Gravesend

by Boyle, William

  The way the light was hitting the window now, he couldn’t see in. But maybe no one was at the desk where Ludmilla used to sit or maybe the desk was done for, retired.

  He should’ve gone in there all those years ago. He should’ve asked her out. Maybe things would’ve been different. Maybe he would’ve kept making music because she liked it. Maybe they would’ve gotten sushi every Friday night on Eighty-Sixth Street, walking back to her place (maybe she lived in one of those nice new condos on Twenty-Fourth Avenue) under the El, holding hands.

  Conway had always been a first-class fuck-up. No hope and no balls was a rotten combination. And the way he’d dealt with the whole Ray Boy situation defied logic. For years, he’d dreamt about getting revenge on Ray Boy, but he did nothing to prepare. He didn’t learn to shoot, didn’t lift weights. He thought it didn’t matter. Maybe what he really wanted was for Ray Boy to still be Ray Boy. Maybe what he really wanted was to die at Ray Boy’s hands, be overpowered by him, fail in an ultimate and final way.

  He was being honest with himself now. That was what he’d wanted. For as long as he could remember.

  But Ray Boy couldn’t give it to him. Ray Boy had turned the tables. The son of a bitch felt sorry for what he’d done to Duncan.

  No one understood Conway. No one ever had. He didn’t understand himself.

  He wanted to see Alessandra, wanted to apologize to her. She didn’t know what he was, hadn’t been home for so many years. Maybe she’d forgive him. Picturing her while he was fucking Stephanie had made him feel closer to her, like they’d bonded somehow.

  Before going back to Pop’s coffin, he’d stop at her house, see if she’d talk to him.

  Mr. Biagini opened the door. Fur poured out of his ears. He wore slippers patched together with duct tape. His nose was damp-looking. He reminded Conway too much of Pop.

  “Mr. Biagini.” Conway folded his arms across his chest. “It’s Conway D’Innocenzio.”

  Eyes adjusting, Mr. Biagini glanced at him sideways. “Sure, sure. Come inside.”

  Conway stepped inside. “Alessandra home?”

  “She’s home, my daughter. Not for long, though. Got places to be. Too good for her old man, for the old neighborhood. Just got here and already she’s talking about moving out.”

  “She’s upstairs?”

  Mr. Biagini nodded. “I’ll call up to her,” he said. He went to the stairs and put his hand on the railing and leaned forward, his chest punching out, as if it were taking all his energy to call up. “Alessandra, you’ve got a visitor down here.”

  Her voice came from the top of the stairs. “A visitor?”

  “Conway. From school.”

  Conway heard Alessandra huff. “One minute,” she said.

  “Get you anything?” Mr. Biagini said.

  “No, sir. Thanks.” Conway sat down on the couch. Mr. Biagini sat across from him on a recliner. The TV was on low. News. Mr. Biagini picked up the channel changer and flicked around. “How is everything?” Conway said.

  “Huh?” Mr. Biagini strained forward.

  “Everything’s good with you?”

  “Good? What’s good? Waiting around to die, that’s it.”

  Alessandra came downstairs a few minutes later. Her hair was wet, crayon black, glossy. Conway could see beads of water on her neck. Her shirt clung to her. She was wearing gym shorts, and she was barefoot. Conway pictured her in the shower.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  Conway said, “I wanted, I just wanted—”

  “What?”

  “Could we talk somewhere, just me and you?”

  “About?”

  “I just . . . I need to, I just want to,” he lowered his voice, “apologize.”

  “Apologize here and then get out.”

  “I need to talk to someone. I thought maybe I could talk to you. I was drunk when I saw you, I’m sorry. I’m just, it’s this, it’s . . . with Ray Boy out, thinking about Duncan, I don’t know, I just, I’m sorry how I acted toward you. I was way out of line,” Conway groveling now, “and I just hope you’ll forgive me. I don’t want you to think bad things about me. I’m not a bad guy. I didn’t want to give you that impression. I’m not like the guys around here.”

  Alessandra clenched her jaw. “I’ll give you five minutes.”

