The Lonely Witness

by William Boyle

  “Going there was so stupid.”

  “Have some gin.” Alessandra pushes the bottle at her, the cap gone for good.

  The rain lashes harder against the window. Amy takes a pull of gin and it sends shivers through her. She imagines Diane at home, sitting at the table in her kitchen with cold tea. Staring at photos of Vincent. Wondering why someone like Amy would present herself so ominously just minutes before she found out about her son’s murder, linger to help, and then go AWOL.

  Tomorrow, she tells herself again. Save these thoughts for tomorrow.

  They finish the bottle, and then they sleep.

  Amy jolts awake when the TV comes screaming back on. She’s totally lost track of time. Alessandra is still asleep next to her, sprawled on her stomach. Black hair curtained over the pillow. Arms up. Hands cupped together near the headboard. Little wrinkles on her shoulders. A sheet covering her bottom half. Her back rising and falling with every breath.

  A movie with Denzel Washington is on TV. He’s trying to stop a runaway train. Amy finds the remote buried in blankets and thumbs down the volume. She presses the info button to see what time it is. Almost midnight. The power was out for a long time. It’s still raining, thudding against the window. Slick sounds from outside of car tires on wet pavement. Amy’s not sure what time Alessandra’s flight is. Just like her to leave it a mystery.

  Amy flips through the channels and settles on some nature show. An armadillo digging a burrow. A soothing voice prattling on over the action. She goes over to Alessandra’s open suitcase and takes out a blue Dodgers T-shirt and a pair of black American Apparel jersey boy briefs with a white elastic waistband. She pulls the shirt on over her head and slips into the briefs. The shirt is big and loose, but the briefs are a little tight. Alessandra’s clothes used to fit her perfectly, but Amy’s sure she’s gone down a size. She fumbles through the suitcase. More clothes. So much underwear for such a short trip. A coffee-stained script for the boxing movie; it’s called Caught Cold. Amy flips through it. Alessandra highlighted the parts for a character named Vicki. A Ziploc bag holding some pills is scrunched into a pocket on the inside of the front shell. Amy wonders what they are. Probably something to help Alessandra sleep. She doesn’t need them now. Or she took one on the sly, washing it down with gin.

  Amy walks to the door and presses her eye to the peephole. Nothing scarier than looking at a hotel hallway through a peephole: ominous carpet, murky light, sad walls, the big blank door opposite them, that hum of silence. In her case, there’s the added fear that Dom will show up, emerging from the elevator and rushing toward their door.

  Alessandra sighs in her sleep. Amy goes back to the bed and curls up next to her. She wants to stay awake. She feels a little scraped out from the gin and all the drinking with Gwen the night before, but she also feels at peace. She doesn’t want to close her eyes. She doesn’t. She focuses on the TV, that armadillo. And then the ceiling. Rain against the window. Fucking rain and fucking peace. She drifts away, one arm flung over Alessandra.

  When Amy wakes up, Alessandra is gone. She expects to hear the shower. She doesn’t. Some show about the ocean is on TV, schools of colorful fish gliding smoothly underwater, soft blue light dappling the carpet and bed. Dramatic music. Amy’s first thought is that it’s early and Alessandra went to get them breakfast and coffee. She expects she’ll be back to the room any second with foil-wrapped bagels and avocados to mash up with little plastic forks. Maybe a couple of Roma tomatoes.

  Amy rises, yawning, stretching. She goes over to the window and draws back the curtain. It’s light out, probably seven or eight. The rain’s done, and the sky’s clear. But, judging by the heavier jackets and hats people are wearing out on the street, the temperature’s dropped. She expects to see Alessandra emerge from C-Town or the bodega on the opposite corner.

  She’s still wearing Alessandra’s boy briefs and Dodgers shirt. She’s cold, so she picks up the blanket and wraps it around her.

  She notices then that Alessandra’s suitcase is gone.

