“Yeah,” Meredith said. “Totally.”
I squirmed in the backseat and pressed my legs together. Lorena was a small, sweet looking lady, but you could tell that on the inside, she held a rage.
I wondered what Gina was doing. This was the longest I’d ever been away from Gina, and I missed her, but I knew that I was doing the right thing. I couldn’t go my whole life without meeting my father. It was dangerous, what Meredith and I were doing, I knew Gina was right about that, but there were other ways of living that were dangerous, too. I would be twelve soon and then I would be thirteen. And everyone knows what happens to teenage boys who don’t know who their father is.
Finally, we came to the top of a hill, and I could see the city of Las Vegas shining below. It was alive with lights. When I closed my eyes I could still see them.
“Where do you want me to let you off?” Lorena said.
“You can just drop us at any of these motels,” Meredith said.
We drove by one with a fifty-foot neon pink flamingo on the outside of it. I remembered Dee’s headband. “That one,” I said. “The Pink Flamingo.”
Lorena pulled over.
“Thanks for the ride,” Meredith said. “I hope things get better with your husband. I’m sure they will.”
“Either things will get better or things will end,” she said. “Either way … it will eventually be better.” She turned and smiled at me. “Hey, thanks for listening, you guys. Really. No one ever really listens to me at home. People can be so … you know.”
I nodded, although I didn’t know. People were people. They could be so many different things.
“Bye, Lorena,” I said, getting out of the car.
“Vaya con Dios, angelitos,” she said, and gave us a small wave as she pulled away.
We checked in at the front desk, but they didn’t have any rooms left with two beds.
I turned to Meredith. “What do you think?”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m so tired I could sleep in the bathtub.”
The first thing I did when we got to our room was check the nightstand for the Gideon bible. It was there. Then both of us brushed our teeth and got into bed with our clothes on. We were too tired to even watch TV. But it turns out that Las Vegas is the worst place in the world to fall asleep because:
1.All the lights are so bright
2.People are partying and yelling and singing and talking and burping and playing music
3.You might have to share a bed with a girl
I crunched myself all the way over to the very edge of the bed so that I wouldn’t disturb Meredith or touch her by accident because I didn’t want her to think that I’d touched her on purpose and was trying to get to first base with her or something stupid like that. Between that and the noise and the lights, I basically didn’t sleep a wink all night.
Staying up all night is okay when you mean to do it, then it can be pretty fun, but when you actually want to sleep and you can’t, it really, really, sucks. Every hour seems so long. Eventually you just want it to be morning already so you can stop trying to sleep and just get up and have the worst day of your life.
22
When the blue light of dawn glowed through our window, I gave up trying to sleep and got up to go see what Las Vegas was all about and find something to eat.
I saw a woman asleep in a doorway wearing only a bra and a skirt. I saw a haggard-looking man who shoved me and asked me a question, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. His front teeth were missing. I saw a beefy looking guy in a grey suit talking into a huge telephone that didn’t have a cord. I saw a fat woman wearing a green sun visor that read Slots-A-Fun counting out change on a bus bench. I saw a redheaded guy with his arms around two pretty ladies who were wearing high, high heels. I saw a Native American guy looking in the window of a western-wear store. I saw a guy who looked just like Fabio and maybe even was Fabio leaning against the side of a bank. I saw an Asian woman in a black dress-suit smoking a cigarette with a cigarette-holder. I saw a guy in a dirty pinstripe suit drinking something out of a paper bag. I saw two women kissing each other. I saw a man in an Adidas track suit smashing his forehead against a brick wall, again and again. I saw a bald man with a patch over his eye. I saw someone like Dee, a D.R.A.G.
The D.R.A.G. was wearing a short silver wig and a purple sequined dress with blue, green, and gold waves up the sides. It reminded me of this dancing costume Gina bought after some guy in Vancouver tipped her 500 bucks one night. It’s a sequined butterfly costume with full-length wings. She can put her arms through the slits and make the wings stretch out and the tips of the wings go all the way to the floor. She wears it only on special occasions, and when she does, she looks so glamorous I can’t believe she’s my mother.
I went to Denny’s and ordered a Moons Over My Hammy and a chocolate milk. After I ate, I felt better. I went back to the motel and wrapped a T-shirt around my head to block out the light. I got into bed and finally slept. When I woke up again, Meredith was leaning over me saying, “Rise and shine, monkey-butt.”
23
The next ride we got was with Relvis. Relvis drove a Buick Roadmaster station wagon with wood panelling on the sides. It was loaded up with blankets and cardboard boxes and garbage bags and smelled like a hamster cage. Relvis wore a white suit with tassels on the sleeves because he was still in costume. Or maybe that’s how he always dressed, I’m not sure. Relvis was an Elvis impersonator. He looked pretty much the same as Elvis except that he had pitted acne scars on his cheeks. He wore tinted glasses and talked out of the side of his mouth. I guess if you impersonate someone for long enough, you eventually become that person. Or at least a version of that person.
“You kids like music?” Relvis asked as he flipped through the radio stations.
“Yeah, of course,” I said. “Who doesn’t like music?”
