Headlock

by Adam Berlin

  We took the escalator to the Bally’s buffet. They were still serving. The hostess showed us our seats and I followed Gary to the buffet line. He picked up two plates. I picked up one. The slicing station was first. Roast beef with gravy. Roast turkey. Liver steaks wrapped in bacon. Barbecued chicken. Chafing dishes full of stuffing, mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, potatoes au gratin, the cheese bubbling on top. The man slicing the roast beef lit up when he saw Gary, asked how everything was, asked how long he was in town for, didn’t need to ask what Gary needed. The man sliced off a hunk of meat three inches thick, forked it onto Gary’s plate, ladled on the au jus sauce. For the second plate, the carver sliced off a giant turkey drumstick and plenty of white meat, soaked it in turkey gravy with giblets. Gary followed the man to the chafing dishes, the blue flames from the sternos underneath gyrating as if they were magnetized. The carver spooned over a pile of stuffing and a pile of mashed. Gary tipped him twenty bucks. The carver said it was good to see Gary and wished him good luck. I asked for a piece of white turkey meat. When the slicer dipped the ladle into the gravy dish I told him No thanks. Gary was loading up his turkey plate with coleslaw, cranberry sauce, cold potato salad. He walked over to the seafood section and lined shrimp around the roast beef, doled horseradish sauce into the beef gravy, the biggest surf and turf ever created right before my eyes. I put some salad on my plate. There were dressing dispensers. Thousand Island. French. Italian. Spicy Italian. Diet Italian. Blue cheese. I swallowed and turned away. Gary’s wide back was moving through the dining room to our table. He put the plates down, sat down, started separating the shrimp from their tails with his teeth. A waiter came over and Gary ordered two Cokes. I ordered one. I hoped the caffeine would wake me up.

  “You don’t like shrimp? The dipping sauce is great.”

  “I’m just not in the mood.”

  “You don’t have to be in the mood. You just have to take as much as you want.”

  Gluttony Las Vegas style. I picked at the salad. I ate some of the too salty turkey. A drop of gravy spotted the edge of my plate, brown and pasty, already cooling and congealing. I remembered the cold grilled cheese sandwiches Gary had helped us eat. I remembered another time my brother and I went to an all-you-can-eat pizza place when he visited me in college. Everyone on line was talking about how much they were going to stuff their faces. The record was twenty-one slices. It was foolish competition but we couldn’t help getting sucked in and by the time we were at the front of the line, ready to be seated, Derek and I had set up our own who-can-eat-most contest. The winner was allowed to puke. It was Derek’s idea. It was almost summer and wrestling season was over. It had been a good freshman year. I had won all but two of my matches and the matches I lost I had lost to seniors, one by two points and one by disqualification. I was happy to compete with Derek in a physical contest I could win. The first slices tasted good. The fifth and sixth slices tasted less good. I had starved myself too long and my stomach was not ready to accept slice upon slice of pizza. On the eleventh slice, the food started coming up in my throat. Derek smiled. He asked me if I was done. I told him I didn’t know yet. He waited a minute. He asked if I was done. I looked at my half eaten slice and told him I was done. It was just pizza. It wasn’t the Hand Game. I thought about squeezing him until he puked. Derek finished his slice and raised his plate in victory. The group that had stood in back of us let out a cheer and Derek bowed for them. Derek was the expert eater like he had been the expert guesser when we were kids. My mom and dad would ask us to guess the time or the temperature or the number of miles we had driven and Derek almost always won and sometimes he guessed exactly right. He would say he was the expert guesser, the extra expert guesser, and I couldn’t wait to start playing Sides so I could smash his head in.

  Gary polished off both plates and headed for the Chinese food station. He returned with plates piled high with fried eggrolls and spring rolls and beef filled dumplings, sweet-and-sour spareribs, slices of pork that were so red around the edges they practically glowed, steaming fried rice, some kind of sesame looking chicken and another chicken dish smothered with cashew nuts. On the other plate he had lo mein, beef with broccoli, beef with peppers and onions, shrimp in lobster sauce. The waiter brought two more Cokes.

  Gary finished everything and left a twenty-dollar tip. We took the escalator down to the casino.

