by Brian Hart
Down the ramp and into the casino proper, Karen spotted a bar in the corner and they bellied up and Roy bought a round of two-dollar cocktails. On the sly he ordered an extra shot of well vodka for himself and was careful to take it without Karen noticing.
April went to the nickel slots while Aaron and eventually Roy and Karen sat down at the blackjack table. The dealer was a beauty and Karen caught Roy staring at the smooth cleft of black skin visible at the top of her casually unbuttoned uniform.
“You think she does that by accident?” Karen said in Roy’s ear.
“What?”
“You’re about to lose some money,” Karen said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Roy had two kings and he was staying.
“Sure you don’t.” Karen busted with a seven, and left the table, stood behind Roy to watch.
After three hands Roy was up twenty bucks. “Where’s your accent from?” Roy said.
“Kenya,” the dealer said. “Nairobi.”
“Welcome,” Aaron said.
The dealer nodded and smiled with her full beautiful lips together, then dealt the cards.
“As if it were up to you,” Roy said. Karen clamped a hand on the back of his neck and he shrugged it off.
“What?” Aaron said.
“You don’t get to welcome anyone. Ex-cop acting all United Nations.”
Aaron turned to face Karen. “Somebody’s a nasty drunk, eh, Karen?” he said, with a smile.
“Fuck you,” Roy said. The dealer wouldn’t look at him but she pitched him a jack of hearts and he thought she was flirting.
Aaron called for another card and busted, but he stayed to play. Roy took the comped drink when it came, well bourbon neat, drank it like a shot, and then scooped up his meager winnings and stood up from the table. He kissed Karen on the mouth even though she struggled against him and, without explanation, went to the cage and cashed in his chips.
He looked over his shoulder and Karen wasn’t behind him so he went out the front door of the casino and onto the sidewalk.
The cold made him cough when he breathed through his nose. He’d forgotten to tip the dealer. He could go back in. The Karen in his mind caught up with him and grabbed his hands. She was smiling. She loved him. He loved her, too. All this love and it didn’t make any difference.
“It can’t go any other way,” Roy said. But he was alone on the sidewalk. He hadn’t felt so alone in a long time. He had to leave. He didn’t care what she said. He walked by the garage attendant in his little booth reading the paper and up the ramp and found the car. Nobody was around and Roy didn’t see any cameras. He didn’t give a shit. He’d broken plenty of windows before.
Then Karen was there. She was actually right there. She’d found him and this changed everything, but only for a second, because he’d made a decision. It was already over.
“What’re you doing?” Karen said.
“Wait and see.”
She grabbed him to stop him but he pushed her back, not hard but he’d never shoved her before, never treated her rough. She gave him a shocked look and he threw his elbow against the car window as hard as he could and it still took three hard, bone-rattling smacks and his arm was throbbing to the shoulder when the glass finally shattered. He unlocked and opened the door, grabbed his bag with board attached, and shook the glass cubes from it. He wouldn’t look at Karen. He wanted to plug his ears in case she spoke because suddenly this wasn’t what he wanted at all. An arrow had been loosed and there was no getting it back. It was the time in the air, when there was only before and who knows what was after, and that was the worst, the in-between, after the release and before the strike.
He was standing in front of Karen, about to speak, about to explain when Aaron and April stepped from the stairwell. There was a long moment and Roy thought maybe he could talk his way out of this but he couldn’t.
“Wait,” April said, slow on the uptake. “Where are you going? Did you break our window?”
“Fucking Jesus,” Roy said.
“Answer me,” April said. “Aaron, make him answer me.”
Karen had tears pooling in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Aaron,” she said.
Aaron shook his head. “You could’ve just asked me for the keys, boss, told me you were going to get a room, which for the record is what I thought you were going to do. That’s why we came up here, to see if you needed the keys. If you were getting sick. You could’ve said something.” He held up his keys to show them, like here they are and they could’ve been yours.
When Aaron stepped toward him, Roy backed away. Aaron chucked the keys after him hard but missed and they went skittering across the concrete and smacked into the wall. Karen was standing there with her palms up. Aaron and April were looking at her, saying something to each other that he couldn’t hear.
“Come on, if you want,” Roy yelled. Karen shook her head no because she knew that he was going to leave her. He’d left her. But couldn’t she see that it had only been for that moment and now the moment had passed, and passed again. There were no walls, only doors. He turned and kept walking, thinking any second he’d go back and apologize and buy Aaron and April however many rounds it would take to make it cool—he’d sob at Karen’s feet—but he didn’t. Later he would think someday I’ll laugh about this but he never could. He would maintain that he was drunk but he wasn’t that drunk. He knew what he was doing.
