A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself

by William Boyle

  He met Luscious Lacey, right before things went south. Crazy. He remembers his neighborhood video store, that skanky back room with saloon doors where they kept the porno tapes. The room smelled stale. Jizz marks dotted the old carpet; there were old-timers who’d just come in and crank it to the pictures on the covers. He remembers going into that room and coming out with an armful of big boxes. The Russian who owned the video store winking, jabbing a toothpick between his teeth, saying he was in Luscious Lacey’s fan club, that he had a signed picture at home.

  What would be good, if he could muster the strength to get into the front and drive off, would be to make it to a liquor store. He’d walk in—this wreck of a man no one’s expecting—and he’d buy a pint of MD 20/20 like the bums used to do in the liquor store on New Utrecht Avenue where he worked when he was twelve. He swept floors and lifted boxes there. The bums would come in when the sign got flipped and they’d grab their bottles and take them in the alley next to the shop and down them. He never wanted to wind up like that. He wanted nice shoes and a pretty girlfriend and a big car and a gun on his hip. He wanted to be like the Brancaccios. He wanted to be with them. He wanted that gangster strut, grease in his hair, a billfold as fat as a Bible.

  A knock on the glass. “You okay, guy?” a voice asks. A mean voice. A cop voice.

  It could only ever end badly. You pay for what you’ve done wrong. Call it justice or karma. Call it whatever the fuck you want to call it.

  Richie makes a noise. He’s got no words left.

  The cop’s calling over to whoever he’s with, probably other cops. Richie doesn’t even know where he is. A town. Some town. How he got here he remembers only vaguely now. Crea. Lucia in that window. Rena. Adrienne.

  He finds some inner reserve of strength and rises from the glass. He hurls himself over the bench into the front. He saw this in a movie, he’d be laughing his fucking balls off. He’s Weekend at Bernie’s. He’s Night of the Living Dead. He lands heavily, sprawled on the front seat.

  He wants. He wants, and then he doesn’t want anymore. The windshield goes hazy. His head is close to the wheel. He wishes his hands were there. He wishes he was keying the ignition. He closes his eyes and feels a great weight crushing his chest. A gasp fills his lungs. He wonders if he’ll become aware when he stops breathing. He licks his lips. His last breath feels like a scream.

  LUCIA

  A little creek winds its way through the trees. Shafts of sunlight hang all around her. Lucia’s not even sure if it’s appropriate to call these woods. She can see houses and buildings just twenty feet ahead. She wades through the creek. The water is up to her ankles. It feels good on her sore feet. She hears a gunshot come from Airplane Park. A single shot. On the other side of the creek, another small stretch of trees. And then she’s in someone’s yard. A riding mower sits covered under a new-looking deck. The house is white and tall. Her feet are in grass again, getting dry. Soft, green grass.

  She looks around. She’s not sure where to go. She wishes she had a cigarette. She goes around to the front of the house and she’s on fresh blacktop. A driveway decorated with a Fisher-Price Tough Trike and a street hockey net. At the end of the driveway, a short road that edges out against a main road, maybe the one they were just on. She walks cautiously to the stop sign and sees, off to the left, the bus and plane joined together, and she sees lights from cop cars and she sees a crowd gathering.

  The diner she noticed before is across the street. She runs to it, dodging a slow-moving car, trying as hard as she can not to be noticed. If Grandma Rena’s still alive, she’s standing there somewhere and looking for her, grabbing strangers by the shoulders and saying, “Have you seen my granddaughter?”

  Only two cars in the diner lot. A striped and dented black Camry with Monroe-Woodbury stickers on its back bumper and a red Civic with vanity plates that read ONLY 1 NUN.

  Lucia enters the diner, the door clanking behind her.

  A waitress standing at the counter gives her a long, confused look. “You okay, sweetie?”

  Lucia nods. She sits at a booth in the back, plunking down the briefcase on the seat next to her.

  The waitress comes over and hands her a menu. “You sure?”

  “I’m fine. Can I have a Coke?”

  The waitress sighs and goes to get the soda.