  I didn’t know how long we had played until we walked away from the tables for the night, went to the registration desk and I saw the time. We’d been playing for four hours and Gary had played the hands perfectly. I had counted the cards perfectly. The count stayed high at the end of most shoes and Gary had upped his bets, placed stacks of green twenty-five-dollar chips in the circle, then stacks of black hundred-dollar chips, winning most double downs, winning most splits, getting blackjacks, perfect twenty-ones, ace and a ten or ace and a picture, any picture, the hand that paid off the bet plus a half, a buck fifty for every buck bet and Gary was betting more than a buck. At one point a man in a Bally’s suit had come over to ask Gary where he was staying. Gary said the MGM but he didn’t love the room there. The man said Bally’s would be happy to accommodate him. Gary said he’d need a room with two king-size beds, preferably a high floor with a view since his friend had never been to Vegas before. The man asked Gary his name and Gary said Gary Dess, his first name first, my first name last. Just in case. The man told Mr. Dess to check in at the front desk whenever it was convenient and the room would be ready. Gary thanked the man and went back to playing until he’d won over ten thousand dollars. Then the trip hit us. Three days of almost constant driving pressed our eyelids down like a slow but mighty wrestler. I had helped Gary carry the black chips to the cashier’s window. I looked at the money and the chips behind the bulletproof glass and saw there was no competition. The house had it all. Gary put the stack of crisp bills in his left pocket.

  “You have enough room in there?”

  “These are even bigger than fat-people pockets. I have a tailor at home sew them in special. They’re my casino pants. My money is down so deep a pickpocket would need twelve-inch fingers to stand a chance.”

  At the front desk the woman’s name tag read JANET and under that TOPEKA, KANSAS.

  “We were just in Kansas,” Gary said. “Great state.”

  Gary had slept through most of it but he was in a just-won mood. She handed over the card for the door and asked if I would need a separate key. Gary said I would.

  “We were hoping to see a twister,” Gary said.

  “You don’t want to see a twister. They look amazing from a distance, but when they get too close they’re trouble.”

  “Kind of like this place,” I said.

  “You don’t like Las Vegas?”

  “He’ll warm up to it,” Gary said. “We’ve been on the road for days and once he gets a full night’s sleep he’ll be a new man with a new attitude.”

  “Enjoy your stay at Bally’s,” Janet said.

  We walked outside to where the valets were standing around in the dry desert darkness. It would be morning soon and a new shift would come on. Gary showed his room card and parking ticket and said he wanted the bags in the trunk brought up.

  We took the elevator to the twenty-fourth floor. It was a big room with two king-size beds as promised. I pulled back the curtains and looked out on the strip. I could see where we had come in, not the road but the direction. I stayed in front of the window, happy to just stand and look before I crashed, knowing I would be able to sleep soon. I blurred my eyes to make all the lights go out of focus. It had been a full day. A full three days.

  I could hear him pressing the phone numbers behind me. He said Hey, Mike, and asked Mike if he’d heard anything. He asked him how the dogs were doing and told him not to forget to walk them like he was talking to a kid. He told Mike we were staying at Bally’s under the name Gary Dess and that he should call if anything came up. He paused and said Whatever, tell them I went to get takeout. I knew he me
ant his parents. He said he’d had a great night, won almost eleven grand. I heard him hang up the phone.

  “I didn’t know you had a roommate.”

  “He pays half the rent. He’s not a bad guy, just a little dim sometimes. We had a giant parrot. This big beautiful bird I taught to say Eat me. I went away for a week and Mike forgot to feed the thing and it died. You have to feed birds every day.”

  “You think your dogs will make it?”

  “I’ve got two gigantic Great Danes. If they get hungry enough they’ll go after Mike and eat him for dinner.”

  I dove onto the bed like Derek and I had done when we were kids, when my family was on the road. Hotel beds became trampolines until my parents told us to cut the roughhousing. I stretched out, closed my eyes, let all my weight settle onto the mattress. I hadn’t been horizontal for days. Someone knocked on the door. I stood up, squared my feet, waited. Gary opened the door. It was the bellboy delivering our bags. I sat down on the bed. Gary tipped the bellboy and the bellboy asked if we needed anything and Gary said One hundred grand like he was joking. The bellboy laughed, wished us good luck, closed the door behind him. Gary took his clothes off and threw them on the floor. There were stretch marks on his shoulders, across his chest and stretch marks I had never seen before, wide red streaks like welts, on his hips and on the sides of his thighs. His underwear hardly covered his ass, the crack a canyon when he bent over to take off his socks. His feet were raw, his toes curved and blistered from carrying all that weight. A body like that could not last very long. I couldn’t picture Gary smiling when he was naked. He went into the bathroom and I waited for the water to come on.

