Gravesend

by Boyle, William

  “You heard me?” Conway said.

  Ray Boy nodded.

  “Can you get out?”

  Another nod. Ray Boy threw his taped-together legs out of the trunk and stood up in front of Conway. It seemed impossible, twisting his upper body out the way he did. Ray Boy could probably do whatever he wanted to. Break free. Run. Beat Conway down. But he was resigned to his fate. Conway didn’t even need the gun. But he stuck it in Ray Boy’s side anyway and told him to move.

  Ray Boy shook his head. He couldn’t walk with the tape around his legs, but Conway wanted to see him try and fall. If the guy was just going to go down like a dog, Conway wanted to humiliate him at least. He pushed him forward with the gun and Ray Boy toppled, face-planting into the glittery blacktop of the lot. He lifted his head up and showed scrapes on his cheeks and chin.

  “Can’t walk,” Conway said. “Maybe I should make you wriggle out into traffic.” He paused. Then: “Too good for you. Get up.”

  Ray Boy turned over and tried to kick himself into a stand. He couldn’t quite do it and stayed on the ground, looking up at the sky.

  Conway wondered if people could see them from the Belt. Probably not, driving by as fast as they were. He took the car key out of his pocket, straddled Ray Boy and cut the tape from his legs. Guy wasn’t going to run, and he needed to get him out to the shoreline.

  Ray Boy stood up, his hands still taped behind his back, his mouth taped shut, his upper arms taped to his sides. Tape covered his legs, but there was an open seam that ran from his boxers to his ankles, allowing movement. Ray Boy was shivering harder, his skin red now, and Conway stared at the Duncan tattoo.

  Shuffling forward, silent, goose-skinned, Ray Boy had his head down and was walking like a condemned man in shackles.

  “I hope you see Duncan out here,” Conway said, behind Ray Boy, the gun fixed on him. “Everywhere you look.” Pause. “You see him?”

  Slow nod.

  “He’s gonna get some peace tonight. Finally.”

  They were out at the shoreline now, the dark beach littered with ocean-soft glass that caught sparks under the moon.

  Conway pushed Ray Boy down in the pebbly sand, and he turned over, his eyes open. “You get a tattoo, you think what? All’s forgiven?”

  Ray Boy just looked at him.

  Enough with the silence. Conway wanted to hear some begging. He stripped the tape from Ray Boy’s mouth.

  “You think I should forgive you?” Conway said. “That’s really what you think? ‘Sorry, man. I was a different person then. I made mistakes.’”

  Head shake.

  “Say something,” Conway said. “Say, ‘No.’”

  Ray Boy said, “No. I don’t think that.”

  “Good.” Conway got over Ray Boy, just stood over him, and aimed the gun down at his face. He held his other hand out as if he’d block the blowback, the brain splatter, something he’d seen in a movie. “You feel Duncan out here? His spirit?”

  “I do,” Ray Boy said.

  “He’s happy, I bet.” Conway’s finger was on the trigger, trying to pull it in, trying to screw a bullet into Ray Boy’s eye. If he got the one in, then maybe he could annihilate Ray Boy’s whole face, empty the gun into his mouth and forehead and cheeks, so all that was left when he was done would be a stumpy blob of throat and hair. To have Faceless Ray Boy on the shoreline, washed over in the dark with the tide, that’d be a thing to carry him.

  But he couldn’t make his finger do the work.

  Ray Boy just waited. He seemed willing to let him figure it out. Ray Boy said, “I deserve it.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Conway said. “You wanna die so bad, why didn’t you just kill yourself?”

  No answer.

  “Huh?” Conway said.

  “Has to be you,” Ray Boy said.

  Conway was a pussy. He’d always been a pussy. He was shaking. He was picturing Duncan dead on the Belt, head run over, body mangled and tire-tracked. And here was the guy that did it. Not begging for mercy. Begging for justice, saying Conway had an obligation to execute him. Conway couldn’t. No guts to fire. No strength in the hand that he needed to make it happen, his trigger finger gone fishy, his bones melted under his skin. A coward, that’s all he was. He stepped back from Ray Boy and put the gun in his waistband.

  Ray Boy said, “No.”

  “I’ll leave you out here,” Conway said. “Maybe you’ll freeze. Or starve.”

