“Then you promise you’ll get lost?”
“Yeah.”
“You have one minute,” she said. “Penny? One minute and then we’re leaving, OK?”
“OK! Hey, Uncle Ray!”
Her voice was enough to break your heart.
“Hey, baby.”
“How’s Brazil?”
“How’s what?”
“Brazil.”
“Oh, Brazil’s good,” I said. “Very hot.”
“What’s it like there? I haven’t Googled it yet.”
“Well, it’s hot, like I said. And there’s a lot of South American people running around in white suits.”
“How come?”
“ ’Cause they’re fancy like that, I guess.”
“Oh. OK. What time is it there?”
“I’m not sure. I lost my watch on the boat,” I said.
“The boat carrying the palominos?”
“Sure. What did they tell you, exactly?”
“First I was mad when they said you couldn’t take me to Central Park, but then Mom told me about the sick horses and how you were helping them, and then I wasn’t mad anymore. I was being selfish. But now I’m not. Mom said you were going to a place in the mountains where there were no phones and that you’d be gone for a really long time.”
Jesus. Even Dawn had given up on me. And why not? What the hell did I ever do to deserve anything from her?
“I am. I’m leaving right now. I wanted my last call to be to you.”
“Really?”
“Of course. You’re my girl.”
“Why do you have to take the horses to the mountains? Why can’t you take them where it’s flat and you have a phone?”
Depression aside, it wasn’t hard for me to continue the story. I always found it easy to talk to kids as long as they belonged to somebody else. And lying, we know, I’ve never had a problem with.
“Because there’re healing springs there, and they don’t have them anywhere else, and if we don’t get them there, then they’ll die,” I said. “There’s an epidemic all over the country. I’ve got twelve other people on my team, though, so I think we’ll be able to save this batch and send the boats back for more.”
“How did they get sick?”
“The people who were supposed to take care of them didn’t do a good job,” I said. “They didn’t pay enough attention.”
“But you’re there now, so it’ll be OK. I know! Aunt KC says I have to go.”
“Don’t go.”
“Gotta.”
“Tell me one more thing,” I pleaded.
“Like what?”
“A fact. Something you haven’t told me.”
“I told you about the torpor.”
“I know about that. Yeah.”
“Lemme see. Oh. Sea horses are the only ones where the males carry the babies. Isn’t that crazy? Boys carrying babies! Gotta go!”
“I love you, P.”
“I love you, too, Uncle Ray. I’m proud of you for saving the palominos. ’Bye!”
I sat there for a long time and thought about how I’d probably never see Penny again. And how there was no one left for me to call. From the day I met L, there were always people around. When we lived in Atlanta, we were friends with everyone in Cabbagetown. We played on the softball team of L’s firm. There were always parties to go to. Concerts to see. Even around town, you’d always run into people you knew from hanging out in different neighborhoods. People in Little Five Points you’d always see at shows. People at the farmers’ market in the Highlands who were there every Saturday. People you’d run into at the Starlight drive-in. People tailgating in Athens. It was a full world. We played touch football in Myrtle Beach with the same group for years. When we moved back north, there were scores of people to see. L and I had to turn down invitations just so we could stay home together. There may have been a time, probably after my mother died and I went to prep school, when I knew something about loneliness, but if so, I don’t remember it. I can’t say whether my ability to make friends with just about anyone was something that came naturally to me or whether I developed it, but it didn’t seem to matter. It all came so easy. If I got tossed out of one school, I’d just make friends at the next. It wasn’t a big deal. I never spent a single nervous second in any room I ever walked into. But sitting there looking at my phone and realizing that there was no one left to call, I understood that all of the people I had met along the way were not really friends but just people with whom I shared something small and inconsequential at one point or another, and that L was right. I didn’t have any true friendships at all. I had L, and I don’t think I ever thought I would need more than her, and so everyone else just got whatever was left over. Loose joints and signed balls and good humor when there was time to kill.