  I called my parents. They asked how much snow we were getting and I said it wasn’t bad, just a little slushy. They asked if anything was new and I said Not really. They asked if I’d done anything over the weekend. I told them I’d hung out, taken a couple of runs. My mom asked how I could run in this weather and I said it was easier running when it snowed. It was distracting and I didn’t get as tired. They said Derek was almost done with finals and that he’d received an A on a term paper. I felt my muscles filling with blood. I told them I’d be home in about a week, right before the holidays, but that I hadn’t checked the exact train schedules yet. They said I love you and I said I love you and we said good-bye.

  I called Derek. He picked up on the fourth ring. I told him I didn’t realize his dorm room was so big and he said Harvard only let their students live in palaces. He asked why I was calling so early on a Monday morning and I said it was earlier where I was. I told Derek I was in Las Vegas. I told him Gary owed some money and needed to make some money fast and needed someone along for the ride he could trust. I purposely didn’t use the word protection. He was still my younger brother no matter how much older he sometimes seemed. He had probably guessed the truth anyway. Derek asked about my job at the garage. I told him I’d lost it. He said Mom and Dad would be very upset about that. I told him Mom and Dad didn’t know where I was and to keep it that way. Derek said it made sense that Gary had put his trust in me. I didn’t like the way he said it. I asked what he meant. He said Gary must be in real trouble. I told Derek to shut the fuck up and not worry about it, that he didn’t know shit about anything except school. Derek said he’d given up worrying about me. He said he wished Mom and Dad would give up too, that every time they spoke they mentioned me and how concerned they were about my life. I told him I was sick of hearing about him, how he was a little pussy who could do no wrong, how Harvard wouldn’t protect him when I beat the shit out of him one day. Derek didn’t say anything to that. He just kept quiet so my words would stay there, so I could hear how stupid I sounded. I took a breath. I told Derek I was tired. I told him we’d driven across country in three days and I’d been thinking about Sides and how he used to say he was the extra expert guesser. Derek said Those were good days. I asked how his finals were going and he said he just had one more. Macroeconomics. He’d read Dad’s book and it was excellent.

  The water went off. I told Derek I’d see him soon. Derek’s voice got serious and he told me to be careful. I said I would. He asked if there was anything he could do for me and I told him No, that I wasn’t really sure what was going on, that I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. I wished him luck on his final final. He told me to call if I needed anything. He told me to say hello to Gary and we said good-bye.

  The towel wrapped around Gary’s waist didn’t fit. He had to hold it together in back. His breasts were red from the water or maybe it was all that orange shrimp, pork, and neon coming through. I unzipped my garage suit and left it on the floor, took off my socks and underwear that felt stuck to my skin. Gary looked me over to see what kind of shape I was in. I stood there to reassure him like I sometimes stood in front of the women I picked up to let them know they’d made the right choice. Like I stood, with only the slim covering of my wrestling suit, in front of my opponents to show them how confident I was, keeping my arms loose, keeping my shoulders relaxed while pushing them slightly forward to bring out the thickness in my neck, and all the time I kept my eyes hard, showing nothing. I was in good-looking shape. I needed to take a few runs to get all my wind back. I went into the bathroom and turned the shower on, stepped in. I made the water as hot as I could take it. I stood under the hot water and let all my muscles relax, soaped myself down once and twice to take the miles off me, washed my hair twice and then I stayed under the water until I almost fell asleep.

  I dried myself off. I brushed my teeth. I smoothed away a clear space on the steamed mirror to see my face. There were circles under my eyes and my eyes were red and there was the knot above my eye. I stuck out my tongue. It was white and dehydrated. Gary was already snoring, his giant body under the sheet, the covers thrown to the floor, half covering his pants with the deep left pocket. I stepped over my garage suit. I shut the lights and got into bed. It felt good to be naked against the stiff sheets, the warm blanket over them, my head on a pillow instead of a jacket, still instead of moving.

