A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself

by William Boyle

  The Trailways bus station is right next door. Three taxis idle in the lot. A long-haired man works on his motorcycle. Three girls wait for a bus, talking.

  Lucia’s plan is to go to the library to research her old man. And then she’s going to buy sneakers and a backpack for the money so she doesn’t have to carry it around in a briefcase like some dipshit. And then, maybe, depending on what she finds out about her father, she may or may not buy a ticket at the bus station going north or south, east or west. Or she might come back and go into the hostel and get a room and lay low for a couple of days—but she thinks that might be dangerous. She’s not far from Monroe, and if word gets out about her being on the lam, as she imagines it will, they’ll know right away who she is and call the cops. So, no, Sister Dorothy, maybe getting a room’s not a good idea, as nice as it would be to lie down on a bed and sleep.

  She’s worried about being out in the open.

  She goes into the bus station. A burnt-out hippie in flannel is behind the glass window, reading a paperback. The walls are wood-paneled. A long bench and a pinball machine and a sad plant on a little plastic table are the only things in the lobby.

  “You want a ticket somewhere?” the guy says, looking up at her.

  “Where’s a library?” she asks, ignoring his question.

  He stares at her. “You like books?” He holds up his: Jitterbug Perfume. Blue, a woman’s hand opening a perfume bottle, some kind of smoke rising up. “This is good.”

  “I just need the library,” she says.

  He leans over the counter and gives her feet a good look. “You’re a runaway, huh? I know you probably don’t want to go to the cops. Fuck them, right? There’s a shelter in town. Maybe you can go there?”

  “I’m not a runaway.”

  “You’re, like, walking barefoot to prove something?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “The library’s up Main Street on the right. You can’t miss it.”

  She says thanks and walks out of the bus station lot back out onto the sidewalk, holding the briefcase against her chest. She heads down Main Street toward the heart of the village. She passes a Thai restaurant and an Italian market and a college bar.

  The library’s right there on the corner where Main Street bears left a little. A rut of shops and markets. Those pretty mountains on the horizon. She goes into the library, and there’s a giant behind the front counter; at least he seems like a giant to her. He’s maybe six-five and three hundred pounds with a big mole on his cheek. He’s also wearing a flannel and dirty jeans. She asks about the public computers, and he points her to them and tells her how to log in as a guest.

  She sits down and puts the briefcase between her legs and does an internet search for Walt Viscuso. She doesn’t really like using computers. She should, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t like them for games or for music or for anything. Whenever she’s at a computer, she feels like she’s in some dumb version of the future, where people are tapping at unwieldy keyboards and staring at boxy screens.

  There are no articles or obituaries about her father, which hopefully means he’s not in jail and not dead. She’s looking for a phone number or an address. She’s trying to think how old he would be. The same age as her mother. The same age as her mother was. Adrienne’s not that age anymore. Or she’ll be forever that age.

  She finds only two Walt Viscusos in New York. One in Brooklyn and one in Buffalo. The Buffalo one is listed in his fifties. The Brooklyn guy’s thirty-five and makes more sense; he never left. It’s got to be him. She can’t imagine her luck. He could’ve been anybody. He could’ve been someone with a name way more people shared. She finds a pencil and takes out the paper Grandma Rena gave her and writes down what might be her father’s number under the other two numbers in Grandma Rena’s shaky print.

  She looks at the rest of the hits and doesn’t see much of value, except for an Our Lady of the Narrows alumni letter indicating that a Walt Viscuso graduated there in ’88. Our Lady of the Narrows is a Catholic high school in Bay Ridge. She’s heard all about it from Adrienne, who went to its sister school. Makes sense that her old man would’ve gone there.

  On her way out of the library, she asks the giant where she can get sneakers. He tells her there’s a shoe store a couple of blocks down. He walks her outside and tells her to make a right here at the library on North Front and then walk past Church and make a left on North Chestnut and the place, whatever it’s called, will be right there. He wishes her good luck because, he says, she sure looks like she needs it.

