A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself

by William Boyle

  See, you blink, God’s made the world worse. Jersey looms, potential for evil everywhere. You’re one dick fiddle away from being lost or dead or spaced on a highway to Shitsville. He can feel the money in the trunk of his Eldorado getting farther and farther away. He can feel Crea’s hammer on his knees. And this old wimp next to him, huddled like a dog he’s taking to be put down, making him even more raw-nerved. There’s no moon. His feet are cold. Night like this, his feet are cold, you believe that?

  He’s thinking of summer sin. Him and Adrienne in his car on Shore Road. Almost lost in the pleasantness of that memory. Adrienne, Adrienne. His confused brain saying her name over and over and over again, hurling it Rocky-style against the vast emptiness. “It’s not spelled like that Adrian,” she’d say every time he did his best Rocky Balboa.

  Crea’s nudging him again. Enzio’s horrified. Crea’s following close behind as he gets off at the first exit up ahead, Richie not even looking at the sign, not even sure if it will lead him into a tangle of tolls and roads going in the wrong direction, hoping only that it’s a key to the secondary route he’s remembering.

  Fuck Jersey. Fuck lost. Crea wants to butt heads again, let him come.

  RENA

  Rest stop off the Thruway, the Eldorado still running. They’re parked away from the main lot, to the side of the squat building where the shops and fast food joints are. Rena’s feeling unhinged. Lucia keeps looking out at the traffic to see if they’ve really shaken Richie and Crea. Wolfstein’s over at the pay phone, calling her friend Mo.

  It was a good idea on Wolfstein’s part to get off the Palisades onto the Thruway. Both roads go to Monroe. They had to figure Richie would try to pick them back up on the Palisades, not knowing where they were headed, and it wouldn’t be that hard for him to escape 95 and recover their trail. As for Crea, he’s not following them. Yet. He doesn’t know they have the money. He’s following Richie.

  They should ditch the Eldorado; that’s all Richie wants. Well, not all.

  The money Lucia mentioned. What Rena’s thinking is she’ll use some of the money to pay someone to kill Crea. Who, though? Not Richie, clearly. Would anyone in Vic’s crew do it? Maybe, probably, she’d have to steer clear of whoever’s left. Vic went to that guy Freddie Touch to deal with some outside issues here and there, she knew that much. She’d met Freddie at Torregrossa and Sons when he came around to pay his respects at Vic’s wake. Reach out to him, maybe.

  Her head’s spinning. Watching Wolfstein on the pay phone in the lights of the car, her good posture, standing firm even through this madness that Rena’s brought into her life. Then again, there was Bobby. That’s probably weighing on Wolfstein, with what he did. Rena looks over at Lucia now and tries to feign a smile.

  “Maybe we should ditch her,” Lucia says, taking off her Yankees cap and tossing it on the dash.

  “What? Who?” Rena asks, as if shaking into consciousness.

  “Wolfstein. For her safety, I mean.”

  “You’re saying what? All her money’s in the car. She trusts us. She’s been good to me.”

  “It was her boyfriend that shot Adrienne. I’m not . . . Grandma . . . We could leave her money, I don’t care. We’ve got more.” Lucia perks up. “Come look. The trunk’s full of Richie’s money. Who knows how much? We could go anywhere.”

  “I’m thinking about your mother right now, that’s it. And Papa Vic.”

  Rena looks out and watches as Wolfstein hangs up the phone. Wolfstein makes a motion that she’s going inside for a second. Rena nods.

  “Come look,” Lucia says. “Let’s see how much is there.”

  “I don’t care about the money. I mean, I care about it, of course. I’m gonna use some of it to get Crea.”

  “That’s a waste.”

  “With what he did . . . ”

  “She was dead already. That old guy shot her by accident.”

  “Lucia.”

  “She was.”

  “That’s your mother. And it’s more than that. What I know now.”

  “I’m going to look in the trunk.” Lucia scooches over and pushes the driver’s-side door out. She forgets to pop the trunk and then comes back and looks for the release. It takes her a minute to find it. “Come look with me.”

  Rena feels cold about this money. But she gets out anyway. She wants to please Lucia. “Okay,” she says, climbing out of the car. “I’ll take a look.”

