Headlock

by Adam Berlin

  I expected to hear Gary’s heavy breathing or a steady snore. The blankets were off the bed. The curtains were open. The lights of Las Vegas were muted from the sky starting to lighten.

  I went down. His wide back was hunched over a blackjack table, his shadow on the felt. It was just Gary and the dealer and the black hundred-dollar chips. I put my hand on his back but he didn’t look up. We had two days left and he was using every minute of it. I waited for the shoe to run out.

  “How long have you been sitting here?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You were sleeping when I left.”

  “I couldn’t sleep after that. Like the song says, I’ve grown accustomed to your face. Not having you next to me completely broke my pattern.”

  “We haven’t had a pattern since we left New York.”

  Gary rubbed his bloodshot eyes. He looked like shit. The lines around his eyes were visible in the casino light, cut into the fat that usually smoothed his face.

  “I’m waiting for my streak,” Gary said. “Unfortunately, the house’s employee is keeping things honest. You’re sure you don’t want to work something out?”

  The dealer smiled while he shuffled the cards with manicured fingers.

  “How was she?”

  “How do you know where I went?”

  “I know everything. I don’t mean how was she like how was she. My mind’s not always in the gutter. Do you like her?”

  “Like you would say, she’s great.”

  “Good. Great. She’s definitely as moody as you. Does she still have that chip I gave her or did she put it on her shoulder with the other one?”

  “She didn’t play it yet.”

  “Smart girl.”

  Gary put his hands on the edge of the table and lifted himself up.

  “Hold my place,” Gary said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. And rethink that offer I made you.”

  The dealer put a marker in the betting circle to hold Gary’s place.

  I followed Gary past the blackjack tables and the craps tables. The stick man rested the stick against his lips as he watched the dice roll like telling the room Keep quiet. Here comes Gary Rose. Watch him closely. He has his work cut out.

  “I don’t want to go into tomorrow like I’m going into today,” Gary said. “We’ve got to stay at the tables until we make a dent. A dent in the dent.”

  “What’s the dent now?”

  “The same. About eighty.”

  “Were you counting?”

  “If you don’t count you’ll lose.”

  I saw a quarter in the tray of a slot machine. I left the forgotten payoff where it was. It would be back in the slot machine soon enough.

  “My concentration is not what it used to be,” Gary said. “I used to be able to go for days and days.”

  We went into the bathroom. Bugsy Siegel’s friend wasn’t there. An old black man with a closely trimmed mustache sat on a stool reading the paper. I heard him put the paper down behind me. I washed my face in cold water and the attendant handed me a paper towel and I thanked him. I waited for Gary to finish. The attendant adjusted a bottle of cologne on the counter, looked at his watch.

  “All right,” the attendant said. “Two hours and thirty-two minutes.”

  “Almost home,” I said.

  Counting time like that was never a good sign. Gary washed his face, took a bottle of spray cologne and hit himself under each arm. He told the attendant it was going to be a long day. The attendant handed him a paper towel. Gary left twenty bucks in the basket and told the attendant that now it was under two and a half hours. The attendant wished us good luck.

  Gary bought three Snickers bars, bit into the first.

  “Are you awake?” he said.

  “I can count.”

  “Ace, two, ace, three, ace, four, three, four, five, six, jack, queen, king.”

  “Like old times. Plus one.”

  “Three days. Two drivers. You only hear about people driving across country in three days. We did it. We made it in three days. A couple hundred miles short of the California coast.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. A day trip.”

  “We could do it standing on our hands.”

  “Sure. Kings of the road.”

  “Two kings. Minus two. I was born to count.”

  “Your dad would be happy to hear that.”

  “Real happy.”

  “I mean the counting part. He’d be cursing me if he knew I took you here.”

  Gary crumpled the three candy wrappers into a ball and took a ten-foot shot into a Bally’s wastebasket.

  “Time,” Gary said.

  We walked to the blackjack table and Gary sat down. I stood behind him. The streak didn’t come in the tenth shoe or the twentieth. I forced myself to count but she wasn’t all out of me. I forced myself to concentrate. The cards came out. A matador fucked before a fight. A boxer did not. There was the scene from Raging Bull Gary had played for me, while we were driving, I wasn’t even sure where, Kansas maybe, maybe Colorado, when Jake LaMotta had been beaten and he looked at the victorious Sugar Ray Robinson and said You never got me down, Ray. Gary had taken a sip of the soda he was drinking and let it dribble down his chin like it was blood and he made his eyes almost dead and he delivered the line. Gary said DeNiro had gained fifty pounds to play Jake LaMotta. Gary said he would have tried to lose his own weight for that part. It was that great a part, he said. They could have filmed him first as the old LaMotta and then he would have fasted to play the young LaMotta and he said they both had small hands so it would have been easy once the weight came off. He had smiled one of his smiles, a sadder smile, a smile that was part of giving up, growing older, resolve, the angle of his upturned mouth saying certain things come to pass and others don’t.

