The Motel Life

by Willy Vlautin

  ‘You sure about doing that?’ I asked him.

  ‘Look, if Junior doesn’t get his money back I’m finished anyway.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But I want the keys to your car. Right before we place the bet, I get the keys. I’ve got to know I have the car.’

  ‘You can trust me, Frank. I’m right,’ Tommy said. ‘This time I’m right. I know I am.’

  23

  WHEN I GOT HOME that night from the hospital the dog was laying on the bed. I poured out some food for him and filled his water. He stretched and yawned and after a while got up. I turned on the radio, put a can of soup on the hot plate, and sat down at my table. I lit a candle I kept and ate. Afterwards, I made instant coffee and opened the sports page searching for the odds on the upcoming fight.

  There were two articles I found, both favored Tyson. Holyfield had cardiovascular problems, his endurance was in question, he was too beat up, he was too old. By the looks of it no one really seemed to think much of him. I searched around more and found the Reno odds all favored Tyson. Twenty to one odds against Holyfield a day before the fight.

  The dog was restless and so after I finished my coffee I snuck him out and we walked up Lake Street to the University. I threw him the old tennis ball and he chased it down the deserted grass courtyards which ran alongside the college buildings.

  I slept good that night and woke early, around six a. m., and decided to go down to the day labor office and try to pick up a job for the extra cash. I took the dog on a quick walk, put him back in the room, made a coffee to go, and went on to the temp office.

  I ended up with a warehouse job near the sheriff’s station, off Spice Island.

  I picked up a ride with another guy assigned to the same place, an old man. The job that day went easy, mostly stacking shipments and putting them in shrink wrap to be sent off. I worked the job that Thursday and Friday. I told the guy I’d be back on Monday although I knew I probably wouldn’t be.

  When the day of the fight came, Saturday, November 11, I took a bus down to the record store and sold off the CDs I still owned. I took an antique silver dollar my grandfather had given me and sold that at a silver shop. In all, I walked to the Cal Neva with $810.

  The sports book was half full and I saw Tommy at the bar with Al Casey and Jim Finer and his girlfriend Diane.

  ‘Jesus, I didn’t think you’d make it,’ Tommy said when he saw me. ‘We only got an hour before the fight.’

  ‘I told you I’d be here,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a crazy bastard if you go ahead with it,’ Al Casey said. He was drunk, but looked better than when I had seen him last. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and black pants. His hair was washed and combed. His face was healing, the black eyes were yellow, and the nose had deflated some.

  ‘I thought you were going skiing?’

  ‘That son of a bitch Darren was lying to me. He didn’t have the room, the tickets, or nothing.’

  ‘Darren’s a fucking idiot,’ Jim Finer said, laughing.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet a dead dick on Holyfield,’ Al said.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ Tommy said. He gave Al a look, then turned to me. ‘Al don’t know shit, Frank, how much you got?’

  ‘$810,’ I said, ‘but I’m keeping twenty dollars to drink on.’

  ‘The odds are dropping, it’s ten to one now. But I still got the strong feeling. Holyfield’s gonna knock the shit out of him.’

  ‘You’re fucking crazy,’ Al Casey said and laughed.

  ‘For once I agree with Al,’ Jim Finer said.

  ‘Me too,’ his girlfriend Diane said halfheartedly and giggled.

  ‘It’s gonna happen,’ Tommy said.

  ‘It ain’t,’ Al Casey said and laughed again. ‘Might as well just get a hooker.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Al,’ Tommy said, shaking his head. ‘He’s a certified fuck up.’

  ‘Fuck you, Tommy.’

  ‘I’m gonna go bet it,’ I said.

  ‘Goddamn right you are,’ Tommy said.

  I walked to the window and placed the bet. When the clerk gave me the receipt I put it in my wallet and went back to the bar, sat on a stool next to Tommy and ordered a beer and a shot.

  People began filing in. All types of people. Most of them men, middle aged and older, alcoholics and gamboholics, casino rats.

