The Motel Life

by Willy Vlautin

  ‘I hope so. You know, every time now that you tell a story, the cool girl dies at the end. Always. Never changes. Last time her parachute didn’t open, and the time before that she got caught on the rocks and the air in her scuba tank ran out before you could get to her. And the time before that the sand people, or whatever they were, tortured her to death.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘It’s ’cause of Annie James, I bet,’ Jerry Lee said proudly. ‘Hell, at least you’ve been in love, you know? And no matter what you say, that girl really did like you. All she ever did was talk about you. Marge is the only one for me, I think, and she’s just a picture I draw. It sure doesn’t feel like love with me and Polly Flynn. If it does at all it’s just when we’re fucking. I sometimes feel like I love her then. Never anytime else, though. Not hardly ever.

  ‘But then I even felt like that when I used to fuck that fat old lady when we were staying down at the Silver State. Nancy. Even with her, when I had to pay her twenty dollars and she was almost too drunk to walk. Even then when I was about to let go, I felt like I wanted to marry her. I even told her that once. Right when I let go. “Marry me,’ cause I love you,” I said.’

  Jerry Lee began laughing

  ‘I remember her,’ I said and laughed.

  ‘She wasn’t much,’ he said, still laughing, ‘but right then, I swear to God I could have really married her.’

  20

  I LEFT THE HOSPITAL when Jerry Lee fell asleep. The dog was outside, almost frozen, waiting for me by the entrance. Snow was falling. I stopped at a pay phone and told Tommy I needed to see him and then went to the Eldorado Casino, got an order of chicken chow mein to go, and finished the walk home.

  The night clerk wasn’t around when I got to the hotel so I let the dog walk up the steps and into my room on his own. I locked the door behind us, turned on the radio, plugged in the box heater, and sat at the small table by the window and ate what I could. I fed the dog a can of food, and when he was done, I took an old comb I had and tried to comb his hair. It was so matted that I grabbed my pocket knife and cut off most of the trouble spots. Then I took off my clothes, grabbed a towel, soap, and shampoo, and the dog and I went down to the bathroom.

  He didn’t seem to mind much when I put him in the shower. The warm water hit him, and when it did he just lay down on the drain and licked the tile walls. I soaped him up and rinsed him off a couple times. I did the same for myself, then sat down and let the water run over me while I petted him and tried to figure out what to do.

  When I got back to my room I turned on the TV and got dressed. It was not much later that I went to the store and bought a six-pack of beer. I was drinking that and listening to the radio when there was knocking on the door. I called out to see who it was, and when Tommy yelled his name I stood up and let him in. He sat at my table and I gave him a beer.

  ‘I was just at the hospital visiting your brother,’ he said.

  ‘I was there a couple hours ago,’ I said. ‘He seem all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. He seemed the same as yesterday and the same as the day before. But he asked me for money. Said he might have to leave town. What’s up with that?’

  ‘He tell you anything else?’

  ‘Not really. What’s he thinking?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You gotta know.’

  ‘You won’t say anything to anyone? No matter what?’

  ‘Hell,’ Tommy said and looked at me seriously. ‘You’ve known me for a long time. I won’t say anything to anyone. You should know that.’

  ‘I know,’ I said and so then I told him the story. The story of the kid, Wes Denny, the snowy night on Fifth Street. I told him about us leaving, and Jerry Lee burning the car, and the reason he shot himself in the leg.

  When I finished Tommy just shook his head.

  ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘I guess not,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know much, but what worries me the most is you two leaving. Did you cover it up at work so no one finds out?’

  ‘No, we just left. I was drunk and Jerry Lee was so upset he was out of his mind.’

  ‘Probably looks pretty bad if someone asked around about it. Now you’re in trouble too.’

  ‘I didn’t think about that ’til afterwards.’