  An older woman is sitting a few booths away from Lucia. She’s dressed plainly. Probably in her forties. Dark smudges under her eyes. Hair in a bun. A delicate gold cross hanging outside her white blouse. She’s got a steaming cup of coffee in front of her and is picking at a plate of cottage cheese and fruit. She locks eyes with Lucia and comes over, bringing her coffee. “You mind if I sit?”

  “Why?” Lucia says.

  “You look like you could use company.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Big commotion across the street,” the woman says.

  “I saw.”

  “I’m Sister Dorothy.”

  “You’re a nun?”

  “Sure am.”

  “That’s your car out there with the nun plates?”

  “I borrowed it from Sister Rory. I’m driving up to New Paltz to see my mother. She’s in a nursing home.”

  “Nuns have mothers?”

  “You’re funny.” Sister Dorothy sits across from her, slugs some coffee. She’s got hard eyes and a sharp jaw. “I’m going to sit.”

  “Whatever.”

  The waitress brings Lucia’s Coke and asks if she wants anything else. Lucia says she wants a sesame bagel with cream cheese and a chocolate muffin and a piece of apple pie. The waitress seems astonished. Lucia tells her she’s really hungry. The waitress says she hates to do this, but she’s got to ask if she’s got the money to cover it. Lucia flashes a hundred. The waitress walks back to the kitchen and puts in the order.

  “Where are your shoes?” Sister Dorothy asks.

  “Everyone’s so interested in my feet,” Lucia says.

  “Concerned, that’s it.”

  “I’m fine. My feet are fine. A little wet. I’m walking barefoot for a good cause.”

  “That so?”

  “Raising money for my friend with leukemia.”

  Sister Dorothy is wearing plain blue slacks. She reaches down into her pocket and comes out with a shiny silver flask and pours whatever’s in there into her coffee and says, “Our little secret.” She stuffs the flask back in her pocket and mixes in the booze with her pinkie.

  Lucia: “You’re a drunk? How original.”

  “You know a lot of drunk nuns?”

  “I live in an Irish neighborhood in the Bronx. Every priest and nun I know is a lush.”

  “’Tis a curse,” Sister Dorothy says, putting a sweet lilt of brogue in her voice.

  Lucia sucks down half of her Coke. “You’re not gonna try to teach me something, right?”

  Sister Dorothy puts up her hands. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, that’s all.”

  “I stopped believing in God years ago.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Sister Dorothy takes a belt of her booze-spiked coffee. She leans across the table and whispers, “I don’t believe in God anymore, either.”

  “Really? That’s cool.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lucia.”

  “You know about Saint Lucia of Syracuse? Saint Lucy.”

  “I don’t like being called Lucy.”

  “I won’t call you Lucy.”

  “I know about her. She’s the one with the eyes, right?”

  “Right.” Sister Dorothy takes another drink. “What are you running from, Lucia?”

  Lucia finishes her Coke. She looks anxiously out the window. She can see the bus and the spinning cop lights, but she doesn’t see Grandma Rena or Crea in the crowd. She’s trying not to look too hard. She’s glad the diner windows are frosted. “Who says I’m running?”

  “Where’s your mother?” Sister Dorothy asks.


  “Dead,” Lucia says.

  “And your father?”

  “I’m going to try to find him.”

  “You’re alone-alone? There’s no one looking for you?”

  Lucia thinks of Grandma Rena, out there—right out there—looking for her as she sits here talking to Sister Dorothy. She saw a TV show once about a bank robber in Texas who robbed a bank and then went to eat right in the Chili’s across the street from the bank. She feels sort of triumphant, the way that bank robber must have felt. “No one,” she says.

  The waitress brings back her food and takes the Coke glass for a refill.

  Lucia chomps a big bite of bagel. When the waitress comes back with her second Coke, she asks for a scoop of vanilla ice cream to go with her pie.

  The waitress shakes her head and says, “Okay, kid.” She leaves and comes back with a little bowl of vanilla ice cream and Lucia’s check.

  Lucia takes the hundred she flashed out of her pocket and gives it to the waitress.

  “You can just pay on your way out,” the waitress says.

  “I’ll pay now, if it’s okay,” Lucia says.

  “You don’t have anything smaller? Your bill’s only twelve bucks.”

