by Adam Berlin
He didn’t mention the craps tables, the blackjack tables, the roulette tables, the baccarat tables.
“What do you say?”
“When are you going?”
“Tonight.”
“Thanks for the notice.”
“That’s what your boss is going to say when you tell him you’re coming with me.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can. Tell him you want to take off a few days. A week.”
“This is a bad time. The holidays are coming up.”
“I’ll get you home before they start. We’ll have a great time.”
Gary started spinning the can again.
“Why do you need me to come along? You’ve made it to Las Vegas before.”
“I won’t bullshit you. I’m driving. I thought it would be fun.”
“You need another driver.”
“I’m sick of flying there. I’ve always wanted to drive.”
“What about your friends?”
“They’re all too busy.”
“I went to Atlantic City once and lost a hundred bucks in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve seen worse than that,” he said.
“It took me three hours by bus to get there, fifteen minutes to stay there, three hours to get back.”
“I bet the bus ride was nice too.”
“Beautiful. If you like looking at a bunch of old people sleeping with their mouths hanging open and dribbling on their shirts.”
“I took one bus ride home in college,” Gary said. “I brought a ton of food, most of it the kind that smells after a while like tuna and egg salad sandwiches. Every time the bus stopped and people came on, I cracked open my giant bucket of Kentucky Fried. I was the fat guy with the greasy chicken. I had two seats to myself the whole ride. After that I got a car.”
“Good thinking.”
“Vegas isn’t anything like A.C. You’ve got to see it to believe it. And we’ll be driving across country. We’ll be free.”
“You just said I was free.”
“You’ll be freer. You know you want to.”
Gary smiled his the-world-is-there-for-me smile. It was contagious, always had been. Even my parents admitted Gary had a great smile.
“You know you’re bored,” he said. “How much time can you spend hanging around Lou and that old guy?”
“Berger.”
“He looks like a lot of fun.”
“He was a communist. A card-carrying member.”
“I’ll teach you how to play blackjack on the way. To tell you the truth, I need a good partner to count cards for me. Someone I can trust. You know, family. What do you say? We could make some money.”
Gary was directing me but unlike Lou I knew some of Gary’s tricks.
“I say I’ll think about it.”
“I’m leaving tonight.”
“Why do you have to leave tonight?”
“Spur of the moment.”
“It feels good to say that, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not just saying it. Come on. How free are you?”
“Obviously not as free as you are.”
Gary didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t look worried. He never looked worried or at least I’d never seen him look anything but happy, his smile, his laugh, his fat face that was almost angelic, curly hair, light brown and tight, a handsome face really if there wasn’t so much weight under it. Gary. Always smiling. Always entertaining. Always a surprise. We had the big family dinners with Uncle Jack and Aunt Laura but my first memory of Gary alone was when he just showed up one day. That was how he came. No calls. No plans. He’d show up. Later I sometimes wondered what he would do if we weren’t home. Would he drive around for a few hours hoping we’d be back soon? Would he stay in a motel for the night and try again the next day? Would he grab a meal at a fast-food place and drive home? Would he even care? Would he be lonely? Would he visit someone else? Was there even anyone else to visit? I didn’t think he was close to his mother’s side of the family.
Gary drove into town with style even then, honking the horn of whatever car he was driving until we came running out. His cars always had that new car smell, salted and sugared with the snacks he’d been eating on the drive up. He was in his first year of college. I remembered that because he said he was a freshman and that was a word my dad used a lot when he talked to my mom about his classes. Gary walked up the steps to our front door with Derek holding one hand, me holding the other, smiling his smile, telling my dad how the courses were going great except for the ones where he had to read books. My dad had wondered what college courses didn’t require books and Gary said he didn’t mind reading texts, books about things, like math texts or statistics texts or economics texts, but books, regular books were a different story. Books were boring. Gary said one of his frat brothers was an English major. I didn’t really know what an English major was back then, guessed it was someone who could read books in English very quickly. Gary said he was paying his frat brother to write papers for him and that he was doing great on the papers. He’d even been nominated for an academic prize. He’d started a betting pool in the frat, giving four to one odds that he’d win.