After I started gambling, normal, stable people didn’t have anything to do with me. I didn’t know anyone like that anymore. The only people I did know were on the outside in some way, short on whatever the things were that made life something you were able to bend to your own will instead of being crushed by. I knew impressionable, fatherless little girls like Penny. Hopeful single mothers like Dawn. There were immigrant bookies like Bing Buli, who had no friends, and overweight motel clerks like Maurice, who also had no friends. These were the kinds of people I had come to attract. And the fact of the matter is that I took advantage of people like that. For companionship. For places to stay. For money. For convenience. The moment I got L back, they all would have been forgotten; I would have left them behind in a flash. Even then, even in Vegas, I found myself attracting those kinds of people. People who were hoping for something from me that they would never get. As I sat in that lounge, looking at that phone, there were not enough pills or bottles of Absolut in the world to keep me from facing the singular truth of my life: In one way or another, I had disappointed everyone who had ever cared about me.
As I walked across the casino floor, I saw Tommy Lee sitting at a roulette wheel. He was wearing a wifebeater and a straw cowboy hat with an exaggerated curved brim. Both his arms were covered in sleeves of ink. Sitting next to him was a girl with short pink hair whose implants looked like they might explode if she exhaled too heavily. I watched him play for a minute, and then something happened that I don’t have any explanation for and am not going to speculate about, because you can go down the rabbit hole with that kind of thing and end up drawing some ridiculous conclusions. I had bronchitis, after all, and was treating it with copious amounts of pills and alcohol. I was concussed from Bing’s beating. What happened could have been caused by dizziness and blind luck as easily as, say, divine intervention. I really can’t explain it, but it happened nonetheless, and all I can do is tell you what happened and let you draw your own conclusions.
As I watched the ball settle into a slot on the wheel and the board get cleared of chips, I saw the number 11 swell to twice its size for a split second. No longer than one flicker of a caution light. I blinked and looked again, but nothing happened. I doubted I had seen it at all, but I was exhausted, and clean out of hope, so I placed my $500 chip on the 11. The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” was playing, and Tommy Lee slapped his hands in perfect time on the girl’s knees. “Fucking Keith Moon, man,” he said.
The dealer looked at the denomination of my chip, called out the play to a nearby pit boss, got a nod of approval, and whipped the ball around the wheel. It went around, around, around, around, around, around, around, around, around, around, around, lost steam, fell, clicked into one slot and another and another, hopped up, clinked and clacked, and made one last little oomph into place.
“Eleven winner eleven.”
Tommy Lee slapped his cowboy hat on the table. “Dude! That’s seriously fucked-up!”
The dealer called both Erik and the pit boss over, and Erik shrugged as I was paid out at 35-1. It came to $17,500. He didn’t care. I had already lost $150,000 before that. And I’d probably give it right back in five seconds
.
“Killer call, bro,” Tommy Lee said. “You got the touch.”
“This was Dostoevsky’s game,” I said.
“Here’s to the motherfucker,” Tommy responded, raising a shot glass and knocking back a Jägermeister.
I handed my original $500 chip to a passing waitress, then stared at the board, and once again a number swelled for a brief second. This time it was 23. I muttered, “The next number’s twenty-three,” to no one in particular, and Tommy Lee handed the girl with the pink hair a $100 chip and said, “Here baby, put this on twenty-three for Dostoevsky.”
“Let it ride on twenty-three,” I said.
The dealer was shocked and looked at Erik. He put his finger up, said, “Hold on a sec,” and then disappeared over by the cage. As we waited, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” came on. Tommy Lee shook his head in disgust. “What a buzzkill.”
“Little ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ would be nice,” I said flatly.
“That’s what I’m talking about, dude!” Tommy Lee sprang up and gave me a half hug and a soul handshake.
“You got some nice work there,” I said, nodding at his tattoos.
He smiled. The girl looked at him and said, “When are you gonna get my name, Tommy?”
He held out his arms. Turned his hands over and said, “No room at the inn, baby.”
