Headlock

by Adam Berlin

  “You weren’t hot last night?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’m tired. Let’s call it a night.”

  We took the elevator to the twenty-fourth floor. The room was freezing. Gary undressed to his underwear and got into bed. All the buffets had been taking their toll. His stretch marks looked redder, wider, more weltlike. I put on my sweats and got into bed but behind my closed eyes all I saw were cards. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep. I got out of bed, dressed, opened the door on one of Gary’s snores, closed the door on the next.

  It was warm out. Except for the signs on the strip that wished people happy holidays and advertised special Christmas appearances by some of the biggest Las Vegas stars, it felt like the middle of summer. The casinos were lit up.

  I walked to Denny’s. When the hostess came over with a stack of menus under her arm, I said I was just here to see Tia. I saw Tia. She was adding up numbers on a check. She looked up and I stayed on her eyes and I felt the dip in the highway and maybe I was fooling myself but I tried to force her to feel the dip too. She tucked her pen behind her ear and walked over to me with graceful balance, one foot in front of the other but easy, calm, she’d been looked at all her life, she had to be, it was a show at first and then no longer a show.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “I came to see you. Do you get off work soon?”

  “Midnight.”

  “I can wait.”

  “How do you know I want to see you when I get off?”

  “I’m taking a chance. That’s what people do in Las Vegas, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what gamblers do in Vegas.”

  “What do waitresses do?”

  “They finish their shifts and go home.”

  “I thought my cousin told you to ease up on me.”

  “That would be your cousin who does all the talking for you.”

  “I’m here alone.”

  “Very brave.”

  “Just very tired.”

  She smiled and I felt myself smile too. Explosions of gray in her blue eyes. I wanted to help her off with her uniform and clean the day away.

  “Sit over there in my station. The kitchen just closed, but I can get you some ice cream if you want.”

  “Water’s good.”

  Tia walked away to bus a table. I sat down and watched her work. She brought me a glass of ice water and a newspaper, told me to read if I got tired of watching her, and went through the swinging doors in back. The same dishwasher was there, dressed in uniform whites, spraying water at dirty dishes, steam rising. His work could qualify for our list of worst jobs. I probably would never see Lou or Berger again. I thought about sending the garage a Wish You Were Here postcard from Las Vegas. I could see Mr. Caparello looking at the card, calling the police, going back to his hovering position at the money drawer. Some connections were just as well cut. I looked over the copy of USA Today. The world went on. The stock market had evened out after a record high, a subject my family would probably discuss. The sports section had an article about the dangers of using aluminum bats in college baseball.

  Two waitresses picked up the salt and pepper shakers, the ketchup bottles. Tia sat at a booth sorting the checks and I looked at the back of her neck and her hair. I had been seeing a lot of backs lately. Blue’s. Gary’s. My back in the hotel room mirrors. If I had been my opponent I would have scored an easy take down. I still looked strong but I wasn’t in wrestling shape. My muscles were not cut the same way. Push-ups and pull-ups and sit-ups and a couple of runs a week were nothing to what we did during the season. Some routines were better ended.

  Tia went into the restroom. When she came out she wore a summer dress. Her arms and legs were tan. She held a plastic shopping bag with the Denny’s uniform folded inside. I stood up. I was aware of everything I was doing, not rehearsed aware, just aware of how I looked. I wanted to look movie star good for her. Not playing a part, not moving this way and that way for the camera. Just moving for her, looking good for her.

  “Do I smell like food?”

  “You smell fine. Do I smell like gambling?”

  “You smell like the chip your cousin left on the table. Come on.”

  We left Denny’s and started to walk the strip in the direction of the MGM casino. The dead eyed lion was lit in the distance.

  “Are you winning or losing?”

  “We’re up. Not enough.”

  “What’s enough?”

  “More than we’ve won.”

  She kept the plastic bag with the Denny’s uniform between us. It swung but not like Gary’s arms when he walked. I had my hands in my pockets, looking at her, looking down at the sidewalk, listening to her voice that was low and quiet but easy to hear over the traffic speeding on the strip.

  “Maybe it’s greed that’s keeping you up.”

  “No. Just cards. I closed my eyes and I was seeing cards. When I opened them I was thinking about you.”

  “Vegas stirs a young man’s blood.”

  A young man. Better than a kid, I guessed. She was a kid and a woman at the same time. She had that kind of balance. Low voice. Smart eyes. Comfortable walking along the strip with someone she didn’t know.

  “Las Vegas,” I said.

  “You said it’s your first time.”

  “It is. I came along for the ride.”

  “That’s a long ride just for a ride.”

  “It wasn’t how I pictured a trip across country would be. We didn’t see too much. Interstate 70 straight across.”

  “You sound like the truckers that come into the restaurant. I always thought that would be a romantic life, but from what they tell me it’s not. They insist that every state looks the same from the highway. The only difference is the weather.”

  “Maybe that’s the trouble with highways.”

  “Maybe you expected too much.”

  “Maybe I did.”

