by Adam Berlin
I forced myself to walk away from the garage, to walk to the Jaguar on the corner, to get in. Gary looked at me but left it alone. I could feel blood on my forehead and in my hair. He stepped on the gas to get us away quickly and it wasn’t all out of me and I stretched my shoulders and tried to breathe it out. Gary got to the avenue and turned uptown. I breathed some more of it out. I told Gary how to get to my apartment so I could grab some clothes for the trip. We heard a siren. Gary got off the avenue and shut his lights but when it passed it was just an ambulance. Gary took a right and a right and speeded on Sixth Avenue and smiled like isn’t this great, us being here together in the Jaguar driving New York City’s streets and I breathed it out.
“Greenwich Village,” Gary said. “It’s always on around here. I bet the boys love you.”
“Turn here,” I said.
“You have a girlfriend you have to call? Let her know you’re going on a little road trip?”
“Nothing steady.”
“Good man. Don’t tie yourself down. The best-looking women in the world are in New York City.”
I knew for a fact that Gary hadn’t been in many places besides New York. He never traveled except to Atlantic City or Las Vegas but he was right. They were the most beautiful. Actresses and models and young executives in perfectly cut dress suits rushing past the library steps and older rich women in furs and gold clicking their Gucci heels against Fifth Avenue sidewalks and the struggling artist types hanging out at Lower East Side bars, dressed down, beautiful bodies in jeans and T’s in the summer, work boots and leather jackets in the winter. I got along with them the best. They weren’t quite sure what they were doing and I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. I worked in a garage, that was cool, had wrestled for a while, that was cool, hung out in New York, that was cool. I didn’t tell them I sometimes beat people away from the mat.
“Right here,” I said.
Gary pulled over.
“You want to come up?”
“Not really. I’m sure it’s spectacular.”
It was a five-floor walk-up and Gary wasn’t interested anyway. I was just being polite, cousin to cousin. I knew he could picture what my place looked like and he’d be pretty much right. A basic studio. A piece of shit anywhere but in Manhattan. Gary’s parents lived on Long Island in a nice house in Valley Stream. Uncle Jack had worked his way up in a factory, sweeping floors to owner, a regular Horatio Alger. Derek and I always looked forward to the dish of miniature chocolates Aunt Laura kept in the living room, Goodbars and semisweet Hershey’s and Krackles which I’d never seen except in bite-size miniatures.
“Bring some summer clothes. It can get hot as hell in Vegas.”
“What about the trip there?”
“We’ll be in the car. And pack light. There’s no real trunk space and two of my super extra large T-shirts, folded in half, take about three-quarters of it.”
I walked up the stairs. It smelled of gas, slow leak, like it always did. There was a smear of dog shit on the third floor left by the resident Doberman. Its owner was a prostitute who let the guys come in and out, doing business sporadically from five to midnight and sometimes weekend mornings. Sundays men stood by the buzzer waiting to get in while the church bells called people for mass. The Doberman’s name was Sweetie. Sweetie could pin most lightweights.
I washed the blood from my hair and face. I took my gym bag from the closet and packed. Two pairs of jeans. Underwear. Socks. T-shirts. Running sneakers. A pair of shorts. Sweat pants to sleep in. A dress shirt in case we took in one of the shows. Don Rickles. Engelbert Humperdinck. Someone like that. Tom Jones. I packed my toothbrush. It all fit in the bag with room to spare.
I unplugged my clock and TV.
I watered the one plant I had.
I checked that the window on the fire escape was locked.
I checked my wallet for my bankcard.
I changed the message on the answering machine. Recited my number, didn’t add the usual I’ll get right back to you.
I shut the light and locked the door behind me. If the cops came looking and smashed in the door, they’d find everything in place.
Sweetie barked when I hit the third floor and didn’t stop when my footsteps were on the second and first and out the door.
Gary popped the trunk and I squeezed my bag next to his. He wasn’t kidding about the trunk space. I got into the car. I realized I still had my garage suit on. It was a look.
“You got everything?”
“What exactly do I need?”
Gary started the car. Twelve Jaguar cylinders sprung into action.
“Viva Las Vegas,” Gary said and he made a whooping sound as he drove down the street, took a right and another right, looking over the beautiful women slow walking the sidewalks, the smell of the Christmas trees imported from the north making the air smell almost fresh. Gary sped on Seventh Avenue toward the Holland Tunnel that went right under the Hudson, right out of the city.
6
GARY USED THE TWELVE cylinders to weave and weave through Interstate 78. The Jaguar gripped the road, smoothed the nicks and bumps, sounded airtight quiet. It was a beautiful way to travel. I sat back in the bucket seat with my legs kicked out in front of me and watched the backs of the cars coming like a video game. We were going that fast, moving around them when we saw the shadowy outlines of the drivers’ heads and then the cars were gone and there were new cars ahead moving in relative slow motion, minor obstacles to get around.