  They went in the kitchen and Alessandra put on espresso and turned the small clock radio next to the microwave to WCBS, cutting down on the burning silence. They sat across from each other at a Formica table with one of those flecked tops. A few issues of the Daily News were folded open to crossword puzzles, horoscopes, the Metro Section, Mike Lupica’s column. “How’s it being back?” Conway said.

  Alessandra took out a cigarette and lit it. She blew the smoke over her shoulder. “You kidding?” she said.

  “I just . . . I was just wondering if it was weird being back.”

  “Yeah, it’s weird. Next question.”

  “Los Angeles—”

  “You want to make small talk, that’s what you’re after?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to talk about any of this. I’ve never talked to anyone about any of it. Hardly anyone.”

  The espresso bubbled over. Alessandra got up and took the Laroma off the burner. She poured the espresso and rubbed the rim of her cup with a lemon wedge. She came back to the table and put the cup in front of Conway. He spooned sugar into his espresso from a small bowl on the table and stirred.

  “I don’t know what you’re hoping for here,” Alessandra said. “You want me to say you’re forgiven? I already said it.”

  “We used to know each other.”

  “You can’t help who you grow up with. We were kids.”

  “I’ve been a wreck since Duncan. My whole life fell apart after that.”

  “I always felt sorry for you.”

  “I don’t want you to feel sorry.”

  “What do you want?”

  Conway thought about it. He wasn’t sure what he wanted and he wasn’t sure why he was with Alessandra now. Did he really think this was going to play out like a bad movie? She’d forgive him, they’d fuck, and then they’d run off to Nova Scotia together? That wasn’t going to happen. So what was he hoping to accomplish? He didn’t know. Things weren’t neat like that in real life. “I don’t know,” Conway said. “Nothing.”

  “I wish you’d go.”

  Conway toyed with the handle of his espresso cup. “Remember that time in Ms. Lacari’s class? You kept turning around and passing me notes, asking me who I liked, what my job was gonna be when I grew up, what my favorite color was?”

  “I don’t remember that, no.”

  “You kept turning around, smiling. You’d put these little balled-up notes on my desk. Your handwriting was all bubbly. The notes smelled like you. Ms. Lacari yelled at you and you blushed. Made you read your notes in front of the class.”

  “Conway, you were a nice kid. We were friends. What else do you want to hear?”

  “I don’t know. I liked you. I see you again now, and I still like you. You’re beautiful. No one I’ve liked has ever liked me back. Not really.”

  “You should really go.”

  “I heard you had a girlfriend now or something.”

  “You heard that where?” Alessandra stood up.

  “Stephanie.”

  “You saw Stephanie?”

  “She said you had a girlfriend. That true?”

  “I think you should go. Really.”

  “I’m not going.” Conway slurped down the rest of his espresso. “I want you to hear me out.”

  Alessandra went over to the rotary phone on the wall and started the long act of dialing. “I’m calling the cops,” she said. “You’re not out of here in a minute, I’m calling the cops.”

  “Don’t,” Conway said.

  “Daddy!” Alessandra said. She dialed the nine and then started on the one.

  Mr. Biagini came into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

&
nbsp; “Conway’s—”

  Conway ran over and took the receiver from her hand. He ripped the cord out of the base on the wall. “Don’t call the cops please,” he said. “I just want to talk to you.”

  “Kid, leave,” Mr. Biagini said.

  “Mr. Biagini,” Conway said, his hands out. “You know, I’m just . . . I’m desperate.”

  “You ripped the fucking phone out of the wall,” Alessandra said. “Psycho.”

  “I ripped the cord out.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I should’ve known, soon as I saw you,” Alessandra said, “what you were, what you are.”

  “What? I’m not, I’m just . . . I’m not bad. I’m good.”

  Alessandra still had the receiver in her hand. She was waving it around. Conway played out a scenario in his mind: Grabbing the receiver and smashing it over Mr. Biagini’s head, Mr. Biagini letting out a defeated sound, part wail, part deflated oomph, and collapsing to the floor. Alessandra would shriek. Conway would hit her in the face, as if his hands weren’t his own. He’d grab her T-shirt at the neck and rip down and it wouldn’t be easy to rip. His hands would be leading him. His mind would tell him to stop, this was wrong, very wrong, but he wouldn’t be able to stop because his hands had all the power. He would finally make the shirt rip. Alessandra wouldn’t be wearing a bra. Her nipples would be hard from standing barefoot on the cold linoleum. She would be screaming in a way that he had never heard someone scream. Primitive. Guttural. He would hit her again. Feel her teeth under his knuckles. Then he would put his hand over her mouth. She would try to bite him. She’d be crying, snot stringing out of her nose. “Please,” she’d say. He’d get her shorts off. No underwear. He’d hit her again. He’d push her over the table. Take her.

