As I was contemplating the events that led to my downfall, Bob Mota came barreling back in the room, check in hand.
“You know we can’t verify anything today, right?”
“OK.”
“This is just a piece of paper to me right now. But I like you, outside of the Red Sox hat, and I like the numbers on the paper. I think we can do business. Can I tell you something, Ray?”
“Sure, Bob.”
“It’s been nothing but pigeons and screamers in here lately,” he said. “Plungers all over the floor. I swear it’s been like a goddamn sawdust joint this summer. Fucking economy. They keep saying it’s recovering, but that’s blue-state propaganda.”
“I hear you, Bob.”
“You have no idea, Ray.”
I nodded. He’d probably never been more right about anything in his life, since he’d lost me at “pigeons and screamers.”
“I’ll tell you how we’re gonna play this,” he said.
I tapped Lou Gehrig on the head, sending a subliminal message to Mota to say something positive. I needed money. I needed a room. I needed to put the plan to buy the Kinder place in motion as soon as possible.
“I’m gonna put you up on good faith. Not in the mansion, but we’ll give you a nice suite upstairs. Everything checks out, we’ll get you set up on the floor ASAP. Folding money till then, though. You need anything in the meantime, meal, massage, whatever, you call me, OK?”
Lou Gehrig and I nodded. I might not have been the luckiest man on the face of the earth, but I had been before, knew what it felt like, and was primed and ready for my second act.
ONE, TWO, THREE . . . BREAK
November 23
. . . hell, I loved the guy on TV as much as everyone else did. Why wouldn’t I? He was beautiful and amazing. I couldn’t get close enough to him. I wanted to crawl inside him and live there forever. I wanted us to be like Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher. To break their record. But that’s such a young way to think. Who knows what the Fishers’ life was really like? Who knows what anyone’s life is really like? It takes forever just to begin to understand your own . . .
I GOT AN EXPANSIVE SUITE with a marble whirlpool tub, loaded bar, wide-screen TV, wraparound sectional couch, and thirty-foot stretch of glass overlooking what Hunter S. Thompson called the “main nerve of the American Dream,” the Vegas Strip (I got the quote from a chamber of commerce–sponsored magazine in the back of the taxi to the MGM, if you want to know). Out the window was the vast expanse of the Mojave Desert. It looked like the end of the earth, a place where things came to die. But, as Bob Mota had said, to focus on that would be to worry about the small stuff. The big picture was clear and looking good. I had gone from the miserable confines of Room 23 at the Parkway Motor Lodge to a suite at the MGM Grand. From being flat broke and thigh-deep in the sludge of debt and despair to more than half a million dollars in the black, assuming I paid off everyone I knew, though, that was not holding the top slot on my list of priorities. I was focused on one thing and one thing only: turning the $612,500 into a couple million, buying the Kinder house, presenting it to L in a dramatic moment of heartfelt grandiosity, moving the hell out of Connecticut and back south, and resuming a life that had been interrupted by a series of unfortunate circumstances and misguided decisions. It was just that simple.
I stood in front of the window in the suite and wondered how soon the check would clear. Outside, directly across the boulevard, a crew of workers was rocking empty cars back and forth along the Manhattan Express roller coaster outside New York, New York, a mini-Gotham-themed casino that featured an enormous replica of the Statue of Liberty that was absurd even by the impossibly campy standards of Las Vegas. I thought for a moment of the story my father used to tell about my late grandfather. How he’d come to Ellis Island with nothing, not even shoes on his feet. It never interested me. I continued looking out at the sprawl of Vegas. To the north, I could see the medieval-themed Excalibur, the turrets and spires above the bell towers looking like they might melt at any second. The radio in the cab on the way to the MGM had reported the temperature at 112 degrees and rising, and the desert out beyond the Rio and the Gold Coast was baking and cracking under the relentless sun.
