Free Gravesend by William Boyle Page A

“Shut up about that.”
    “You’re gonna say that homo didn’t ruin our lives?” Teemo said.
    Ray Boy stood up and walked out of the bar.
    Alessandra sucked down the rest of her drink. “Let’s go,” she said. “Now.” She tugged Stephanie out of the booth and they headed for the door. Alessandra heard Teemo grumbling under his breath about Ray Boy but didn’t really understand what he was saying.
    Outside, she looked around for Ray Boy and saw him walking away up the block, his hoodie pulled over his head.
    “What’re we doing?” Stephanie said.
    “I don’t know,” Alessandra said. She took out a cigarette her father had rolled for her and lit it. What was that they’d witnessed? Regret? He was so different than his old crew. “Shit, I don’t know.”
     
    Back home, after dropping off Stephanie at the corner by her house, Alessandra was in bed in the dark. She thought about Ray Boy in high school, just the way he looked, and slipped her hand into the waistband of her underwear. But then the thought creeped her out. Duncan’s face popped up. Then the phrase hate crime . That killed the buzz between her legs.
    She got up and went downstairs. It wasn’t even six yet. She turned on the TV. News. Nothing.
    Her old man was in the kitchen. He was smoking and playing solitaire. Nipping at the wine that was left. “I’m going for a walk,” Alessandra said. “Mind if I bum some smokes?”
    He withdrew four already-rolled cigarettes from his pouch and handed them to her. “Be careful,” he said. “Lot of crazies out there.”
    She patted him on the shoulder.
    She took a scarf out of the cubby by the front door, one that must’ve belonged to her mother, and put on her warmer coat, vintage taupe with brown piping and great seaming detail. She’d gotten it on Etsy from some seller in Pasadena before heading home. This was perfect weather to wear it.
    The house where Ray Boy grew up was only a few blocks away. Alessandra thought there was no harm in passing by.
    She walked under the El to get there and then cut across the street as she got closer, recognizing the green two-family frame house. Pine tree in the yard. Rotting front porch. Hadn’t changed all that much. No sign of Ray Boy. She half-hoped to see him sitting out on the front porch, smoking. The porch was empty, full of overturned chairs and dead plants.
    Figuring she’d check out his sister’s house next, just a block over, Alessandra turned the corner. The Laundromat she remembered being there was closed down, turned into some kind of sketchy-looking bargain bakery.
    Ray Boy’s sister’s house was an ugly place with a big concrete lion at the foot of the driveway and a tacky fountain in the front yard next to a Mary statue with a chipped-off nose. Alessandra scanned the windows for some sign of him.
    Maybe he was just out walking like her.
    It was dark out, and Alessandra wasn’t used to just walking around anymore. She never did shit like that in L.A.
    She took a right on Bath Avenue, thinking she’d go down to the water. She used to watch her old man fish down there, casting out into the bay with a bucket of bait at his side, drinking cans of Schlitz. On the promenade that ran from Ceasar’s Bay Bazaar to the Sixty-Ninth Street Pier under the Verrazano they’d stake out different spots and she’d sit on graffitied benches and watch him. She’d also count rats. Sometimes she’d look over the railing at the rocks and see dead rats. She wouldn’t count those but she’d be fascinated by their guts and their squashed eyes. She’d watch boats pass under the Verrazano, afraid they wouldn’t fit.
    She passed the tennis courts where she took lessons as a girl. Not really lessons. It was a summer tennis camp, and she never really learned how to play. Wound up drinking forties and smoking cigarettes with the instructors instead. She hooked up with a boy, Dominic D’Amato, at that camp. And she came to the conclusion that tennis was for