The Blessed

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 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.

Cecilia collapsed into the door, banging her head against it just hard enough to hurt, hard enough to remind her of how bad things had gotten, hard enough to press a teardrop from her heavily mascaraed eye.

Besides not having a place to sleep or shower, the thing that upset her most was the element of rejection she was suffering and that it was her own fault. She was used to getting thrown out of apartments late at night; it just wasn’t usually her own. The other thing was something much less self-involved but just as urgent. She grabbed her guitar, slung it across her back, as two black tributaries meandered down her cheeks and flowed together to form a liquid soul patch under her chin as she read what Bill had written.

Our Lady of Sorrow

No hope for Tomorrow.

No soul left to Borrow.

Your hands hold Tomorrow.

Cecilia smiled through her tears momentarily, and walked outside with her guitar strung across her back. She nodded good-bye in the direction of her friend on the roof, and hailed a pedicab.



3 “Don’t ever speak to me again!” Agnes yelled at her mother, her eyelids now in the shape of half-moons. Her mind was a raw, open sore, and Martha would scratch and scratch at it relentlessly, trying to bust it open any way she could.

“Why? Because I was right? Why are you so afraid to hear the truth?”

“It’s your truth, Mother.”

“The truth is the truth, Agnes.”

Sounded familiar. Agnes began to wonder if her mother and the doctor were conspiring and, just as quickly, refused to give in to paranoia. “I broke up with him. What more do you want from me? Do you want me to grovel, beg for your forgiveness for straying from The Path?”

“Don’t get hysterical, you’ll bust one of those stitches.”

“Oh, so now I’m crazy and can’t make my own decisions. Nice, Mother.”

“What do you mean ‘now’?”

“I hate you.”

“Why you would go to such lengths, I’ll never understand,” Martha said, trying to fix Agnes’s bandage.

“No, you never will,” Agnes said. She pulled her arm away. “I’m not afraid for my future. Not afraid to follow my heart.”

“How naïve. You’re young. You’ll figure it out.”

“You are so bitter. No wonder Dad left.”

Martha was livid. It was the most hurtful thing Agnes could have spit at her. And it was too late to take it away. But Agnes was actually relieved to release the elephant in the room. The ice rattled in Martha’s cocktail tumbler. “When I married your father—”

“You weren’t married; you were sacrificed,” Agnes cut in. “Isn’t that right?”

“Don’t talk to me like that. I am your mother.”

“Technically.”

“The Harrison boy is perfectly nice. Good family, the best schools, polite, well-spoken, SATs through the roof. He’s got everything you need to make it in life. Not like that Pineapple Express understudy you were dating.”

“Oh, please, Mother. Don’t start with the matchmaking again. It’s lame.”

“Because you are doing so well?”

“ ‘That Harrison boy’? You don’t even know his name. What is this, 1950? Besides, I’m sure he’s looking for one of those ‘dress for success’ types who’s a whore in the bedroom, just like all those other future Wall Streeters.”

“Don’t you dare speak that way to me!”

“Oh, but you can treat me like that. I just can’t say it out loud. I get it. I am nothing like that. Like him.”

“Opposites attract,” Martha spit back.

“I’m sixteen, Mother. I’m not looking for a Trump.”

“Would it hurt you to fish in a less polluted pond? Or do something with that hair falling all over the place? Throw some heels and makeup on. Sharpen up a little, for God’s sake.”

“How about a goddamn geisha getup? I know there is something better out there for me. I don’t need to have a master plan drawn up.”

“You don’t need to because I do all the heavy lifting, I make the sacrifices, so that you won’t have to.”

“You’re my mother! Do you need a medal?” Agnes screamed, frustrated at the level of selfishness.

They each took a breath.

“When I find it, I will know it. Instantly. It won’t take an audit to convince me,” Agnes continued.

“Find what, Agnes? You obviously don’t have a clue what you are looking for, flitting from loser to loser like some kind of serial romantic.”

“Love, Mother. Real love. A heart and a soul. Not a wallet with feet. Simple as that.”

“Please,” Martha pleaded. “Not another lecture about love at first sight, Agnes.”

Agnes stared her mother down. Both dripping resentment.

“You know how you explain love at first sight, Mother?”

Martha sighed. “No, how?”

“You don’t. That’s how.”

“Real love.” Martha just laughed derisively, practically gargling the words. “Don’t be so high and mighty.”

Agnes grabbed at her ears, trying to block out the skepticism, the rigidity, her mother cutting her down to size. She almost felt herself transported back to the therapy session with Dr. Frey, except this conversation was a bit more unprofessional.

“You were the one who insisted on Catholic school.”

