The Lonely Witness

by William Boyle

  The money. The money’s wrong. She’s put herself in a position where she’ll have to tell everyone what she saw. Diane. The police. Head down, she sighs.

  “Dude, let’s go,” Alessandra says, standing up. “This is fucking crazy.”

  Maybe escape’s still an option. Seems like the only thing to do now. Walk away from these wrecked mothers. Amy can’t let herself get sucked into a whirlpool like this.

  Amy leaves Diane with Monsignor Ricciardi, saddened by the way Diane’s hair looks spread out against the carpet, and she follows Alessandra to the door. The Mescolottos are a blur as she passes. Fred’s staying close. She wants to shake him, but she’s not sure how. She’s already tried cruelty.

  Back outside. Streetlights. A bus at the corner, wheezing low under the El.

  Alessandra’s frantic. “I shouldn’t have come back here,” she says.

  Dom’s sitting on a fire hydrant in front of the law office. Amy can’t believe he’s there. He claps his hands together. “I stuck the knife in his pocket,” he says to her, laughing. “You catch that?”

  She says to Dom, “I thought you were—”

  “I had a drink at Homestretch to celebrate,” Dom says. “You were right, Amy. What you said about me not coming to the wake. You were right. Bad idea to skip it. Plus, I wanted to give Vincent my little parting gift.”

  “Listen,” Fred says, stepping in.

  “Who are you?” Dom says.

  “I’m Amy’s father,” Fred says. “I recognize you now, from the bar the other day. I’m a little in the dark here, but do we need to do something to make things right?”

  “Amy’s old man, huh?” Bad guy grin, all blind arrogance. “Your daughter’s a little troublemaker. She likes to be in the middle of things. You teach her to be that way?”

  “Watch that mouth there, bub,” Fred says.

  “I need to pick up my bag and then I’m going to get a hotel by the airport,” Alessandra says to Amy. “I was fucking crazy, coming back here.”

  “I’ll give you a ride wherever you want to go,” Dom says, puffing out his chest. “Me and you, sweetie, I can see us going places together. Might be I’m headed to the airport anyway. Might be we’re getting on the same plane.”

  Alessandra ignores him.

  “I’m a ghost?” Dom says, standing and stepping toward Alessandra. “Let me give you a ride. Look at me in my suit. I’m a handsome motherfucker, no? You, you’re model-pretty. I’d like to suck your toes. Stroke your little feet with a feather.”

  “You’re a real pig,” Fred says. “That’s no way to talk.”

  “Think it’s time to go back to the homeless shelter you came from, bub.”

  Fred, red in the face, stumbles into Dom. He raises his hand, looking like he might try to clock him on the side of the head, but instead his forearm thwacks against Dom’s shoulder and it’s Fred who seems hurt.

  Dom laughs. “Watch the fucking suit,” he says, and he pushes Fred off. Fred flops to the sidewalk, landing on his ass and letting out a wheezy groan.

  Mrs. Mescolotto comes tumbling out of Capelli’s, her husband nowhere to be seen.

  “Ma,” Dom says, and he goes over and puts his hand on her back. “You’ve had too much to drink.”

  Mrs. Mescolotto’s blubbering. Amy’s afraid of what she’ll say.

  “I know, Ma,” Dom says, trying to calm her with soft circular pats on the back. “I know. Why don’t you go on home? Have one of them peach yogurts you like. Put on Law and Order.”

  “We had a future, me and Vince,” Mrs. Mescolotto says. “We were gonna run away.”

  “He’s dead, Ma,” Dom says. “Don’t make me mad by saying his name.”

  “Your father must’ve—”

  “It wasn’t Dad, okay? It was random, that’s it. He walked down the wrong street at the wrong time.”

  “I’m sorry you found out about us the way you did,” Mrs. Mescolotto says, dabbing at her eyes with her knuckles.

  “Don’t talk about it,” Dom says, his voice hard.

  “Dom, please.”

  “Shut up. Just shut up.”

  Tony comes out next, huffing. “Karen, let me take you home,” he says. And then to Dom: “I’ll talk to you later, Dommie. This five grand you got from Bernie—whatever you got up your sleeve, I’m gonna find out.”