“I’m very proud of you,” my dad said. “Really very proud.”
My dad couldn’t help smiling sometimes with Gary and that made me smile too and Derek laughed out loud.
“I’m very proud of you too, Cousin Gary,” Derek said.
“I’m proud myself,” Gary said.
He picked Derek up which made Derek laugh even more and set him on his wide shoulders. I remember thinking I was too old to be picked up like that. Grandpa didn’t pick me up anymore because he said I was too old to be held so I knew it was true. He was a wrestler so he knew.
“What if I win?” Gary said. “Wouldn’t that be great?”
“Then you’ll have fooled everyone,” my dad said.
“I know. All those distinguished men of letters will think I’m the next great writer.”
“You’d like that?”
“Why not? If my bets keep winning, I’ll be the most scholarly student on campus.”
“That’s a big if,” my dad said.
“Not really. Not if you know what you’re doing.”
Derek and I listened to Gary’s every word. I was already calculating what I’d saved in my top desk drawer, thinking how I’d be homework-free if I held on to my weekly allowance.
“Why don’t you write the papers yourself?” my dad said. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”
“I already know what I need to know.”
I remembered that line. My dad stopped me from using it a day later. I know everything I need to know. I don’t need to do my homework because I know everything I need to know. I don’t need to go to school because I know everything I need to know. My dad told me to remember how to walk down to my room and do my homework.
My mom would make Gary special sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches with olives in them. He loved the way my mom made them with the cheese melted all the way through, the bread buttery and golden, never burned. Derek asked Cousin Gary if his mom made grilled cheeses for him and Gary said no one made them as good as our mom, that we were lucky kids to have a mom who made such great grilled cheeses. Gary said my mom was the only one who made them special with olives and not just any olives but olives with red pimentos.
I asked my mom to make me two grilled cheeses like Gary’s. She said I wouldn’t be able to finish two sandwiches. We’d just eaten lunch and she knew I was full. I said I would be able to eat them. I’d been thinking how I could do what Gary did. Gary was a man in my eyes but he was like me in a lot of ways too. He didn’t like school. He liked to do whatever he wanted. His grandfather was my grandfather. I could eat two sandwiches and I asked my mom to make them. My dad called me a glutton. I asked him what a glutton was and he told me. Gary said he was a good example of a glutton. I said I didn’t care if I was a glutton, that I wanted two sandwiche
s. Derek said he wanted two also. He looked up to me back then. We insisted until my mom got sick of hearing us and started buttering the bread, separating the cheese slices, cutting the olives.
As she made the sandwiches she told us that we were not to leave the table until the sandwiches were completely finished. Gary was smiling. That spurred me on. I said I was starving. My mom took out a big skillet and started melting butter. Derek was laughing, saying he was starving too. My mom said we’d get our grilled cheeses but we had better finish them. My mom slid the sandwiches onto plates with a spatula, cut them in half, put the plates in front of us. Four perfect halves, slightly parted to show off the buttery bread, melted cheese, green olives with red centers.
Gary went through the first half in one bite and I tried to do the same but my teeth marks fell short. My bite was not as big as Gary’s. We were full from lunch. The perfectly melted cheese started to congeal. The olives were becoming cold. I couldn’t finish the third half and Derek was still on the second half. I asked my mom if I could leave the table and she said No. Derek asked if he could leave the table and my mom said No. I said I had to go to the bathroom and my mom said I could go as soon as I finished my sandwiches. Gary was laughing and that made me laugh and Derek laugh and my mom and dad were smiling but they weren’t going to let us get up. My dad said this was a good lesson in gluttony. Derek tried to take a bite of his cold grilled cheese but it was too cold and he took it out of his mouth and put it on the plate. I told Gary he could eat the rest of my sandwich if he wanted but my mom said Gary was done eating grilled cheeses for the day.
After a while, my dad asked Gary if he wanted to get out of the kitchen and Gary said Sure and he winked at us and they left. My mom put Gary’s empty plate in the sink, warned us not to get up from the table or we would be grounded for a week, and left too. I called to my mom that I had to go to the bathroom and she said that was too bad. We could hear my dad and Gary talking up in my dad’s study, my dad’s low, patient voice and Gary’s slightly nasal one. Gary was no longer laughing.