  She goes over to the lamp on the desk and flicks on the switch. The light illuminates a hotel notepad. A cheap pen, uncapped, partially blocks the words on the paper. Alessandra’s handwriting, sloppy and rushed. Amy reads the note:

  Am,

  Didn’t want to wake you. My flight’s early, so I caught an Uber to the airport. Checkout ’s 11. Stay until then. And try not to worry too much. No one’s following you. Everything will be fine. Forget what you saw. It ’ll only bring you trouble. Start over. Gwen will help, I’m sure. Come visit me in LA sometime. I had fun last night. I have a headache from the gin. This flight’s gonna suck. Still got a lot of love for you.

  —Al

  Amy had woken up feeling peaceful. The feeling has faded. Leaving like this is such a deeply predictable Alessandra move, she should’ve seen it coming. Alessandra’s not into good-byes or emotional scenes. The state Amy’s in, Alessandra probably anticipated things getting weird and bailed. Amy wonders if she actually has an early flight or if that’s just a bullshit excuse to get away. Doesn’t matter. Reality’s back. She rips up the note and tosses it in the trash can.

  Amy watches a little TV. Morning news. It makes her sick. She shuts off the TV and takes a shower, putting the door guard back on before she gets in. She stays in the shower until her skin starts to get pruny.

  When she gets out, she dries her hair and pins it back up. She finds the wig cap and wig on the chair next to the bed and puts them on. She likes the idea of staying who she is now. Without the wig, she fears drying up, retreating. She stands in front of the mirror, wearing only the wig. Her tattoos are still there. She remembers that she’d dreamed they’d disappeared. She puts on Alessandra’s shirt and underwear. She’s wearing them because they’ll keep her close. She gets dressed in the swing trousers and cardigan. The underwear she wore the day before, she just throws into the trash can with the torn note. She wishes she had makeup. Aside from that, she feels prepared. She has a plan.

  13

  Her plan is that she’ll go home and grab a few things and then leave her sad life behind. The life where she’s Mr. Pezzolanti’s tenant, where she delivers communion to old folks, where she eats Chinese food and has a crush on a woman who has no interest in her. She’ll leave it behind for something new, something truer to who she used to be. Maybe Alessandra’s right. Following Vincent was a cry for help from a version of her that once existed. You don’t have to live this way. Go back to the edge. Here’s a map.

  A happy by-product is that Fred will also lose her trail.

  What she thought she saw yesterday, Dom following her after she left Gwen’s, that can’t be. It’s the paranoia. Alessandra’s right. Alessandra’s right about everything. Whatever else someone can say about her, she knows how to survive. Amy wants to call Alessandra. She wants to see if she really got on that plane or if she’s off having breakfast somewhere, waiting for a later flight, afraid to deal with Amy’s shit.

  She takes out her phone, powers it on, and calls Gwen. It goes straight to voice mail. “Thanks again for letting me crash,” Amy says. “It was great seeing you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you anything about myself. What I’m stuck with right now, I’m not happy. I want to start over. I come there, you think I could stay for a week or two until I get a room and a job somewhere? Would your roommates mind?” She pauses. “This is Amy Falconetti, by the way.” She folds the phone and stuffs it in her pocket. She was trying not to think about it too much, but she noticed there weren’t any new voice mails from Diane.

  Before leaving the room, Amy searches for any traces of Alessandra. She knows very well that she’s the kind of person who forgets jewelry, floss, socks. But she’s left nothing behind. Amy shuts off the TV. She leaves the room and lets the door thump closed behind her. The hallway is quiet. She gets chills.

  She leaves the hotel and hustles across to the Twenty-Fifth Street station. She thinks she can catch the D there. It should only be about a tw
enty-minute ride back to her apartment. Or what she’s now thinking about as her former apartment. She hopes she can get in and out without running into Mr. Pezzolanti. She wants to pack a few things, that’s all. Mostly the contents of her egg crate.

  She’s glad it’s such a short walk to the station because it’s much colder now. The streets are wet, gutters thick with puddles.

  She remembers that the D only stops here late nights and waits for the Bay Ridge–bound R. She can take that one stop to Thirty-Sixth and then switch for the D.

  When the train finally comes, she gets on and decides not to sit, to stand and hug a pole. A man in a black tracksuit, a big plastic bag at his feet, stares at her. He’s got grimy features. His sneakers are new. She looks through the scratched glass at the station wall’s mosaic tiles as they pull away.