  They stand in front of the trunk, and Lucia shoves open the lid. What they see they see together, but it makes Rena feel even colder. Machine gun, camera, luggage, briefcase, ski mask, sandals. Lucia looks all around to make sure they’re not being watched and then leans into the gaping trunk. She snaps open the briefcase, and her eyes go wicked.

  “Jesus Christ,” she says, thumbing through bills. “How much is here?”

  “A lot,” Rena says, and then she reaches over Lucia and slams the briefcase closed. “And please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “How much is a lot?”

  Rena ignores Lucia and zips open Richie’s luggage, withdrawing a neatly folded Van Heusen dress shirt. Blue with polka dots and a starchy white collar. She shakes out the shirt, with its size-eighteen neck, unbuttoning it like a pro. She spreads it out over the gun the way she used to spread out Vic’s shirts on the bed for funerals or weddings or Mass. The gun’s bulky outline shows under the shirt. “We can’t just have that out in the open.”

  “Have you ever seen that much money? I’m sure you have with Papa Vic.” Lucia’s peppered up, bouncing on her heels, almost smiling. Hard to understand with all that’s gone on, all that’s going on.

  “I’m closing the trunk,” Rena says, but she’s slow to actually do it.

  “And that gun!”

  Rena shushes her. Now it’s her turn to look around. People milling by their cars in the main lot with crinkly bags from Sbarro and steaming cups of Starbucks coffee. Not many people. It’s late. You get the feeling—this time of night—that anyone in a lot like this is caught up in something sketchy. Like the middle-aged Wall Street–type in sunglasses leaning against his car. Probably coming home from a tryst at a hotel with a girl half his age. And the short junkman in overalls with the bushy eyebrows, what’s he doing? Cleaning up after something? Big buckets in his truck. You live the life Rena’s lived, married to the man she was married to, you know there’s a dark story behind everything. You know someone might be watching, even if it seems like they’re not. She finally shoulders the trunk closed.

  “We could clean up with that thing,” Lucia says. “Take out Crea and Richie if they find us. The both of them. Bam. Just like that. Then we don’t need to pay for it.”

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  Wolfstein comes up behind them with a pack of Marlboro 100s and a handful of sad oatmeal-raisin granola bars. “Nutrition,” she says. “Anyone have to take a squirt? Bathrooms are pretty clean.”

  “I’m okay,” Rena says.

  “News was on in there. Saw a quick something, one of those between-commercial segments. Some anchor in a red dress with Silver Beach in a little box behind her. Cop lights flashing. Couldn’t really hear what she was saying.”

  Rena looks down at the pavement. A squashed soda cup to the right of her feet. Flattened green gum. Specks of yellow paint. Exhaust from the Eldorado puffing away around her ankles.

  “Eat something,” Wolfstein says, palming the granola bar into Rena’s hand.

  “Thanks,” Rena says, stuffing it in her pocket. “Maybe later. My stomach’s uneasy.”

  “I can imagine.” Wolfstein turns to Lucia. “How about you, kid?”

  Lucia says sure and scarfs down one of the bars, looking away from Wolfstein at the cars thrumming by on the Thruway.

  “Did you talk to your friend?” Rena asks.

  “I did. Figured I’d give her a little heads-up. She’s excited. I mean, she sounded pretty drunk, but she’s excited. She loves when things get wild.” Wolfstein t
ears the cellophane off the Marlboro 100s, rips away the silver foil, and pops one between her lips. She lights it with a little purple Bic she must’ve gotten inside, too.

  “Can I have one?” Lucia asks.

  “Kid,” Wolfstein says. “Don’t put me in this position.”

  Rena: “You are not smoking.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” Lucia snaps back.

  “The hell I can’t.”

  “I’ll smoke if I want.”

  Wolfstein takes a deep drag and blows the smoke away from Rena and Lucia. “Kid, clam up, would you? Listen to your grandma. You haven’t crossed that line yet. You’re eighteen, you call the shots.”

  “I don’t have to listen to lectures from some lady who was in porno movies.”

  “A firecracker, like I said.” Wolfstein exhales dramatically, goes out of her way to make it look extra good to Lucia.