  The dealer was all business and didn’t show off with fancy hand work or bullshit talk. He revealed his down card fast to take away the mystery.

  The lights stayed the same. The air temperature stayed the same. Dealers and pit bosses were changed. One crew going off. One crew coming on. The casino filled up while I counted, pressed, rubbed. The space between back and seat grew wider and then Gary would catch himself and sit back.

  We took a lunch break. Gary downed the first Coke in one long drink, rubbed his eyes before he picked up his heaping pastrami sandwich. I wasn’t hungry.

  “How do I look?” Gary said.

  “You look okay.”

  “That’s not what the mirror in the bathroom told me.”

  “You look tired. So do I.”

  “No time to rest. Did you see that fucker playing next to me?”

  “He sticks too much.”

  “He’s a fucking moron. A submoron. He’s fucking the cards up.”

  “You think it matters?”

  “His stupidity was fucking up my concentration.”

  Gary drank his second Coke.

  “We should have slept last night,” he said.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You want me to apologize for running over to Denny’s?”

  “We’re here to play blackjack.”

  I smashed my hand on the table.

  “Play blackjack? We’re here to play blackjack? We’re working blackjack. We’ve been working our asses off since we got here.”

  “I thought you were stoical like Grandpa.”

  “I guess they don’t make men like they used to.”

  “I guess not,” Gary said.

  “I wasn’t the one crying out when my hand got squeezed.”

  “And that makes you a man?”

  “It makes me the winner.”

  “Those were Grandpa’s rules.”

  “I like his rules.”

  “It was a stupid game.”

  “But blackjack isn’t? What are your rules? The more money you lose, the more of a man you are?”

  I looked Gary down. I looked acr
oss the room. Busboys were clearing plates, wiping tables. Gary finished the rest of his sandwich.

  “All it takes is a real streak,” Gary said. “One real streak and I’ll pay that bastard off and tell him to go fuck himself.”

  “I’d like to do more than that.”

  “So would I. I can’t.”

  “What if you only pay half of what you owe? Or two-thirds? Is there some kind of cut off?”

  “They cut off your thumb. I don’t know. They want their money. It’s a business.”

  “Could you buy some more time with a partial payment?”

  “This isn’t economics.”

  “Blue took your deal.”

  “Blue took my money. Blue’s a psychotic. He knows he can get away with a few days off so that’s what he’s doing while he spends four grand of my money. You can see in his eyes that Blue enjoys his work.”

  “There’s something to be said for that.”

  “Sure. I have all the respect for him in the world, especially with a baseball bat in his hand. If I don’t come up with the money he’ll enjoy taking a few swings on me. I’ve seen guys after he got through with them. They never walk right again. It’s hard to notice sometimes, years later, but if you look closely it’s there. A little hitch in the step, a little off.”

  “Maybe not enough.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You’re still playing. You still put yourself at risk. What the fuck were you thinking knowing what you know?”

  “We all do things that may not be the best for us.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Not maybe. All of us do. All of us.”

  We were eye to eye.

  “Even Grandpa,” Gary said.

  “Grandpa did what he did for the family.”

  “Your dad never told you why Grandpa came to this country?”

  “He came for the same reasons everyone else came. Freedom and opportunity.”

  “Sure,” Gary said. “Lady Liberty was welcoming him with open legs. That’s not why he came.”

  “Why did he come?”

  “My dad told me the story.”

  “What story?” I said.

  “He told it to me after I wiped out his life savings. A guy like Blue visited our house looking for me and my dad went to the bank and took out all his money. I was in the Caribbean hiding out for a few days. I even made a few bucks at the casinos. When I came home there was a message on my machine. My dad was scared and angry. I called him and he told me to come over right away. He sat me down and told me what had happened and he told me he had no more to give. He had taken all his savings to bail me out. He told me to tell whatever scumbag it was I had to tell that there was no more money on his end. Then he slapped me in the face and called me a sick boy. He said I was a sick boy. You think I’m a sick boy?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I walked out of the house. I didn’t talk to him for a couple of months. Then my mom invited me to dinner and we pretended everything was all right. We never touched the subject again. I know that’s what he’s thinking when he looks at me. That I’m a sick boy. Not even a sick man.”

  Gary looked at his plate. He picked up a piece of meat that had fallen from his sandwich and ate it.

  “My dad told me a story about Grandpa right before he called me a sick boy. Grandpa put his father in the hospital.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He beat his father so badly they had to put him in the hospital.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “It’s the truth. Grandpa’s father was a small-time government clerk. When Grandpa was a kid he got in a lot of fights and not just wrestling fights. Some of the parents of the kids he beat up also worked in the government. Even back then, Odessa was a gangster city and Grandpa got in so much trouble that people assumed he was part of that world.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “Were you there?”

  “He was a hard worker.”

  “He worked in New York.”