  “You like that pole, huh?” the man in the tracksuit says.

  She ignores him.

  “You heard me?” he says. “You like that pole, and I like your costume.”

  “Fuck off,” Amy says through gritted teeth.

  “Oh, she bites.”

  Amy fumbles along to the other end of car, hovering over an old woman reading a Chinese newspaper. She rushes off at the next stop and watches to make sure the man in the tracksuit doesn’t follow her. He doesn’t.

  The D train rumbles into the Thirty-Sixth Street station. She gets into a near-empty car, and a woman skitters in behind her. Amy sits down in a center-facing seat and crosses her legs. She looks down at her lap. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the woman, diagonally across from her, readying a stack of cards. The woman is young, maybe in her late twenties, and she’s wearing a ratty green sweater and men’s jeans. She comes over and puts a card on the empty seat next to Amy. Amy looks at it: I have a one-year-old daughter at home. Anything will help. The woman heads down to the other end of the car where four other people are clustered close together. Amy watches as she puts cards on empty seats next to them. They don’t look up. They don’t acknowledge her. She collects the cards quickly and heads back to Amy. Amy takes out five dollars and gives it to her. The woman nods and picks up the card. She gets off at the next stop and moves on to another car.

  Back in her neighborhood now. Former neighborhood. It feels good to think about it that way. Amy watches the tops of buildings: graffiti, wet brick, dramatic roof puddles. Old signage that always catches her eye. Fire escapes, pigeons on windowsills, drawn shades.

  She gets off at Bay Parkway and walks down to street level. It occurs to her that she doesn’t have a bag at home. She’s not going to bring much, but she should get a backpack. She stops at one of the little Chinese gift shops selling paper dragons and striped NYC caps and umbrellas and weird little dancing dogs. Everything’s three bucks. She walks in and finds a cheap blue backpack that looks like it will hold everything she needs it to hold, some clothes and tapes. Everything else, she’ll leave behind.

  Except the knife. She’s going to do just what Alessandra said, walk down to Gravesend Bay and throw it out into the water. The picture, she’ll rip up and throw out in one of the overstuffed cans on Eighty-Sixth Street.

  She pays for the backpack. Three dollars. The zipper’s a bit frayed, and it’ll probably fall apart in a week, but that doesn’t matter much.

  As she leaves the store, her phone dings. A text from Gwen: yeah!!!!!!!! come live with me, motherfucker!!!!!!!!

  Amy laughs. She’s definitely making the right decision.

  When she turns onto her block, she sees that Mr. Pezzolanti is standing outside the front gate, half blocking it, looking nervous. She approaches him, the backpack slung over her shoulder.

  “Help you?” Mr. Pezzolanti says.

  Amy says nothing. She considers for a second how she should play this.

  She doesn’t have the guts to pretend to be someone else. Say a long-lost twin.

  “Amy?” Mr. Pezzolanti says.

  “It’s me,” she says.

  “You had me fooled. You okay? I was worried.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “That’s a wig?”

  “It is.”

  “You hiding out from your old man?”

  “Something like that.” She wonders if she should be straight with him. Tell him she’s moving out. Moving on. She can’t deal with that now, though. He’ll tell her don’t worry about the money. Stay for nothing, he’ll say. It’ll probably be too hard to refuse. She’ll agree right on the spot, go in and change back into her other clothes. She’ll think about Mrs. Epifanio and Monsignor Ricciardi, and she’ll resume living this dead-end life, the last however long being nothing but a weird blip.

  “You need anything?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Well, you need anything at all, you let me know. Okay? I like the look, I do. You remind me of how the girls used to dress back in the fifties. You’re not careful, I’m gonna invite you out for dinner and a show.” Mr. Pezzolanti pauses, fondles a spike on the gate. “I haven’t seen your old man around, that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I don’t think he’ll come back.”

  “Chased him off, huh?”

  Amy nods and squeezes past Mr. Pezzolanti, a move she wouldn’t usually make. In the past, if he was blocking the gate, she’d wait for him to finish his small talk and step aside before moving in toward her apartment.

  Surprised by her forcefulness now, Mr. Pezzolanti stammers a little and says, “I like the backpack. You going to school?”

