City of Margins

by William Boyle

  A knock on the front door. He wonders who the hell it could be. He imagines for a second that it’s Ava and that she’s got nothing but a mink coat on, her body all goose-pimply.

  “Who’s there?” he says from the couch.

  From the other side of the door: “It’s Nick.”

  He can’t make sense of why Ava’s son would come to his house. And not that long after he left there. How’s he even know where he lives? Donnie doesn’t say anything. He stands up and shuffles down the hall to the door. He opens it with the chain on. Nick’s there. He looks lit up from the bourbon.

  “What do you want?” Donnie asks.

  “Can I talk to you a sec?” Nick says.

  “About what?”

  “Can I just come in and talk to you?”

  “How’d you know where I live? Why you knocking on my door?”

  Nick lets out a breath. “Okay, let’s do this right here. Took me a few minutes after you left, but I realized who you are. The cop who punched out his captain.”

  “So, you want a fucking medal?” Donnie says.

  “You don’t understand, man,” Nick says. “You’re interesting.”

  “I am?”

  “You’ve got a fan in Ava, my friend. Let me tell you.”

  “I do?”

  “Sure, man.”

  Donnie beefs up his chest. “What do you want from me?” he asks.

  “You’re it, Donnie,” Nick says, his speech slurred. “You’re just what I’ve been waiting for. You should come around again. Ava really likes you.”

  “Don’t call me Donnie.”

  “Don. Okay? There you go. Ava really likes you, Don. She’s been lonely.”

  “You’re drunk.” Donnie pauses. “You’re fucking with me about this, why?”

  “Maybe I’ve had too much to drink,” Nick says, stumbling back toward the gate. Under the streetlights he looks sick and pale. “I’m from here. I’m the guy. This is it. Thanks for helping Ava out, Donnie. Don.”

  “What are you saying? I don’t get it.”

  Nick opens the gate and walks backward on the sidewalk.

  Donnie shakes his head and watches Nick disappear up the block and then around the corner.

  He decides he’ll go to the Wrong Number. He needs a stiff drink after this encounter with Nick. He goes back in for his cigarettes and wallet and then walks straight to the bar.

  When he gets there, Maddie’s in her usual spot. The place is pretty crowded. Some faces he recognizes from the neighborhood. Others he doesn’t. One he does recognize is Dice, Big Time Tommy’s fuckmook sidekick. Little guy. Five-three if he’s an inch. He’s wearing sweatpants and an oversize Patrick Ewing jersey. He’s there with a couple of nobodies, guys who look like they cruise up and down Eighty-Sixth Street in shiny cars, windows down, bass thumping, hollering at girls like the animals they are.

  Donnie orders a beer and a shot of whiskey from Maddie, and Dice is hovering over his shoulder in no time flat. The guy’s a natural-born ballbuster. His nobody buddies are still over at the table. They’re smarter than he is.

  “What’s the what?” Dice asks.

  Donnie does the shot, sips the head off the beer. “I ain’t in the mood for you, that’s for sure,” he says.

  “That’s not nice. I’m gonna see you tomorrow, right? You’re on the clock?”

  “Fuck off. Let me drink.”

  Next thing he knows Dice’s hand is on his shoulder. Donnie doesn’t want to tangle with this shitbird, but he will. The guy rides Big Time Tommy’s dick, but Donnie knows Big Time Tommy thinks he’s nothing but a joke. He’s like a dumb dog that just needs to be fed and kept around. Donnie’s not sure what his story is exactly. Must be somebody’s son or nephew. Donnie knocks him out, he won’t get shit for it.

  “Get your hand off my shoulder now,” Donnie says to him.

  The hand’s still there. Dice rattles on: “Tell me something funny. I want to laugh tonight. I’ve had a few. I know you’re good for a laugh. I’ve heard things. This guy’s got stories, they say. From the force and whatnot. Shit you saw. What’s the craziest thing? You ever seen a guy stuck down a sewer? Or a broad shoving a dead rat up her snatch?”

  Donnie turns and pops him in the face.

  Dice falls back and lands on his ass, his hands over his mouth. “What the fuck?” he says. “Who you think you are? I’m gonna tell Tommy on you.”

  Donnie downs his beer, calls for another shot from Maddie. He turns on his stool, the shot outstretched in his hand. He knows Dice won’t get up and fight back. That’s the thing with bums like Dice—they never do.

