The Blessed (31 page)

Agnes. Virgin-martyr.

“Virgin.”

One of seven women commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. Born January 28 c. 291.

“So long ago.”

Martyred January 21, 304. Age 13. Beheaded and Burned.

“Thirteen. My God. For what?”

Refused to marry a member of Roman nobility . . . dragged naked through the streets, sent to a brothel to be repeatedly raped . . . as she prayed, her hair grew to cover her body . . . to protect her . . . then tied to a stake to be burned, but the flames parted away from her . . . finally killed by a soldier’s sword to her throat.

Patron saint of virgins, girls, gardeners, rape victims . . . depicted most frequently with a lamb, symbolizing chastity.

Agnes found herself on the verge of tears. “I had no idea.”

She searched for Saint Cecilia and Saint Lucy and found their stories to be equally awe-inspiring and brutal. Both martyrs. Both among the seven.

Lucy, denounced for her faith by her own husband . . . could not be moved or burned when sentenced to die . . . gouged her own eyes from their sockets . . . to make herself less attractive . . . rather than compromise her chastity. Patron saint of the blind.

And Cecilia. They tried to cut off her head, but they couldn’t. . . . She sang faithfully for three days as she lay dying. Patron saint of musicians.

Finally, Sebastian. Saint Sebastian. Martyr. Patron saint of athletes and soldiers. Captain of the Praetorian Guard who secretly converted to Christianity. Sentenced to death for converting others.

Agnes was stunned.

Martha knocked.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Can I get you something to eat?”

“No, thanks, I’m not hungry.”

It was all just chitchat. Agnes knew her mother had something on her mind.

“Agnes, what were you thinking?”

It was a fair question and not asked in the judgmental tone she was accustomed to getting from her mother.

“I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling.” A nonanswer but the most honest one she could give.

“The news reports said you might have been taken in by some kind of psychotic boy with two other girls?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mother. Do you believe everything you see on TV?”

“I was terrified.”

“It’s over, Mother,” Agnes said. “I’m here now.”

To her surprise, Martha let it go. No lecture. No fighting. No apology demanded. No guilt trip. Passive-aggression or passive-compassion? It was hard to say. Maybe the storm had even swept some bad blood away. Whatever the case, it was the best “welcome home” present she could’ve received. The truth of her leaving would remain unexplained and unresolved, at least for now.

She flopped down on her bed and found chamomile tea in her favorite garnet and gold Moroccan glass that she got on Atlantic Avenue. It was sitting on her nightstand, piping hot.

Thanks, Mom.

Agnes lay there, appreciating the softness of her bedding, cuddling with Elizabeth of Hungary, unable to sleep. She was thinking about the night he had bandaged her. Cared for her. Duped her.

All night, until the dawn, until the rising sun rose over the rooftops and crowned her head with a yellow-orange halo of sunshine . . .

She thought about him.

13
Cecilia was not only homeless now, but she was also jobless. The club on the Bowery was flattened by the hell storm and Saint Ann’s Warehouse had canceled all shows due to the flood overflow of water from the East River. Lenny, the promoter, was an unfortunate casualty, so there was no following him to another club to get gigs. Apparently, he died trying to salvage however many bottles of cheap liquor he could, but overstacked the cases in the tiny back hallway and they collapsed on him like one of those unlucky hoarders on cable. He always said he’d die in that place. Lenny turned out to be a prophet. Even though Cecilia couldn’t stand him, he did give her a place to play, a chance, and for that, she was saddened by the news. Maybe because she realized she was the one who probably knew him best. A sad circumstance for them both, she concluded.

That night, the night she left Sebastian, she squeezed into a turnstile with a guy, piggybacking his Metrocard, gaining access, and a bruise on the ass, at the Jay Street station. She played guitar for change and then maintained her routine of buying a bottle and sandwiches for Bill at the corner bodega—he liked their cuts of meat and would eat only from there. He was a beggar, and a foodie. An unlikely combination, but then again, so was Bill. The most sophisticated,
fey man she’d ever met, always dressed for something. “You never know when the end will come, or the beginning,” he would say. She grabbed a shower at the Y and popped into her staple vintage shop, owned by a girl named Myyrah, an up-and-coming designer, straight out of F.I.T., who dressed her for shows. She loved Cecilia’s style and often took credit for her design ideas. She used CeCe for fashion shoots, as a muse, and in exchange, Cecilia got handmade, one-of-a-kind clothes. She picked up some things to wear, threw them in her guitar case, and then applied some of Myyrah’s makeup before heading directly home, to the roof, to Bill.

“Well, look what the dubious devil dragged in,” Bill said, looking up and seeing Cecilia standing there like a long lost soul mate that he thought he might not have ever seen again. “Our Lady of Snow.”

He didn’t ask her if she was holding, aside from the snow reference, which he knew she’d pick up on if indeed there were anything to give. He was relieved to just see her. For a junkie, that meant everything.

“How did you survive the tornado up here?” she asked, but what she really wanted to know was
How did you survive without me?

“Cockroaches and junkies,” he said in his slurry, crackled voice, “always survive.”

She was comforted by that, as he knew she would be.

“They’ve been looking for you,” he said stoically, sincerely, concerned.

Cecilia was used to this kind of “out of mind” talk from
him, but what she wasn’t used to was his sincerity and intensity when he said it. It was like he was twenty years younger and completely sober. A flash of a man who used to be. Someone who cared for her beyond his exterior and weaknesses. Beyond drugs.

