The Blessed Read online

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry,” Catherine said.

  “It’s cool. It was a lifetime ago, y’know. I’m over it. I get all the approval I need from this,” CeCe said, nodding at her guitar case.

  Catherine could see that CeCe had exhausted whatever patience and politeness she’d mustered and was pretty much done with the memory lane chitchat.

  “So, any advice?”

  Cecilia paused, weighing her words.

  “Go home, Catherine,” Cecilia advised with a tight smile as she pulled a pint bottle of vodka from her coat pocket and raised it in a faux toast. “Just go home.”

  3 Agnes felt like a car alarm going off after midnight as she walked down the hallowed corridors of Immaculate Heart Academy, the bandages wrapping her wrists her siren. The burden was almost too much to bear, even more than the seeping wounds that threatened to stain her history book through her dark blue school uniform sweater.

  Being back in school was humiliating, but it was still far preferable to her than being at home. Nevertheless, the cuts she was expecting from classmates were certain to be deeper and more painful than any she’d inflicted on herself.

  “Accessorizing?” came the sly whisper from a two-dimensional blonde traipsing down the hallway, swirling her finger in a circle and eyeing Agnes’s wrists. The more they commented, the more she hiked up her sleeves, defiantly offering herself up to their ridicule.

  “Love your stitch bracelet.”

  She was pelted. With words.

  “Sadster.”

  “Next time, try harder.”

  She took it. Each tongue-lashing. Closing her eyes briefly after each one, recovering, and then walking forward.

  “Choose life!” another mocked, holding her comparative lit book up like a fevered preacher bangs his Bible.

  “Classholes,” Agnes mumbled under her breath. She kept walking, keeping her focus forward. Taking everything that they threw at her with strength and dignity. There was a certain pride in being willing to die for something or someone, she told herself. It made the berating a little more bearable, anyway.

  Her friend Hazel came up beside her. “Guys—can’t live with ’em and can’t die for ’em.”

  “Not now, Hazel.” Agnes smiled. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Let’s hope so!” Hazel said, then burst out laughing at her own joke.

  Agnes continued down the hall; she watched everyone watching her. No one approached her. She felt betrayed.

  It was hard for her to fault any of them though. Not that she was particularly forgiving, because she wasn’t. It’s just that these weren’t exactly enemies. Not friends either really, but more than acquaintances. People she hung out with after school or at parties or did group profile pictures with, tongues wagging outward suggestively, giving some unseen someone the finger. Poring over horoscope books and studying numerology, as it pertained to certain guys and whether they were liked by them or not. They were part of her crowd and she was part of theirs, whatever that meant. Fun but numb inside, all of them. She wouldn’t have expected much sympathy from them even if they knew how to express it. She knew what they were like and what she could be like, from time to time. It just sucked when the tables turned. Bad.

  The bell rang announcing the next class. She was saved, she thought, feeling more as if she were in a boxing ring and not a high school hallway. She didn’t expect much quarter and didn’t get any. Protect yourself at all times, as they say. She’d been beaten down but threw her guard up as she saw him coming around the corner. She turned back around and hoped the adrenaline pump inside her was good for a second whirl.

  “I can hear you rolling your eyes,” she said, feeling Sayer come up behind her.

  “Hey,” he said, trying to act concerned.

  “Been crying?” she mocked, noticing his red eyes and knowing full well he was stoned.

  “How are you?” Sayer asked.

  “More to the point, how are you?” Agnes responded.

  Sayer was slightly built and long-haired; he was generally dazed and nervous-looking with a toothy perma-smile as if he were almost about to be caught doing something wrong in mid-laugh but wasn’t exactly sure what. His natural demeanor suited this situation perfectly. Her nonchalance was totally unexpected. He thought he might get read the riot act, but Agnes seemed to be offering a peace pipe.

  “I’m okay,” he answered.

  “Oh, that’s a relief. I assumed you must have broken your fingers or your legs or something.”

  She clung to the burning heart charm under her bandaged wrist and outlined it with her finger as she talked to him.

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, otherwise, I thought for sure you’d come by for a visit or call or even just text,” Agnes went on. “Then it occurred to me it must be solar flares.”

  “Solar flares?”

  “You know, screwing with the Internet. I mean, it had to be something pretty drastic for you to not come see me or even ask how I was doing, right?”

  “Opening up your wrists is pretty drastic, Agnes,” he half whispered, topping his insensitivity off with a nervous giggle. “It was, like, scary. I didn’t know what to do, or what to say.”