  “This one’s for you, you dumb bucket of fuck,” Donnie says as Dice works himself up into a sad squat, defeated. Donnie throws back the shot and laughs.

  MIKEY BALDINI

  The Ulmer Park Library is one of Mikey’s usual stops. He heads there now, walking up Bath Avenue with his head down, trying not to trip on cracked concrete. He’s a pretty slow reader, but he likes sci-fi. When he was nine, his mother took him to the library to get his own card, and The Time Machine was the first book he got out.

  His mother. He should’ve just stayed away from home longer. Fighting with her like that was a waste of time and just made him feel rotten. When he said he wished she was smarter, what he really meant was he wished she was interested in things other than him. He wishes she had friends, that those friends would take her out to movies or for drinks. He wishes she liked anything as much as she likes worrying about him. All she has is church and work. And when your job is taking care of old people, dressing them, wiping their asses, watching them shake with confusion and terror, that’s not much to hang your hat on. Mikey went to work with her once or twice when he was younger, and it made him upset.

  To stop himself from thinking about his mother, he starts thinking about the pretty bank teller, Ludmilla. He’s still bummed that she took pity on him like that. Maybe he’d become one of these young guys walking around who already looks washed-up without knowing it. He should try again with her.

  His old man. Had he brought him up, or had his mother? That was stupid. Now she’ll be crying all night, and he’ll have the feeling he gets when he pictures his old man dead on Bottle Beach.

  When Mikey gets to the library, it’s closed. Just outside the front gate, there’s a small box of books. People are always dropping off books for donation. The library has more than they can deal with. Some, they sell up front for a quarter or fifty cents. Others wind up in the trash. People feel like they’re doing good giving their old books to the library, but mostly they’re just afraid of throwing things out.

  He doesn’t feel bad digging through this box now. If he finds something good, he’ll give them some money next time he’s in.

  Eight paperbacks are stacked in two piles in the plain box. Pennies are scattered at the bottom. A lot of times, a box of donated books like this would be pure junk, but there’s good stuff here, classics, even a sci-fi novel or two. He plucks The Lathe of Heaven from the middle of one pile and then decides he should just take the whole box.

  He sits down on a bench up the block and looks through the books. Nestled between a copy of Invisible Man and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is a folded piece of paper with perforated edges. He unfolds it and sets it on his thigh. It’s a letter that looks like it was typed on a word processor. The single-spaced print is faint, faded. He reads it:

  Dear Mom,

  I just don’t feel right. It’s like a burning wire in my gut, this feeling. I guess I’ll never be okay. That’s just the way things are. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry for letting you down. I’m sorry I couldn’t be a better son, the son you deserved. Love you.

  Gabe

  Mikey turns the letter over in his hand to see if anything else is on the back. He reads it again. It sounds like a suicide note. Or maybe it’s just an apology. Maybe this Gabe did something that pissed his mother off and he had to write this to try to explain himself. But Mikey can’t shake
the feeling that it’s more than that, a goodbye, a definitive last statement, the kind of thing both he and his mother wished his father had left behind before disappearing.

  He wonders how this note even got there. Is it possible that Gabe’s mother never even saw it? That it got sandwiched between these two books and forgotten?

  He leafs through the pages of all the books, hoping for some clue. Some scrap of paper to drop out. Something, anything else. Inside the front cover of Frankenstein, he sees Gabe 9-F in big, blocky letters. He looks in every other book, thinking he must’ve missed Gabe’s name elsewhere. But all he finds is a yellow Post-it note sticking to the back cover of Salem’s Lot. On it, in girlish curlicue script, is written: New phone # 372-4276. It’s something.

  The numbers play over and over in Mikey’s mind. He wonders what will happen if he dials. There’s a payphone at the deli up the block. He’s used it before. One time, when he was fourteen, he used that very payphone to try to call a phone sex line off a card he found on the street on a dare from his friend Mig. They didn’t get anywhere with the phone sex line. No way a quarter or even a few quarters would’ve gotten them past hello.

  Carrying the box under his arm, he heads for the deli. The payphone is on the brick wall on the side of the store. Tags are spray-painted all around the phone. The things people usually write above phones, too. He digs around in his pocket for a quarter. He has change from the bar he went to after Ludmilla gave him that forty bucks.