  ‘I don’t know what you should do.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Jesus, the luck of the Flannigans. It’s almost worse than mine. I know I owe Jerry Lee, and I’d give you guys the money, but I’ve been betting the playoffs and I’ve lost three weeks in a row. I’ve also been betting my least favorite sport in the fucking world, basketball, and I couldn’t even tell you why I’m doing it. I’m down a couple thousand dollars. The most I’ve ever been down, and to make things worse I borrowed it from this guy, Junior. He’s a friend of my uncle’s. An old guy. I told him I was going to buy some Russian hand grenades from some military fanatic I knew. But the thing is, there was no military guy and no grenades, and I just took the money thinking I could double it, and then I’d give him back his money and tell him a story about how the guy never came through with the grenades. But I lost the money. Most of it, anyway. I don’t know what to do now. If I tell my uncle he’ll fucking kill me. I might have to sell my car, I don’t know.’

  ‘I’d give you the money if I had it,’ I said.

  ‘I know you would. The thing is, when Junior handed me that money, all those hundreds, I knew I was stupid, but I couldn’t stop taking it. I just couldn’t.’

  ‘You’re starting to sound like my dad,’ I said. ‘I’ve never told anyone really, but my mom said he couldn’t stop gambling. Craps and video poker. That and betting sports, football and boxing. He lost $3,000 once on a fight. He even went to the state prison in Carson City and was sentenced there for three years because of it. He was a mechanic for a Ford dealership out on Glendale. I think it’s still there, at least it was a while ago. It was a small place back then, and he was the only mechanic they had. Anyway, he and the accountant had a system going. My dad would put in used parts. He’d buy them from some guy he knew that did that sorta thing, who sold stolen parts. They’d cost maybe a quarter of a new part. He’d also say to the customer he’d changed things that he’d never touched, or he’d spray-paint the old parts so they’d look new. He didn’t do it all the time, but enough. The accountant would bill the customer accordingly and make up fake checks for parts distributors and things like that.

  ‘My dad owed everybody money. He’d gotten beaten up ’cause of it. Someone broke all the fingers in his hand, and he almost got shot ’cause of it. He’d get loans from people and then couldn’t pay them. My mom said it was like that for years and years. She wouldn’t let him near a credit card or a check book. Their deal was that she’d get every other check of his for the bills so they could get by. When I was little, just a kid, that’s when he got caught. Somehow, by somebody, they found out and he went to prison. He owed over $25,000 to people. People he shouldn’t have taken money from. My mom said he thought someone would kill him in prison because of it, but they didn’t. And when he got out he stayed around for a couple weeks then just ditched us. I don’t know where he went but he left and I don’t know where he is now. We’ve never seen him since. So we just make up stories about him, about who we wished he was, but really, he could be dead for all I know.’

  ‘I hope I don’t go down like that.’

  ‘I always think that if we didn’t live in Reno, he probably would have never gambled. Then maybe everything would have been different.’

  ‘Maybe. I wish I didn’t live here, but then I can’t think of another place I’d want to live. I just got to come up with $2,000 in a week or so and I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Something will come together.’

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, ‘or I might be moving in here with you.’

  ‘You’ll have to wait in line,’ I told him, ‘’cause pretty soon Jerry Lee will get the b
ed and me and the dog will have to move to the floor.’

  21

  THE NEXT TIME I visited Jerry Lee the other two beds were empty and he was alone in the room. Just seeing his face as I walked in I could tell that something was wrong. Then he told me in almost a whisper that the police had come by to see him. He could hardly sit still he was so nervous, and when he spoke the words just ran out of his mouth.

  ‘There were two of them, and one asked me what kind of car I had. I got so nervous I could barely talk. But the thing is, they already knew. I told them anyway and the other guy wrote it down. The cop asking the questions was huge with a mustache, a real son of a bitch. You could just tell by the way he was talking that he was. They asked where my car was. I told them it was stolen a couple weeks back. So they ask me why I didn’t report it stolen and I just told them that the car was a piece of shit and had been stolen a few times before. I told them how it wouldn’t lock anymore and that I use a screwdriver to start it, that it didn’t even have an ignition key. It was a real piece of shit, I told them. Which it was.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said and sat next to him.