It was dark. There wasn’t much to see. There were the cars with their taillights on. There were patches of highway between overhead lights where the stars were visible. There were houses lit up in the distance, people sitting down to dinner, lounging around some den, going on with their lives, probably secure in some routine so not thinking about what they were supposed to do. They were doing it. They had a house, a family, a TV, a TV Guide. They’d done it. We kept moving. Gary drove fast. There were the signs to look at. Speed limit. Deer crossing. Exits. Rest stops. Weigh stations. There were the other cars and the trucks carrying goods across America, speeding eighteen-wheelers with lettered sides advertising who they were, telephone numbers printed on the back to call if the vehicle was not being operated in a safe manner.
One eighteen-wheeler kept pace with us for a full mile and the truck driver tried to bully us, stayed close to the white lines and even a little over. It was a big Mayflower moving truck painted yellow and green with a full-sailed ship on the side. It must have been empty, going to a job and not weighed down in the middle of one. Gary kept pace with the truck.
“King of the road,” Gary said.
“Him or us?”
“Us. Power thrills. Speed kills. Whenever I put money on a prize fight I put it on the guy with quick hands.”
“What if the guy doesn’t have a chin?”
“Then he’d look kind of funny.”
Gary made a face trying to get rid of his chin. He looked more like an old man in need of dentures.
“You have quick hands?” Gary said.
“Bet on me.”
Gary turned. His eyes narrowed a little. He nodded his head.
“I know you have strong hands.”
The eighteen-wheeler sped up on a dip in the road and cut right in front of us. Gary had to brake. The truck moved back to the center lane. Gary didn’t say anything. His face didn’t change. I thought of the game my grandfather taught us as kids. The Hand Game. He would take one of our hands in his and squeeze it hard. The object of the game was to show no pain. My grandfather was a man of few words and fewer expressions but he did explain to me that in a fight it was important to show the opponent nothing. To show was weak. To conceal was strong. My grandfather would squeeze my hand, looking for signs of pain, looking for signs of weakness, and I always kept my upper lip stiff to make him proud. The more it hurt the more I felt my blood rush but I was able to control it for him. I guessed Gary had learned the same lesson, played the same game. I couldn�
�t read him the way my opponents couldn’t read me. His small hands looked calm on the steering wheel.
The highway lifted with a slight upgrade. There wasn’t a cop in sight. Gary stepped on the gas, put all twelve cylinders to work and we started to pass the truck. The vacuum of wind pulled us to the right and the Mayflower sail practically fluttered. Gary kept looking straight ahead, not even glancing in the rearview mirror. I looked up into the truck’s cabin to see the truck driver looking down on me. He had a beard and wore a baseball cap high on his head and I guessed that inside the cabin country music was blaring, some ode to the lonely life of a trucker, eating sunny-side ups and grits while the truck stop waitress poured a refill of coffee and they both fell in love for an instant. Gary sped forward, then pulled right in front of the truck and started to slow down. The truck was honking away and I could hear the power of brakes applied, all eighteen wheels starting to seize up. Gary slowed and slowed until he came to a complete stop. I watched in the side mirror as the cabin door opened and the trucker jumped down just above the mirror lettering that warned OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. The trucker started walking toward us. I could hear how fast the moving cars were going past, sixty-five miles per hour suddenly an impressive speed. The trucker was almost on us or at least he appeared to be in the mirror. I could see the I’m-going-to-kick-your-ass-all-over-the-highway-with-my-cowboy-boots expression. I readied myself to open the door so fast it would knock the wind out of him and then those shitkickers he was wearing would slip all over the hardtop while I took him down. I turned to see Gary watching my eyes. Like a test to see if there was grace under the pressure or something else. I turned back to the side mirror. The trucker’s denims filled the view. Gary took off. The squealing tires spit gravel at the man.
“All those gears,” Gary said.
In the side mirror I saw the truck grow small. It would take the driver awhile to shift up to highway speed.
“You were ready,” Gary said.
“Could you tell?”
“Don’t worry. Grandpa would have been proud. You know these truck drivers want to come after me, rear-end me and do some damage, but their job depends on a good driving record. So I win.”
“You play this game a lot?”
“If they start, I try to finish. You ever drive a Jaguar before?”
“Just up and down a ramp.”
“No need for a car in the city unless you can afford it. You’ll like the feel of this one. It’s a very responsive car, especially when you’re going fast. You hardly have to move your hands on the wheel. What do you do, take the subways?”
“All the time.”
“Too rough for me.”
“Right.”
“Too rough.”
“It’s all hype. Three in the morning and they’re still packed. Out of towners come here scared shit to ride them.”
“They don’t have your wrestling skills.”
“Wrestling can only get you so far.”