“Some people don’t,” he said. “I try not to associate with those people, though.”
“I like lots of different kinds of music,” I said.
“I like Elvis, personally,” Relvis said.
“No kidding,” Meredith said.
“Don’t be cruel, baby,” Relvis said.
I glanced back at Meredith and she rolled her eyes.
Relvis checked her out in the rear-view mirror and jammed his tongue into the side of his cheek. Meredith turned her head to watch a scuffle on the street. A cop was arresting a young black guy, shoving him hard against the hood of a police cruiser. Relvis clucked his tongue and slowed down as we passed them. He caught the eye of the cop and pointed to his own eyes and then back to the cop.
“Is this place a hole or what?” Relvis said.
“Or what,” I said.
“Huh,” he said. “You don’t know Vegas.”
“I don’t know anything. I’m eleven years old.”
“And you know what?”
“What?”
“The older you get, the less you know.”
“I figured.”
“It’s just the way it goes.”
“I don’t even know what I don’t know,” I said.
“That’s right, kid.” Relvis shut off the radio and started humming “In the Ghetto.” “You want to know the truth?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“The truth is, I hate Vegas. I’ll always be Relvis, but do I have to do it in Vegas?”
“If you don’t want to live here, then you probably shouldn’t live here,” I said.
“That’s right. That’s exactly right. This damn city’s killing me. That’s why I’m moving. This is me moving.” He gestured to his garbage in the back. “It’s now or never. Time to stop talking about it and actually do it,” he said.
“A little less conversation, a little more action?” Meredith said.
“You got it, sweetheart!”
Meredith and I laughed.
“I just have one small problem,” Relvis said.
“What’s
that?” Meredith said.
“I don’t know where to go.”
“You could go to Canada,” I said.
“Canada!” Relvis said the word Canada like it was a disease. “Why would anyone want to go to Canada?”
“That’s where we live,” Meredith said.
“Oh,” Relvis said. “Sorry.”
I shrugged. “It’s pretty nice. And there aren’t too many Elvises.”
“Huh.”
“Plus, we have Tim Horton’s,” I said.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s a donut shop. They have the best donuts. And they’re everywhere. All over the country.”
“You want some advice, kid?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Keep your eye on the donut, not the hole.”
I thought about that for the rest of the trip.
No one said anything for a while. Then Relvis said, “You know what, I don’t think Canada’s the place for me. I’m looking for something particular, and Canada ain’t got it.”
“What are you looking for?” I said.
“I’m looking for the American Dream,” Relvis said.
“Where’s that?” I said.
“I’m not sure exactly. Could be Alaska. Could be Hawaii. Could be Hackensack, New Jersey. But I’ll know it when I see it,” he said. “I can tell you that for sure.”
When we stopped for gas, I called Gina from a payphone but no one answered. I was sort of relieved that I didn’t have to talk to Gina because she probably had some elaborate plan all worked out where she would make me fly home that day or take a direct bus from Las Vegas or something stupid like that, that did not involve me getting to Hollywood and meeting Sam Malone. I knew it was hard on her, what I was doing, but it was hard on me not knowing who my father was. Gina should’ve thought of that one of the five billion times I’d asked her to tell me about him.
I sat in the car and waited for Relvis and Meredith to finish up in the store. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty, I just wanted to get there.
They got back in the car and Relvis set a plastic bag by my feet and then we were back on the freeway. “You hungry, kid? You can have one of them candy bars.” He nodded toward the bag.
“I’m okay. Thanks.”
He took one and tore the wrapper open with his teeth and spit it out onto the floor. “How you doin’ back there, baby girl?” He eyed Meredith in the rear-view.
“Fine,” she said. “Good.”
“When are you scheduled to pop?”
“A few months still,” she said.
“Going to be one beautiful baby, that’s for sure.” He winked at her in the rear-view mirror.
Meredith stared at him for a second, then turned her head to look out the window.
“Thinking of names yet?”
“Not really.”
“You could name him Relvis if you want,” Relvis said. “If he’s a boy. For girls, I like Priscilla and Lisa Marie.”
“Yeah,” Meredith said. “I’ll think about it.”
Then Relvis lit two cigarettes at once and smoked them both at the same time. I stared at him. He glanced over at me and shrugged. “Sometimes one just ain’t enough,” he said.
Meredith laughed and rolled down her window and I did too.
“Want to pick a tape, kid?”
“Sure,” I said.
He opened the cover of the arm rest and there were about fifteen cassettes lined up in there. In alphabetical order. Mostly Elvis. Some Lisa Marie. Some other country stuff. I picked Johnny Cash and stuck it in the tape deck.
“Excellent choice,” Relvis said, nodding. He licked his finger and smoothed his sideburns down.
The clock on the car stereo was the wrong time so I pushed the button to try to set it. But the numbers just kept going and never stopped.
Relvis shook his head. “Sometimes, things get broke and they can’t ever be fixed again,” he said.
I punched some more buttons but the clock numbers didn’t stop. All four of them raced from zero to nine and back, again and again.
“Doesn’t matter what time the clock says anyways,” Relvis said. “It’s only ever now.”
