Gravesend

by Boyle, William

  Uncle Ray Boy led Eugene out of the office. They walked out of the building under THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE and headed for Grandma Jean’s Camry, which was parked up on the curb. Eugene got in on the passenger side, and Uncle Ray Boy got under the wheel. A copy of The Village Voice was folded on the dash. Eugene noticed that it was open to a story about Uncle Ray Boy and Duncan D’Innocenzio. A picture of Uncle Ray Boy from back in the day was side-by-side with his mugshot. And Duncan’s junior yearbook picture took up the bottom of the page. Uncle Ray Boy plucked the newspaper from the dash and put it in the backseat. Eugene figured it was better not to ask about the article.

  “That was bullshit,” Eugene said.

  “What?” Uncle Ray Boy said, pulling away from the school.

  “The whole thing. What Aherne said.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “My mom didn’t tell you?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know.”

  “Said ‘fuck you’ to a teacher.”

  Uncle Ray Boy kept his eyes on the road.

  Eugene said, “How come you didn’t say anything to Aherne? You just let him talk to you like that?”

  Uncle Ray Boy said, “Like what?”

  “Just like you were nothing. Like he was so much better than you.”

  “You got a lot to learn.”

  “I always thought you were tough.”

  “You wanted to be like me?”

  “What you did to that fag, who cares?”

  Uncle Ray Boy pulled the car over by Owl’s Head Park. He was gripping the steering wheel so tight his fingers were quaking-red. “They’re all gonna want me to help straighten you out,” he said. “They’re gonna want me to tell you how shitty prison was. How sorry I am. I am sorry, Eugene, but I’m not gonna do any of that. You’re my nephew, what’s that mean? Blood? What’s blood mean when you’re dead? I don’t give a fuck about you, about your mother, about my parents, about anything. Just let me be dead.”

  Eugene got out of the car and limped into the park. He took cover behind a tree and watched Uncle Ray Boy pull away. Eugene could see now that there was something very wrong with his uncle.

  Sweat was still in school, so Eugene walked to Constantino’s for an early slice. He didn’t know what Uncle Ray Boy would tell his mother, but that didn’t matter yet. For now, he was free. Free to roam between Bay Ridge and Gravesend. Or to go somewhere new. There was so much Brooklyn he hadn’t seen.

  The slice was cardboardy, orange with grease. Leftover from yesterday. Eugene ate from the crust in and left a circle of picked-clean dough.

  He took out his phone and texted Sweat: Hit me up later.

  No response, the phone probably off at the bottom of Sweat’s locker. He’d gotten in trouble so much for carrying it around that Brother Dennis always checked in the mornings to make sure he put it away before classes started. They were on different schedules, and it was possible that Sweat hadn’t even heard about what had happened yet.

  Eugene played pinball in the corner by the window under the neon beer signs, and the Mexican guy behind the counter, apron over his shoulder, watched him, like, Why aren’t you in school? Eugene stripped off his tie and stuffed it in his backpack.

  He went through three bucks in quarters on the machine and then left Constantino’s.

  It was weird to be walking around on a Monday morning. Not much was going on. Old ladies humped shopping carts up Fifth Avenue, stopping at banks and markets. Construction workers and traffic cops goofed at Dunkin’ Donuts. Old alkies shuffled into The Dodger, McTierney’s, The Wicked Monk, and Brushstrokes, playing touch video games and starting off the day with a glass of beer or a Bloody Mary or straight whiskey.

  Eugene’s phone started buzzing non-stop. His mother. Uncle Ray Boy must’ve called her as soon as he got home. Eugene powered it down, put it at the bottom of his backpack.

  Eight

  Alessandra was in the city at Café Torino with a director named Lou Turcotte she’d hooked up with through a friend on Facebook in the gin haze of two, three the night before. The guy was casting a small indie drama set in Brooklyn, and she chatted to him that she was born for one of the parts. He said he’d e-mail her a script, and he did first thing in the morning, just a few pages. She glanced at it. It was really bad. No way the guy was from Brooklyn. But she needed work, anything, and maybe a movie part would get things going. They sat a sidewalk table and he ordered them espressos. He was dressed the part: sunglasses, ascot, sport coat, beard. She was dolled in her low-rise super skinny jeans and a long-sleeve chambray shirt, her vintage taupe coat folded over the back of the chair.