  Sometimes, in the past, Jerry Lee and me would sit in the casinos, the Fitz or the Cal Neva, and we’d make up stories about any guy that passed us.

  ‘There’s one for you,’ Jerry Lee would say. ‘Look at that sorry looking bastard.’ And the guy he would point to was always a sorry looking bastard. Most likely a drunk who gambled the remainder of his life away. Dressed in old clothes which were always wrinkled and unwashed. There’s thousands of them. If I was in a good mood I’d say the guy was an astronaut who had to lie and say he made it to the moon when really he was just stuck in a warehouse that was made up to look like the moon. The man was so upset about lying to the whole nation that he fell off, disappeared, and ended up in Reno. Other times I’d say it was a Vietnam vet who was tortured for years and escaped on a raft and made his way to Hawaii drinking blood from the sharks he caught with his dog tags.

  Sometimes I’d make him a porn star who couldn’t get it up anymore or a sports hero who had blown out his knees or had a weak blood vessel in his brain and if he got hit one more time he’d die or become institutionalized.

  Other times if I was in a bad mood I’d say that he’d lost his whole family in a car wreck, or a crazed madman ate his wife on a barbecue while he had to watch. Or that he and his kid were camping and a mountain lion or a cult captured the kid and took him to a cave and he was never seen again. And then the old man spends years alone walking through the mountains yelling out his poor kid’s name, and then finally gives up and sits alone at the Cal Neva.

  My mind went racing like that through a thousand thoughts before the fight finally started. By then my nerves were completely shot and the odds were down to seven to one. The sports book was full and I was half drunk and nervous as I’d ever been. The commentators on the TV favored Tyson, the people around us cheered him even though he was a rapist, a felon, and I began to lose hope before it even began.

  Tommy bought us each a double whiskey and I drank it as the first round began and ordered another. The second round came with Holyfield keeping his ground. The third and fourth were the same. The fifth was the round that Tyson looked like he might be taking the fight. I almost had a heart attack then. I almost walked out.

  But in the sixth round Holyfield cut Tyson’s left eyelid. They stopped the fight and the doctor looked the cut over and signaled for the fight to continue. The crowd on TV began screaming ‘Holyfield’ and then with forty seconds left in the round Holyfield knocked Tyson down, nearly finished him. In the seventh and eighth rounds the two fighters tired and stood there clinching each other and it looked like Tyson had recovered from the knockdown. Then in the ninth Holyfield came alive and began to beat down Tyson. By the tenth Tyson was in trouble. Holyfield landed five hard rights in a row and Tyson was saved by the bell. Would he win? COULD HE WIN??? I got so excited I felt like I might pass out. Round eleven began and I could barely breathe and just as the bell sounded the referee stopped the action to look over Tyson’s now swollen eye once again. He resumed the fight but Tyson looked tired, he looked beat. Holyfield began a series of punches that all landed. He was destroying Tyson and the referee let it go on for a while, but then, finally, he stopped the fight.

  It was the greatest feeling you could ever have.

  Tommy and I cheered. I was screaming like a maniac and we were jumping up and down hugging each other. We all kissed Diane, Jim Finer’s overweight girlfriend. Al Casey began crying and got so broken up that he went to the bathroom to wash his face and never came back.

  We waited a long time, until the crowd died and Jim Finer and his girlfriend left, to go to the sports book and collect the money. When I finally got up th
ere, I was shaking and I could barely put the money in my wallet.

  ‘You get the money?’ Tommy asked nervously when I came back to the bar.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘Put the wallet in your front pocket,’ he said, looking around. ‘Jesus, I can’t believe it. How much?’

  ‘$5,720.’

  ‘Holy fuck.’

  ‘It’s more money than I’ve ever had,’ I said.

  ‘It’s more money than I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘It barely fits in my wallet.’

  ‘We should get out of here, go somewhere safer. You never know what kind of crummy bastard’s been watching us.’

