A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself

by William Boyle

  When he makes a turn around the far side of Mo’s house, they instinctively know that this is their chance to make a break for the woods. The four of them take off simultaneously, Rena lagging behind just a bit to keep an eye on Lucia.

  Rena can’t remember the last time she ran like this. Maybe in high school. Sprinting around the track during gym class. When Lafayette was still a school where a girl like her could go. Short of breath afterward. Doubled over. Hands on her knees.

  The distance to the tree line seems enormous, even though it’s so close. Everything is slow and strange. Her eyes are fixed hard on Lucia. It’s as if she anticipates the girl tripping before she actually does. A branch in her path, crooked and sharp-looking. Lucia stomps it with her bare right foot mid-stride and tumbles forward, the briefcase ejecting from her grasp. Rena says her name aloud and then puts her hand over her mouth, as if to silence herself. Wolfstein and Mo stop in their tracks.

  Rena, on her way to help Lucia up, looks over her shoulder and sees Crea back behind Mo’s house. He’s noticed them. He’s grinning. Holding the hammer like he’s about to destroy a wall or drive bolts into concrete. “Ladies!” he says. “You are here!”

  Lucia stands and dusts herself off. She lifts one foot up and pulls a piece of bark off her heel. Rena’s thinking how stupid it was to not take the extra minute to retrieve her shoes. “Lucia,” Rena says.

  Lucia doesn’t even look at her. She locates the briefcase a few feet ahead of her and leaps for it. She snatches it up and then flees into the woods.

  “Don’t let that kid run away!” Crea says, coming toward them.

  Rena feels stuck in place. She looks at Wolfstein and Mo. And then she snaps her head quickly back in Lucia’s direction, watching her disappear behind a stand of big trees.

  “Go after her,” Wolfstein says.

  “What about you?” Rena says.

  “We’ll go for the gun.”

  Rena takes off after Lucia. Wolfstein and Mo break back for the house. Crea is not moving like he’s determined, merely like he’s capable of catching whoever he wants, whenever he wants. Rena can’t see Lucia in the woods. She’s wondering where on earth she could’ve gone. She hears a door close behind her. Hopefully it’s Wolfstein and Mo getting safely back into the neighbor’s house. Not many steps down the blue hallway to the garage, to the gun, to the Eldorado. She half-hopes they just hop in the car and drive away. She hears Crea now. He’s laughing that Cape Fear laugh again.

  Rena’s trudging through the woods, the earth crackly under her shoes. She’s looking for some sign of Lucia, who might have zigged and zagged and shot off in another direction. The road ahead of her is getting closer. Rena wonders if Lucia could already be there somehow. A barefoot girl with what must be close to a half-million dollars. Jesus, Mary, and Saint Joseph. She thinks about a show on sex trafficking she watched one night. Little runaways disappearing lightning fast from the nation’s back roads and bus stations and being sold to men who kept them locked up in basements. Her head going to other horrible places, too. Lucia flattened by a truck on the road. Lucia attacked by an animal.

  She feels lost now, even though the road is there. She should go back. She should help Wolfstein and Mo. She should be the one facing down Crea.

  She feels light-headed. What was it Mo said? Get out to Lakes Road and make a left and take that straight into the heart of the village? Lucia has to be headed for the bus station. A kid. The world is too big, and her options are too small.

  Rena looks around. She wishes Vic would appear from behind a tree. That’s what would happen in a movie. She’d need him as her guardian angel, call for his advice, and he’d show up and smile, as if he were late for dinner, tell her she’s beautiful, tell her not to worry, call her a name that only he ever called her. Except there is no name like that really. He mostly called her Rena. Sometimes shortened it to Re.

  “Help me, Vic,” she says aloud.

  Only birds chirping. Silence from the trees.

  Now she’s talking to her dead husband. And the man who killed him is back at that vacant house. She doesn’t want to lose Lucia. She wants Crea to pay. She looks up at the sky through a dark net of branches. Bursting blue with traces of pink.

  She presses on.