  A bus passed us. The noise blocked everything. The windows were tinted so I couldn’t see if anyone was inside.

  “What about you?” I said. “Are you from here?”

  “No. I don’t think many people are actually from Vegas. They come to work or to play or to retire.”

  The plastic bag brushed against my leg.

  “I just live here,” she said. “Almost a year.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “California. A small city called Bishop.”

  “Bishop, California.”

  “You’ve never heard of it. People drive through before or after they’ve been to Death Valley. They sell a lot of cold drinks in Bishop and that’s about it.”

  “Nothing wrong with a cold drink.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Walking is good.”

  “I’ve been on my feet all day. We can take a drive as long as you’re not one of those crazy New Yorkers they warn people about.”

  “I’m not really a New Yorker. I’ve only lived there a year and a half.”

  “Your cousin has an accent.”

  “He’s from New York. You don’t have to worry about him either.”

  “My car is down here.”

  We took a left and walked to a lot. I looked over the cars trying to guess which one was hers. The cars in the lot were more beat up than the cars on the strip or the cars I had parked. Tia stopped in front of an old Chevy Nova painted red.

  She opened the door for me and went around the front. She threw the plastic bag in the backseat, got in, I got in. The seats were worn, not like the fitted leather in Gary’s car. She rolled down her window and I rolled down mine.

  “What’s your name stranger?”

  “Dess. Short for Odessa.”

  “I’m Tia. Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Tia turned the key, revved the engine once. She pulled out of the lot, drove on the strip, past the MGM lion, past the Luxor pyramid and then the road opened up. She was a good driver the way I knew she wou
ld be. Her hands were easy on the steering wheel and I leaned back and watched the road in front of me. She didn’t weave. She didn’t crowd, flash her lights, move cars off the road. We weren’t really going anywhere and there was no need to rush. The night air felt good on my arm, on my face, in my hair, against my eyes.

  “I always take a drive after my shift.”

  “I don’t want to break your streak. I like your car.”

  “Vegas is the best city to find secondhand cars. I sometimes wonder how many people drive in by car and leave by bus.”

  “I’ll warn my cousin.”

  “You do that.”

  Tia was talking over the wind coming through the windows. The wind pressed her hair across her forehead.

  “We used to drive from Bishop to Death Valley in the summer to see if we could take it. The heat’s unbearable. Cactus can’t even grow there, only some scrub brush that barely survives. If you see a live animal you’re supposed to report it to the rangers. We’d dare each other to get out of the car and take the heat.”

  “It sounds like a game I used to play with my grandfather.”

  “I stayed out for twenty-eight minutes one time. That night we watched the weather and they said it was one hundred twenty-three degrees. It felt like there was an unbearable weight on my back. It was almost too much to take.”

  I knew how that was.

  “Las Vegas must be brutal in the summer,” I said.

  “It’s not so bad. There’s always an air-conditioned room to duck into. Or a Denny’s to work in. Even when the weather’s good people aren’t exactly spending their days outside.”

  “They have other agendas.”

  “They have the same agenda. They want to make money. Like you two.”

  I looked in the side mirror and watched the Las Vegas lights dim, the strip become a strip, defined in distance. It felt good to be away. It was a clear night. The stars increased and I could fit my right fist into the sliver of waning moon. A left fist meant the moon was waxing. That was the trick.

  “I’m not like my cousin that way.”

  “I forgot. You only came along for the ride.”

  “That’s all.”

  I wanted to feel the speed from the driver’s seat, my foot against the gas, the body of the red Nova turning the way I wanted it to turn. I had been the wrestler with the best record but the coach had never asked me to be team captain. He knew I would decline. Before my matches I never watched the other wrestlers. I’d prepare myself to face my own opponent, shifting my weight back and forth, rolling my neck, shaking my head to test that my headgear was tight. I didn’t need a team and then they’d kicked me off. At the garage when things were slow, I’d sometimes stand out on the street and think about where I went wrong. The blood rushes had been handed down to me but I wasn’t a kid anymore.

  “There’s a good place to look at the sky near here. You can hardly see the glow of Vegas.”

  “Like Central Park.”

  “What’s that like?”

  “It’s a park in the middle of the city. When I get sick of the noise and the people and the miles of streets and sidewalks and skyscrapers, I go to Central Park and walk into the woods. From some parts I can’t see a single building.”

  “Escape.”

  “It was an escape. Where I grew up I could go into my backyard and practically get the same feeling. There was plenty of country there. I guess I didn’t fully appreciate it.”

  I felt very tired all of a sudden. It had been a long day but she was next to me and I wanted to be with her, to be awake. I leaned my head out the window and took the air full force. She drove on. There was hardly any traffic. She took a left onto an unpaved road, rolled her window up and I did the same. The desert dust made a gritty sound against the glass. The beams from the two headlights merged into one and died in the darkness somewhere out there. I thought of the movies and I was sure that Gary thought of them too. Movies about gangsters driven into the desert never to be found again. Gary was too big. Too hard to carry. Blue wouldn’t do that anyway. He needed to collect the money. That was what was important. The thoughts were stupid. I was tired.