I took out the unopened letter from my father and put it on the coffee table, along with the paperback copy of Gatsby I had finally started reading on the plane (again losing interest when it was obvious he had gotten Daisy back), $86 in loose bills, and the envelope Maurice had given me to place a futures bet on the Giants winning the Super Bowl. I knew that telling Maurice I was Vegas-bound was a bad idea as far as secrecy was concerned, but he’d been going on about how he had a vision of the Giants winning the Super Bowl for months, and I knew I’d need some spending money beyond the crazy check I was carrying, so I told him they were going off at 40–1, I was heading to Sin City, and you couldn’t take visions lightly in this world. If he was ever going to make a big move, I said, this was it.
Maurice pulled himself off the love seat, ambled into a back room, and returned with an envelope full of cash that he handed over with great ceremony. It was like he was bequeathing me a samurai sword.
“Be careful, Ray,” he said as he forked over the envelope. “There’s some crazy people out there.”
I stared out at the desert and pulled out a pack of Marlboros, extracting what was left of Chip’s joint, which was camouflaged between the cigarettes. This was how I’d always get my stash through airports during the days when I had a job. I once was a recreational dope smoker (just a little here and there to take the edge off things), but the stress of my breakup with L and my nonstop gambling had caused a condition where my heart became permanently stuck in a state that can best be compared to an engine being revved in neutral, and I couldn’t make it stop without sparking a joint. A little weed would calm me, slow the world down to a reasonable pace, and let me breathe and think things through. You could say I smoked every day if you wanted to.
I sat down in front of the window and put the joint in my mouth. Across the street, a security guard pulled a couple of kids from the fountains in front of the Bellagio, and as I watched the killjoy ply his trade, I fired up the joint and put my cell phone on the floor. I had 136 text messages, 58 missed calls, and 37 voice mails. It didn’t take peerless intelligence to assume that word had gotten out about exactly who had yanked Jorge de la Maria off his horse at Belmont Park. The texts were a litany of “Wuz that u?,” “WTF?,” and “Ur fukked.” I knew the voice mails weren’t going to be much better, but since things were looking up in every other way, I figured I could endure the avalanche.
Hello. You have thirty-seven new messages.
First message, received at 11:02 A.M. . . .
Hey, man. What the fuck?
Second message, received at 11:21 A.M. . . .
You son of a bitch!
Third message, received at 11:38 A.M. . . .
What’s your problem? You walk out of the casino without saying goodbye, and then you don’t even call to explain or answer your stupid phone or anything. I’m so sick of this crap. It’s just . . . You’re just ridiculous, Ray. You can’t keep doing this all the time. And did you tell Penny you’d take her to Central Park this weekend? She’s Central Parking me to death over here. Call us. We love you.
Fourth message, received at 11:31 A.M. . . .
Is it me, or was that you on TV doing some really fucked-up shit? It’s Keith.
Fifth message, received at 11:49 A.M. . . .
I go motel. You trouble Bing Buli.
Sixth message, received at 12:15 P.M. . . .
Raymond Parisi, please call 1-800-984-2100, extension 100, regarding your past due account; 1-800-984-2100, extension 100.
Seventh message, received at 12:41 P.M. . . .
Ray? It’s Maurice. Bing is back. He’s not happy, Ray. I need you to call me right away, OK? Call me right away.
Eighth message, received at 1:02 P.M. . . .
Hey, man. Miss you
around these parts. If that’s you we’re seeing, we’re gonna have to report it, brother. Call me and tell me you don’t have a cast on your arm.
Ninth message, received at 1:18 P.M. . . .
Ray, it’s Maurice again. I had to let Bing in your room. I’m sorry. He insi— Ray? This Bing Buli. You trouble no friend. I find. He tell. You tell fat!
Tenth message, received at 1:33 P.M. . . .
Yo, fuckstick, it’s Angelo. Don’t be a douchebag your whole life and straighten that thing out you said you was gonna straighten out. Come by Bobby V’s tonight. And what’s this shit I’m hearing about you and a horse?
Eleventh message, received at 1:51 P.M. . . .