  Amy’s distracted enough by Dom and his folks that she doesn’t notice Alessandra has started hustling away down Eighty-Sixth Street, her phone in her hand, still holding the backpack. Amy runs after her, calling out her name, sloshing through a puddle. When she catches up, Alessandra’s crossing Nineteenth Avenue. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “I just shouldn’t have come here,” Alessandra says. “It’s not you. It’s the neighborhood.”

  Amy keeps pace with Alessandra, looking back once and catching a glimpse of Fred, on his feet now, hitching up his pants and hopping along after them. Dom’s still standing back by Capelli’s with his parents. Two trains pass in opposite directions overhead. Everything’s consumed by the noise. Alessandra’s lips are making words, but Amy can’t hear them.

  After the trains are gone, Amy can hear that Alessandra’s just saying, “I’m so fucking stupid,” over and over.

  “I’m the one who’s stupid,” Amy says. “Tempting fate.”

  “This is where I’m from. This is what fucking happens here. Are they following us?”

  “Fred is.”

  “Get on the train, Amy. Now. If I didn’t leave my bag behind, I wouldn’t even go back to your place. So stupid. Get out of here. To Gwen’s or wherever.”

  “You called a cab?”

  “The Uber should be there by the time I get back. Give me your key. Split. This is dangerous.”

  “I’m coming with you. Just to the apartment, at least. I want to give you some of this money.”

  The whir of Eighty-Sixth Street around them: another rush of commuters coming down from the train; a Chinese restaurant with chickens hanging in the window next to a Chinese restaurant with a cramped fish tank in the window, gray sludgy forms puckered against the glass; faces in windows behind these displays, white hats, loud food orders from open doors.

  They pass Lenny’s. Amy’s almost convinced for a moment that she could steer Alessandra in there for a slice and things would return to a time before any of this. They’d stare at the picture of Sylvester Stallone and John Travolta, taken during the making of Staying Alive, and nothing that happened would actually have happened. It’d be a portal into their first year together, how everything felt lit up with love, with raw kisses, with the possibility that things would work out, that the neighborhood would be good for them or they could at least reinvent it to suit their purposes. It wasn’t the place Alessandra had grown up in anymore. It was changing. A new wave of immigrants. Chinese, Ukrainian, Russian, Albanian, Turkish, Georgian, Uzbek, Palestinian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Pakistani, Mexican. The old ghosts were finally going away, lingering only in the houses of those who hadn’t died yet or hadn’t been worn down or run off. There were still plenty of those folks left, but they were fading fast. If only that could happen for them now, a return to such a moment of promise. But it can’t. This is ending, as all things end, badly.

  Alessandra’s jaw is clenched, making that little line on the side of her face she gets when she’s angry or frustrated or fed up with failing.

  “Talk to me,” Amy says, sweating now, afraid of what’s to come, what’s not to come, what will never come.

  “There’s nothing to say,” Alessandra says.

  “I love you,” Amy says.

  “Haven’t you learned that’s not enough? Whoever you love, whatever you love, it’s not enough. It’ll never be.”

  “Jeez, Al.”

  They’re between Twentieth Avenue and Bay Parkway on Eighty-Sixth Street now. Fred is still trudging along, about a hundred feet behind them. They pass a kid on a quarter ride, a little paint-stripped elephant bopping back and forth as if on a broken s
pring. The kid giggles, his mother and father rooting him on.

  A food stand with a smoking grill. Smell of chicken kebobs.

  An overturned garbage can on the corner.

  They cross Bay Parkway. People waiting for the B1 on a small sidewalk island under the El. Markets still crowded. Old men and women with shopping carts, walking slow. Bruised fruits. Broccoli rabe. Junk stores overflowing and circus-like in the dark.

  They’re closing in on Twenty-Third Avenue, Fred getting farther away, losing steam. “I don’t know what else to say,” Amy says.

  “There’s nothing to say,” Alessandra says.

  Amy’s phone buzzes in her pocket. A text from Gwen: What’s up? She puts the phone away. She’ll respond as soon as she can. Over the rooftops, she can see the cross on the St. Mary’s steeple. That’s something she’ll remember wherever she goes, seeing the cross from everywhere. Over the El. Nudged between things. Just tall enough that it rises over the squatting two-story buildings that dot Eighty-Sixth Street. But she’s got to be looking up to see it, as she is now. So often, she’s looking down, focused on the sidewalk. Cracks, weeds, words, the sidewalks their own story.