Erik came back, gave the go-ahead, and the dealer zipped the ball. It went around for an eternity. I didn’t even watch it. Everything had suddenly become clear to me. I knew what was coming.
“Twenty-three!”
The dealer’s eyes bulged. Erik pinched the bridge of his nose. Tommy Lee slapped my back and said, “Holy shit, dude!” and the girl with the pink hair tried to give me a hug but could barely reach. Her boobs hit my chest like an air bag. Tommy Lee was ecstatic. He kept shouting, “What’s next, kemosabe? What’s next?”
I eyeballed the board. Nothing happened. And why would it? 11/23 was my anniversary. There was no number left for the year.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what’s next. I’m all done.”
“I like a man who knows how to go out on top. That’s totally cool,” said Tommy Lee.
Later, at the cashier’s window, the only female over thirty-five in the entire building counted my chips. A couple of people stood behind her and watched.
“OK, Mr. Lucky. That comes to a total of—”
“Six hundred twelve thousand five hundred dollars,” I said.
She looked at me. “That’s right,” she said. “Six one two five. How’d you know?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just had a feeling.”
SOMETHING’S UP IN MEMPHIS
May 1
It was a wonderful performance. One of those nights when Broadway feels like the center of the universe. I hadn’t seen any Shakespeare in I don’t know how long. Boyd had such interesting things to say as always. We ate hamburgers at Junior’s like teenagers. I remember seeing Romeo and Juliet with R once. He went on for an hour about how it was all the Friar’s fault. Anybody who wore the cloth was suspect to him. He brought up Pastor Perry time and again. Father Phil, he calls him. He thought Romeo and Juliet would have lived happily ever after if it weren’t for the Friar’s meddling: He came up with the idea. He screwed up the letter. What business was it of his? What kind of crazy person suggested taking poison? Why didn’t he get punished for it? God, that was a long train ride home. R wasn’t goofing around like usual, either. He absolutely felt that the Friar was the only thing worth discussing as far as the tale of the Montagues and Capulets went. He kept on it the entire next day . . .
I STOOD OUT IN FRONT of the hotel and watched the sun rise over the Spring Mountains. Hipsters who had pulled all-nighters poured out of purple Hard Rock limos, stumbling toward the entrance of the hotel as I hailed a cab, climbed in, and told the driver to take me back to the MGM. There I was in Vegas, with $612,500 and a dream once again, heading toward the emerald gates to see if I could get things right the second time around.
See, something had occurred to me while I stood outside watching the first cathartic light of day break over a place that didn’t deserve such softness and wonder. She wasn’t married yet. L wasn’t married. L was getting married. No one in their right mind got married during the week unless they were eloping, and she hadn’t said anything about that. There was no present tense around the word marriage. It was future tense. And the luggage I saw on the day I borrowed the dog suggested some kind of destination, which also pointed to traditional weekend nuptials and not some town hall quickie. It was still dawn on Friday, after all. At worst, she’d be getting married on Saturday, and since that was the Fourth of July, it might even be Sunday. Granted, my obstacles were greater than ever, but if the roulette miracle had taught me anything, it was that you were never dead. I had heard countless athletes run out some version of “It ain’t over till it’s over,” usually when they were on the brink of playoff elimination, and you know what? Sometimes they were right. Sometimes it wasn’t over. Why couldn’t I be the 2004 Red Sox? Had anyone ever come back from 3–0 down in a league championship series? No, they had not. Had the mighty Yankees ever suffered such an unlikely and inglorious collapse in all of their storied history? No, they had not. But what happened? Boston won four straight, then another four in a row in the World Series, and the next thing you knew, there were millions of New Englanders lining the streets of Beantown and the banks of the Charles to celebrate men who would never be forgotten. Men who changed the history of an entire region and eliminated an eighty-six-year jinx. Men who gave hope to countless souls who had long since stopped believing in miracles, or in the fairness of a cold and fickle universe forever ruled by clean-shaven men in pinstripes. Those men in Sox laundry had changed all that. Why couldn’t I be such a man?