  “What I’m thinking,” Lou Turcotte said, “is that Angie—that’s the part looking at you I think you’d be good for—is fed up, just about to explode, tired of her life. When Angelo comes back to the neighborhood, she’s sort of starstruck.”

  Alessandra said, “Angie and Angelo?”

  “Yeah. I’m going for the authentic vibe. You’re Italian, right?”

  “I’m Italian.”

  “So Angie, she’s led a sheltered life, never been out of the neighborhood. Angelo, he’s a mobster, he goes all over the place, Jersey, Italy, Vegas, killing, gambling,” lowering his voice, “making love to whomsoever he chooses. He’s back because his mom’s dying. Real prodigal son situation. He walks in with pastries, sees his mother hooked up to ventilators, starts shooting holes in the ceiling.”

  “Shooting holes in the ceiling? Why?”

  “That’s what this guy does when he gets upset.”

  Alessandra almost lost it. “This is the lead you want me for?”

  “Look at you. You’re beautiful. I mean, you’re a Brooklyn girl.”

  “Where are you from?”

  He took his time answering. “Connecticut. My grandmother’s from Brooklyn, though.”

  “Right.”

  “Listen, I’m gonna get this movie in at Sundance. No bullshitting.”

  “You’re gonna keep this title?” Alessandra said, looking down at the pages he’d sent her.

  “Fuhgeddaboudit? No. No way. That’s a working title. Tentative as hell. I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Okay, that’s good. I’ll do it, I guess.”

  “Really? Great. Great. I’ll get you the rest of the script.”

  Alessandra put out her hand and they shook on it. Lou Turcotte had the hands of someone who’d never worked a day in his life. They were moisturized, his nails manicured. “When do we start?”

  “Well, that’s the hitch. Gotta raise some money. My mom’s got some doctor friends. They said they’d kick in. My dad, he’s affiliated with these start-up-your-business kind of guys, they say they’ll help. It’s gonna happen, don’t doubt that. The ball’s rolling, Ali.”

  “Alessandra.”

  “The ball is rolling, Alessandra. It’s in my court and I’m ready to hit some shots.” Lou was getting cheesier and cheesier, mixing up clichés. Alessandra wondered just how bad the rest of the script actually was.

  “Okay, well keep me updated.” Alessandra stood up.

  “Would you like to accompany me for a celebratory drink? I can text Beau, get him to join us. Beau’s gonna be playing Angelo.”

  “Beau?”

  “Beau Benjamin. Quite the young actor.”

  “Beau Benjamin?” Alessandra smiled chin-to-eyes.

  Lou Turcotte was texting Beau Benjamin. “He’d love to meet you. Angelo and Angie out on the town.”

  “I don’t think so,” Alessandra said. “Not now. I’ve got some things to do. But be in touch about the film.” And she walked away from the table, up Thompson, wanting to put her head in her hands, thinking, I’ve stooped lower.

  She didn’t have anything to do, anywhere to be. She figured she’d just walk around the city, get lunch, go to a museum, avoid Brooklyn. The run-in with Conway D’Innocenzio earlier in the day had unsettled her, made her feel like things had corkscrewed way out of control. And trying to get with Ray Boy Calabre
se—or whatever she’d been trying to do—had been a sick mistake.

  She stopped at a bodega and bought a pack of American Spirits and a Pellegrino.

  At lunchtime she ghosted after Dojo on St. Mark’s. The place no longer there. She remembered afternoons cutting Kearney when she’d take the train into the city and have an avocado, lettuce, and tomato sandwich and sparkling water at the Dojo and then take in a movie at the Angelika. St. Mark’s had turned into a yuppie wonderland, Coney Island High gone, Kim’s moved, no-better-than-Hot-Topic boutiques and a chain frozen yogurt shop replacing the diviest of the dives, basement leather shops, dust-dark vinyl-only record stores up craggy stone staircases, shithole bars. The Keyhole Cocktail Lounge was still there, thank Christ, and she remembered nights she’d hang out there senior year, playing the jukebox, drinking free, Stefan, the owner of the joint, an old drunk who was famous for serving anyone, serenading her.

  She stopped at the Keyhole for a drink, gin-and-tonic with double limes, and struck up a conversation with the shoulders-hunching-into-titties bartender. Whiskers hung from a flabby mole on the bartender’s cheek, and her eyes were black and deep. Stefan died three years ago, she said. Just went plop behind the bar one night and everyone kept drinking for three hours before they realized he was dead and not just asleep.

  Alessandra left the place depressed.