  “I’m not trying to convince you of anything,” Amy says.

  “Good,” Alessandra says. “Listen, you can just get in the Uber with me. We’ll drop you at Gwen’s. Or wherever. Just get out of here.”

  “Can’t I come to the hotel with you? Just for the night?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’ve got trouble all over you.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t get mixed up in it.”

  “You thought I was being paranoid.”

  “I don’t know what you did, and I don’t know why you did it. I can’t get mixed up in it.”

  “Trying to rob the rest of the jewelry out of the attic was your idea.”

  “It was stupid. You made me think there was a gold mine there, and I got greedy. Like the fucking end of The Goonies. I started thinking about how we could be rich.”

  “The Goonies?”

  “Just let shit be. I’m worried for you, but I’ll be fucking honest, Amy, I don’t want to pay for these decisions you’ve made.”

  They hook a left onto Twenty-Third Avenue, close to the church now and the apartment Amy can’t quite escape. There’s always something drawing her back there. She puts her hand on Alessandra’s shoulder, tries to stop her from crossing the avenue and walking up the block to the apartment, brushing past Mr. Pezzolanti and grabbing her bag from inside and hopping in the cab or the Uber or whatever it is and going somewhere that’s not where Amy is. What does Amy want? What has she ever wanted?

  “Get your fucking hand off me,” Alessandra says, pulling away.

  “Please.”

  “Please what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know. I don’t know. That’s all there fucking is, Amy. Not knowing. Don’t you see that?” A car passes. Alessandra pauses before crossing in the middle of Twenty-Third Avenue.

  Amy’s got tears in her eyes. She’s trying to hold them back. Alessandra’s not big on crying. “Why do we do anything we do?” Amy says. “What am I gonna do with my life?”

  “How many ways can I say I don’t know? People are just trying to find a way to live. You used to have records, at least. Find something to hang on to, something that’s not God and not love.”

  Alessandra rushes across the avenue. Amy stays with her. They pass St. Mary’s, dark as a dead place. Music plays somewhere up the street.

  When they get to the apartment, Mr. Pezzolanti is out on the stoop, his front light on. He’s wearing an oversized flannel and rumpled chinos. He’s got a boombox between his legs, and he’s playing “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. That falsetto. Amy knows it from her grandparents. They loved Frankie Valli, always made her listen in the car.

  Mr. Pezzolanti’s moving his mouth to the music. It’s not loud enough to bother anyone. He would never want to be perceived as someone who could bug his neighbors. “You girls like this music?” he asks.

  “Give me the key,” Alessandra says to Amy.

  Amy fumbles for the key in her pocket and hands it to Alessandra, her hand shaking.

  “Getting those extra batteries made me remember I had this radio upstairs,” Mr. Pezzolanti says, “so I got my tapes. Sinatra, Frankie Valli, Johnny Mathis, Dion. The good stuff.”

  “That’s nice, Mr. P,” Amy says.

  “Sounds terrific, right? I’m happy it still works.”

  “Big Girls Don’t Cry” fades out. “Working My Way Back to You” comes on. The car’s not there yet, and Amy’s grateful for that.

  Inside, Alessandra throws Amy’s backpack on the bed. She gets her suitcase and wheels it behind her back to the door.

  “Just wait in here,” Amy says.

  “The car’ll be here any second,” Alessandra says.

  Amy picks up the Joan of Arc medal from the table. “Take this, at least,” she says, rushing over and thrusting it at Alessandra.

  Alessandra nods. She unzips the outer pocket on her suitcase and drops the medal in, the chain dribbling after it.

  “It’ll fall out if you don’t close the pocket,” Amy says.

  Alessandra goes outside, pushing through the front gate. She stands by the curb, waiting for her car to show up.

  Amy lingers back by Mr. Pezzolanti, sensing that she’s coming off too desperate. She’s done that before; it’s a sure bet to make Alessandra turn further away. If she can keep her cool, maybe they’ll be able to talk in a few days and see where they are.