  “Sorry, no.”

  The waitress shrugs and heads over to the register. She comes back quickly with Lucia’s change.

  Lucia stuffs a ten under the ketchup bottle as a tip and pockets the rest of her change, seventy-something bucks. She puts down her bagel and spoons some vanilla ice cream on top of her apple pie. She picks up her fork and digs in. Chewing, fork poised in the air, she looks at Sister Dorothy and says, “Sister, if I paid you, would you give me a ride somewhere?”

  “Where?” Sister Dorothy asks.

  “Wherever you’re going. New Paltz, you said? That sounds good. I just need to get away for a few days.”

  “I wouldn’t mind making some extra dough,” Sister Dorothy says, sitting back.

  Lucia smiles, her mouth full of pie. “You’re okay, Sister,” she says.

  Lucia watches as other cars blur by in the left lane. They’re in Sister Rory’s red Civic on the Thruway, and Sister Dorothy is driving forty-five, both hands clutched on the wheel, her back straight as a board. The car is immaculate and smells of pine air freshener. The briefcase is lodged between Lucia’s calves.

  On the way out of the diner parking lot, Lucia caught a quick glimpse of Grandma Rena, Wolfstein, and Mo, but they didn’t see her. She’s trying not to think of them now. Cops were swarming all around. She didn’t see Crea.

  “You don’t smoke, do you?” Lucia asks.

  Sister Dorothy takes her eyes off the road and looks over at her. “You’re a real little spitfire, huh?” Her eyes drift back to the road, and she motions with her hand toward Lucia’s knees. “They’re in the glove compartment there.”

  Lucia pops open the glove compartment and finds a pack of Parliament Lights next to a sleeve of pine air fresheners and a folded map.

  “I’ll take one, too,” Sister Dorothy adds.

  Lucia hands her a cigarette and takes one for herself, tapping the filter against the tip of her finger. A girl in school, Myra, a really troubled girl, she’d sometimes snort cocaine or something from the recessed filter of a Parliament Light. “Lighter?” Lucia asks.

  “The car one works.” Sister Dorothy reaches down and pushes in the lighter and waits for it to pop. When it does, she lights her cigarette off the glowing coils and then passes it to Lucia.

  Lucia lights hers and takes a long drag. It doesn’t taste bad. She feels tough. She rolls down the window and blows her smoke outside. She curls her toes against the grainy mat under her cold, dirty feet. “Can you go any faster?” she asks.

  “You’re really something. I don’t like driving, sorry. The faster I go, the less I like it.”

  “I can drive.”

  “You’ve got, what? A learner’s permit?”

  “Sure.”

  Sister Dorothy pulls over to the shoulder, leaves the engine running. They get out and switch places. Lucia keeps the briefcase at her side, pressed up against the door. Buses and trucks and SUVs thrum by, rattling the little car. Lucia flicks her cigarette out onto the pavement. Behind the wheel, she already feels free. She pushes the whatsitcalled, the gear, into drive and stomps down on the gas, catapulting them into the right lane just behind a Freihofer’s bread truck.

  Sister Dorothy’s cigarette pops out of her mouth and drops down to her lap. She swats at the cherry, burning hot on her leg. “Take it easy there, kid,” she says. “Sister Rory will kill me if I get burn holes in her upholstery.” She throws the ruined cigarette out the window, thumps at some more live embers on her thigh with the heel of her hand, then settles down and takes a slug from her flask.

  Lucia tries to keep it steady, checking her mirrors, hands firm on the wheel.

  “Tell me about your father,” Sister Dorothy says.

  “What?” Lucia asks, looking over.

  “Eyes on the road now.”

  Lucia’s eyes go back to the glittery blacktop, the white lines, the tires of the truck booming along in front of her.

  “You mentioned at the diner maybe trying to find your father,” Sister Dorothy says. “Can I help?”

  “I only have his name. I just learned it.”

  “So, you’re just at the beginning of something here? Barefoot, with a briefcase and your old man’s name. What’s in the briefcase, you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Half a million bucks,” Lucia says, smiling.

  Sister Dorothy busts out laughing. “‘Half a million bucks,’ she says. Regular spitfire.”

