The Blessed (9 page)

Jesse was ensconced in his dimly lit booth, alone, by choice, observing this mini-universe unfold like a pocketsized Hubble telescope. He was perched in a primo spot with a bird’s-eye view—the lit-up city and bridges, his backdrop, and an even more appropriate garbage barge passing behind him down the East River. He was dressed all in black, as usual, which made it easier for him to disappear into the background, except for his eyes, which were always watching, and his hands, which were always typing, looking like the Invisible Man in reverse. She caught his eye and turned away just as he raised his finger to his brow and pointed at her in some kind of obnoxious salute. She wasn’t sure whether it was a creepy acknowledgment that she’d arrived or that he was there. Either way, he was the last person she wanted to see.

A high-pitched but aggressive voice Lucy didn’t recognize cut through the thump of the DJ’s bass speaker, coming at her from her blind side.

“You bitch!” the apoplectic socialite screamed, slapping
at the air around Lucy’s head. “You ass-covering sellout!”

Lucy had good peripheral vision and even better survival instincts, and easily sidestepped the raging junior leaguer. But the girl was quick and determined. She turned around and caught a few strands of Lucy’s locks in her manicured claws, tugging her hair over her eyes and her head forward. She couldn’t see a thing, except for the girl’s copper glittery stilettos driven into the stained red indoor/outdoor carpet beneath her, illuminated by electronic flashes from cameras and cell phones. Lucy grabbed for the girl’s legs and took her down at the knees, driving her onto her back to woots and screams, mostly from the guys who took all the panty shots as fan service. Oddly, of all things, Lucy was most worried about her bracelet. That it might get damaged.

Security arrived before a full-on girl fight could break out, and the two VIPs were involuntarily separated. Lucy finally got a good look at her adversary and recognized her as the actual girlfriend of Tim, the guy she’d been ratting out to Jesse. The one who was with Sadie at the hospital. But how could she, this dim-witted piece of eye candy, possibly connect her to it? How could
she
know?

Lucy shot Jesse a knowing and condescending glance.
It was him. Had to be,
she thought. Payback for her ingratitude and warning of what he had in store for his rebellious protégé/fetish. He glared back for a second and then returned to his phone, typing feverishly. She pulled herself together and sat down. A few stragglers ambled over for a chat.

“What circle of hell did she escape from?” one said. “Who cares anyway, right? That will move.”

“This was a total borefest until now,” another one said. “Did you see Jesse over there? He got the whole thing.”

“You should get in touch with the hair extensions company,” a third snarked. “Xena over there couldn’t rip them out of your head.”

Stunned equally at the vicious attack and the calculating indifference of the brain-dead bar junkies surrounding her, Lucy stared blankly ahead, trying to process the new low she’d just sunk to.

“I’m good, thanks,” Lucy grumbled sarcastically, noting that no one bothered to ask if she was okay. She hadn’t even had a drink and the room was already spinning.

“We saw the BYTE item from last weekend,” they said following her. “So cool that you wound up in the ER. It’s so . . . effective.”

“I would have bulk-mailed my contact list once I got to the hospital though,” another strategized out loud.

A year ago, this might have been her, she thought. Irritating, clipped, vocal-fried commentary on the minutiae of social climbing by couture ass-kissers. She was just like them—except, she sort of wasn’t anymore. Not since the hospital. Calculated, cunning, self-interested, and self-absorbed, yes. But not conscienceless. She preferred to think of herself as a flower among weeds. A single bloom, a standout, rising high above the fields of cheatgrass except that, like all flowers in a patch of thistle, the weeds were beginning to choke her off.

She’d become their idol, the one who lit the way for all the other attractive and ambitious, but otherwise unremarkable, Big Apple celebutantes. Their very own Statue of Celebrity, her torch of notoriety shining brightly from VIP rooftop lounges citywide. For a fee, of course. It wasn’t much of a legacy, she’d come to see. “Bring me your entitled, your selfish, your huddled attention-starved masses, yearning to be famous. . . . ” She’d lifted her lamp beside the golden door, but more and more, she felt the light inside of her going out.

“Excuse me, Lucy,” another voice called from behind her, and she immediately tensed up, ready for another sucker punch.

