Free The Blessed by Tonya Hurley Page A

be kidding me right now,” Lucy said, stunned.
    “I’m askin’ you as a friend not to come back here. At least not for a while.”
    “I was attacked. You’re lucky I don’t sue you.”
    “Don’t make me ban you, Lucy.”
    “Ban me? I put this shithole on the map. Without me youcouldn’t find this place with MapQuest, unless of course you’re underage,” Lucy said, looking around the room. “Sure you’re checking IDs tonight, Tony?”
    Tony stayed calm but firm in the face of her threats.
    “Don’t bust my balls, Lucy. Maybe all press is good press for you, but not for me. I’m sorry.”
    She knew then that it was everyone for themselves and that even thank-you cards came COD in this world. She grabbed her things. But, before she could escape, Jesse slithered up beside her for a chat.
    “Nice work,” he said, brushing away the shaggy bangs from his layered mod do. “If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought you set that little fight-club moment up yourself.”
    “Are you accusing me of social climbing?” she fumed, getting right in his face.
    “You are a social climber, my darling.”
    “They only call you a social climber if you’re not good at it,” Lucy said, starting for the front door, checking her phone for what would be the last time as she exited.
    “I deserved that,” she said to Jesse. Without missing a beat, a breaking-news alert popped up on her phone, complete with unflattering photo and nasty comments from “people who saw the whole thing.” The only redeeming detail about the entire sordid episode was that the chaplet earned its own photo inset as a hot new trend she was kicking off. She stared at it for a while, felt for it on her wrist. Smiled. And then tossed her phone into the street.

13 “It’s not often that I have something to give,” the old man said, holding out a brown bag scarred and wet with whiskey stains for Cecilia to take.
    “Thanks, but I’ve had enough,” she said.
    “Open it,” he demanded in his raspy voice.
    Cecilia went to the rooftop of her fifth-floor Williamsburg walk-up to see him and give him a sandwich and a bottle of vodka after every gig. For her it was always part of the deal. He was a squatter, a thin, old guy in his seventies, who always wore a suit and hat, who made his home there on the tarred roof under the stars, while writing his beat poetry and hallucinogenic novels.
    Cecilia opened the bag that was being offered to her. She slowly pulled out a length of hypodermic needle casings strung together meticulously on a piece of black wire.
    “It’s a necklace,” he said. “Didn’t have enough to make a chandelier.”
    “Thank God,” she said, relieved, putting it around her pale, long neck. “Recycling?” Cecilia asked, tying it in the back and fixing the needle casings so they all pointed down in a V formation. “Don’t tell me you’re going green on me.”
    It was sure to be the envy of every wannabe fashionista from Smith Street to the Bowery. But to her, it was the kindest gesture from a friend, made just for her with his own two hands. With the only thing he had.
    They’d met several years ago; she would pass him every day on her way to the subway and routinely hand him what was left of her egg-and-cheese bagel. A one-time punk poet who’d fallen on hard times in his middle age and who would willingly trade you a quip from Jim Carroll or Billy Childish, or personal stories from the Chelsea Hotel or the Beat Hotel in Paris, for what he needed that day.
    It wasn’t just the daily word of wisdom for her that tipped him off as a writer. It was the dilapidated vintage Royal typewriter, his prized possession, that he positioned in front of himself, turning the sidewalk into a desk of sorts. All the keys seemed to work, but it had no ribbon or paper, which was to her more profound than anything he might have said or written. The lack of ink didn’t stop him from banging away, however, typing his thoughts into the ether as