  We left and walked down Second Street, both of us in good moods, drunk and finally, at least momentarily, successful. We went to the Sundowner and drank beer and whiskey, then to the El Cortez. We got a table in the back and I counted out money and gave Tommy the $2,000 he needed to pay back the old man he owed.

  ‘For once I was right. Wasn’t I?’

  ‘You were,’ I said.

  ‘Now I can pay off Junior, and now my uncle won’t find out. My whole life would have been ruined.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about that now.’

  ‘What are you going to do tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Probably stop by Jerry Lee’s then go home. I’m already drunk and I don’t want to get much worse with all this money on me. How about you?’

  ‘Probably finish up this round, maybe get another, and head home myself. I got to work tomorrow.’

  ‘We got lucky.’

  ‘I thought I was cursed.’

  ‘You ain’t cursed.’

  The jukebox began playing and we each got another round, and watched a group of women at the bar. They were middle-aged tourists, dressed in jeans and sweat tops. They were laughing, smoking cigarettes, and drinking. After a while Tommy went up to one of them, and when he did, I finished my drink and left for the hospital.

  The night was cold, and the sky was dark and brooding, and it seemed like it might snow again. I put on my hat and gloves and began the walk.

  I stopped by the Eldorado and got him a pint of chocolate chip ice cream and two cookies. Then I walked the last bit to the hospital and made it to his room.

  There were two old men in there with him. Jerry Lee was asleep. I whispered in his ear a couple times but he was out. I was gonna shake him awake so he could hear the news, but I didn’t. I just found the notepad and wrote:

  Jerry Lee,

  We won! TKO by Holyfield, 10th round. We have $3,700. I’ll pick up a car from Earl tomorrow, but will call to see what kind you want. You know I like Cadillacs, but understand if you don’t. They do break down and suck up gas.

  Your brother,

  Frank Flannigan

  P.S. I brought you by some ice cream. Would have left it but didn’t want it to melt. I left you two cookies sitting on the table. I’ll bring by lunch tomorrow. You want Jim Boys or an Awful Awful burger? I’ll call you around 11.

  I put the note on his chest and left the hospital. As I walked down Fourth Street, I could see snow beginning to fall. I turned on Virginia to walk past the glowing lights of the strip, and I was at the Fitzgerald when I heard a lounge band inside play the song ‘Boy Named Sue’ by Johnny Cash. The song is a favorite of mine and I decided to go in.

  I went past the statue of the Irish leprechaun, Mr. O’Lucky, and past the rows of slot machines and the people playing them, and then I saw, sitting at a twenty-one table, Tommy Locowane. I stopped when I saw him, and my heart sank. Almost like someone hit me in the stomach and took my wind. I felt sick. I stood there unnoticed and watched him, watched as they took the chips from him, and when I left he was almost broke. He was almost done.

  24

  WHEN I GOT HOME I opened the door to my place and saw the dog on my bed wagging his tail. He yawned and looked at me, and I felt better that he was there. I took two bowls and set them on the table and dished out two portions of ice cream, one for me, one for the dog. I turned on the radio, and as the music softly played we ate.

  The next morning I called Jerry Lee and he told me to buy any car I wished, Cadillac or Toyota, Honda or Ford. The only kind he didn’t want was a mini-van or a station wagon.

  ‘Now that we got some dough, maybe you could find that kid’s folks easier. He’s got to have them somewhere. Maybe they’re good people who are sick or something. If you find them you could give them some of the money.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s got anyone,’ I told him.

  ‘Everybody’s got somebody,’ he said.

  ‘What if I can’t find anyone?’

  ‘You will,’ Jerry Lee said.

  ‘I’ll try,’ I told him.

  ‘Maybe when you find someone we could get them subscriptions to magazines. Like National Geographic or People or Sports Illustrated. Who knows what they like, but most people like magazines.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I said.

  I got dressed, combed my hair and shaved, put on my coat, and took the dog out the back. We walked quickly down First Street, then over Virginia, then took the alley entrance to the Golden Nugget, and I left him there, waiting outside near a row of trash cans.