Derek and I picked at our sandwiches. I tried hiding pieces of it in my napkin but it was too obvious. It was funny for a while and then it wasn’t so funny. My dad and Gary came down. Gary whispered that we should piss in our pants if we wanted to get away from the table. It sounded like a good idea. We waited until my mom and dad came into the kitchen. I told them I had to go the bathroom and they said I could go as soon as my plate was clean. I told them I’d piss in my pants and my mom said I could do whatever I wanted to do as long as the grilled cheese sandwiches were finished. When they left the kitchen I looked at Derek and told him I was going to do it. Derek thought that was hysterical. I could have held it but Gary was in the house and Derek was laughing and it would be funny if I pissed in my pants like a baby and it was Gary’s idea and he’d laugh. So I just did it and Derek followed my lead.
It was warm at first and then it too went cold. Cold piss. Sticky pants. Cold cheese. We sat there laughing and Gary was laughing but my mom wouldn’t let us leave the table.
Gary sat with us for a while. He eased us through eating the sandwiches. He told us to pretend they were something else besides grilled cheeses. He told us to close our eyes and he asked us what our favorite food was, what we would still have room to eat if it was in front of us, even if we were full. We decided on hot fudge sundaes. We kept our eyes closed and chewed the sandwiches and thought of hot fudge sundaes the whole time, thought of sundaes hardest when we had to swallow. It worked.
Gary had convinced two disgusted kids that cold grilled cheeses were sundaes. He’d convinced us to piss in our pants. He was trying to convince me to go to Las Vegas, using my life, my job, my supposed freedom to sell me the trip. It wasn’t a hard sell. Not with the way I was feeling lately. Not with Gary making it sound like the thing to do.
“If I get it in the glass, you go.”
“If you get what in the glass?” I said.
Gary opened his small hand. Inside was a crumpled napkin yellowed with mustard.
“Which glass?” I said.
“Your glass. My hand can’t cross the line of the table.”
“I’m not making this bet.”
“Are you that sure you’ll lose?”
“When I lose I like to know it’s my fault.”
“You want to take the shot?”
“I’m not playing this game. Why do you need me to go to Las Vegas with you?”
I already knew Gary wouldn’t give me the whole answer, at least not until he was ready.
“I told you. You’re family. Remember how Grandpa used to raise his hand and say, I had to work for the family. He’d keep his hand up like that was the end of the discussion. That’s all. I had to work. For the family.”
“For the family,” I said. “I can hear him now. All those years flipping mattresses.”
“What a life,” Gary said.
“It was honest work.”
“Parking cars is honest work too.”
“Exactly. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I’m not sure your dad would agree. Look, I’m asking you to come along as my cousin. My first cousin. I know your brother wouldn’t. And it’s not dishonest work. There’s no cheating the casinos.”
“You’re right. My brother wouldn’t go along. He has better things to do.”
Derek didn’t play a sport but he would have done well in school even if he had. He didn’t fight with my parents, didn’t mind doing his homework, didn’t have a problem getting into the best university. I already saw the recruiters lining up to give him interviews, their faces glowing as they looked over his academic record. He belonged in school. I belonged on the mat, using my muscles, easing out the rush in my blood.
“I’m taking the shot,” Gary said and I knew he meant more than a napkin in a glass.
I finished the rest of the black cherry soda inside, took one of the two remaining ice cubes in my mouth and moved the glass to my edge of the table. It was a tough shot. The diameter of the glass couldn’t have been more than three inches.
I should have known. He probably practiced this like practicing rolling a can of soda, like practicing catching a pink ball between his fingers, like practicing his blackjack or whatever else he played. My dad used to criticize Gary for perfecting those stunts, said that if Gary spent as much time in the library as he did with his hand tricks he would have graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
I still remembered certain moments from Professor Gilmore’s Introduction to Humanities class, certain pieces of information stayed in my mind more than supply and demand curves, more than Machiavelli’s theories about power, more than the sociology courses I took to make it easier on my wrestling career, the easiest major at the university. In my senior seminar alone, a class of eight people, wrestlers filled half the seats. The 141-pounder, the 157-pounder, the 285-pounder who was heavy in a completely different way from Gary, and my perfect 165 pounds.