  She got the 6 at Astor Place and took it uptown. She smoked cigarettes in Bryant Park and picked up a paperback at a drugstore.

  People made movies all the time. Maybe the next Cassavetes or Scorsese was around. Lou Turcotte wasn’t him, but she had to start somewhere. There was Law and Order, off Broadway, off-off Broadway. The city was humming with plenty of work. She’d be in Gravesend once a month maybe, for dinner with her father and Aunt Cecilia, to do a favor, drop something off. Real promise overwhelmed her.

  She was feeling better about everything, excited to find a place, even if it was only with sad, sweet Stephanie Dirello. She could still pull out of that anyway. Say she found a nice studio. Went back downtown, East Village, West Village, wherever. Say she found one today. Sorry, Steph. Dumb luck. Stumbled into it. Come visit.

  Hell, maybe she’d stay in the city all night, find someone to go home with, no ex-con hate crime-perpetrators to tempt her for lack of better options.

  But, first the Met. Still an afternoon to kill.

  She took her time at the museum, lingering at Joan of Arc for forty-five minutes, just sitting on a small bench, legs crossed, staring deep inside of it, Joan of Arc’s eyes in the painting alive, wondering how the painting stayed so alive-looking for so long. She remembered the first time she’d seen it, on a high school field trip, and how she’d lingered then, too. The other girls scooting past, drunk on the energy of being outside of school, seemed uninterested. Marie Gennaro joked that the painting gave her the creeps. But Sister Erin, the youngest nun at Kearney, stood in front of it as if she were praying. She said to Alessandra on the bus home, “It’s just beautiful, isn’t it? Stays with you.” And Alessandra knew what she was talking about and nodded.

  The rest of the museum was a blur of tourists and forced air. Other paintings interested her, but there was nothing else like Joan of Arc.

  Alessandra remembered the time she’d seen Ed Harris and Amy Madigan down by the bathrooms. It was the week before she was leaving for L.A. Mid-summer. She’d tried to make conversation, tried to say, “I want to be an actress.” But nothing came out. She just stared, mouth open like a gag had just been removed, eyes gone fuzzy, tongue sandpapery.

  Her father had wanted her to go to Italy that summer before college, to spend a month with some cousins in Naples, but she’d refused, spending her days in the city, doing bogus extra work, haunting the museums and cafés, drinking at the Keyhole.

  She should’ve gone to Italy, had always regretted not going.

  Feeling bad, she called her father to check in, said she’d run into some friends and was going to be crashing with a girlfriend from L.A. Her dad didn’t seem happy, already used to the company, but she brushed it off, pretended to be in a too-crowded place where she couldn’t hear him.

  “Okay, I love you,” he said.

  “Love you too, Daddy.”

  And then the actual blankness of the day blindsided her.

  She ate a baguette in Central Park and watched some hipster-slash-hippie play guitar with a case open on the ground in front of him full of nickels and dimes. He wasn’t singing. Just strumming. Poorly.

  She sat down on a bench, dreamed of Lou Reed-style romance, a perfect day, sangria, animals in the zoo, a movie too and then home.

  She stopped at a wine bar called Zulaz, which she’d heard about from a friend of a friend, had a glass of pinot noir and a small square of dark chocolate dusted with sea salt.

  On the subway back downtown everything was headphones-on quiet. People were getting off work, going home with sacks of groceries from Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. She wished she had a home here to go to. To hell with a studio. Something in a brownstone, with a let’s-drink-this-rosé-and-chat kind of roommate.

  Back off at Astor, she picked up The Village Voice, figuring she’d see about apartments. Craigslist was a better bet, but maybe she’d find something old school this way. She sat at Starbucks with a small coffee and flipped through the pages from back to front, seeing very little about apartments, a couple of out of reach places maybe, but nothing else. Instead, she noted movies she wanted to see, albums she wanted to download, restaurants she should tell Lou Turcotte to meet her at if he was footing the bill.

  Folding the paper open to its center now, the main headline screamed at her: THE MURDER OF DUNCAN D’INNOCENZIO, SIXTEEN YEARS LATER. Duncan’s high school yearbook picture stared up at her. Such a cute kid. That genuine smile, Duncan not miserable-looking, not being ironic. Little streak of red in his hair. Next to it were side-by-side pictures of Ray Boy. He was sitting on his stoop in the first, wearing a wife-beater, hair greased back. The other was his mugshot, Ray Boy’s face drawn in, his eyes hollowed out, like he was being sucked inside himself.