  He drops the quarter into the slot and punches the number in from memory. He’s always been good at memorizing phone numbers quickly, not that he’s had many to memorize. A few guys who were good friends for a little while and then faded away. Ginny. Before that, his senior year, Kristy. He never memorized Antonina’s number. They were just getting started when what happened in the schoolyard happened.

  The phone rings four times and then a woman picks up. Her voice is soft. She’s got the sound of the neighborhood in her. Mikey’s lost his accent. He made an effort to lose it up at college. He wanted a nowhere accent.

  “Yes?” the woman says.

  “Hi, is Gabe there?” Mikey asks.

  “Who is this?”

  “I’m looking for Gabe.”

  A long pause. Tears in her voice. “I’m his mother. Who are you? Gabe’s dead. What the fuck is this?” The sadness turning suddenly to anger.

  Mikey is about to hang up, but he doesn’t. He keeps the phone pressed against his ear. He listens to her breathing, hears the sound of her licking her lips, swears he can even hear the sound her teeth make biting down on her lower lip.

  “I’m really sorry,” he says.

  “You’re sorry?”

  “I just found a box of books at the library. I found this number on a Post-it stuck to one of the books. There was a note in the box. I didn’t know if it was what I thought it was.”

  “What note?” she asks.

  “A note saying goodbye. From Gabe. I didn’t know. I hoped it wasn’t . . . I just didn’t think it was something that was meant to be in the box.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  Silence hangs between them for twenty seconds. It feels like ten minutes.

  “Do you want me to do something with it?” Mikey asks. “Do you want me to bring it to you?”

  “Please,” she says, in a hush.

  “Just tell me where. I’ll bring it now.”

  She gives him her address. She lives on Eighty-Fourth Street right off the corner of Twenty-Third Avenue. It’s not far. He memorizes the house number.

  “Who are you?” she asks him.

  “I’m just a guy,” he says. “I’m home from college. I live around here. My name’s Mikey Baldini.”

  “Thanks, Mikey. I’m Donna. Donna Rotante.”

  “Okay, Donna. I’ll be over in fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  He hangs up the receiver and backs away from the payphone. He crosses the street and heads up Bay Forty-First Street toward Benson Avenue. It feels good to be doing something with purpose.

  DONNA ROTANTE

  Donna hangs up the phone. The call was a sledgehammer to her chest.

  Her son, Gabe, killed himself three years ago, and she’d finally worked up the courage to bring some of his books to the library as a donation, thinking she’d send a little of him out into the world. But it was closed when she got there, so she left the box of books out front and somehow—somehow—Gabe’s last note just to her, his suicide note, was in the box and here was this stranger who’d picked it up and read it and called her because her new phone number was somehow also in that box, scribbled on a Post-it. How did it even get there? How does anything get anywhere? It fell in, or she stuck it on one of the books for some reason or another, most likely. These things happen.

  She puts her head in her hands and listens to the emptiness of her apartment. Once, she lived in a house not far from here. She had a husband, Donnie, and they had their baby, Gabe, and he learned to crawl and walk on the wood floors in that house, and she sat in the kitchen and fed Gabe mashed carrots and little bits of pasta and mozzarella, and she wiped his mouth and gave him sippy cups full of apple juice. He grew up, and he went to grammar school at St. Mary’s, and he wore his little clip tie and his blue button-up shirt and his dark slacks and his Thom McAn shoes. Donnie was a cop. He drank too much and was gone even when he wasn’t on the job. As Gabe got older, he grew more and more withdrawn. He cried a lot. Donnie gave him hell for that. Gabe was always wearing his headphones, listening to heavy metal. He started cutting his arms with razors. Donnie didn’t know that, but she did. She tried to talk to Gabe about it, but he wouldn’t open up. She wanted him to go to a shrink. He refused. She should’ve forced him. When he was fifteen, he hanged himself in the cellar with a belt. Finding him was hell. She can’t revisit that scene in her mind’s eye. She can’t think about his body against her as she held him and tried to get him down from the pipe. Afterward, he was gone, really gone. Nothing prepares you for that.