  Los Angeles. A name that’s still soft on her tongue. She sees them at a party in a backyard with a pool, lanterns all around, drinks on trays. She sees them at the movies. She sees them hiking. Matching boots. Klean Kanteens. The dream of it so pretty. The reality filled with hard distance and missing pages.

  “Everything okay?” Mr. Pezzolanti says, lowering the music to a hush.

  “Fine,” Amy replies.

  “She’s waiting for car service?”

  “An Uber, yeah.”

  “What’s an Uber?”

  “Just a cab.”

  Mr. Pezzolanti waves his hand through the air. “I don’t know nothing.”

  Alessandra doesn’t look over her shoulder at them. It feels late because of the dark, but it’s not. Late afternoon, maybe early evening. Barely. Amy doesn’t want to look at the time on her phone. She doesn’t want to see numbers. Numbers tell only one story: time winding down.

  “Alessandra,” Amy says.

  “What is it?” Alessandra says without turning around.

  “Let me know you get home okay.” Amy takes a breath. “Okay?”

  Alessandra turns around now, a little quiver in her chin. “All that’s going on, you be careful.”

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Pezzolanti says.

  Amy looks up and sees Fred turning onto the block, out of breath. As he crosses to their side of the street, a horn blares. A car blasts through the red light at Twenty-Third Avenue and comes screeching onto the block. Dom’s Daytona. Fred looks up and sees the car. He tries to halt in his tracks. Dom slams on the brakes and swerves to the left, clipping Fred with his side-view mirror and knocking him off-balance. Fred staggers forward, collapsing to his knees first and then landing on his side with a thud on the glittery black pavement in the glow of Dom’s headlights.

  “Jesus Christ,” Mr. Pezzolanti says, standing and then rushing over to help.

  Amy is frozen in place. So is Alessandra. Dom slams the wheel with his fists.

  Mr. Pezzolanti, kneeling at Fred’s side, starts yelling: “Call someone!”

  The same words Vincent said.

  “Call nine-one-one,” Mr. Pezzolanti says. “Someone call someone!” He’s shocked to see that Dom’s not getting out of the car, that Amy and Alessandra aren’t dealing with this in any way whatsoever.

  Amy finally t
akes out her phone and fumbles it to the sidewalk. It’s not as bad as it could’ve been, she’s telling herself. Dom’s car barely touched Fred. He’s just fragile. She picks up the phone and punches in 911 and says that a man’s been hit by a car on Eighty-Fifth Street between Twenty-Third and Twenty-Fourth Avenue.

  When Alessandra makes a move, it’s away from the scene, past Fred and Mr. Pezzolanti and Dom in his Daytona, heading for the corner of Twenty-Third Avenue, hoping to cut off her Uber when it finally arrives.

  Dom throws open the driver’s-side door of his Daytona, tie undone, looking from Fred on the ground back to Alessandra. “Hey, sweetie,” he says. “How about you stay right where you’re at?” He leans into his car and gets the gun out of the glove compartment.

  Alessandra ignores him.

  Amy says Alessandra’s name—quietly, and then much louder.

  Dom swings around with the gun in his hand, aiming it in Alessandra’s direction. He looks strained, confused. A battered minivan pulls up behind the Daytona, and the driver leans on her horn. The driver can’t see the situation with Fred. And it takes a second before she notices the gun in Dom’s hand and throws the minivan into reverse, screeching backward off the block, almost slamming into two cars in the intersection.

  Amy rushes out onto the sidewalk.

  “You see me here?” Dom says to Alessandra.

  “Fuck off,” Alessandra says, continuing on past the church, passing under a bright cone of light from a streetlamp.

  “You think you’re hot shit, huh? I’ll show you hot shit.” Dom fires above her, the bullet blasting high into the stained glass on the close side of St. Mary’s, the glass sturdy enough that only a small hole webbed with cracks shows in a patch of blue robe.

  “What the fuck?” Alessandra says, her hands over her head now, ducking, looking for cover behind her suitcase, behind a telephone pole, behind anything.

  Mr. Pezzolanti is on his feet. “Guy,” he says to Dom, “put the piece down, okay? What’s this all about?”

  Dom turns to Mr. Pezzolanti with the gun. “Mind your own business, old man,” he says.

  “Why are you doing this?” Amy says. “I’m not talking to anyone.”