  “Is it like Central Park now?”

  Her voice was low again. With the windows closed, she didn’t have to talk over the wind.

  “In a way it is,” I said.

  Tia pulled off the road, stopped, and turned off the lights. We got out of the car and sat on the hood of her Nova that was hot from the engine. Her legs were bare in her summer dress but it was probably nothing to Death Valley heat. The desert air smelled clean and it was the clearest sky with thousands of stars and the constellations highlighted like at a planetarium. The crescent moon looked sharp enough to cut the fist that told it was waning.

  “Out here you can almost forget everything.”

  “Almost.”

  “Almost,” she said.

  The engine ticked, winding down, and then the ticking noise stopped.

  “Is that why you come here?”

  “Sometimes. It beats the view from my place and I got tired of wandering around the casinos. I used to do that when I first moved here.”

  “Air-conditioned places to duck into.”

  “With a lot of bells,” she said.

  “You didn’t move here to gamble?”

  “Did you move to New York to see the Empire State Building?”

  “I thought New York would put some distance on things.”

  “But now you need Central Park.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I came to Vegas to get away,” Tia said. “I didn’t want to be one of those kids that complained about how boring life was and then ended up making a boring life of my own in the same place. The day I finished high school I packed some clothes and came here.”

  “I’m here because of Gary. We didn’t see him that often growing up, but he was always our favorite cousin. He’s a professional gambler.”

  “That’s all he does?”

  “That’s it. He’s the real thing. A full-time gambler.”

  “I’m a full-time waitress.”

  “I parked cars.”

  “I guess we’re all reaching for the stars.”

  I lifted my hand, took a swipe at the sky, rested my empty hand on the hood, close to her thigh.

  “He must have won along the way, but now he’s in trouble.”

  “Most gamblers are in trouble. Look around.”

  “Not like he is.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “It’s bad.”

  It was quiet in the desert. No traffic like in New York. No crickets like at home. I felt her hand on mine and I took her hand and held it, all my focus on her hand, warm, her thumb moving over my palm.

  “He has to make a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time. That’s how bad it is. Where I parked cars, there was a punch clock right behind me. At first I didn’t hear it, but after a while I could. After driving across country, I feel like all I remember is that punch clock. I just lost my job.”

  “What does one have to do to lose a car parking job? Did you miss a space?”

  “I asked for some time off. My boss refused to give it to me. I wrote up a letter of resignation and taped it to the punch clock.”

  “Very symbolic.”

  There was nothing symbolic about Caparello’s bloody face. It had just been a bloody face.

  “I’m trying to think of a dramatic exit from Denny’s,” Tia said. “Not that anyone would care.”

  “My dad once worked as a busboy and when the manager fired him in the middle of the shift my dad dropped the pile of dishes he was carrying.”

  “That’s an idea.”

  “I used to think of unloading the cash register one night, stealing a car from the lot and driving into the sunset to start fresh somewhere.”

  “Like you started fresh in New York?”

  “Probably.”

  “Maybe you would have ended up in Vegas.”

/>   It was quiet. Her hand was warm. Her thumb moved slowly over my palm and back again. The stars filled the sky. It was the perfect setting but it was real and I wanted to draw it out, wait for the right moment. A movie star kiss but only for her. So she would remember me the next time she came here and I was wherever I was.

  “When I first moved to Vegas, I did come for the money. I got a job as a cocktail waitress at Caesars. I thought the job might lead to showgirl work or something. When I got here I saw that it wasn’t like what I expected. I don’t know what I expected. Las Vegas seemed like a place to go. It wasn’t in California. It sure as shit wasn’t Bishop.”

  “How did you end up at Denny’s?”

  “Quite a fall, isn’t it? Caesars to Denny’s. I got sick of wearing the costume, getting grabbed at. I didn’t think it would bother me so much, but after a while it did. At Denny’s it’s mostly families. I’m making enough money to pass some time.”

  “That’s the kind of money I made. Enough for a beer and a subway ride to Central Park.”

  “Your cousin wants more than that.”

  “He wants much more than that. He needs much more than that. What will you do when you finish killing time?”

  “I’m still killing it. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Become a professional gambler?”

  “Not me.”

  I tried not to think about Gary. He was asleep in Bally’s resting for another day at the tables. Resting to make it back by Sunday. I tried to concentrate on the stars, the quiet, the warm hood of the car, Tia’s hand. I moved her hand into me like she was my opponent and moved her body into me and I kissed her and she kissed back and the kiss was long and hard and I wanted it to be perfect for her and I wanted it to be perfect for me, not counting cards perfect, not playing the hand perfect, not even Hollywood perfect. I wanted it to be one of those moments when time stopped.

  21

  HER APARTMENT HAD BEEN on the top floor of a three-floor walk-up with a small balcony off the bedroom, a breeze coming through the curtains that I had felt on my back when I rested and then didn’t feel until I rested again. She had felt strong under my weight, her legs hard against me, her hands around my arms, her eyes on mine, perfect.