  “So you did nothing,” she said. “You said nothing.”

  “Not exactly nothing,” he said. “I was thinking about you the whole time.”

  “So I’m supposed to be telepathic now? Thinking about me? When? Between bong hits and hos?”

  For the first time, she was able to see him for the selfish, disheveled, stupefied, and unreliable stoner her mom so vehemently disapproved of. The pointlessness of the conversation took her totally out of body and she began to beat herself up for being so stupid and impulsive, for her moments of weakness or rebellion, but if any good had come of this self-destructive episode, it was that the brain fog from this relationship had lifted. Thank God she hadn’t slept with him. At last, something she and her mother could agree on.

  “Did it hurt?” he asked slowly, running his finger along his own wrist for emphasis.

  “Not as much as it does now.”

  “I guess I’m a pretty lame excuse for a guy.”

  “Just some guy?” she said in a tone that parents and lawyers often use when asking a leading question. “You were supposed to be the guy.”

  He wasn’t great at thinking on his feet, and her sarcastic inquiry was met with awkward apologies.

  “I’m sorry, okay?” he whined, the most authentic emotion she could ever actually remember getting from him.

  “That’s it?” she hissed. “You cheated on me!”

  “I never said we were exclusive.”

  “You knew how I felt about you.”

  “It was just too much pressure, y’know. All the love stuff,” Sayer said. “I just wanted to have some fun.”

  “Does this look like fun?” Agnes screamed loudly enough to stop the between-class traffic clogging the halls, holding her bandages up to his face.

  Sayer just hung his head.

  “It’s not worth it,” Agnes said, turning her back on him and rummaging through her locker. “I guess you were just an excuse. For me.”

  “Forgive me?” he asked, reaching for her shoulder, mustering up his most concerned face. “Please.”

  Startled by the sympathetic gesture, she looked him over and honestly thought about it for a second. He was just doing him. He was sorry, at least as sorry as it was possible for him to be. She could see that, even in his blank expression and glassy eyes. But he had now entered “what was I thinking?” territory in her head. The worst place for any guy to be.

  “My mother was right about you,” Agnes said, almost choking on her words.

  “At least you finally admit it. We both know, this was never about me.”

  “Don’t turn it around,” she said, tears beginning to flow more from embarrassment than hurt. “You used me. I believed you.”

  “No, actually, I didn’t get the chance to use you, remember?”r />
  “So maybe if I would have slept with you, you might have cared? What a joke,” she nearly growled, gripping his arm with force.

  He shuffled around, pouting in place with his head down for a second like a little boy, waiting for his time-out to be over. She released his arm and pushed him away from her.

  “I almost died for you,” Agnes said.

  “I almost waited for you,” he said.

  As if they were of equal importance.

  7 Lucy was immediately ushered into the VIP area, as usual, at Sacrifice, the afterhours DUMBO club. Both bridges—the Brooklyn and the Manhattan—illuminated the dark space, creating auras around the celebrity guests and patrons. She was wearing rhinestone drop earrings with several gold spikes radiating out of the bottom of each. Her hair was freshly colored blond—sleek, straight, and shiny. She was wearing a short gray couture tunic dress with fox fur sleeves dyed royal blue. Her suede stilettos were dyed the same blue, with gold spiked heels to match the ones coming out of her earrings.

  It is amazing, she thought, how quickly you can become accustomed to A-list treatment, whether you deserve it or not, or to ultimately losing it. Everyone did at some point. It was like death. Always looming and eventually your fate. Even more amazing was the short ride from getting it to demanding it to needing it. It was as addictive as any drug.

  As she looked around for someone she really knew well, there were few hellos. Just stares from underage insiders with fast-food opinions, Botoxed curiosity hounds, and surgically rerouted Joker faces with etched bellies, unnaturally arched brows, and swollen lips framing tight, twisted-up smiles impossible to discern from frowns. Digital attention-seekers all, with a million questions they were dying to ask, the answers to which they were dying to sell to the highest bidder. It was a cage match of ambition more intense than the climb up any corporate ladder or high school hierarchy. A bloodsport that smelled more like expensive perfume than perspiration.

  The competitiveness was palpable, viral. She recognized it in others because she was one of them, one of the afflicted. Riding any wave that would take them to the golden shore of their Fifth Avenue fantasies. It didn’t matter whether they caught a clean one in or tumbled and crashed on the sand, they were there just the same. Different day, same night. All the same.

  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 eve
ryone 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.