  Again: “No.”

  Conway turned and rushed back to the car, leaving Ray Boy there in the sand. He got in and drove away in the dark. He panted onto the steering wheel, the windows fogging up. Someone flashed him as he merged back onto the Belt, and he snapped the lights on.

  “You gotta be fucking kidding me,” McKenna said. “I should’ve been there.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” Conway said.

  They were sitting in a booth at Murphy’s Irish, the only joint they went to since Teemo started tending bar at The Wrong Number. The place was awful and bright with five TVs showing ESPN and bartenders that could’ve been Teemo, probably had their own bad histories, greasy, balloon-chested fucks in Nautica gear with Yankee tats on their necks and white date rape caps. But Conway and McKenna didn’t know anything about them and could pretend. McKenna had gotten there before Conway and lined up a few shots of Jack and two pitchers of Bud. Conway was feeling the booze, his clothes sweaty even though he was cold. “I just couldn’t do it. My hand wouldn’t let me.” He pounded his shooting hand on the table and then brought down his other fist on top of it. “As good as broken.”

  “Take it easy,” McKenna said. “So you just left him out there?”

  “I’m gonna do what else? Give him a ride home?”

  “Guy comes after you, what then?”

  “He won’t.” Conway shook his hands out.

  “That’s for sure?”

  “You didn’t see him.”

  “This is fucked.” McKenna chugged a cup of beer. “Royally. Now what?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You go back to stocking shelves and Ray Boy gets on the first bus back upstate?” McKenna stopped, scratched his chin. “He stays in the neighborhood, what happens? Christ. Ray Boy back around. Scary thought.”

  Conway couldn’t even consider it.

  McKenna said, “I say we go out there now. Few drinks calmed you down. I’m there, I’ll do it if you can’t.”

  “He’s still out there, you think?”

  “He’s gonna go where? On the Belt and put out his thumb? Way you tell it, the guy’s just waiting to die.”

  “He is,” Conway said, and he stood up, knocking the underside of the table with his knees, sending plastic cups toppling onto the floor.

  They were both drunk and McKenna was driving. He got pulled over, he knew what to do. No cop was going to take him in or even give him a ticket. Conway was sweating, the gun clammy against his waist. The defroster in McKenna’s car was throwing off steam, slicking the windows over and making the brake lights ahead of them hazy. Another run, another chance to fail.

  “I should just use it on myself,” Conway said. “I’m the one needs to be put out of my misery.”

  McKenna said, “Fuck that. What’d this guy do to you? Play some mind game?”

  “I off myself, it’s all done. That’s it.”

  “You’re talking shit now, Con.” McKenna wiped the windshield with the back of his sleeve, swiping out a clean view. “I ain’t gonna pity you, that’s what you want. Get your shit together. You do this or you don’t, that’s it.”

  Conway looked down at his lap. He couldn’t believe it. A chance, finally, and he turned out to be a full-on chump. All those years of lying to himself.

  “You were ready when we left Murph’s,” McKenna said.

  Conway shook his head, tried to will himself to have strength, tried only to think of Duncan, seventeen forever, his blood scabbed over by grit on the Belt.

  Back at Plumb Beach, Conw
ay marked the Dumpster again, on his knees, booze-shaky. McKenna looked at him like he was a total fucking whackjob. Conway etched a little claw onto the right foot of his squat, slashy X. Then they walked to the shoreline, Conway leading, gun drawn, McKenna close behind. Marks in the sand where Ray Boy had been but no Ray Boy. Signs of rolling around. Footsteps. Tape he’d shed.

  “Fuck me,” Conway said.

  “Free and roaming,” McKenna said. “He played you.”

  “That’s not how it went. I just pussied out.” Conway wound up to throw the gun.

  “Fuck you doing?” McKenna said, trying to stop him mid-toss with a forearm shiver, but it was too late. Conway let go as McKenna made contact and the .22 went arcing out, landing in the water with a chirp. “You gotta be kidding.” McKenna put his arms up over his head.

  Conway said, “It’s over, dude.”

  McKenna pushed him. Conway fell backward, landing in Ray Boy’s tracks. McKenna huffed, fed up, disappointed.

  “I’m sorry,” Conway said.