“They won’t find you here,” he said. “I’ll make sure of that.”

She gave him his sandwich and then a bottle of cheap whiskey. He barely came up for air, thirsty for the bottom of that bottle.

“Easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to get a rich man into heaven,” he said, realizing that Cecilia didn’t have any money but still managed to bring him food and drink. It always meant something to him, but now, it meant even more.

As the night fell, she told him everything. She confided in him, every intimate detail of what happened in the church. What they saw, what she experienced, what she felt. About Sebastian.

He hung on her every word. Every detail, as if he were taking a verbal shoot-up through his veins. He dared not ask anything, for fear that she would lose her train of thought and forget a morsel of detail. He watched her lips and felt butterflies in his stomach as if they were two girls talking at a sleepover.

“Why didn’t you bring some of that shit home?” Bill asked at the end of the story, insisting that Sebastian had likely slipped the three of them some major hallucinogens like the ones Bill once got on the street right across from the hospital
that housed Sebastian in the psych ward. Cecilia felt betrayed by Sebastian, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but think of him. She got out her guitar and sang to him.

Every word.

For him.

7
Lucy signed the contract for a new cell phone, paid, and walked out of the wireless store activated. Within seconds it was buzzing. Jesse, of course. Leave it to him to christen her smartphone. Her first episode of ring rage since the storm. She hit mute and put it in her bag, determined never to speak to him again. And pulled it back out just as determined.

“What?”

“You’re my one phone call,” Jesse said desperately. “Don’t hang up.”

Lucy knew exactly what that meant. “Where are you? And why are you calling me?”

“House of D,” Jesse said as he was being hurried off the phone. “You have to get here now. I need to talk to you.”

Click.

“Jail?” she screamed out loud enough for everyone on Gold Street to hear. She growled in frustration, already angry with herself for what she was about to do. But she was within walking distance. And curious. Lucy knew that whatever Jesse did, or didn’t do, to get into the House of D, it was serious. Dead serious.

He was an asshole. But he was an asshole who meant well. Sometimes.

She made her way through DUMBO just as the subway went barreling across the Manhattan bridge, on her way from her apartment in Vinegar Hill. Her head pounded as the train shook the inside of her brain along with everything else. She walked by Sacrifice but on the other side of the street. The club was still boarded up and closed down like much of the neighborhood. Destroyed, pretty much. As she looked around at the downed trees, flooded cobblestone streets, abandoned vehicles, and dead power cables littering the neighborhood, she realized that the storm that changed her world had truly changed her as well. It wasn’t just the infrastructure that had been shredded.

Tony, the bouncer, popped out of the black double doors and noticed her, a lone figure walking across the street. He waved. She put her finger up to her lips, the international symbol for
If you tell, I’ll cut your balls off
. He nodded, understanding that Lucy didn’t want anyone to know she was around, or alive for that matter. Even though Lucy had a reputation as a cold, ruthless, self-centered narcissist all in one high-end package, Tony was there for her. The keys to her world were relationships—you scratch my back and I’ll talk behind yours. He smiled and held up her old cell phone, to show her that he’d kept it safe and to offer it back to her. She shook her head
no
. He dropped it to the ground and shattered it with his heel, her contact list, saved e-mails, and photos never to fall into the wrong hands. She blew him a kiss and kept walking. Uphill.

Lucy was so preoccupied she almost walked by her favorite
pizzeria, Paisan’s, without so much as a peek in the window. Shelves of every kind of pie known to mankind. She pressed her nose up against the glass and promised herself she’d come back later.

“Hey, Lucy. Where ya been?” Sal, the pizza guy, called out from the service window in a deep gravelly voice.

“In church, Sal,” she smiled, tossing him a wink.

The beefy pie man in the flour-dusted white chef’s tunic laughed.

“Now I know you’re shittin’ me. Time for a slice? On me? You look . . . hungry.”

“To go, okay? I gotta run.”

“Where ya headed?”

“Prison,” she said.

“That’s an even better one.” Sal nodded.

He went inside and shortly came out with a piping hot slice right out of the oven.

Lucy wanted to cry.

“Thank you, Sal,” she said, kissing him on the cheek in gratitude for the first time ever.

“Get outta here,” he said, semi-blushing.

Neighborhood people. She loved them the best. No pretense. No pressure. If it weren’t for Sal, she’d forget to eat half the time. She could actually count on him. Like Tony. They were nothing like Sebastian, but he was like them in the most important way. They were for real.

Lucy knew the Brooklyn House of Detention, the House of D, as the locals called it. She, on the other hand, had
hoped to call it the “jail with retail,” the first urban brig to feature ground-floor storefronts. But it was not to be. It was an eleven-story eyesore at the intersection of Atlantic and Smith, towering over the brownstoned streets and alleys of the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. About the only accolade it could be given was that nobody had ever escaped. Jesse wasn’t likely to be the first.

“Lucy Ambrose to see Jesse Arens,” she said, tipping her dark, oversized sunglasses to the guard at the check-in. She walked through the X-ray machine and endured a pat-down by a very manly looking woman. She wished they made hand-size versions of these things that you could just use to scan anyone.
How cool to actually be able to see through someone instead of having to guess.
Lucy was escorted to the visitors’ boxes and she waited impatiently in the harsh white lighting until Jesse was brought out in cuffs. She watched him as he shuffled into his seat, bruised eye and sickly looking. “Bail fail?”