  Lucia doesn’t quite know where she is beyond the fact that they’re on the Thruway, headed north. They get off at Exit 18 for New Paltz. It’s not a long trip, only about fifty minutes from Mo’s town and all Lucia left behind there, and that makes Lucia a little uneasy. There’s no way they can track her here, but she’d like to be farther away. Maybe she can just grab a bus to somewhere else. Or maybe—and this is a big maybe—she can steal this car from Sister Dorothy. The fact that it’s not actually hers means Lucia wouldn’t feel as bad about it. Sister Rory’s nobody. Just a person who exists out in the world and pays extra for dumbass vanity plates. Plus, Lucia can leave Sister Dorothy some money, so it wouldn’t be stealing at all. Not that she needs to give a shit about being moral.

  “How is it?” Sister Dorothy asks.

  “How’s what?” Lucia replies.

  “Driving barefoot. Does it feel weird?”

  “A little. I don’t know.”

  “You should get some shoes.”

  They stop at the tollbooth. The guy inside is wearing an eyepatch and reading a big fat Stephen King book, The Stand. Sister Dorothy searches around for the ticket, finds it stuffed behind the driver’s-side visor, and then reaches over Lucia to pay. It’s not much, a dollar and change. The guy gives Lucia the same once-over she’s been getting from everyone she encounters, and he can’t even see her feet. He simply seems shocked by her youth. He has questions, and he wants to ask them. Lucia rolls away before he manages to make a coherent sentence.

  Sister Dorothy points and tells her to take a left into town. They pass a gas station and supermarkets. The view straight ahead is of mountains and blue sky. Her window still rolled down, the air feels crisper here.

  “It’s a nice town,” Sister Dorothy says.

  Lucia nods, almost forgetting to put on the brakes at a red light, coming close to rear-ending a yellow VW Beetle.

  “Down by the bus station,” Sister Dorothy says, “there’s a hostel. You know what a hostel is?”

  Lucia shrugs. “Not really. I know the movie.”

  “What movie?”

  “Hostel.”

  “The only movies I like are Rain Man and Beaches.”

  “This one’s gory.”

  “Anyhow, a hostel’s just a cheap place to stay. You can get a room there, or you can get a bus at the station. We haven’
t talked about my rate.”

  “Your rate?”

  “How much I charge for rides. Forty bucks fair?”

  Lucia shrugs again. “Sure.”

  They pass through a green light outside of a strip mall with a sign for a movie theater. They pass pizza places and a beer store and pharmacies. They seem to be coming downhill now. Stopped at another red light, off to the left is a deli and off to the right is a dive Indian restaurant. The mountains feel closer. Lucia thinks about how stupid it was to even consider stealing the car. She’d never be able to pull it off.

  After a gas station and another deli and a little scattering of other shops, Sister Dorothy points at a big old white house with a weird sculpture on the front lawn. “That’s it,” she says. “Pull over.”

  Lucia does that, jolting to a stop right outside the house, tires up on the curb, nearly clipping a fire hydrant.

  Sister Dorothy takes a long pull from her flask. “Good luck finding your old man.”

  Lucia reaches into her pocket and comes out with the folded money from the diner. She peels off two twenties, dropping them into the ashtray. She then pulls the briefcase up into her lap, fearing a scenario where it pops open and her money’s everywhere. But that doesn’t happen. Lucia gets out, and she’s standing on the pavement, clutching the briefcase.

  Sister Dorothy scooches into the driver’s seat and then leans out the open window and says, “Get some shoes, huh?”

  Lucia nods and says thanks. She walks around the back side of the car and steps onto the sidewalk. Sister Dorothy screeches away. Lucia thinks how strange it is how people come and go.

  Her father’s name is spinning through her head. Walt Viscuso. All these years, he’s been a blank page to her. A blank face. Nothing. And now he’s a name, letters on the black screen of her mind. Walt. Four letters. An ugly name. And Viscuso—that should be her last name. Lucia Viscuso. She doesn’t like it one bit.

  She looks up at the hostel. It looks like the kind of place where college kids live in movies. She imagines mattresses on floors, band posters on walls, people sitting cross-legged and smoking pot out of little glass pipes.