  Alessandra didn’t want to think more about it all, but she read the article anyway, the writer saying that Duncan’s murder was committed before the Hate Crime Act got passed in 2000, otherwise Ray Boy, Teemo, and Andy Tighe might’ve gotten sent up for life. She was saying their sentences should be revised and they should be thrown back in jail according to the new law, that it was a goddamn crime they were out walking around. They couldn’t even get a plaque up at Plumb Beach for Duncan, but these guys had their whole lives ahead of them, she said. It was a rallying cry. No comment from Frankie D’Innocenzio.

  Alessandra folded the paper and put it on the chair next to her. She finished her coffee and just sat there, watching people through the window.

  A sick feeling crawled up in her.

  The picture of Ray Boy, the mugshot, it was like looking at the Devil.

  Seven Bar was a hipster dive on East Seventh. Alessandra plugged a few dollars into the jukebox and put on X, David Bowie, and The Cramps. She sat at the bar and ordered a double gin-and-tonic. The bartender, a blond girl with pin-up tats, rockabilly jeans, a tied-in-the-front blouse, and Bettie Page hair was a welcome relief from the Gravesend brand of bartender. Alessandra felt like she could sit here all night. Anyhow, the place was open until four. If she didn’t find someone to go home with, she’d get an Irish coffee or two and go to a diner when Seven Bar closed.

  The bartender bought her back after the first drink and introduced herself. Amy Falconetti from Flushing. “You live near here?” Amy said.

  “Been in L.A. for a long time. Just got back home to Brooklyn. I’m Alessandra.”

  “Alessandra, that’s pretty. So what’s L.A. like? I’ve never been.”

  “Better than you’d expect. But still kind of shitty.” Alessandra sucked down her second gin-and-tonic and rattled the ice around in her mouth.

  Amy bought her another one.

&
nbsp; “No,” Alessandra said.

  “Owner’s an angry Ukranian midget,” Amy said. “I’m sure.”

  Alessandra tipped big.

  They got to talking about music. Amy complimented Alessandra on her picks, especially The Cramps, and talked about how goddamn much she loved Lux Interior. Alessandra told her about some great shows she’d seen out in L.A. at the Wiltern and the Hollywood Bowl: Social Distortion, Wilco, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Amy talked about her record-buying problem. She loved vinyl, 180 gram vinyl, and it was costing her. She lived with all her records in a small basement apartment in Flushing. She only really came into the city to work and see shows.

  The bar started to fill up, and Amy left her to drink. Hipsters, kids from NYU, bikers, old weirdoes from the neighborhood filed in. They ordered pitchers of PBR or the house beer. Some kids got the Dirty Hipster special: a shot of Jäger and a PBR. The booths filled in. The jukebox got backed up. A kid trying to look like Edward Scissorhands played pool on the ratty table in the back with an entourage of giggly Japanese girls.

  Amy came over and said, “Fuck my life.” She backed Alessandra up with another on-the-house gin-and-tonic. “We’ll do shots, me and you, when things calm down.”

  Alessandra grinned dumbly, gin hazy. She was just sitting there, drinking, watching Amy, the action of the bar swirling around her like some ribbony dream. Her phone rang a few times and she silenced it. Her old man. Stephanie. Ugh.

  At midnight the bar was packed, sweaty guys shoving up behind her, ordering over her shoulders. She had to pee a few times and tipped her stool forward to show it was taken. If someone snagged it in the time she was gone, Amy made sure to kick them off.

  She was going home with Amy when the bar closed, that was clear, taking the subway to Queens. Or maybe they’d stay in the bar, dance to the jukebox, get cozy on the pool table. Alessandra let her mind wander.

  Amy’s alarm clock sat on top of a stack of magazines next to a bookcase. It was just past noon. Alessandra, guessing they hadn’t actually gone to sleep until about eight, was still tired. They were lying in a curl of blankets, both naked, a record player at the foot of the bed skipping against the middle ring of Rain Dogs. The mattress was on the floor. Alessandra sat up, put her head in her hands, the gin still twisting in her temples. She looked over at Amy, sleeping belly down, tats all down her back and thighs, lots of ink, hundreds and hundreds of dollars’ worth of work. Her breasts were pressed against the bed. Her breaths were short and sweet, the tats rising and falling. Alessandra thought about waking her up by kissing her neck and ears, but decided against it. Amy probably had to go back to work in a few hours.