“Oh, Tony.” Lucy sighed at seeing a friendly face and hugged him. “Thank God.”

“Listen, Lucy.” The burly bouncer pulled her arms off his neck, leaned in, and spoke as confidentially as possible in such a public place. “I can’t have dis goin’ on here. I heard da cops are involved in da t’ing from last weekend and I don’t need any more trouble dan I already got. The owners are goin’ apeshit.”

“You’ve got to 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 you
couldn’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 if he were composing out loud or dictating to an imagined Girl Friday from deep in his past. Whether it was drugs, mental illness, or just plain determination, she found it, and him, inspiring.

More than any preacher, spiritual figure, or self-help guru, he spoke to her soul. A maestro, playing his typewriter like an instrument, performing his thoughts. As a musician herself, she could relate. He needed to write, but he didn’t need anyone to read it. A confidence she strived for but had yet to attain. She would bring him paper and ribbon when she could get it and catch what she could.

He looked sophisticated, like a William Burroughs doppelgänger, sitting there in his baggy suit, elegant even, despite the fact that his pants and sport coat swam on him. He was so gaunt, given his proclivity for drinking his meals, that she was sure her sandwiches were the only solid food he got. Not that she was one of those “pay-it-forward” types. She hadn’t been on the receiving end of much kindness or generosity to transfer anyway.

Besides, she’d met plenty of those and there was something so unnervingly self-serving about them. Do-gooders willing to volunteer or donate but not if it hurt, not if it really required some effort or compassion and only as long as someone was watching, as long as there was credit to be taken in exchange for their largesse.

They became closer the night he was attacked by some street thugs and she offered him her rooftop. It didn’t belong to her, but it was something she could let him in on. She’d been taking him sandwiches, and vodka, and an endless supply of paper ever since.

Cecilia handed Bill a bottle of Stoli that she’d carried from the gig. He looked sick, his eyes hollow and desperate,
and she knew he needed a drink. But he would never come out and ask her. Not her. Then again, he didn’t need to.

“That shit’s like drinking poison, you know,” Cecilia said, as she kicked a few needles out of her way to get to him.

“No, Night Queen. Anger is like drinking poison. . . . ”

“And expecting the other person to die.”

“That part sounds more like jealousy to me.”

“You’re a smart man,” she said, unwrapping his sandwich to make sure he ate something.

“No, I’m just a junkie with a typewriter.”

“Okay, then, you’re a dangerous man.”

She sat there in the dark, next to a smoke stream of sandalwood incense, strumming her guitar for him until he ate. Then they sang the parts of “Fairytale of New York.”

She watched as he began to nod off, bottle still clutched in his hand.

A junkie lullaby.

It was the same every night—Cecilia covered him up with a spare suit jacket that he carried around, finished smoking his lit cigarette, took the poem he wrote out of his typewriter, and then made her way over to the steel reinforced door and down to her apartment. She would read his work at night and return it before he woke up in the morning. He was writing for her, anyway. He would never sell his soul, but he would give it freely, lend it to someone who needed one. To her.

That particular night, as she reached her floor and rounded the corner, she could see the sign on the door.

She was marked.

She’d seen the signs on the doors of others and knew exactly what it meant.

NOTICE OF EVICTION

The Landlord has legal possession of these premise spursuant to the Warrant of Civil Court.

She leaned her guitar case against the stack of thirty-gallon garbage bags that had been piling up outside her door, pulled the old filament lightbulb hanging overhead toward her, reached for her key, and tried in vain to slip it in the lock. She didn’t have a prayer that it would fit, and after a few frustrating seconds of recapitulating the stages of grief, she gave up. It wasn’t her life that flashed before her but a series of special-delivery envelopes from her landlord that had been turning up in the past few weeks. Letters that were piled, unopened, six inches high on the kitchen counter next to her beloved vintage hand juicer and a terrarium made from a broken liquor bottle that Bill gave her last Christmas. It was filled with moss, a cigarette butt, a wad of chewed-up gum, an old subway token, and a switchblade, all orbiting a tiny plastic baby figurine—a cupcake topper for a baby shower that he scavenged out of a bakery Dumpster. He called it “Street Life.” She joked that she could sell it for a hundred bucks to a Bedford Avenue boutique. But she never would. Not for a million. Not even now.