  “You’re sorry?”

  “Sorry I threw the gun away.”

  McKenna shook his head, walked back to the car.

  Conway sat there, propped on his elbows, looked up at the dirty, starless sky. Just a quick cut of moon behind some cashew-shaped clouds. Conway remembered how Duncan would always tilt his head back on nights they sat out on the front stoop and say, “Look at the moon, man, it’s beautiful.”

  Getting up, dusting himself off, Conway walked with no purpose back to the car. McKenna had the radio on loud, didn’t want to talk, made throat-cutting signals when Conway offered to drive. McKenna took off with spinning wheels, back into the tragic flow, away from Plumb Beach, the moon staying framed in the back window.

  Pop was waiting up, standing at the door, looking out from behind the musty curtain over the glass. Conway could see him from the car. McKenna still had the radio on loud, the engine running, just waiting for Conway to leave. Conway wanted to apologize again, say something, anything, but he just got out of the car and watched McKenna drive away up the block, red lights fizzing out in the distance.

  Pop turned off the alarm and came outside. “Been worried sick,” he said. His pajama bottoms hung low and he wore a heavy North Face coat, making sure Conway knew it was a lot for him to be outside this time of night.

  “Sorry, Pop,” Conway said.

  “Where you been?”

  “Just taking care of some stuff.”

  “You said you’d get my prescription.” Pause. “Stephanie brought it. I should’ve gone myself.”

  “Pop, I’m sorry,” Conway said, feeling suddenly sore all over, hungover already maybe, or on the sour end of a cheap beer drunk.

  “You stink like booze.” Pop put a hand on his shoulder and scrunched his nose up.

  “I had a few. Let me be, huh?”

  “Let you be. I got one son left, I gotta worry.”

  The guilt trip. Conway couldn’t take it. He walked past his old man and went inside. Didn’t brush his teeth. Didn’t drink water. Just went to his room and flopped on the bed, feeling the headache settle.

  It took Pop a few minutes to reset the alarm and close up the house, but then he was hovering over Conway in the bed, saying, “Where you been? Stephanie said she was worried. Said you sounded upset.”

  “It’s nothing, Pop.”

  Pop paced next to the bed, frantic, spry when he wanted to be. “I’m alone here, what can I do?”

  Conway, eyes closed, tried to ignore it. He wanted to dream about something good. But what? Girls? He hardly knew any. He wasn’t going to dream about getting a blowjob from Stephanie, that was for sure. Actresses maybe. That cute redhead from the zombie movie he’d just watched. Her legs in those cutoffs. Conway tried to keep the picture of her up in his mind, saw it like a flickering image on an old drive-in movie screen, no sound. Pop’s voice killed it, droning on, the old man half-complaining, half-begging. Conway wanted, for once, to say, Please please please shut the fuck up, but he didn’t have the balls. He never had the balls.

  Pop kept going strong: “I’m worried sick over here. I don’t know who to call. I’m thinking maybe an accident. I’m looking up numbers to hospitals. Victory’s closed. Where they gonna take him, I’m saying. Methodist? Maimonides? I’m sick.”

  Conway’s eyes shot open, the ceiling fluttering. He said, “Please, Pop.”

  “And you got a big head.” Pop sat on the edge of the bed. “That’s all. Out drinking. I’m here worried, you’re at a watering hole, no worries, no thought for your old man.”

  “Please.”

  “Sleep it off. Mass is at 7:30 tomorrow. Or you gonna give up on that?”

  “I’ll be up,” Conway said.

  Pop got up, paced some more, and then left the room. “Sleep it off,” he said on his way out.

  “Night, Pop,” Conway said, closing his eyes again, trying to get the picture of the actress back, anything but Ray Boy.

  Next morning, at Mass with Pop, Conway felt hammered flat as elephant shit. He hadn’t showered or brushed his teeth. He’d peeled himself from the bed and walked to Murphy’s Irish to retrieve his car and then went back home to pick up Pop, making them almost ten minutes late for church, walking in on the second reading. He’d taken three aspirins for breakfast, washed them down with Tabasco-spiked tomato juice, and tried to eat a piece of toast but found he couldn’t. His stomach was all knotted up. He had a tightness in his chest, too, like what asthma probably felt like. And he kept seeing Ray Boy everywhere he looked. Ray Boy just out walking. Ray Boy in passing cars. On the bus. Leaving a deli with the Post folded under his arm, blowing on a steaming cup of coffee. Ray Boy, alive in everything.