This is Robert Barnes. Again. We talked about this dog thing, Mr. Parisi. Please. L does not want to get the restraining order, but you’re leaving us no choice. You understand that, right? It’s simple. You’re leaving us no recourse. None whatsoever. Please be reasonable and stay off the property. And leave the dog be already.
Twelfth message, received at 1:55 P.M. . . .
Estivation is like hibernation except in hot weather. And sometimes an animal can be in a deep sleep and doesn’t hear anything going on around him. But he’s not hibernating or estivating. Just really, really sleeping. This is called a torpor. Can’t wait to go to the park with you, Uncle Ray!
Thirteenth message, received at 2:03 P.M. . . .
The Las Vegas? Take Bing money the Las Vegas? Oh, Ray, you . . . oh you . . . oh. I find! Bing find! No Thanksgiving no more. No more friend. You lie Bing Buli!
Fourteenth message, received at 2:07 P.M. . . .
Ray, it’s Marty Tepper. You sound retarded on your message. Do something about that. I put in the call to Ed Kinder— Hold on. Put it in the car, not on the car. There you go. That’s terrific. Now it’s got a much better chance to make it there. Anyway, his wife’s not well, so this may be a good time after all. He’s talking Florida again. Don’t fuck me on this. Have a good Fourth of July.
I decided to skip the rest of the messages and focus on the great news from Marty Tepper (there was no sense worrying about the other stuff). It was too bad that Ed Kinder’s wife wasn’t doing well, but they were old and would be better off in a condo down in Fort Lauderdale than worrying about chasing after dogs and all the stuff that was better left to me and L to do. All I had to do was roll the inheritance money over and the place was ours. The plan seemed ingenious, which set it in stark contrast to the rest of the ideas I ever had about getting L back. As I’d figured, telling Maurice I was going to Vegas had been a terrible idea, since he couldn’t keep a secret and was scared to death of Bing Buli (though he was in his early fifties and checked in at no more than five-four, 130 pounds, Bing looked like he had once done terrible things to American soldiers in faraway huts). Maurice Boudreaux would have made the world’s worst prisoner of war, and while I traded the quick cash for the risk that he’d spill the beans about my whereabouts, I knew Bing would never find me in Vegas even if he was inclined to look for me. Which I doubted he would, since his parents made him look fluent in English by comparison and were for the most part bedridden. There was no way he’d leave them alone. I had spent the grimmest Thanksgiving of my life at the Buli apartment the year before, but again, what kind of thing was that to concern myself with? This Thanksgiving, L and I would invite everyone we knew in Atlanta up to our new place. Hounds would be running around the barn. The leaves in Georgia would be golden on the ground. The Dawgs would be getting ready to kick off against the Jackets. You could practically smell the turkey already.
I poured myself a vodka from the bar, splashed in some pineapple juice from a mini-can, and contemplated opening my father’s letter before deciding to turn on the big screen instead. I flipped over to ESPN. Lo and behold, there I was again, though this time it was not footage from Belmont Park but rather my speech at the Little League World Series, which accidentally started the career I had gone on to squander.
The anchor, also a former friend of mine to whom I owed a few grand, was noting that the qualifying games for the LLWS were going on all over the country, and since it was about to be the tenth anniversary of my moment in Williamsport, they thought they’d run the clip again. I was just a low-level scrub at ESPN in those days, gathering stats and monitoring games for highlights, and with L in her last year of law school, I had a lot of time on my hands, so I helped a guy I worked with named Stu Lock coach his son Ben’s Little League team, or rather the regional All-Star team Ben had been selected for and that Stu offered to coach. These kids were phenomenal, and the Connecticut team wound up going on a run, making it to Williamsport as winners of the New England region and ultimately representing the United States in the championship game against a precise Chinese squad that hadn’t made an error the entire tournament.