  When she comes out of the trees, she crosses a gully and finds herself on the narrow shoulder of the road. Lakes Road, she hopes. No sign to confirm it. She starts walking to the left, hoping to see Lucia up ahead. No such luck. Back in the direction of Mo’s house, she hears a burp of sirens. Her nerves raw, she picks up the pace. A few minutes later, a single gunshot followed by a rapid spray of gunfire echoes through the woods. She hopes that it’s Wolfstein and Mo taking out Crea. We see your hammer, and we raise you a machine gun. So many hopes. She sticks out her thumb like a hitchhiker. When the first car passes, it swings into the oncoming lane to steer way clear of her. The second car that passes does the same. She thinks she sees Lucia on the other side of the road in the distance, but it’s only a mailbox. Her old eyes are playing tricks on her.

  WOLFSTEIN

  Mo closes and locks the back door behind them. Wolfstein leads the scramble into the dark garage. She keys open the trunk and tells Mo to take out the gun. Mo makes a sound like she’s overwhelmed by its presence. “It feels good to feel alive,” Mo says, picking it up.

  “Take it easy,” Wolfstein says.

  “Let’s go down in a blaze of glory.”

  Smashes from the other room. Crea likely breaking through the door with his sledgehammer. “Ladies!” he calls.

  Wolfstein hits the button to open the garage door. They hop in the car as the door begins its mechanical rattle, Wolfstein under the wheel, her bad leg stiff. She puts her bag on the floor in the back.

  “I just pull the trigger until it goes click, right?” Mo asks.

  “Something like that,” Wolfstein says, starting the car and almost flooding the engine as she anxiously pumps the gas.

  Mo has the gun leveled on the entrance to the garage, waiting on Crea to show his face.

  As soon as the door is open enough, Wolfstein steps on the gas and they lurch out of the garage. Richie is in front of them, zombie-shuffling up the driveway. He’s battered and bruised. Wolfstein swerves around him, the tires going up on the grass.

  The obstacle causes Wolfstein to be late cutting the wheel at the end of the driveway, so she zips straight into the mailbox of the house across the street. An old man with a white chinstrap beard is watching from the front stoop, and he cries out as she shatters the post. Wolfstein slams the brakes, and they wrench to a stop on Chinstrap’s lawn. She puts the car in reverse and backs out into the street. Straightening out, she sees that Richie is now right next to the car. His gait unsteady, he opens the passenger door and pushes Mo’s seat up as she protests, diving into the back and stretching out across the bench.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” Mo says to him.

  “I’ve gotta be in my car,” he says. “I’ve gotta die in my car.”

  Chinstrap calls out from the stoop: “You’re gonna pay for my mailbox, Mo!”

  Mo holds up the gun. “Mr. Romano, we got a situation over here. I’ll get you the best mailbox money can buy.”

  “No problem here, Mo,” he responds, looking suddenly as if he realizes there’s a level of danger he couldn’t have possibly anticipated. He rushes back into his house and shuts the door.

  Wolfstein struggles with the gearshift—it’s stuck between gears. She looks over her shoulder at Mo’s house, waiting for Crea to show. She figures he’s watching from somewhere and isn’t coming out yet for a reason.

  “He’s fucking with you,” Richie says. “He’s playing games.”

  A Monroe patrol car pulls up in front of Mo’s place just as Wolfstein elbows the gear into drive. The cops bleep their sirens a couple of times as if to tell Wolfstein to stay put. Wolfstein keeps it in drive with her foot on the brake.

  Mo puts the gun on the floor and cra
nks down her window.

  “What are you doing?” Wolfstein asks.

  “I know these two,” Mo says.

  “Know them how?”

  “We smoke cigarettes at the gas station together a lot.”

  The cops get out of the car slowly. A man and a woman. Strutting dumbly in their navy blue uniforms. The woman wears sunglasses and has her hair in a bun under her hat. She’s pale, freckled, pudgy. The man walks like a duck and has a big round belly that seems to be pressing open his uniform. His bald head is ceramic-smooth. Podunk cops if Wolfstein’s ever seen them.

  Crea emerges from the garage, hammer in hand. Wolfstein notices that he sees the cops before they see him and that he backs up into the shadows until he’s out of sight.

  “What’s going on here?” the male cop asks. It’s not clear who he’s talking to.

  “Falsetti, Fitzgerald,” Mo says, sticking her head out the window. “It’s me, Mo. Your cigarette-smoking pal from the Shell.”

  “Mo?” the woman cop says. Fitzgerald, Wolfstein guesses from the freckles and paper-white skin. “We got a call about a disturbance. What’s happening? You knock over that mailbox?”