  She left Donnie and rented this apartment from Suzette Bonsignore, an old friend of her mother’s. Suzette lives upstairs with her three cats. Both of Donna’s parents are gone. Her mother died ten years ago from a stroke. Her father died the year before Gabe from a heart attack. As far as Donnie, she signed off on everything. She didn’t want the house, didn’t want his pension, nothing, zilch. He went down an even darker path, losing his job and his pension in the process. She’d decided to try to survive her own way. That’s all she could do.

  This apartment was where Suzette’s daughter lived before she moved to Long Island. Suzette isn’t in good health. Her daughter doesn’t come around much anymore. Donna took it as it was and didn’t do anything to improve it. She moved in with just a couple of suitcases of clothes, her records and turntable, and several boxes of Gabe’s stuff. Everything else she left with Donnie at the house. The apartment is on the ground floor. There are bars on the windows. The mailbox is missing a screw and dangles next to the door. The couch is torn. She got a nice area rug for cheap on Eighty-Sixth Street, and that covers the scuffed, wooden living room floor. Her bed frame is on the verge of collapsing. Water damage has stained the ceilings in the living room and bedroom. Lights dim on their own. Pipes clank. There’s no washing machine, so she has to use the Laundromat around the corner.

  Gabe loved to read, but she doesn’t, which is why she was getting rid of his books. It hurt her too much to look at them, to imagine him reading them, curled up in bed, a tall glass of water on his nightstand. She’d taken them with her for the connection to him they provided, but that connection was lost.

  What she loves is music. She has about a hundred records split between two milk crates in her living room. She has the same turntable she’s had for twenty-plus years. It still sounds great. She doesn’t even like to watch TV. When she comes home from work—she’s a receptionist at Bishop Kearney High School on Bay Parkway—she just likes to pour some wine and listen to her records. Bruce Springsteen,
Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding, Carly Simon, and Garland Jeffreys are some of her main go-tos. Music is her only solace. The silence right now is terrible.

  When the doorbell rings, she jolts back into the present moment and looks around at her messy kitchen, her sink crowded with mugs and plates, detritus from three or four meals in a row of nothing but coffee and crumb cake.

  She’s still dressed for work, her black slacks and black blazer and white shirt that she should’ve washed days ago, but her shoes are off.

  She pads through the living room to the front door, barefoot. She hasn’t had anyone in her apartment in months, and even then it was just Roberta from work. Does she need to invite this Mikey in? She looks around. A mirror frosted with dust. Blankets swirled on the couch. Crates of records, and a stack that she’s recently been playing. Turntable and dusty speakers. A Casio keyboard that once belonged to Gabe, that she’s been tinkering with. She took piano lessons as a girl, and she can play a few songs from Les Misérables on the piano at Bishop Kearney.

  The stranger is there with the box of books when she opens up. He’s little more than a boy. College, he said? He’s in a ratty T-shirt and wrinkled jeans with holes in the knees. He has dark hair and dark eyes and a beard. He has a unibrow and a big Italian nose. Something tells her he’s been drinking—he just has that look—but he also seems harmless, tender even.

  “Hi,” he says. “I’m Mikey. I called.”

  “Do you want to come in?” Donna asks.

  “I shouldn’t.” He holds the box of books out to her.

  She takes it and sets it on the floor just inside the door. “That note,” she says.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have read it.”

  “You couldn’t have known what it was.”

  “Still, I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t know how it got in the box.”

  She says it and realizes it’s absolutely true, and her mind plays back the scene from earlier that day, taking the stack of books from the shelf in her bedroom, thinking it was time to let go of some of Gabe’s stuff. The note must have somehow been between the books already. When was the last time she’d seen it? She’d read it frequently in the months following his suicide, holding it in her shaking hands just to put her hands where his hands had been. He’d left it for her in the cellar, in a sealed envelope propped on top of the washing machine. She’s always wished he’d written more, had taken the time to let her know more about himself. He had become a mystery to her at fifteen. She wishes she could’ve told him—though she did tell him, in various ways—that everyone goes through hard times and that being a teenager is especially hard. She wishes he would’ve written more because writing more sometimes helped people get through the worst of it, the writing itself a form of therapy, a way of healing. But Gabe had descended into a darker place than that, and he couldn’t get away from it and he didn’t write more, barely wrote anything. But he’d written something, and she’d looked at it and looked at it until she lost track of it, and there it is now in this box of books she dumped at the library.