“And I expected better results for the tuition I’m paying!”

Always back to money, Agnes thought. And guilt. She was a failure to her mother and her mother was a failure to her. She pursed her lips, trying to hold back the bile that had been building for months—actually years—and then exploded.

“Can’t you see? I don’t want to wind up like you and your Franken-Forty so-called friends. Drunk by dinnertime, blow jobs for Botox, and sleeping with their divorce settlements under their pillows.”

“Annulment.”

“So as long as the Church approves, it’s okay? You hypocrite.”

“Watch your mouth, young lady! You don’t know who you’re talking to!”

“And neither do you,” Agnes said. She stormed off to her room and slammed her door, almost breaking the glass doorknob and the mounted antlers that hung above it. Her room was her sanctuary. Her cocoon. It was as Zen as she could make it and exactly what she needed right then. Flooded with light, the high ceilings, dark wood floors, and blush walls were a direct contrast to the harshness of the conversation that had just taken place in the living room. Colorful scarves were draped over her lampshades just inches from catching fire, exactly how she liked it. A vivid kilim rug–upholstered footrest and a bottle-green leather wingback chair, large coffee table books stacked up with cushions thrown on top for seating on her lush sheepskin rug, burlap feed-bag pillows, a huge cement pot filled with succulents in every shade of green, incense holders, and an impressive collection of extraordinary silk robes and caftans.

She switched on her Moroccan lantern, lit a stick of incense, grabbed her favorite heirloom afghan from her bed, and wrapped herself inside it as she sat down at her desk—an antique door that she had propped up on sawhorses. Her enormous gray Maine coon cat, which she named Elizabeth of Hungary, jumped up onto her lap. She stroked her back and stared at her curiosity cabinet filled with her collection of beautiful, rare things that she’d collected over the years—an antique wooden hand that she used to hold her vintage necklaces, a collection of antique thimbles, and vibrant glass-winged butterflies, once alive and free, pinned to a board. She, like her mother, loved to collect beautiful things. She often felt her mother counted Agnes as one of her pretty possessions. And she was done with being part of her mother’s collection.

Agnes held her head and began to cry. She knew that her mother was right. Not about everything, but certainly about him. Right then, she wasn’t sure what hurt more, her arms or her ego. They were both so badly bruised.

She pressed a fingernail into the least healed portion of her wound, bit her lip, and forced a wince. In a way, having an open gash was convenient, more so than the tiny little injuries she’d been inflicting. Now there was a big enough target to deliver the sufficient dose of pain and discomfort she felt she deserved.

She didn’t cut, or pick, or break her fingers and toes as a general rule. She punished herself by refusing to be herself. Denying herself. To go along with the life her mother had plotted out for her. Until recently. She’d begun choosing guys and friends on her own, letting her hair grow, literally. Not happier, necessarily, but freer.

Her mom just put it all down to hardheadedness, a phase she was going through. And there were times that she, Agnes, felt that way. But this wasn’t one of them. Her mom was too rigid, too angry over her divorce and the fighting and scratching she had to do to rebuild her life, or as her mom liked to say “repositioning herself.” She couldn’t be heard any longer. Where once she felt like her mom’s “prized possession,” she had lately become just another obstacle, an insubordinate ingrate.

“I have no idea what to do.” Her mom’s voice seeped through the door and into her room. “She’s ruining her life. And mine.”

Agnes scrolled through her smartphone playlist for one of her favorite songs, “Summer Lies.” She popped the phone into her speaker dock, pressed play, and dragged the volume bar as far as it would go. It had special meaning for her after the whole Sayer thing, but more importantly, it could drown out the hurtful conversation going on right outside her door.

All the sweetest things you said and I believed were summer lies

Hanging in the willow trees like the dead were summer lies

I’ll never fall in love again.

Whichever neighbor or relative her mother had chosen to bitch to over the phone, it was the last straw for Agnes. She knew she couldn’t stay there any longer. She stared out her bedroom window for a while, watching a car parked across the street disappear in the twilight, giving up a precious spot on their busy street for a different destination.

I whispered too but the things I said were true

and I gave up my whole world for you

The sudden touch of the sheer curtains blowing away from the sill and lapping her cheek seemed to her like the billow in a sail that had just caught a breeze and was ready to leave port.

I pine and wane, pale and wan, never knowing

when it’s dawn, curtains drawn, hiding in my room,

wasting away, cutting myself.

The song was over. She opened the window, fastened her bracelet tight under her bandage, and climbed out into the garden of her Park Slope parlor-floor brownstone, hopped the fence that bordered her yard and her neighbors’ and—

She was gone.