  “The money and the smoking,” Rena says to Lucia, shaking her head. “What am I gonna do with you?”

  “Nothing.” Lucia twists her feet so they’re pointed in. “I don’t care. I’m a bitch.”

  “You’re upset; it’s understandable,” Wolfstein says.

  “I want one of those cigarettes,” Lucia says.

  “A bitch?” Rena scrunches her eyes, tries to process the word. Again: “A bitch?” She wonders if Wolfstein’s thinking, Just like her mother.

  Wolfstein stomps out her cigarette. “We should go,” she says. They get in the car, Lucia in the back seat now, to be closer to the heat of the money in the trunk likely, Rena turning around to look at her as they merge into the flow of traffic on the Thruway.

  They get off at Exit 16 for Harriman and Central Valley. Rena remembers this road, this exit. After a toll, they’re on Route 17, which runs to Monticello, where Vic took her to the track a few times because he had a horse he was maybe going in on. The horse’s name was Bright Fancy. This was when it was just a racetrack, before the racino part opened. One time, driving up to the track, she saw an old hobo sitting on a fence near the entrance. It was early in the morning. The sky was purpled with clouds. The hobo had a big white beard and generous eyes and a walking stick, and she started thinking up a story for him. Freight-hopping. Scratching monikers on the sides of train cars. Sleeping in the woods and eating beans over a campfire. Her whole idea of hobos shaped by what little she’d seen in movies. Maybe he wasn’t even a hobo.

  Route 17 is also the way to the Catskills, where she and Vic went on their honeymoon back in ’68. Gershwin’s. A beautiful resort. Comedians. Horseback riding. Drinking by the pool. They had a cottage. The walls were so red, freshly painted and tacky to the touch. Vic had gotten her about six bouquets of daisies and scattered them around the room in empty wine bottles. They stayed in bed late every morning, had coffee brought to them. They drank the coffee out of china cups on fragile saucers that looked as if they were from another century. She and Vic had matching silk robes. He’d bought her the most beautiful bathing suit she’d ever owned at Martin’s on Fulton Street, a blue Jantzen with white piping trim. She’d turned heads the whole time, as Vic said. Lived in it. Shaved her legs every night in the old cast-iron tub while a candle burned on the windowsill. Best two weeks of her life. Quiet, peaceful, idyllic. Away from the madness of Brooklyn. Away from the stress of Vic’s work.

  Except now, she’s remembering, Crea was there. A teenager at the time. Not there-there, but staying up the road at a dive motel. He’d show up once a day and give Vic a rundown, relay any messages that needed relaying. Even then, as a kid, he had this psycho arch to his eyebrows.

  Rena and Vic went back to Gershwin’s in ’88 for their twentieth anniversary, no Crea or anyone else accompanying them this time, but Vic got pulled away for a job after two days. He felt bad making her leave early, so she stayed and sat by the pool, playing solitaire, making friends with a lady named Adelaide from Poughkeepsie. The bathing suit she had this time was nothing special. At night, she ate dinner with Adelaide and her husband, Ron, and then went back to her room and watched old movies or read a Danielle Steele. Adrienne was staying with the sitter back home, Ralphie Baruncelli’s sister, and Rena felt guilty about that, but it was nice to have the time to herself. She remembers her feet in the grass over by the tennis courts. She remembers relaxing on a float in the pool. She remembers sneaking away to go to church in Callicoon and being amazed by the smallness of the church and the smallness of the congregation. She put fifty bucks in the offertory basket and felt especially holy, tried not to think about what Vic was off doing.

  Another thing she remembers from that visit is how far downhill Gershwin’s had gone. The walls were cracked. Dust everywhere. Leaves and gristle in the pool. Sad dining room. A stage where no one sang or told jokes. Decrepit chaise lounges. Cottages with broken shutters and ancient roof shingles. She remembers thinking about time a lot. She remembers thinking about her body and the resort and how everything melted away. She didn’t shave in the bathtub with a candle going. There wasn’t a bathtub anymore. Just a small shower stall with a frosted-glass door edged with mold. She would’ve given anything to be back at Gershwin’s in ’68 in her Jantzen, nothing but the future and possibility in front of her.