  17

  PLUS ONE. PLUS TWO. Plus three. Plus four. Press. Plus five. Plus six. Press. Press. My hand on top of the seat, my fingers wedged under Gary’s back. I kept the count. When the count went up I pressed my finger into Gary’s back. When the count went down I rubbed my finger across in a minus sign. The pit bosses came and watched and went. There was the fat guy and the guy standing behind the fat guy. I knew there were cameras above us. I kept my finger movements slight and hidden and Gary’s fat blocked the overhead view. My finger pressed into the fat and the fat covered it. The count went up, my finger pressed. The count went down, my finger rubbed. It was a rhythm against the same space on Gary’s back over and over, breaking up the fat. It went on and on. A player’s finger scratched on the felt table meant hit. Another card needed. A player’s hand waved across the chips meant stick. No more cards. Gary’s small hands played with the chips, separated them into piles. He was doing subtraction, how much owed minus how much won. The dealer shuffled the cards, the yellow cut card thrown out, picked up by a player, inserted, the cards cut, the cards fit into the shoe, the dealer’s manicured hand sliding across the top edges to keep them even and firm, tight against each other. New shoes. New cards. New counts. Dealer after dealer after dealer. Players came. Players went. On the upswing it looked like a foolproof system. Gary’s small hands caressed the chips, stacked them into a magical castle of different colored turrets. On the downswing the towers crumbled, hundred-dollar black chips traded into twenty-five-dollar greens, greens into five-dollar reds. Time passed but not like time on the outside where the sun rose and fell, where clocks told the time on church steeples, town hall facades, digital news ribbons, punch clocks outside garages. There wasn’t a clock in the casino. The lights were on twenty-four hours a day. It was its own world. Always on. Always going. The play constant. A movie shot to show the passage of time wouldn’t work in a casino, no fast-forwarding clock hands, no sun rising and setting in superspeed mo
tion. The day went on and on and on. One long day. One long play. Outside time moved. Outside Sunday had passed. Outside Gary owed. Inside it felt like he could sit at the table forever and I forced myself to focus, forced myself to count. We played on, Gary’s stamina good, great, his answer to almost every question, Great, I’m doing great, Things are great, Sure, Sure, Great, his wide back stretching into sameness, the material on his shirt going on. I had to look away, stay with the cards, focus on the cards, count the cards, count perfect, play perfect. Press. Press. Rub. Rub. When I closed my eyes to rest between shoes the cards kept coming like the road had kept coming, the curve of the highway across America now the curve of the table, a cut circle of green felt. Easy money. Hard money. Working. I had to work. Flipping mattresses with feathers flying blocking out the daylight or the evening light, New York City streets too bright even then for stars to come through and the feathers all around like a shake-up toy that starts the snow going, all those feathers, all those mattresses, all that weight, working and working, my grandfather working to pay food, pay rent, for the family, for his boys, my dad, Gary’s dad, my dad keeping it going for his own boys. Plus, press. Minus, rub. Work. Why my grandfather had come over. Here’s your documentation, here’s where to sign your name, here’s the ferry to the city, get out, make what you can, the hand of the Statue of Liberty not waving the way it looked from a distance but holding a torch, a beacon of light to come to, now there, too close, the torch can burn, the streets of gold just pavement, the land of milk and honey just the city, walking the streets, a hand in the pocket, going to work, strong hands, strong hands from wrestling, strong hands to pick up the landlord and throw him down the incinerator, for the family, strong hands to flip mattresses, stuff them, pull the long needle through heavy material until hands are pricked and punctured, skin healed harder than a mattress cover over muscle and bone, strong hands passed down and down again, my strong hands, fingers pressing into fat, cramping up, hours and hours wedged between chair and back, nothing compared to flipping mattresses years and years, nothing compared to that, staying on my stomach to keep from getting pinned, from losing that way, not man enough to lose completely and take that, keep it in, going after the one who beat me with a chair in my hands passed down from him. A new hand. A new shoe. The yellow cut card passed to Gary. He cut.