  In an alley next to a bakery on North Front, she kneels down and opens the briefcase slightly, yanking a few hundreds through the slat. She looks around to make sure no one’s watching and is relieved to see only a gaggle of summer-break college kids, slugging coffee, the girls braless in crop tops and cut-offs, the boys in sandals and cargo shorts and band T-shirts, none of them giving a shit about her.

  She walks over to the shoe store and picks out an expensive pair of blue Pumas in her size. The lady working is keeping an eye on her, thinking probably that she’s a likely candidate to stuff something under her shirt. But Lucia goes to the register proudly with her Pumas and cash, and the woman acts as if she’s being filmed and needs to respond to this weird young girl respectfully.

  Lucia pays and puts on the sneakers right there, leaving behind the bulky red box. “Is there a good place to get a backpack?” she asks the woman at the register.

  The woman nods back in the direction of Main Street. “There’s a rock-climbing place just off the corner. Couple of head shops, too. The vintage place. You might find something in one of those.”

  Lucia leaves and walks up North Chestnut into the village. After she scores a backpack, her goal will be to call Walt and maybe get a slice or two of pizza.

  The store the woman was talking about is called Rock and Snow. Lucia approaches and guesses it’s perfect with its big, clear windows, racks of bright clothes, walls full of equipment. They’ve got to have backpacks. She walks in and asks for the backpacks and is pointed to where they are by a guy in his twenties with a long red beard.

  She picks out the one that looks the nicest. It’s red nylon with a lot of zippers and a kind of curved mesh part that’s probably meant to be good for the back. It’s big enough to hold the money. It’s expensive, high end, almost three hundred bucks, and Lucia feels like a rock star buying it. Red Beard rings her up, unsmiling, considering her businessman-like briefcase, her bright blue sneakers, her aura of fatigue. He asks if she wants a bag for the backpack, and she shakes him off.

  She looks around. She can honestly say she’s never given one single thought to rock climbing. She’s seen movies. People scaling walls, using ropes and picks and shit, dressed silly.

  Back outside, she heads up Main and settles on a little hole-in-the-wall pizza shop called Gourmet. She goes in and looks over the slices behind glass. Lots of specialty pies. She orders two plain slices and an orange soda from the dude behind the counter, pays, and goes over to a booth to wait while her slices heat up. Behind her, there are two narrow doors for the bathrooms, scuzzy, splattered with graffiti.

  She opens the door on the right. It smells like piss and bleach. The toilet is dirty. She uses the toilet and then takes the money out of the briefcase, stuffing it in her new backpack and double-checking it to make sure all the zippers are secure. It feels good to have her hands on the money. She feels around in the briefcase to make sure she’s not missing anything. She would hate to think that there’s a secret compartment she overlooked. Nothing else, as far as she can tell. She props the briefcase behind the garbage can, brown paper towels spilling over the edges, and thinks about the next person who walks in there finding the empty briefcase and wondering how it got there. She slips the straps of the backpack over her shoulders.

  The slices and soda are waiting for her when she gets back to the booth. She sits up on the bench, the backpack on. She scarfs down the slices, studying the poetry
of the grease stains on the white paper plates.

  What will she say to her father? What if he doesn’t pick up? What if he’s married and his wife answers? Maybe he’s got six other kids. Maybe they’re terrible, running all around and knocking things over and he’s just trying to sit there with a beer and watch something that he likes. Maybe he never even knew that Adrienne was pregnant. That seems like Adrienne: getting knocked up, keeping it quiet. Grandma Rena said he was a lowlife. What’s that mean, coming from a mob wife?

  She takes out the scrap of paper with the numbers on it and works on memorizing Walt’s in case it gets lost. Scraps of paper can float away, rip into nothing, the ink can be washed to a fade in rain or from sweat. But a number can burn itself onto your brain so you never forget it, that much she knows. She still has every number of every apartment and house she and Adrienne have ever lived in rattling around her mind. She doesn’t memorize the number for Grandma Rena’s prepaid cell, not yet, but maybe she should. She stuffs the paper back in her pocket.

  Done with her pizza and soda, she goes up to the counter and orders garlic knots. She is congratulated on her appetite by a fat man in a Knicks jersey who peeks his head out of the kitchen. The dude behind the counter laughs and agrees that she can sure eat. She pays for the garlic knots.

