink at Murphy’s Irish. Conway headed straight there. McKenna was waiting for him in the same booth as the night before. They slapped five. The bartender brought over shots and a pitcher. “Here’s to forgiveness,” McKenna said, already seeming half-lit.

  They put back the shots.

  “How’s Marylou?” Conway said.

  “Don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I get you in trouble?”

  “Let it be. What’s the deal? Where we at?”

  Conway talked about his most recent run-in with Ray Boy, keeping his voice low, saying this was the way it was going to go down. McKenna nodded along, his eyes glassed over. Conway wanted to know if it’d work.

  McKenna said, “More shots.” He stood, wobbly, and bellied up to the bar, ordering two double shots of Jack. He brought the shots back, balanced on his palms, doing a little crabwalk for kicks, and put them on the table in front of Conway. “Tomorrow I take you back to the range.” Then he started singing “Home on the Range.”

  “I’ll need, you know, I’ll need another—”

  McKenna shushed him dramatically. “You’ll need another slice of carrot cake.”

  Conway laughed. “I’ll need another slice of carrot cake.”

  McKenna, even drunker than Conway had realized, leaned over the drinks. “Carrot cake equals pistola, sí?”

  “Sí, sí, Señor McKenna,” Conway said.

  McKenna took his shot. “Spanish, junior year, Ms. Polanco,” he said, reaching under the table, grabbing his crotch. “I had such a boner for her. I’d sit there, the whole class, just staring, drooling on my desk. You think she’s up to now? I wish I had her number.”

  “She was so hot.” Conway sipped his whiskey.

  “Remember, remember,” McKenna slurring, “we thought she was fucking that senior. Frankie Mazzo.”

  “Maz had pictures.” Conway thought about Alessandra again. “You remember Alessandra Biagini?”

  “From Kearney?”

  “Yeah, and I went to MPB with her.”

  “Tight little body. She was in all the plays. You used to talk about her non-stop.”

  “Never really had the guts to talk to her. Not since grade school anyway. I’d see her outside Kearney when we’d drive over there in the afternoons, and I’d want say something, see if she wanted to go to the city or something.”

  “Standing outside Kearney, those chicks in their uniforms, Christ. I remember that one smelled like vanilla perfume. Fuck was her name?”

  “Mary Parente.”

  “Mary Parente!” McKenna’s eyes rolled back in his head, “Jesus Christ. You didn’t even have to get that close to smell her. You could smell her across the parking lot.”

  “I saw Alessandra. She’s back.”

  “You’re what, interested? How’d she look?”

  “Good. Great.”

  “Better act soon before you wind up in Shawshank.”

  Conway was still sipping his double shot, not making a dent in it.

  “You want a straw?” McKenna said. “Drink up.”

  A couple of hours later, Conway and McKenna left the bar. They stumbled back to the Civic. Conway was thinking seriously about driving home. McKenna said do it and bring him along. Conway got behind the wheel and turned the car on. McKenna got in the backseat, sprawling, yawning. “Take me home to Pop, driver,” McKenna said. “I want to see Pop. I want to tell Pop he’s the greatest.”

  “Here we come, Pop,” Conway said. He put the radio on, McKenna pounding the back of his seat.

  McKenna said, “Driver, drive. Take me to Pop. I need to have a consultation with Pop. I need Pop’s advice.”

  “Pop’s in. Pop’s seeing patients.”

  “We need more booze.”

  “We do,” Conway said, feeling like he was back in high school. “And we need Ms. Polanco and Alessandra.”

  “Ms. Polanco!”

  Conway took the car away from the curb, almost ramming into a parked Pontiac Firebird across the street. He felt like this wasn’t going to end well. How could it? Sirens in the rearview, telephone pole in the front seat. But he kept drivin
g, tunnel vision all the way, the radio guiding him. McKenna was shouting along to the music. It was an old Nirvana mix, played a hundred thousand times in this car and on the stereo in his room, but it wasn’t skipping and it felt new tonight. Conway was moving his head, wiping the window, thinking, Don’t let me get pulled over don’t let me get pulled over don’t let me get pulled over.

  Conway parked at a hydrant outside a bodega on some dark and forbidding corner. Nothing looked familiar. He couldn’t even read what block it was. They went in, bought two twelve-packs, and came out, half-embracing, half-gut-punching each other, twirling the twelve-packs like they were basketballs. McKenna dropped his and a few of the beers broke in the box, splashing a sudsy mix of glass and beer out the handle-holes.

  “This is like fucking Afghanistan!” McKenna said.

  Conway snorted, thinking this was just a gluey hallucination now, not even real.

  Back in the car, driving again, Conway opened a beer in his lap. He brought it to his mouth on the sly, everything feeling slo-mo weird.

  Home was in front of them now somehow, behind a telephone pole and an extra high-seeming curve. Out of the car then. Leaving the doors unlocked. They stumbled through the front gate, beers in pockets, McKenna with three under each arm, his box gone soggy. Conway balanced his twelve-pack on his head and tried to make the key fit the hole. Pop was there behind the curtain, looking fish-eyed like in a carnival mirror. He opened the door.

  “Pop,” McKenna said. “Good old Pop.”

  Pop said, “You boys should be ashamed.”

  “The bozo shawl bead claimed,” McKenna said. “You’re right, Pop.” He reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a hundred percent correct.”