The white lady cabdriver took his blackjack money. Alcohol had him stunned and unsure, moronically attentive. The news at the bus station wasn’t great, no bus to Oakland until nine in the morning. He sat on the bench in the bus station spinning the wheels on his skateboard. He read for a while, he had some Vonnegut in his bag and it made him feel better. KV was good with the big picture and not getting all screwed up by the small shit. He got it. He understood what it was about, he’d lived through the war after all, witnessed all kinds of horrible death and sorrow. After a brief nap and a few moments of dedicated thought, Roy realized how wrong he’d been.
Karen, to his surprise, answered her phone. Roy told her straight away that he’d been wrong, put it out there right off.
She was doing something else while listening to him, he could hear her moving around, and he wanted to know what it was but he didn’t want to ask because she’d get defensive.
“I feel like you’re too old to say this to, but maybe not.” She quit moving around on the phone for a moment, then started in again. “Your actions have consequences. All the things you do, you’re responsible for that.”
“I’m going to Oakland. I want you to come with me.”
She said no, she wasn’t going, without even thinking about it for a second. “If you want to stay,” she said, “I guess you can, but I’m embarrassed of you right now. I’m ashamed of what you did.”
“Do you want me to say sorry? I’m sorry, OK? I made a mistake.”
She was silent.
“Answer me, what do you want me to say?”
“I guess nothing.”
“Where are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. By myself. I’m alone. Aaron and April aren’t here if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“He’s pissed.”
“Of course he’s pissed. They’re both pissed. We’re all pissed. We had to drive back from Reno in a snowstorm with a broken window. It was bullshit.”
“I didn’t need to do that, break his window.”
“You didn’t need to leave me standing there. You didn’t need to treat me like that. I mean, if you’re this ready to just leave me, then I guess there’s nothing to do. Why’d you tell me to bring my stuff, when you were just going to ditch me?”
“I wasn’t planning on any of it. You could’ve come with me.”
“It’s easy to say that now.”
“It’s not easy though. None of this is easy. You were pushing me to come here and do all this shit. I don’t want to live in the fucking boonies, middle-of-nowhere shit
.”
“I thought you were with me. You know we could’ve had fun. Aaron and April aren’t that bad. They’re actually kind of great. I like them more than you. Right now I like them way more.” She wasn’t doing something else. She was trying not to cry.
And it was as if he’d crested a hill and it was easier now but then it was like there was a cliff on the downhill side and he was going over. “Get the fuck off me with your guilt,” he said. “I can’t stand it. You need to grow up.”
“Get the fuck off me, Roy.” She was screaming mad like he’d never heard her. “Get the fuck off of me.” The line went dead.
Maybe this was for the best, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like he was making a horrible mistake and that it was happening very slowly and he could change it but he wouldn’t. Romantics like Karen were nothing more than vultures, surrounded by death, pictures of the dead and abandoned houses. History is for suckers. Not me. I’m going to live. I’m going to get on the bus and get out of here. I’m going to go. Be a man.
[19]
R<35
OR 97202
It was happy hour and Roy was sick of the sad, bummer on a barstool, Replacements-era regulars, so he hung in the back by the walk-in watching Simpsons reruns on the iffy, hit-me-again, no-remote TV, waiting for his shift to start. Day Shift Damian said he had coke but he wasn’t going to share until he was off work in two hours.
With an empty six-pack of high-test microbrew at his feet, grimacing at a rotten courtroom TV show, the Simpsons long since over, Damian finally came back and waved him into the employee bathroom. A couple of lines and one stashed by the spare TP in reserve and he was behind the bar.
A gaggle of gas station beanies and black hoodies were trying to out-metal each other on the jukebox. There was a time for Mastodon, but barely post-happy hour on a Tuesday, as far as Roy could tell, wasn’t it. He snatched a fistful of quarters out of the till and limped across the room to the jukebox and unplugged it, then, with some effort and more pain, plugged it back in.
“Not a word,” Roy said, feeding quarters into the machine. “You guys are killing me. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m not saying I’m better than you, but right now, I’ve got all the quarters. Don’t give me that look. I’m gonna work with you. You’ll like it.” He loaded the complete Ride the Lightning album, followed by Reign in Blood, and then, preempting the demise of Damian’s shitty cocaine, burned through the last of the quarters with Leonard Cohen and Velvet Underground. South of Heaven was playing when one of his regulars, an ex-carnie, Burning Man reject named Rooster, slipped him some Norcos and a half hour later his back finally went quiet. Almost whimsically, he thought he might get into the Jameson’s. He was a bartending legend, a hero. He didn’t just work here, he presided. It was always the same, night after night: ice-cold service and piss-warm beverages, decent jukebox and superior pinball in the back. Only a few played the machines anymore, though, rare was the pop of the replay.