  The garlic knots are served on a paper plate with a plastic cup of marinara sauce. She devours them standing up at a slim counter scattered with shakers of crushed red pepper and parmesan cheese. The garlic knots are rubbery and greasy and good. Her stomach feels like a brick. “Hello, is this Walt Viscuso?” she says aloud.

  From over by the register, a shout: “Huh?”

  “I’m just talking to myself,” she explains.

  A shrug, a nod, the oven door being opened and whooshed shut, a clattering of pans.

  Lucia takes out the phone Grandma Rena bought her and dials Walt’s number from memory.

  After two rings, someone picks up, but they don’t say anything.

  “Hello, are you there?” she says into the void.

  “Who is this?” a voice shoots back. Raw, scratchy. “Is this Gruffo’s kid?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Who the fuck are you? You called me!”

  “Is your name Walt Viscuso?”

  “What is this, a goof? Did Slam Bam and Chub put you up to this?”

  “Walt?”

  “Yeah, I’m Walt. And whatever it is”—he’s laughing now—“it’s not my fucking fault.”

  “My name’s Lucia. I’m your daughter.”

  Deep silence that seems to last a minute or more. Then the sound of him clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  “My mother was Adrienne Ruggiero.”

  “Was?” Walt asks.

  “She died yesterday.”

  “Aw, fuck.” More clicking, some heavy breathing, the sound of a cigarette being lit. “What do you want, kid? I’ve got a life here. I’ve got responsibilities.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You need money? If there’s one fact in this fucked-up world, it’s that I’m broke. I’m scratched out. I owe Gilly three hundred bucks. Forget what I owe Slam Bam and Chub. Plus, there’s Mackey. He’s about to sic his goons on me, no shit. Could be you’re talking to a dead man. I’m in the hole with Mackey for twelve grand.”

  “I have money,” she says.

  A beat. “You have dough? An inheritance?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d she die, your old lady?”

  “Cancer.”

  “Of the titties or brain or what?”

  “Ovaries.” She’d seen that on an afternoon talk show one time—ovarian cancer—it was a thing, for sure.

  “Oof. Tough deal. You know, she didn’t give me the time of day after I knocked her up. She was blitzed that night. She came to where I was working at the time, Century 21, wasted, had a purse full of little airplane bottles of gin and vodka and tequila. We went to a show at this club together, the way we sometimes did, and she screamed herself hoarse. She dragged me into the bathroom and we went at it. I’d wanted it to happen as long as I’d known her, but I wasn’t ready. I stuck it in for only a minute. She was so far out of my league, I shot that fast. She was disgusted with herself. Right away. She puked on the toilet. Not in it. When she found out she was pregnant, she told me Richie Schiavano would kill me if I ever went near her again. He came around to see me once or twice. I wasn’t scared, but I didn’t see any percentage in fighting her on it.”

  “Okay.” Lucia is rattled by this image of how she was conceived. A skanky club bathroom. A quick, sad fuck. Adrienne puking afterward.

  “But you have your inheritance and you’re looking to strike up a relationship with dear old Dad, huh?”

  “Can I come see you?”

  “Shit, sure. Come on over. Where are you? You need a ride? I’ll gas up the old Citation and play chauffeur.”

  “I’m upstate. I don’t need a ride. I’ll get there.”

  He gives her his address. He’s on Thirteenth Avenue between Seventy-Fifth and Seventy-Sixth Street in Dyker Heights. His apartment is over a Laundromat and across the street from a lingerie shop that’s just a front for a brothel, he tells her. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard the word brothel. He says he’s going to clean for her and reminds her to bring some of that inheritance and not to involve Grandma Rena, who he calls a rigid old pain in the ass. She says her grandmother is out of the picture. She lets out a breath and ends the call.

  She’s not stupid. She heard how his voice changed when she mentioned the money. He probably figures he can make a killing off her, that some of Papa Vic’s money will trickle down to him. She lets out a breath. The dream of being on her own is bullshit. And no one will expect her to go back into the city. She’s tough—she’s proven that. She can get out of trouble if she needs to.