  But that wasn’t happening. It was just some fucked-up fantasy. Conway didn’t really want to rape-rape Alessandra, but he almost got a hard-on thinking about it. What was really happening was pathetic. Alessandra was coming after him with a phone receiver, trying to chase him out the back door like he was a moth that had gotten in by mistake. She swung the receiver. He raised his hands to block the blow. Mr. Biagini picked up a broom from the corner and started to swat at him. “You get outta here now,” Mr. Biagini said. “My daughter tells you to leave, you leave.”

  Conway said, “I just—”

  “No just,” Mr. Biagini said.

  “I don’t know who you think you are,” Alessandra said.

  Conway opened the back door and skittered across the threshold. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Alessandra said, “You don’t know what you are. I’ll tell you: You’re a psycho.”

  “You got a screw loose,” Mr. Biagini said.

  The door slammed in Conway’s face. He looked at the house, the red bricks, the awning over the door, and he felt paralyzed, empty, unable.

  Walking away from Alessandra’s house, Conway looked down at the sidewalk. Crack-lumpy. Weed-stitched. Candy wrappers like ripped flowers dotting dirt squares where the city had put in shitty little trees. Fire hydrants that resembled squat patrolmen. Telephone poles with the copper wire picked clean, probably by some kid who sold it over at One Stop Salvage. He crossed the street as he passed Stephanie’s house and kicked into a run. Conway lifted his head and had a thought about the neighborhood: it had never let him do anything right.

  He was close to home, just up the block. As he got closer to the house, he saw a dark, hooded figure sitting on the front stoop, head down. It was Ray Boy, hoodie drawn over his forehead, staring at the ground. Conway looked all around, as if there would be witnesses to this meeting, as if people would imagine that they were somehow in cahoots, as if that Village Voice reporter might leap out from behind a telephone pole and question the ethics of this encounter.

  Ray Boy didn’t get up. He just sat there.

  Conway approached him. Maybe Ray Boy had been fucking with him all along. Or maybe he’d reneged on their deal, gone bad. What would it take to make him what he once was? Probably not much. Some prodding. A reminder that he ruled the neighborhood before prison, before the shit with Duncan.

  Ray Boy said, “We doing this or what? I can’t wait anymore.”

  “We’re doing it,” Conway said.

  “When?”

  “Whenever I want.”

  Conway couldn’t tell if Ray Boy was smiling, but he could see his yellow teeth, filmy, a gap in the back where he’d lost a tooth, maybe had it yanked in prison.

  “I’m saying now,” Ray Boy said.

  “You don’t get to say,” Conway trying to walk past him up the steps, “get it?”

  Ray Boy reached out and gripped Conway’s leg. “I do get to say. And I’m saying now. We’ve played games enough. I’m gonna make you do this, I’ve got to. Down to the last thing. I gotta hold you at gunpoint to make you kill me, I’ll fucking do it. No more waiting. You can fail at anything else you want, but you can’t fail at this.” His eyes cut through Conway. “Hear me?”

  Conway nodded.

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Up the block.”

  “Walk.”

  Conway didn’t move. “I don’t have a gun anymore.”

  Ray Boy let out a breath. “Christ.”

  “Can I do it with something else?”

  “Something else? You’re kidding, right? You want to go inside, get a fucking butter knife?”

  “No, I’m just saying, how am I gonna do it?”

  “I’ve got a shotgun at the house in Hawk’s Nest. You’ll use that. You’ll hold it up,” Ray Boy miming how to hold a shotgun, “and blow a hole in my chest. Sound good?”

  “I’ve got to go inside. Get something.”

  “Then we’re getting in your car and going upstate.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m coming in.”

  Now it was Conway’s glance digging into Ray Boy. “You can’t.”

  Ray Boy said, “Hurry up.”