Sometimes I thought Gilmore was talking about humanities to himself and if someone in the class understood what he was saying, that was fine, and if no one did, that was fine also. I respected that. He didn’t change his way for anyone. He had us read Antigone, the new one by Anouilh. Gilmore went over the part where the Chorus talks about the coil that sets everything in motion. He described the coil, the spring ready for action as soon as it was touched, how it took on an energy of its own once it was put into play and Gilmore told us that was how all classical tragedies began. Once the spring was set into motion there was no going back. That was fate. That was life. That was why Antigone never made it out of her play.
Gary was smiling his smile, saying we would have a great time driving to Vegas together, saying we’d made a bet and he’d won, I’d lost. Behind him was the old-time delicatessen. The salamis hanging. The workers working. I could practically hear my grandfather’s voice, see him raising his hand. For the family. I looked at the balled-up napkin in the glass. The paper was already pulling wat
er from the melting ice.
5
GARY DROVE ME BY the garage. He let me off in front and said he’d be at the corner. There was a newsstand there and he wanted some candy bars for the road. I said hello to the night crew and they said, What’s up, Dess. What’s up. They joked about the car I was getting out of, asked what kind of side business I had going, laughed out loud in the cold air. I went to the glass booth to talk to Mr. Caparello. He sat there the way he always sat there, hunched over the register, his hands at the ready to make change. Caparello prided himself on never having been robbed. The rumor was that he had a gun taped under his chair but no one was allowed into the glass booth so no one knew for sure and on weekends his son worked the booth, a younger version of the father.
Caparello leaned out the window to ask what I wanted. He knew I wanted something before I even spoke. Why else would I be bothering him after my shift was over. I told Caparello there was a family emergency and that I needed an extra week off from work and that I’d be back just after New Year’s. He asked if I was asking him or telling him. I left that alone. I took a breath. I said the garage was closed for Christmas anyway and that I just needed the extra week off. Caparello asked what the emergency was. I told him it was private. He said the fat guy hadn’t seemed too broken up about anything when he was standing around an hour ago. I told him my cousin had a strange way of expressing himself and that I needed the week.
I had worked a full year plus at the garage. I had taken a few days off in that year, never showed up late, never went after a customer, never showed any disrespect to Caparello or asked for a raise or made any demands about anything, never even bumped a car or scratched a fender. I had also seen the number of men coming by looking for work. That was all the reminder we needed that the job was easy come, easy go, like a New York City parking space where demand beat supply. Mr. Caparello told me not to bother coming back.
I put my hand through the small window and grabbed his throat. He had an older throat than throats I was used to, soft and fleshy and my fingers went into his flesh. I pulled him to me to get his head out the window. His mouth was open like he was trying to scream but not much was coming out. I took his ear in my other hand and lowered my head. I pulled his face into my forehead. I looked at him. His nose was off to the side. I pulled his face forward again and then again and I looked at him. He was cut above his eye and there was blood all over his face, the most blood on the side where his nose was. I tried ripping his ear off. I felt someone holding my arm and I turned into my arm, went low, got hold of a leg, took the body down. I lifted the leg up and up and I could hear him screaming and other screaming too, screaming from the booth. The one screaming closest to me was struggling with his other leg. I turned him around, got on his back, pressed my chin into his back. He was breathing hard. It was one of the night crew. He was still struggling. He got a hand in my hair and started to pull my head. His leg was kicking back at me and I got hold of his foot and turned it. He pulled harder at my head and I turned his foot some more until I heard the ankle bone break. He screamed louder and my head was free and he wasn’t struggling anymore. I got up and spread my legs for balance. There was a man standing outside a BMW looking at me but he didn’t move. Caparello’s bloody head was resting where his hand usually rested waiting for the money.