  There’s a lot of money. She can share some with Walt. She wants to know him. At least a little.

  She leaves Gourmet and walks the few blocks back to the bus station. She doesn’t intend to get on a bus. Too much of a trail. Instead, she goes over to where the taxis are parked. She comes up on the driver’s side of the first one on the left and knocks on the window. The guy behind the wheel is in his twenties with shaggy blond hair and a messy beard and those glasses that turn into sunglasses in the light. He rolls down the window. He’s wearing an open flannel with a Nirvana shirt underneath, and he’s got a guitar magazine open in his lap. He smiles at her. “Help you?” he asks.

  “How much for a ride to the city?” she asks.

  He bites his lower lip. “It’ll be a lot. You can just catch a bus.”

  “I don’t want to take the bus.”

  “A hundred bucks.”

  “That’s fine.” She opens the back door and gets in, taking off the backpack and holding it in her lap, pulling the belt across it and snapping the buckle shut. She reaches over and closes the door.

  “Hold on,” the driver says.

  “What?”

  “I don’t mean to be unreasonable, but can I see that you have the money? I can’t afford to drive all the way to the city and have you hop out on me at a light or something.”

  She nods, takes a hundred out of her pocket, one of two she has left there, and passes it up to him. “Keep it,” she says.

  He holds it up to the windshield to make sure it’s not counterfeit, seems convinced, pushes the guitar magazine out of his lap, and starts the car. “Where to?” he says.

  “Brooklyn,” she says. “I have the address.”

  He turns around. “I’m Justin.”

  “I’m Mikaela,” she says, and she’s not sure where it came from or why she chose that name, but she likes the freedom of being able to name herself. She’s always liked that name: Mikaela. Sounds like a girl with a chip on her shoulder, like a girl who can start some shit. She’s ready for Walt. She’s ready for the future.r />
  WOLFSTEIN

  Mo gets chummy with Detective Pescarelli, and they drag Wolfstein and Rena along to O’Leary’s for a good dose of questions over early drinks. As they go in, they see Richie being pulled out of the Eldorado and loaded into a coroner’s van. Rena puts her hand over her face. Richie must remind her of Adrienne, of where they are and where they’ve been and all that’s different or not-that-different, just new. Panic and anger set in again.

  Wolfstein, Mo, and Pescarelli sit down in a booth, while Rena scurries away to the bathroom to wash her face. Wolfstein keeps her bag in her lap.

  “She’s been through some shit, huh?” Pescarelli says.

  “One dirty old man put the moves on her, one dirty old man shot her daughter, and the last dirty old man finished the job,” Mo explains. “It’s like some fucked-up folktale. Plus, her granddaughter’s on the lam.”

  “It’s normal to do this in a bar?” Wolfstein asks.

  “Normal for me,” Pescarelli says. “I do things how I do ’em. I’m an old-school individual. I get respect. I get breathing room.” He sits back. He’s sweaty in his corduroy blazer and heavy shirt. He’s got a half-beard that makes his face look dirty and bags under his eyes and wiry hairs jutting from his nose and earlobes. He looks like the kind of guy who orders two meatball subs for dinner and eats them alone in his car listening to a Mets game.

  Wolfstein’s gaze drifts back toward the bathroom, expecting Rena to come out any second.

  The bar is even shittier on the inside. It’s dark, and a heavy smell of stale smoke blankets the place. They probably don’t allow smoking anymore officially, but she’s sure this place gets smoked out every night into the wee hours. With its pinball machine and crumpled Yankees banners and pictures of cops and firefighters on the walls, it looks like a bad approximation of a working-class bar from a bad movie. The kind of place a Matt Dillon character would drink at when they were trying to make him look like a guy who plows driveways for a living. The bartender is a wretch. Skeezy, with bloodshot eyes and carrot-colored hair and NEVER FORGET tattooed on his neck. Pescarelli goes to him and orders a pitcher for the table, flashing his shield. The bartender pulls the pitcher and hands over three plastic cups and says it’s on the house. Pescarelli’s tip is lousy.