  “We did and we didn’t,” Mo says.

  “What’s that mean?”

  Wolfstein’s figuring they haven’t gotten a call from the Bronx yet. Must’ve been Crea’s yelling that drew them here.

  “You’re looking pretty anxious in there,” the man, Falsetti, says.

  “You hear my old lady just died?” Mo asks. “That’s it. Things are a mess. You can think you’re ready, but you’re not ready.”

  Fitzgerald takes off her glasses. “Jesus, I’m sorry, Mo. That’s tough. My mother’s got Alzheimer’s. Similar. It’s heartbreaking.”

  “This right here”—Mo puts her hand on Wolfstein’s shoulder—“is my best friend, Lacey. She came to support me.”

  Falsetti and Fitzgerald come up on either side of the car, Falsetti on the driver’s side, Fitzgerald standing over Mo. Mo buckles her knees together in an attempt to keep the gun hidden. “That’s nice,” Fitzgerald says.

  Falsetti motions for Wolfstein to roll down her window. She does. “Whoa!” he says, pointing to Richie in the back. “What do we got here?”

  “He’s nobody,” Mo explains.

  “I didn’t ask you, Mo,” Falsetti says, playing it tough. “I asked your best friend.”

  Wolfstein could spill about Crea, but she knows that’s unwise. He’s watching. She does that, he comes out and the cops draw down on him, and the whole thing goes to shit. Best thing for everybody is to keep quiet, let it play out some other way, take it off Mo’s block. “That’s my cousin,” Wolfstein says of Richie, thinking on the fly. “He tied a good one on last night. We’re bringing him to ShopRite to get some Pedialyte in him.”

  “Looks like he got hit by a car.” To Richie: “You okay, big fella?”

  “Take care of the girl,” Richie says.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” Mo says. “He’s still drunk. Talking nonsense.”

  “Lucia,” Richie says. “The half a rock goes to her.”

  “He said ‘half a rock’?” Fitzgerald says. “I heard that once on The Sopranos. That’s a half-mill.”

  “The guy’s dead broke,” Wolfstein says. “Look at him. He’s dreaming. We’re getting him into rehab soon.”

  Falsetti smiles. Wolfstein sees herself in his glasses. She looks haggard. Heavy bags under her eyes. Cheeks sunken. Pale. Hair frizzy. “Jesus,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Just saw myself in your glasses, that’s all.”

  “You had a tough night, too, huh?”

  “Emotional time.”

  “Nice car. Eldorado, right? You did some damage to your front end.”

  “I’m heartsick over it.”

  “You know who that truck belongs to?” Fitzgerald says, pointing to an Explorer that’s parked directly across from Mo’s. Cracked windshield. Wheels up on the curb. One of the door windows busted out.

  “No idea,” Mo says.

  Falsetti leans into the car and whispers. “You ladies sure you’re okay? If you’re under duress, just wink.”

  “Adrienne,” Richie says from the back. “I’ll take care of Lucia. Don’t you worry.”

  Wolfstein and Mo look at each other. They speak to each other without speaking, a gift. Mo’s on the same page as her. They turn to Falsetti. Mo just shrugs. Wolfstein says, “We’re good, I swear. Thanks for your concern, Officer.”

  “Mo, I’m real sorry about your mother,” Falsetti says.

  “I appreciate that,” Mo says. “She’s at peace now.” A beat. “No more shitting herself, either.”

  Falsetti and Fitzgerald erupt in laughter. “You’re a real character, Mo,” Fitzgerald says. “We’ll be seeing you over at the Shell. My girlfriend wants me to quit smoking, but I’ll keep sneaking them just so I can hang out with you.”

  Big smile from Mo. “Give Bethany my best.”

  “Take care of that mailbox when you get the chance,” Falsetti says.

  “Will do.”

  Falsetti and Fitzgerald back away from the Eldorado, heading to the patrol car.

  Wolfstein looks over at the open garage. Crea emerges, no longer holding the hammer, seeming less powerful somehow at first. He puts a finger over his greasy smile, shushing her. His piece is out, and he’s holding it at his waist.