It had gotten me through seven semesters on scholarship. As a sociology major I was supposed to be interested in how society worked and what I’d learned was that it rewarded someone who could pin another man to the mat before he got pinned. All those intelligent students walking around the university but the athletes were known. The football and basketball players and even the baseball players, not a big college sport, were treated with respect but the wrestlers were respected and feared. Those are the wrestlers. Look at the size of some of them. Don’t be fooled. They’d take you down. They’d tie your ass in knots. You wouldn’t stand a chance. We could beat most men and because of that we were admired as I had admired my grandfather. So the smart kids went about their business quietly and often suffered socially while the jocks strutted around with the best-looking coeds on their arms. Now those quiet students were all forging ahead in their professional careers where physical strength didn’t mean much, meant less and less as we moved on, grew up. A couple of guys from the team had called me in the past six months. Both were getting married. Both had low-level jobs that sounded as if little advancement was possible. They didn’t judge me for working in a garage. It wasn’t that far from their own experiences and the experiences they knew. Their parents were not teachers. There was no pressure to do certain things, to be certain people because their families had different expectations. Sometimes I thought that was the way to live. In college I had not done much thinking about my future. When I was kicked off the wrestling team for good I started to think but I had needed time. It had been easy being a jock. I had enjoyed the admiration from students and especially teachers. Professors looked at me differently when they heard I wrestled, assumed I was not too smart but still looked at me with a quiet awe. It was a look that said I was somehow blessed with strength and more, plugged in to something primal, the stuff they sometimes talked about, lectured about, glorified, all those battles in literature and all those dark desires potential catalysts for creativity and success and how far one could go if one harnessed certain energies.
I was pinned once in my life. The fight had started over wrestling but it was before I became a wrestler. I was in fourth grade. Some older kids had been pretending they were professional wrestlers, the WWF kind. Even at my young age I’d heard enough stories to know that what my grandfather had done was real and that what these kids were doing was show. My grandfather was visiting that week and we had been playing the Hand Game and maybe that was why real wrestling was on my mind. I was excited to tell these older kids about real wrestling. I went up to the biggest kid because he seemed to be the oldest and the leader and I explained to him that the wrestling he was doing was fake and that the wrestling my grandfather did was real. He laughed at me. He told his friends and they laughed at me. They asked where my grandfather was and I said at home. The biggest kid picked me up and threw me down. I was on my back, I noticed the blue sky and then the kids came into my view. The biggest kid yelled Body slam, only he didn’t pull up short when he jumped on me and then his friends joined in. I could take the pain, I could take it when my grandfather squeezed my hand, but I panicked with these three kids on top of me. My back was pinned to the ground. I tried to squeeze out from under them but I couldn’t. I tried to move but I couldn’t. I tried to control myself and I felt the rush of blood but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t move. I was screaming. Not words but a long sound.
I was screaming when I saw the blue sky again. They were already standing, laughing, asking where my grandfather was now. I rolled over, off of my back, stood up. The recess bell rang. I stretched my shoulders to assure myself that I was free and I felt my blood rush. I found the biggest kid that afternoon and while he was running down the stairs I tripped him. He broke his leg in three places and cried like the bully he was. One of the teachers saw me, grabbed me, walked me to the principal’s office. My dad was called in and I was suspended for a week. That night at the dinner table my dad lost his temper. He couldn’t help himself, his blood was rushing too, and he yelled questions at me, how could I have grown up in his house, what was I thinking, how could his own son trip a kid down the stairs on purpose. The questions didn’t seem fair. I had told my dad the whole story about how the three kids ganged up on me after I tried to explain about real wrestling. I only left out my scream. My grandfather was with us and I didn’t want my grandfather to know I had screamed. When my father finished yelling I left the dinner table and sat on my bed. I wanted to cry but I didn’t. From downstairs in my room I heard my grandfather yelling at my father. He was a man of few words and my father didn’t yell back at his own father. That was the order of things. My father showed respect even though he didn’t agree, showed respect because that is what a son was supposed to do. One generation rebelled against the last so that it all came back and my father understood that and kept quiet. It was a circle, like the circle on the wrestling mat where I had spent my days. All three generations of the Rose family, a tight circle united by blood. My father hated
the Hand Game. My son would probably hate the Hand Game too.
In Gilmore’s humanities class I had written on the midterm exam that in many ways Oedipus was like a wrestler. He had been warned of his own possible weaknesses and so he worked to compensate for his weaknesses just as I had worked to perfect my balance, my strength, my speed. As a roadside warrior Oedipus was unable to escape his fate and ended up killing his father, fucking his mother. In my third college match I was in the heat of my own battle and I found my opponent’s thumb and pulled, heard my opponent’s painful cry, understood his Achilles’ thumb which was how I described it on the midterm looking for the good grade, looking to impress Gilmore. The referee warned me to let go but it was a close match and I needed to finish what I started. I broke my opponent’s thumb. When Oedipus learned what he had done, how he had gone against the rules of humanity in a big way, he tore out his own eyes. I was disqualified from the match. Loss by injury default. Flagrant violation of the rules. Unsportsman-like conduct. My coach sat me out for two weeks. I didn’t do it to myself but I wasn’t a classical hero either. Gilmore wrote in the margin that it was a pretty forced analogy but an interesting one. He gave me an A minus. When he handed back the midterms he smiled awkwardly at me and then went on calling names in his monotone voice.