  ‘Then they told me that the car was found in Idaho. It had been burned and abandoned. They said that normally they wouldn’t look into an abandoned car, especially one found out of state, but that the owner of the land wanted to press charges. Wanted to get money so he could get the car out of there. Then they asked me where the car was stolen from and I told them the parking lot of the Sands. I told them I always left it there, that it was just down the street from the Rancho Sierra where I lived. Then they asked me if I knew that someone might have been killed by an old beat- up car like mine in a hit and run.

  ‘A nurse getting off work had reported to them that she’d seen a large old yellow sedan parked by Saint Mary’s Hospital. She saw two people moving something out of the car when she passed it.

  ‘They asked me what color my car was. Yellow, I told them. Then I told them that if it was my car the lady saw, whoever stole it probably did it. Shit, then they asked me why I was in the hospital and hell I just started crying. I wasn’t faking it, I started crying like a kid and I told them the truth. I said I tried to kill myself but lost my nerve and so I just shot my leg. The big son of a bitch with the mustache kept asking me questions but I couldn’t stop crying. Even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t. So I guess they gave up. They got my phone number and my room number at the Rancho and left me their card. They said they would come back and just like that they left. What are we going to do, Frank?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ was all I managed to say. ‘They don’t know anything for sure.’

  ‘They’ll find out. You know they will. You gotta get me out of here. You gotta, I’m gonna go crazy if they come back.’

  After that I told him not to worry. I told him they’d never find out. I told him, if they did, I’d think of something.

  22

  THE TRUTH WAS, I was nervous as hell. I went to the Fireside Liquor Store and bought a six-pack of beer and the newspaper and walked east through the old industrial section of town and down the deserted railroad tracks with the dog following along. I tried to think of what to do and drank three of the beers while throwing him an old tennis ball. I’d toss it as hard as I could down the gravel and dirt that lay throughout the yard, the ball bouncing oddly as it went. The dog would chase after it like a madman.

  When I got too cold I went back up to my room. This time the front desk clerk was there and I left the dog in the alley until the fat old man went into the back and then we ran up the three flights of stairs.

  Once inside I fed the dog and moved my chair to the window and opened a beer. After I finished it, I opened another, and then the last. The dog moved to the bed and I took a shoe box I had underneath it and set it on the small table. Inside were stacks of letters and pictures. The pictures were of my family. The letters were mostly from Annie James, letters she wrote me after that day I told you about earlier.

  They start in Winnemucca, and stay there for a while, almost six months, then the rest are from Elko. She wrote me one a week, every Friday night she said, but I had never once written back.

  Sometimes the letters were six or seven pages both sides and other times they were short, almost postcards, written on binder paper, the spiral notebook kind where you have to tear them from the coil. I kept all of them.

  In the very last one she said she was living in Elko in an apartment by herself. She talked about the town, the people she’d met, and how her mom and her didn’t speak anymore. She didn’t have a car or a TV. There was a movie theater near by and she said she’d see any movie that came there, and that she had a library card and spent most of her free time at home, reading.

  I looked the letter over a few times then put it back with the others, fastened them together with a rubber band, and put them in the box with the photos, and shoved it back underneath the bed. Next to it was my dad’s shotgun. He’d left it at the house when he took off. It was a handmade Remington 1100. I set it on the bed, and for the next hour I cleaned it the best I could then put it back in its case, put on my hat and coat, and left for Tommy’s uncle’s gun shop.

  Inside the store the two men sat facing each other in old gray metal desks which stood behind the counter. Both looked up when I entered and Tommy stood and walked towards me.

  ‘What you doing with the 1100?’ he asked when he saw me holding the case. He shook his head and I set it on the counter and opened it.

  ‘What’s he got?’ his Uncle Gary said and lit a cigarette.