  Wolfstein’s sudden shouts confuse Falsetti and Fitzgerald. Mo’s slow with Richie’s gun, pulling it up into her lap, fumbling it as she tries to turn it on Crea. Wolfstein’s eyes flash to the note on Mo’s hand: Get trash bags. Crea’s charging down the driveway. He fires at Falsetti, hitting him square in the back. Falsetti crumples to his knees on the pavement, feeling around on his waist for a piece he’s probably never had to pull and then flopping forward. Fitzgerald takes cover behind the patrol car. Last Wolfstein sees of her, she’s on her radio calling it in and drawing her piece, but she looks shaken. She’s calling Falsetti’s name. He’s groaning.

  Mo takes aim at Crea. He’s laughing. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” he says.

  Mo pulls the trigger and unloads in Crea’s direction. The bullets all go high, shattering windows in the vacant house. Crea does a little dance like a kid in a schoolyard who’s avoided being pegged during a game of Suicide.

  Wolfstein steps on it, the tires screeching as she peels away.

  Crea fires at the Eldorado, shattering the back window. Mo lets out a yelp. She’s drawn the gun in.

  Richie, bathed in glass, moaning in agony, says, “I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t kill him.”

  In the rearview mirror, Wolfstein sees Crea climbing into the Explorer, starting it, and making a quick three-point turn in Mo’s driveway. Fitzgerald rushes after him with her gun drawn, but he doesn’t stop, and she doesn’t fire. She collapses to her knees in the middle of the street, exasperated and shocked, as he passes out of her reach.

  Crea is on their ass in no time. They’re headed out of the development a different way than they came in. A buckle of narrow residential streets. Little houses with manicured yards and ugly plastic mailboxes. Having heard the sirens and what they can’t imagine could’ve been gunfire, people are out in their robes consulting with one another, newspapers under their arms, coffee steaming in big-handled mugs. An Eldorado and an Explorer racing through their community is not what they expect.

  Wolfstein lets Mo guide her: “Take a right here, a left here, let’s see if we can shake him.”

  Crea’s fully staying with them, though.

  Wolfstein feels a tug of emotion for the cops, just more people caught in the middle of this fucking crazy-ass thing. Falsetti shot in the back like that. Probably has a family. Probably likes whatever things cops like. She hopes he makes it. Fitzgerald not taking the shot when she had it. Probably worried about the houses full of sleeping people around them. Just wanting to get home to her girlfriend.

  Wolfstein�
�s trying not to look back at Crea. She knows he’ll just be sitting there behind the wheel, calm, smug as a perfumed dog. She knows he knows they don’t have his money. She’s assuming that he wants to off them because they’re witnesses. She can only keep her fingers crossed that more cops show soon. She can only keep her fingers crossed that Rena and Lucia are okay.

  As they’re coming to an intersection for Lakes Road, Mo motions fast to go left. Wolfstein takes the turn hard, almost spinning out into a ditch. Crea’s masterfully close, almost nudging them again. Lakes Road loops into a curve as they pass an old mill and a couple of stone houses with blue-and-yellow historical markers out front. “That’s 17M up at the light,” Mo says.

  The little lakes of the village are ahead of them. The light they’re coming to is red. Two cars are waiting in front of a Dollar General and a pet grooming place for the light to change. “What should we do?” Wolfstein asks.

  “Go around the traffic. Go through the light.”

  “Yeah?”

  Mo shrugs. “I guess.”

  Wolfstein guns it and cuts into the oncoming lane, passing the two cars waiting at the light. No cars are coming toward her, which is good news. She rides the brake a little as she blows through the light and coasts cleanly across the intersection.

  Lakes Road continues between the lakes and then crosses Millpond Parkway and becomes the main drag in the village. A couple of pizzerias, a bakery, a hair salon. It’s not crowded at this time of the morning. Nothing’s open. A scatter of sirens rides the air now. Police responding to Fitzgerald’s officer-down call.

  “The bus station is right over there,” Mo says, motioning toward the north end of Millpond Parkway where a deli doubles as a depot, a Short Line bus idling at the curb.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Wolfstein says.

  “I’m sorry,” Mo says. “The police station’s right up here. Every other direction goes nowhere.” A police cruiser buzzes past them in the other lane just as she says it, rushing to help Falsetti. Fitzgerald must’ve made Falsetti her priority and forgotten to call in the Explorer’s plates. Inexperienced in matters like this. Soon enough.