Free Gravesend by William Boyle Page B

Southerners and Europeans.
    Walking in the dark didn’t seem safe. She passed a Wendy’s with some kids huddled outside and thought this was the scene in the movie where the stupid lonely girl gets jumped, knifed across the throat. God forbid. What was she trying to catch up with Ray Boy for anyway? Guy made her sick on so many levels. But he still had those sharp good looks despite the sorry clothes and she kept thinking there was something about the way he was back there at The Wrong Number. She ran into him, what was she going to say? You rehabilitated? Wanna come back to my place?
    All that was really going on here was she needed to get laid. It’d been too long. Three months since Mindy. Four since Minor. If she could just let loose, maybe she could settle down for a few days. But Ray Boy Calabrese?
    When she saw Ray Boy sitting on a bench at the far end of the tennis courts, smoking, she couldn’t believe it. Just her luck to actually find him. Now she had to decide whether or not she was really going to talk to this ex-con, this murderer, this homophobe.
    She passed in front of Ray Boy and looked at him, huddled, hood still up, drawing in deep on his cigarette. He noticed her. Didn’t say anything.
    “You’re Ray Boy?” she said.
    Still didn’t say anything. Just sat there, smoking his cigarette down to the filter and then tossing it off in the direction of the courts. Tired. Broken.
    “I’m Alessandra,” she said. She was nervous like she was back in the Kearney days, trying to say something to too-cool-for-her Ray Boy, back before she had a body, anything, back when she sweated Mary Parente. The way Mary wore her tights, her skirts, buttons open on her blouse, the way she talked, chewed gum, smoked cigs, hummed against Ray Boy’s neck with her tongue—Alessandra wanted to be her. Feeling like that kid again, even for a second, made her want to puke. “Forget it, I’m sorry.”
    Still nothing from Zombie Ray Boy. Prison quiet.
    She started to walk away and then stopped. “What happened back there?” she said. “You seemed upset by what your buddies were saying.”
    “They’re not my buddies,” Ray Boy said, looking up.
    “They’re not?”
    “Listen, what do you want?”
    “I don’t want anything.”
    “Then leave me alone.” He lit another cigarette.
    “Sorry,” Alessandra said. She bowed her head, embarrassed. She headed back the way she came and wondered if he’d call her back over to apologize. But he said nothing. She looked over her shoulder at him. He wasn’t the same as everyone else. He was ruined past the point of repair.
    Ray Boy got up and started walking in the other direction, toward the Verrazano.
    Alessandra lost him in the darkness and walked away from the water slowly, her head down.
     
    Alessandra wandered up and down blocks she hadn’t walked since high school on the way home and found another bar. Murphy’s Irish. It looked like some nightmare sports bar. Techno blared and ESPN was up on all the screens. She went in anyway. The one gin-and-tonic hadn’t done enough for her. And now, fresh from being turned away by Ray Boy, she wanted to pick someone up. But what were her options? Where did you go after being ignored by Ray Boy Calabrese? Running to the arms of some chubby plumber, all ass crack and double chins? Or to some manic depressive electrician with back hair? Weren’t many rungs on the ladder lower than the hate crime-perpetrating, hangdog ex-con. She was open to women, but here they were scarier than the men: balding, scraggly, leathery from tanning beds.
    She sat on a duct-taped stool at the bar and ordered a gimlet from the bartender. He had too much gel in his hair. He didn’t know what a gimlet was. Even if he did or even if she told him how to make it, it would be terrible. The guy wouldn’t have the ambition to use real limes instead of Rose’s. She was desperately missing her L.A. bartenders again. She figured she’d have to go Downtown