  Eyes going squiggly, temples pounding, Conway looked around the church, trying to zone out on something. Only about fifteen other people were there. Mostly old timers. No one to mistake for Ray Boy. One woman, his age maybe, wore sunglasses and a scarf in her black hair and didn’t belong to the scene. She looked familiar. He wanted to nudge Pop, who’s that, but held off, going through an internal Rolodex of jerk-off material from the past. Had he gone to school with her?

  When Mass was over, Father Villani greeting people on their way out, Conway’s eyes followed Scarf and Sunglasses, trying to place her. She put her small hand in Villani’s and spoke to him for a moment.

  Outside, Pop was itching to get in the car. He’d walked right past Villani, never liking to shake hands with the priest on the way out, and Conway had followed him. Lapdog.

  He looked back over his shoulder at Scarf and Sunglasses, her neck arched now, buttoning up her soft coat, no wrinkles on it, straight and clean like in the store.

  “Hold up a sec, Pop,” Conway said.

  Pop wasn’t happy about it but he went over to the car and waited, arms crossed, sitting on the hood.

  Conway made a move toward the woman, not wanting to be a coward, wanting to say, Where do I know you from? Smooth, like that. But he stood in front of her, gawking. She was even prettier up close. “Hey,” he said.

  “Sorry, man,” she said, trying to walk away.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Listen.” She took off her sunglasses and eyed him with suspicion. “It’s too early for this.”

  He said, “I’m Conway.”

  “D’Innocenzio?”

  “I do know you?”

  “Alessandra. From Most Precious Blood.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “I was just,” she said, putting her glasses back on, “I was just out visiting my mother’s grave and I saw . . . I mean, I was just thinking . . .” She trailed off with what she was saying.

  “It’s been forever.”

  “Last night I hung out with Stephanie Dirello.”

  “I work with Steph.”

  “What she said.”

  “I heard you were out west. Where’s your dad? You were with your dad, I would’ve known it was you right away.”

  “He doesn’t
come to church anymore. Wanted me to go, though. Figured it was the least I could do, go to church for him. I haven’t been to church since high school. It’s weirder than I remember.”

  Conway tried to play it cool. He said, “I come for my old man. Least I could do, too.” It all came back to him then. Grade school. Sitting behind Alessandra for years. Her in her uniform. Olive skin. Black hair. Little feet. Root beer eyes. Always turning around to say something to him, to laugh, him doing the latest Saturday Night Live bit, her loving it, saying he was so funny. All those years, him going home, writing in marble notebooks over and over and over again, C hearts A, C hearts A, C hearts A. His biggest crush from grade school. His only crush really, not counting Dana Zimmardi in first grade. Alessandra, shit, right here in front of him now, not knowing what a coward he was, but knowing he worked at a fucking Rite Aid, and her an actress. He had no shot, none at all. Just tuck your dick between your legs and drive your daddy home, chump.

  “I got home yesterday,” Alessandra said.

  “Crazy. For how long?”

  “I don’t know. A bit.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m . . . I heard about your mother.”

  “Thanks, yeah. I was just saying, I was . . . I was out there visiting her at Holy Garden.”

  “Holy Garden?”

  “I saw Duncan’s . . . I mean, I paid my respects to Duncan. I didn’t remember he was out there.”

  Conway ignored it, not wanting to think about Duncan or Ray Boy right now, just wanting to think about Alessandra’s killer body. “Crazy, crazy, crazy.”

  “Well, I’m happy I ran into you.”

  “You want to, maybe, go get a slice one day? Catch up?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Let me see. I’m kind of unsettled, but yeah, probably I could do that.”

  Conway nodded, her being nice, he could tell, not really wanting to catch up beyond this. “You know where I work. Steph’s got my number.”

  She smiled, white teeth like a commercial, and said, “Bye now.”

  Conway walked back to the car, his old man about to explode, sick of waiting, tired of breaking routine.

  “They’re gonna be out of papers,” Pop said, as if Augie’s would sell out of the Daily News in five minutes.