By the time both sides of the tape had finished, Relvis had decided that he was going to drive north. Maybe even all the way to Alaska. “See if I can meet any cats as cool as you two up there,” he said, grinning. He dropped us off where the I-15 intersects with the I-40 so we could keep heading west.
“I have to say it,” I said, as Meredith and I got out of the car.
“Go ahead,” Relvis said.
“Thank you, thank you very much.”
Relvis laughed and gave us a wave, tapping the horn to the tune of “Shave and a Haircut” as he drove away. We watched until the station wagon disappeared into the great, yawning sky.
“Relvis has left the building,” Meredith said.
Then we both cracked up. We stood at the side of the Mojave Freeway, giggling, as the traffic rushed past us.
24
The next person who stopped for us was a transport truck driver named Zane. He was hauling water bottles and told us he had about a million bottles of water in the back of his truck. I don’t know why anyone pays to drink water out of a plastic bottle when you can drink it out of the tap for free, but that’s one of life’s great mysteries. Zane wore a brown mesh Hooters hat and drank coffee out of a red Big Gulp mug. He had light-brown eyes and a five-o’clock shadow.
It was kind of squishy with all of us sitting up front, and Zane had to reach around my knee to work the stick-shift, so Meredith said she’d sit up in the back cab where Zane had a bed and a mini-fridge and a microwave and even a little TV with a Nintendo system hooked up to it.
“Sure, hop on back there,” Zane said. “Don’t mind the mess.”
“This is cool,” Meredith said, admiring the back cab.
“It ain’t much, but it’s what I got,” Zane said. Zane was like a snail-turtle too and carried his house around behind him.
“Do you mind if I have a nap back here?” Meredith asked, lying down on the bed.
“Knock yourself out,” Zane said.
Meredith zonked out right away, and Zane and I listened to talk-radio. After a while an announcer came on and said, “The verdict is in.” And Zane turned the radio up loud. “The four LAPD officers accused of beating Rodney King last March have been acquitted,” the announcer said.
“Fuck-damn,” Zane whistled through his teeth. “That city’s gonna burn.” Then he rolled down his window and snot-rocketed onto the highway.
“We’re going to L.A.,” I said.
“Well, kid, you’ve got bigger balls than me.”
I laughed.
“Ooh, doggies! Gonna see all hell break loose in the City of Angels tonight.”
“Zane?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“What does acquitted mean?”
“Not guilty,” Zane said.
“Oh,” I said.
“You seen the video, though?”
I nodded. If it was the same video that had been on the news for a year, I knew the one he meant. It was a home-video of four white cops beating up a black guy real bad.
“So?” he said.
“So, what?” I said.
“So everyone’s seen the video! So everyone knows those cops are guilty as charged!”
“Oh,” I said.
“Think I’ll head on over to my buddy’s place in San Bernardino, lay low for a while. I suggest you do the same,” he said.
“No way,” I said. “We’ve got to get to Hollywood. Tonight.”
Zane glanced back at Meredith. Then he looked at me hard for a moment. He sighed. “Well, I’ll put a call out on the radio for you, see what I can do.” Zane picked up the CB radio from its holder attached to the roof. “Breaker one-nine. This is Zane the Main Vein hauling the water train, headin’ south on I-15, just comin’ up to Baldy. Got an anklebiter and a YL with me, looking for a lift into Shaky Town. Can anyo
ne nearby give them safe passage?”
There was only static over the radio for a long minute. Then a man’s voice came on and said, “Ten-four, Veiner, this is Big Red,” and he spoke in the same strange code as Zane had, but I figured out that he said he could give us a ride all the way into Los Angeles and that Zane should drop us at the Shell on Santa Fe Avenue and he’d collect us there.
“It worked!” I said, my heart ballooning inside my chest.
“Of course it worked,” Zane said. “It’s CB radio.”
“That’s the best thing ever.”
“Yep,” he said, nodding. “It pretty much is.”
Then I put my hand up for Zane to give me high-five and he gave me a really good one and laughed and said, “You’re all right, kid.”
“Zane?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“How’d you learn to talk like that?”
Zane laughed. “Well, if you ever get to be a truck driver, you’ll find out.”
Then I thought that maybe trucking was something I could do when I grew up. I like to travel. I’m good at it, and I’d get to carry my house around behind me, plus, I’d get to learn a whole new secret language. I hated it when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up; I never knew what to say, so I always just told them the truth and said, “I don’t know,” but then they’d look so disappointed, like I’d done something wrong. Then they’d usually walk away because who wants to talk to a kid who doesn’t even know what he wants to be when he grows up? So right that second I decided to start telling people that I wanted to be a trucker when I grew up. And it felt good.
Not too long after I’d decided to be a truck driver, Zane pulled into the Shell station, and we saw a guy with long dirty-blond hair wearing jeans and a white T-shirt leaning up against the front tire of a red dump truck, smoking a cigarette. He gave us a nod as Zane pulled his truck around. We all got out and the man walked over to us and Zane and the man shook hands. The man’s name was Reginald but he said we could call him Reggie.
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