  “No,” Amy says, not turning to look back at him.

  She walks down the steps and keys open her apartment door. It’s the one time since Vincent’s murder that she’s truly let the paranoia slip away. She enters the apartment with her head down, closing the door behind her. When she looks up, she sees that the killer is there waiting for her.

  A good scream will bring Mr. Pezzolanti running. He’s not that far away, after all. Fifteen feet. Less. Amy doesn’t scream. Dom is just sitting on her bed, drinking a venti Starbucks coffee with his name written on the side in big black letters. He’s wearing a satin Jets jacket with snap buttons and the same jeans and boots. He doesn’t have a weapon—that she can see. She thinks of the knife in the freezer. If she could just get to it, she could use it to fend him off. He looks calm, relaxed.

  “How’d you get in here?” Amy says.

  “I’m not good at much,” Dom says, “but I’m good at stuff like that.”

  “My landlord will call the cops. He’s right outside. All I’ve gotta do is yell his name.”

  “Don’t do that. Just don’t.”

  “Or what?”

  “I want to talk to you, that’s it.”

  “About what?”

  “You know who I am?”

  Amy treads lightly. “The guy from Homestretch.”

  He laughs and slurps down some coffee. “I like the wig. It’s a good addition. But you’re going to a lot of trouble for nothing. I know what you know. I know what you saw. I’m not worried about it. I believe that if you were gonna do anything, you would’ve done it already. I believe you’re smart. A city girl. You know how to keep your mouth shut. You don’t need to get dressed up and run away from me. Let’s get that out of the way right now. Okay?”

  “I’m not running away from anything,” Amy says.

  “When I saw you at the bar, it took a second to register you were the same girl.”

  “Same girl as what?”

  “Sweetie, drop the act.”

  “Don’t call me sweetie.” She should be more scared than she is. She was right. He knows. He’s been watching her. She wonders if he realizes she has the knife.

  “What’s your name? Tell me your name.”

  “I didn’t see anything. I don’t know who you are. I just know you were at Homestretch yesterday.”

  “I saw you. Without the wig. In your normal clothes. I saw you go to Vincent. I know you saw me stab him. I believe you didn’t know it was me until I walked into the bar.”<
br />
  “Have you been following me?”

  “I followed you here from the Roulette afterward. Other than that, just a little. You’re hard to keep up with.” He stands up and comes over to her. He drinks more of his coffee. He’s standing close to her. Almost toe-to-toe. The coffee on his breath is strong. “Can I tell you what I want? Let me start with a question. I know you’ve been to Vincent’s place. What’s your aim? You looking for something?”

  Amy swallows hard. Nothing to do but tell the truth at this point. He has her pegged. “I don’t know why I did it. I’m not looking for anything.”

  “Okay,” Dom says. “Okay. Now we’re talking.” He takes two steps back, his coffee breath a whisper in the air now. “I want you to know something. I’m not a bad guy. That’s why you don’t have to be scared of me. Vincent, he was a bad guy. What I did to him, I did because he was a bad guy. You don’t have to be afraid of me. That’s straight? Even if you wanted to go to the cops—and I know you won’t—I wouldn’t do anything to you.”

  “Are you looking for something?” Amy says. All she can figure is the knife. It can’t be the picture.

  “Something belongs to me, yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me your name first. I’m Dom, but you already know that.”

  She hesitates. “It’s Amy.”

  “Amy, you and me are gonna be fast friends, I can tell.”

  Dom sits on one of the folding chairs at the little table, the same seat Fred occupied when he showed up that first time. She’s had no one in this apartment other than Mr. Pezzolanti for years, but now Fred and Dom have been here in the same week.

  “Sit,” Dom says, motioning to the other chair.

  Amy scrapes the chair out and sits on the edge of her seat, setting down the backpack at her feet.

  “You don’t look comfortable,” Dom says.

  “I’m not,” Amy says. She feels for the phone in her pocket. It’s as if Gwen’s message is getting further away. Amy’s being sucked into something else altogether. It was stupid to come back. She’s stupid for not trusting her instincts about Dom. She’s stupid for tempting fate. And yet, she feels oddly at ease. This moment with Dom has purpose; she’s playing her part.