  “He supported his family.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m telling you what happened in Odessa. Grandpa’s father never got promoted because the people in high places, higher places than a small-time clerk, held some serious grudges. Grandpa’s father decided that if his son went into the military then maybe his past actions would be forgiven and a government promotion would be possible. So he told Grandpa to join the army. Grandpa refused. All that for-the-family crap was just crap. At least for the family he came from.”

  “He had his own life.”

  “We all have our own lives. That’s the point. But when his father insisted he join the army, Grandpa lost his temper. He beat up his father. He beat his father so badly his mother had to call the neighbors to restrain him. And then he beat some of them too and then he ran. He’d been in trouble with the law and he’d beaten his father and he knew if he was caught they’d lock him up. That’s when he came to New York.”

  Gary picked up his pickle, bit off half of it.

  “We all have our weaknesses,” he said. “I can judge you too.”

  “Judge me for what?”

  “You’re judging me for gambling. I can judge you too. The story you told me about losing your scholarship. What you did in that restaurant. You’re just like Grandpa that way. I am too, but not like you. You change. I see the way you look sometimes.”

  “How do I look?”

  “Don’t tell me that’s the first fight you’ve been in since you got kicked off the wrestling team. Your boss wasn’t the first one you beat up since then. Don’t be high and mighty.”

  “I’m not being high and mighty.”

  “Understand how hard it is for me to break it.”

  He was right. I beat them. Until they were broken. Until they were out. Then I ran. I was never caught. Afterward I walked along the Hudson River to slow the blood rush, the Statue of Liberty in the distance, the torch lit up.

  “Who told you that story about Grandpa?”

  “My dad.”

  “Who told him?”

  “Grandma. She was from the same part of Odessa. They met in New York, but she knew of the Roses in Odessa.”

  “So why did she marry him?”

  “For protection. I don’t know.”

  “My dad never told me that story.”

  “He didn’t want to ruin your hero for you. He was being nice.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Don’t.”

  “He could have told me.”

  “It was the worst story.”

  The pickpocket story had been my favorite. Grandpa had shown restraint. He walked the pickpocket to the precinct and turned him in.

  “After he paid off what I owed, my dad told me that story,” Gary said. “When Grandpa’s father got out of the hospital he disowned his son. They never saw each other again. After my father bailed me out, he disowned me. He said he would never do it again. If something bad happened to me, he would just accept it like Grandpa’s father had accepted not seeing his son. He had done as much as he was willing to do. I was on my own.”

  Gary worked himself out of the seat. I watched him move across the dining room to get his dessert. It was a sad walk or maybe it just looked that way.

  Gary came back and sat down. He ate his sundae. We walked back to the tables. I automatically squared my feet for balance but it didn’t matter.

  We worked.

  It became like at night when I closed my eyes and all I could see were the cards coming out. I forced myself to concentrate, to not close my eyes, but I still saw the picture. It was a new picture, the colors too vivid. Grandpa beating his father. I felt weak. Physically weak.

  The next shoe started and the next and the next and the next. Outside day turned to night. Inside it stayed the same. The cards came. I counted.

  My hand was on his back and he was leaning over the chips and I felt a hand on my back. I didn’t turn around. I had to keep the count. Th
e dealer flipped his down card, pulled an eight to a twenty-one, took everybody’s chips.

  I turned around. She was there, her eyes clear, a full shift worked and not a line of red. Her Denny’s uniform was in the plastic bag.

  “Is there a free spot at this table, young man?”

  Tia held up the red chip that Gary had given her.

  “How’s it going?” she said.

  “Fine. How are you?”

  “I’m done until Monday.”

  “Hold on.”

  I turned around. I kept count. The shoe came to an end.

  “I see you brought some high stakes money,” Gary said.

  “Big time,” Tia said.

  “Stay away from this table. I’m getting killed. What time is it?”

  “A little after midnight.”

  “You want to take a break?” Gary said.

  “Whatever you want,” I said.

  “We can take a quick break.”

  Gary picked up the remaining black chips and handed them to me. They fit in one hand.

  “You hungry?” Gary said.

  “Not really,” Tia said.

  “There’s no such thing as not really when it comes to food. I am definitively and absolutely hungry. How’s about some dessert? My treat.”

  “I like pie.”

  “I know a place that serves great pie. All you can eat.”

  We walked across the casino to the Bally’s buffet. She took my hand on the escalator. Gary’s wide back blocked the view in front of us. Behind us the panels of escalator going down flattened and disappeared.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Did you make it through the shift?”

  “I slept a little before work. What about you?”

  “I’ve been up.”

  “I thought we could take a drive tonight.”

  “I can’t. Tomorrow’s the last day.”

  “The last day for what?”

  “I don’t know. He owes some money.”

  We followed Gary to the buffet line. Tia put a scoop of chocolate ice cream on her pie. I took an apple from the untouched fruit display. It wasn’t the kind of thing people paid for at a buffet. We waited for Gary to return from the slicing station and found a table.

  “You ever play at Bally’s?” Gary said.

  “I don’t go to the casinos anymore,” Tia said.

  “What do you do in Vegas if not gamble?”