  The counter was crowded and I stood in line and finally ordered a coffee and two orders of bacon to go. Then me and the dog crossed Virginia Street and headed up Lake towards Seventh and the home of the kid, Wes Denny.

  When I made it to the small green house I sat a little way down from it and finished my coffee, gave the dog half the bacon, and waited. The red work van I had seen from the last visit was gone, but the mini-van was parked in the driveway, and there were lights on inside.

  It wasn’t too bad sitting on the cold concrete sidewalk. I still had a little of the coffee to warm me. When it was finished my ass began to freeze, so I took the dog across the freeway to the University courtyard to run us both around. The students were coming and going, but no one seemed to notice or care that we were there.

  When the dog had worn himself down we headed back over the freeway, and once again sat and waited near the house. Not a lot of time had gone by when the woman came out with her two small daughters. Once she had put the kids in the car, she went back into the house and came out wearing a winter coat and carrying a purse. She locked the front door, started up the car, and drove off.

  The dog and I walked across the street and through the small chain-link fence surrounding the front yard. I found a mail slot on the front door and I took from my wallet $1,000 and shoved it through.

  Then we went over the freeway for the last time and walked the short distance to the Walgreens they had just built. I left the dog outside and went in to look for magazines. I went through a lot of them, taking subscription flyers from each that I wanted. For the mom I got National Geographic and Cosmopolitan and Sunset, and for the dad I got Sports Illustrated, Popular Mechanics, and Penthouse. I didn’t know anything about kids, though, so I had to pass them over.

  We went down past First Street and over the river to the main post office. I went inside and filled out the subscription forms. I remembered their address and a mail clerk helped find their zip code. I got a money order to pay for each as well as envelopes, and put that and the subscription form inside, sealed the envelope, addressed it, and mailed it out.

  When I was done I walked outside into the falling snow. I put on my hat and gloves, and the dog and me made the trip up to Fourth Street and slowly on towards Earl Hurley’s used car lot.

  25

  I SAW THE ELBOW ROOM’S LIGHTS in the blurry distance, through the wind and snow, and I knew I was close. Soon I could see the cars and the lot sign and then the office and the shop still standing next to the old bar. I hadn’t been there in five years. I hadn’t seen Earl or his grandson Barry since the last day that I worked there. It was shame more than anything that kept me away, and as I got closer the memories of old Earl Hurley and the lot came sinking back in.

  When h
e found out I’d dropped out of high school he put me on full time and didn’t give me a hard time about it. A year or so later he said if I’d get my G.E.D. he’d help pay for me to go to college. I told him I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Two months later I quit as Jerry Lee and I were gonna move to Montana and live for free with another guy we met whose aunt left him a house up there. But, like they do, the plans fell through and I was too embarrassed to go back to Hurley’s, especially knowing how much of a bum I felt for not going back to school.

  After that I never even went down into the lot’s neighborhood just in case I’d run across them. And the Gold Dust West, where Earl gambled, I haven’t been in there since that day, the last day I worked there …

  When I made it up the steps I could see Earl inside watching TV. I knocked on the door and he waved me in. I bent down and gave the dog a quick pet and left him on the porch and went inside.

  ‘How the hell are you, Frank Flannigan?’ he said and stood. He lit an Old Gold cigarette and walked over to me and we shook hands.

  ‘Did I see you with a dog out there?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied.

  ‘It yours?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘Well, let the son of a bitch in. A frozen dog ain’t worth a shit.’

  I went back to the front door and brought the dog inside.

  The office was a decent size, there were two desks, both facing the TV, a couch, some chairs, and a wood stove burning. The place was warm and I took off my hat and gloves and coat, and moved next to the stove.

  Earl bent down and petted the dog as I stared across the room at the walls and the framed pictures of Dodge Darts that hung from each of them.

  ‘What the hell you doing over here in this weather? I haven’t seen you in a goddamn long time. It’s been years, ain’t it?’