  Last she’d heard, Gershwin’s closed down in ’04. She’d seen some pictures on the computer of the abandoned main house, a drained pool full of mud and cinder blocks, rusted chairs, ivy eating up the beautiful old sign, a collapsed stage, graffiti on the cottages, and broken and boarded windows. Tragic.

  Rena watches the dark out the window as they come over a rise, and Wolfstein flips on her right blinker. The blinker lights the road red behind them. Wolfstein keeps it on even though the exit isn’t for a mile. Finally, she slows down and takes the first Monroe exit, keeping left and then making another quick left at a green light. She bears right at a dark Mobil and then comes out on a main stretch across from a brightly lit diner.

  Monroe is a suburb, probably once considered the country to city types. Two lakes stretch off to the left. More like scummy little ponds, really, but the centerpiece of the downtown. There’s a park with a renovated Korean War airplane stationed beside the slides and swings across from the close end of the nearer lake. Rena sees two girls in hoodies sitting on the swings. Across the street is a plaza with a bagel shop, a dollar store, a Chinese buffet, and a Dunkin’ Donuts. The squat, eerie feeling of a suburb settles over her. High school kids in running cars sit outside the still-open diner smoking cigarettes and conspiring on cell phones. Rena is glad she doesn’t have a phone. She’s glad Lucia doesn’t have one.

  Wolfstein, who has been silent for a while, says, “Mo can be a bit overwhelming, especially when she’s loaded, but you’re gonna like her.” Then, looking over at Rena this time: “She’s gonna be happy to help.”

  Mo’s house is back in a community called Little Lakes, past a Burger King with a craggy parking lot and a Chase bank and an unnamed ice cream shop featuring three wooden bears painted in patriotic colors propped against the front window. It’s a split-level with some Christmas decorations still on the lawn: toppled reindeer, a dirty Santa, an elf hanging from a tangle of extension cords. Houses loom close on both sides and there’s another huddle of houses right across the narrow street, all dark and dreary-looking. The community must have been built in the sixties or seventies. Two nearby roads dead-end in pitch-black cul-de-sacs. Mo’s house, however, is alive with light as the Eldorado pulls into the driveway. The flowered curtains are open. Music is pumping. A woman who must be Mo dances her way past the bay window wearing only a purple bra, jangly beads around her neck, and sequined gym shorts. Her dyed red hair is piled high on her head.

  “That’s Mo?” Rena asks.

  “In the flesh,” Wolfstein says. “I wonder what she’s celebrating. Maybe just Sunday winding down.”

  “Doesn’t she have a sick mom?”

  “Deep sleeper.”

  “We’re going in there?” Lucia asks. “We should just keep driving.”


  Rena: “And go where?”

  “Anywhere. Canada.”

  “We’ve gotta at least fill Mo in a little more,” Wolfstein says. “And we can lay low. Rest. Get our bearings before we take off in the morning. Mo’s full of good ideas.”

  They climb out of the car, Wolfstein grabbing her black bag. Lucia goes around and pops the trunk and gets the briefcase with Richie’s money, saying to Rena, “I’m not letting it out of my sight.”

  Rena’s not sure how to respond, Lucia only seeming to have eyes for the money. Maybe it’s shock.

  “You look in there yet?” Wolfstein asks Rena and Lucia.

  Lucia tucks her chin into her chest, doesn’t answer Wolfstein.

  “That much?” Wolfstein says.

  Mo’s at the door as they walk up the stoop. “Welcome, welcome, welcome,” she says, guiding them inside to the ground floor landing. She’s wearing lots of makeup and crimson lipstick, like she’s been having some kind of glamour night, and her bra is lacy and expensive-looking. She’s got a big smile. Her teeth are yellow. Rena focuses on a stray whisker protruding from her neck. Mo was in movies with Wolfstein is mainly what Rena remembers Wolfstein telling her, so her mind goes to the two of them doing the kinds of things she saw briefly on the screen at Enzio’s.

  Wolfstein embraces Mo and laughs. “You having a party?”

  “Let me go turn the music down.” Mo points at Rena and Lucia, as if putting a freeze on actually meeting them. She jogs up the few steps to the top level. In the kitchen, she powers down her little boombox, Rena unable to place what she’d been listening to.