The game was a nail-biter. Ben was pitching, and Stu never went to the mound when his son was on the hill on account of the kid not forgiving him for divorcing his mother two years earlier. In the fifth inning of a scoreless game, the wheels came off. Our shortstop booted a routine roller, our right fielder lost one in the sun, Ben started pouting, and then the floodgates opened figuratively as well as literally, as the Chinese jumped all over us and half our team started breaking down and crying on the field. Stu asked me to go out and say something, anything, to stop the bleeding, so I called time and trotted to the mound, waving the entire team in to join me. Since it was the finals, ABC asked us to wear microphones, and all of it was captured live.
I sat and stared at the TV. Watched myself walking out on the field. The kids, tears streaming down their faces, gathered around as the Chinese players stood stoically on each base and their manager stared from the dugout with an inscrutable look on his face. This is what I said:
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Not the errors. Who cares about the errors? Unless you’re trying to miss the ball on purpose—unless you’re the mini Black Sox running some crazy conspiracy to throw the Little League World Series—then you gotta ease up on yourselves. People make mistakes. It’s nothing to cry about. I don’t want to see any more crying, OK? Not because it’s unmanly—there’s no such thing as that—but because it’s ridiculous. It’s summertime. You’re playing ball with your friends. What the hell is there to cry about? Look: I don’t know a lot about China, but if you look at how serious those kids are, you can see that they have a lot of pressure on them. In a couple hours, they have to go back and deal with a bunch of Communists while we all go down the shore to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl and eat Carvel. Some of you guys are going to be meeting girls down there, and trust me when I tell you that meeting the right girl is a lot more important than anything that happens on this field. You meet one half as good as mine and it’ll save your life, believe me.”
At this point, the umpire began to walk to the mound to break up the meeting. As I sat there and watched it all these years later, he seemed to take his time, though I don’t know why. Maybe it was the crying. Or the fact that I’d had the entire team sitting on the ground like we were around a campfire and not a pitcher’s mound. It was an odd scene any way you looked at it.
“I should say that if you’re leaning the non-girl way, that’s fine also. Meeting the right guy is more important than this, too. A lot of people are going to give you crap about it, but to hell with them. That’s their hang-up. Don’t apologize for who you are.”
The ump got within five or ten feet, said, “Wrap it up, coach,” and walked back toward the plate. I motioned for everyone to stand up. Cameras were everywhere. There were thousands of people crammed into the grandstand. The hill behind the outfield fence was filled.
“I know you feel pressure,” I said. “There’re adults all over the place, which is never good, and there’re a lot of cameras, and those are never good, either, but screw everything and have some fun. It’s just baseball. We’re on a field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, not Gettysburg. No one’s shooting at you. There’s nothing to cry about. If those Ch
inese kids beat you, then you shake their hands ’cause they were better, and you move on with your lives. They get a bigger trophy but have to live in China. You get a smaller trophy and get to live in the greatest country on earth. Who’s really winning?”
I had them all put their hands in the middle like we always did before we took the field.
“This isn’t the high point of your lives, OK? You’re just getting started. These aren’t your glory days. This is just something cool you did when you were young. Let’s start having a good time out here. Break on three. One-two-three . . . break.”
That was it. And when I walked back to the dugout, I didn’t think anything of it. Ben pitched out of the jam, but the damage was done, and the Chinese took the title. Later, it all exploded. The speech was shown everywhere, and I not only became the golden boy in Bristol but was also embraced by a variety of pro-American groups as well as gay rights organizations. Much to L’s chagrin, most of the Republican candidates that year quoted the speech and hailed its American values (aside from the gay stuff), and Sunday-morning shows broke down the content of what I’d said and claimed it not only put sports in perspective but redefined masculinity in post-9/11 America. Hell, a women’s magazine put a picture of me on the cover under the headline IS RAY PARISI THE PERFECT MAN? due to what I’d said about L (“You meet one half as good as mine and it’ll save your life, believe me”), which was heralded as one of the most romantic things a lot of women had ever heard. L had the magazine cover framed and hung it in the living room until she got back from Myrtle Beach and it “accidentally” fell off the wall one day and broke, putting an end to an item that had given us a lot of laughs and one I still think was the victim of something other than an accident.
Swimming with Bridgeport Girls Page 7