  Conway walked up the steps and went inside, shutting off the alarm. He thought about resetting it. What would Ray Boy, not knowing about the alarm, do then? Conway could just set it and hole himself up in the house. Scared. A pussy to the bitter end. If Ray Boy tripped the alarm, the cops would come. They’d haul Ray Boy away, that was it. They wouldn’t go inside, wouldn’t go near the bathroom. Didn’t have a reason to. No one knew about Pop. Conway’s fingers hovered over the buttons. He looked out the little window in the door at Ray Boy, sitting on the stoop, his back still to the house. From behind, he kind of looked just like some guy waiting for his buddy. Could’ve been McKenna. Conway didn’t set the alarm, though. He walked into the kitchen and looked under the sink. He found the tin box full of matchbooks that Pop kept there—from the Golden Nugget, Benny’s Fish & Beer, Villa Roma, Peggy’s Runway, Amendola’s, some of them so old he wondered if they’d even ignite—and pocketed a few. Then he looked for lighter fluid. There was some around, he knew, because one afternoon Pop had taken out two yellow bottles and was ready to give them to the garbage—the bottles twenty years old at least, Pop never wanting to go out in the back and grill and never wanting Conway to either—but he kept the bottles, just kept them, because it was such a waste to toss them. Conway found them turned over in a dish basin full of old rags under where the pots and pans were. He put one bottle down on the kitchen table and uncapped the other. Sliding the chair out of the way, he opened the bathroom door and looked in at Pop. All that blood. Poor Pop. To die like that. Conway stood back and sprayed the lighter fluid in an arc onto the blankets covering Pop. Next he made a trail out of the bathroom and sprayed the kitchen table and the curtains on the window over the sink. He went into his bedroom and sprayed his records, his cassettes, his stereo, the bed, all his clothes. Nothing was coming with him. Nothing at all. In the living room he doused the carpet, the lamp, the TV, the recliner. Pop’s room was full of ghosts. He sprayed the ghost of his mother and Duncan’s ghost and the ghost of what Pop used to be and h
e wanted to spray himself because he felt like a ghost, but he didn’t do it. He dragged a line of lighter fluid close to the tips of his black Converse sneakers and cut the flow. He was almost out of fluid in the first bottle. He took the cap off and poured the rest on Pop’s bed. He got the second bottle and went to what used to be Duncan’s room in the basement. Pop hadn’t changed much. Conway never went down there. A framed Nirvana poster hung over the bed. A cassette of Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation was out on the desk where Duncan had left it. The desk was covered in other things that screamed Duncan. A VHS copy of A Streetcar Named Desire. Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle with DI written on the spine. Fanned out issues of Entertainment Weekly and Premiere. An eight-by-ten picture of James Dean. Conway sprayed everything. He walked upstairs and went back to the kitchen, continuing to spurt the lighter fluid in a trail on the floor behind him, and he opened the gas burners on the stove so that the gas didn’t come on but he could hear it hissing. He sprayed the stove and then he made a trail back to the front door. Looking out the window at Ray Boy, he considered dragging the motherfucker up the steps and starting the fire on him. Guy wanted to die so bad, let him die that way. But Conway didn’t do it. Couldn’t. He leaned over and flicked a match and then twisted it until the other matches in the book sizzled to life and he was holding a ball of fire in his hand like a witch, feeling the flame licking his palm. He tossed the fire at the trail of lighter fluid and watched a quick glow open up in the center of the house. He walked outside, closing the door behind him, and told Ray Boy to move fucking now.

  Twelve

  Lou Turcotte was on the phone, jabbering on, sounding like he had a toothpick between his front teeth. He said, “I think this is a great opportunity. A great opportunity. For you. For me. For Beau. You understand? The things we could do here. Enormous potential. You, you’ve got that star quality.”

  Alessandra was still shaken up from Conway coming over. It was way worse than anything she had anticipated. She saw something pass over Conway’s eyes in the kitchen, something that said he might be dangerous, not just a harmless, sad-sack doofus with a dead brother. Her hands were unsteady. She had smoked her last American Spirit down to the filter. She was trying to roll one of her dad’s cigarettes now. She was uh-huhing Lou Turcotte. She hated guys that talked in this phony Hollywood-speak.