But there was much to do before the parades came for me. So much to do. First, I still needed to turn that $612,500 into $2 million. And then I needed to find out where the hell L was and get there. And then I needed to get her alone and convince her to come back to Georgia with me and leave that musty old shitbird behind. It was too much to think about getting done in twenty-four hours, too overwhelming, so I slowed my mind down and tried to be Zen, whatever the hell that really was. As we pulled into the drive of the Grand, I knew I needed to focus on one thing at a time, and the money would be first. I had to get the money. If I could get the money and find L, the Kinder House Plan might be enough to save me. After all, it was one thing to say goodbye to someone over the phone, but in person? After the kind of grand gesture I’d be unveiling? That’s entirely different territory. I mean, we had spent nearly half of our lives together. I was the only man she had ever been with before the Ancient Mariner washed up on the fucking shore. We had history. And I had the secret to her heart. To her future, even. L talked about the Kinder House with a reverence it’s hard to explain. I had clearly let her down, disappointed her deeply, but all that meant was that she still cared, and still carried with her the flickering hope that I would change. Do something selfless and dramatic. Wasn’t that what all women wanted? Didn’t they all want us to do what I was about to? Go all the way down the line for her? Of all people, shouldn’t L have known how difficult things were? How tough life was? Not just for me but for all of us? Hell, life was so hard that you had to spend a third of it asleep just to have the energy to deal with the rest of it. Wasn’t it time to cut this boy a little slack? I mean, let’s remember one thing, and it didn’t occur to me until I got that money back: She called me. If she wanted to get married in peace, why on earth would she call me and tell me it was happening? She could say it was about closure or whatever, but I was standing right in front of her not a few days earlier, and she chose not to say a word. They were getting ready to leave. The car was there. Bags packed. She could have told me and driven off, and there was nothing I could have done about it. But she didn’t do that. She chose not to tell me, and then she called instead, and I don’t think it
’s anywhere close to out of the question that she wanted to see what I’d do about it.
Now, why go back to the MGM when I could have simply walked into any house in town? Because fuck Bob Mota, that’s why. I wanted to stick it to him, and to his hideous sidekick Manny C. But that would be gravy. There would be no time for shenanigans. No time for trying to replicate the epic run I had gone on when I first got there. Two spins of a roulette wheel had turned $500 into $612,500 (no wonder Dostoevsky was obsessed with that stupid game), and two hands of blackjack would turn the $612,500 into $2.4 million. That was the only way to play it now, and I wanted to see Bob Mota’s rat face when it happened. And it would happen. Even the most cynical person in the world had to take what had gone down with Tommy Lee as a sign. Eleven and twenty-three? Those two numbers couldn’t have been an accident. Maybe it was taking my beating from Bing Buli that had placated the gods. Maybe it was trying to save Howie Rose. Maybe it was saying goodbye to Penny. I don’t know. But clearly things had shifted. There was no question about that. I didn’t know how I was going to find L, but I definitely knew that I was going to win that money and figure it out. Just because I was on no sleep and numb from pills and alcohol didn’t mean I wasn’t seeing things clearly. I was seeing things more clearly than ever. My torpor had ended.
Mota wasn’t in his office. He wouldn’t be back until six P.M., and when I demanded that someone call him, wake his fat, bald ass up, there was no reply. I stumbled out into the nearly dead quiet of the casino with the bag of cash in my hands. I fished in my pocket, produced my room key, and took the elevator up to the suite. Sure enough, it worked. Mota had obviously gotten busy and hadn’t bothered to inform anyone I had departed. The place was exactly as I’d left it, right down to the shopping bags Renée hadn’t been able to carry with her when she’d left for work not ten hours earlier. Jesus Christ. Had it been only ten hours? Think about how much can happen in your life in ten hours. How everything can change entirely. Who knew that when you hit rock bottom, there might be a spring mattress waiting for you down there to break your fall?
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