  ‘His dad’s shotgun.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A custom 1100 with gold inlays and it has two diamonds, one on each side of the stock. I don’t know if they’re real, but they look real.’

  The uncle got up and walked over to us.

  ‘I don’t think it’s ever been shot,’ Tommy said.

  ‘I don’t think it has,’ I said. ‘At least not much. My brother and I never shot it. My dad owned it, but I think he’d just gotten it when he left.’

  ‘Who’d he get it from?’ Tommy’s uncle asked, picking it up.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve looked it up before,’ Tommy said. ‘It ain’t on any stolen list that I’ve come across.’

  ‘What you gonna do with it?’ the uncle asked.

  ‘I need to sell it. I was hoping you could buy it.’

  ‘I don’t think I could give you the money this thing’s worth. You should put an ad in the Gun Trader or wait until the next gun show in February.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tommy said. ‘This could be worth a lot to the right buyer. My uncle’s right.’

  ‘I’m in a spot.’

  ‘I heard about your brother,’ the uncle said. ‘I know you probably need the cash. I could loan you a few hundred and keep the gun as collateral, and you could take as long as you want to get the money back to me. Six days or six months. As long as it takes.’

  ‘How much would you buy it from me for?’

  His uncle shook his head. ‘I’d have to check the inlays and look it over, but as is, to you right now, all I could give you is $500, and I don’t recommend you do it, that’s just all I could give you for it.’

  ‘You could get a hell of a lot more if you could wait it out,’ Tommy said.

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ I said. ‘I’ll take the $500.’

  ‘It’s not the best move,’ his uncle said and looked at me.

  ‘I know,’ I said, and shrugged.

  ‘Look, kid, I’ll buy it from you for five, but I’ll hold on to it for a month or two or three. If you need it back, just pay me, or at least set up a pay schedule. If we do decide to sell it, I’ll cut you in on twenty percent of my end.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I got to give it a better look over, recheck the numbers to make sure it wasn’t stolen, and then it’s a done deal. Tommy, why don’t you take Frank in the back and give him a c
up of coffee and make him take the rest of those donuts.’

  Tommy nodded and led me to the back and I poured myself a cup of coffee.

  ‘You guys are gonna leave, aren’t you? That’s why you need the cash, hunh?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘$500 ain’t much to run away on if that’s what you’re gonna do.’

  ‘We don’t even have a car.’

  ‘You could probably pick up a decent car for $400, but I don’t know.’

  ‘I was thinking about going over to Earl Hurley’s lot. He’d set up credit with me.’

  ‘The only other option is the fight. The Tyson versus Holyfield fight. That’s what I would do. Holyfield’s gonna win. The odds are good too. That’s in two days.’

  ‘Beside Jerry Lee,’ I said and shook my head, ‘you’re the unluckiest guy I know. As far as gambling goes, you’re the worst.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know I ain’t lucky, but I know this time Tyson’s gonna lose. I can feel it, and I feel it more than anything I think I’ve ever felt. Plus my aunt, she’s a worse gambler, worse than me, she bets the football games and the fights and she never wins. Never. Maybe one out of fifteen. She told me she’d bet her house on Tyson. Said she’d bet her whole goddamn life on Tyson. The odds at the Cal Neva are thirteen to one. Probably better now. You read the paper? Everyone’s against Holyfield.

  ‘Junior, that friend of my uncle’s, the old guy, he called today wondering about those grenades I told you about. Jesus, I know it sounds like I’m trying to work you, but I need your help. I need some cash, I do, or I’m finished. I’m out of a job, my whole future.’

  ‘It’s Jerry Lee. I can’t think past him.’

  ‘Look,’ Tommy said as tears filled his eyes. His voice broke and got shaky. ‘I’ll give you my car, and I’ll get you at least a hundred cash to make the trip with. We’ll only bet $400. That’ll leave you with $200 cash and a car to make the trip with.’