Around midnight, some skate pro pals of Roy’s showed up so he kicked everybody out and locked the doors and poured. An hour later they were all deeply embroiled in a drunken slappy grind competition in the bar parking lot. The judge was a shit-wig trog chick in a half-shirt Blazers jersey and a black miniskirt, fishnets, and boots. Roy didn’t like the look but he liked her body. She used a broken chalk square she’d taken from the pool table to mark where the competitors entered their grind on the curb, then, noting the distance and attaching initials to the hash, declared the winner. Which, as luck would have it, was Roy.
Joyous champion with a cold Pabst in his hand and another in his pocket, he found himself in a shoe-company-owned Sprinter van rocketing down I-84 to some other spot, a house party with a well-lit miniramp and no neighbors. He’d bested all the pros in the van in a battle of slappies and now he was among them, a wee hours contender. He thanked Independent Trucks. He thanked the northwest moss that passed for curb wax. He thanked the trog for the E and slid his palm over her fishnets and soon found the top of them and touched the smooth skin of her upper thigh, higher. He touched the silky smoothness of her underwear and she pushed him away. “I don’t fuck around in vans,” she said. “I have rules.”
The rest of the boys, and two girls, were huddled up front around the captain’s chairs arguing about which exit to take. Roy held the pill up for inspection, its unremarkable and non-threatening dimensions, and popped it in his mouth.
Two days later he returned to Sasha’s apartment to find his stuff under the landing stairs. The super had done a half-ass job of shoving it there after Sasha had tossed it all into the yard. There’d been phone calls. Derby was now his stepdog or more likely not his dog at all, and that hurt, more than Sasha’s hatred hurt. He considered stealing the dog but didn’t want to complicate things.
The trog chick’s name was Lacey and she was waiting at the curb in her Range Rover. Roy opened the back hatch and loaded what he wanted, which wasn’t much, into the pristine cargo area. Then they were off.
The skate-shoe company was owned by the swoosh. Big sneaker rolling with skateboarding was like big pharma selling medicinal weed, but with all of their backdoor advertising tricks and subcompanies they appeared to be from the streets. Roy didn’t give a shit anymore. He didn’t even know what selling out meant. Home brew or Budweiser, it was all the same to him. Homeless bartender v. pro skater. Just tell me where to sign.
Apart from a few of the really young guys on the team, Roy had skated with everybody else before. Jim “Nessy” Nestor—the Scottish gentleman—was their top pro and he and Roy went back ten years or more. They’d done a couple of van tours together when they were younger. He’d bumped into him a handful of times at Burnside too, and once in Sacramento, just after he and Karen split up. Nessy was big business now and Roy figured that it was probably a lot of his pull that got Roy signed.
But, according to Lacey, Roy had reached a marketable vintage, and over the last two days, to prove his worth, he’d thrown down some epic shit, cracked a tooth trying the kickflip over the hip in the big bowl and stomped it on the fifth try. Nobody could mess with that, not even Nessy. And it made the edit. So Roy would have a video part, and with that came a film stipend and a travel allowance, which was essentially a wad of cash handed to him by the team manager, Tony. He’d signed paperwork but it felt like just another session, another skate trip, with benefits. Like the hooker was paying him to fuck her.
Downtown, stopped at the light on Lovejoy, Roy felt a bit out of his mind. He’d quit his girl. He’d quit his job. He either had everything going for him right now or he was in deep shit. He glanced at Lacey and she was gnawing on her cheek and bobbing her head to what the fuck were they listening to? Robot crap, dubstep. Whatever. Her car, her system.
“Why didn’t you do something with skating before?” Lacey asked. She was the West Coast advertising rep for the skate-shoe company that he now skated for, and come to think of it, her pull with the corporate people definitely hadn’t hurt his chances either. The thing about succeeding was that you immediately ended up having to thank people.
“I’ve been skating,” Roy said. “That’s what I did with my skating.”
“Commercially.”
“Dreams are for kids.”
“Presenting the lonesome, hard-ass, Roy Bingham.” Lacey smiled and pointed at Roy. “I’ve heard your name for a while now. People talk. You are legend. Do you still have a board sponsor?”
“No,” Roy said. “I was on the Bilge team until they imploded, but folks still send me stuff all the time. I don’t pay for product, haven’t since before I got pubes.”
“You’re like the guy that people say they want to be like,” Lacey said, “but really they don’t. I’ve spent enough time with you in the last few days to know. Nobody wants to be like you.”
He placed his hands against his chest. “You can’t buy this.” He was joking but he wasn’t. He’d signed paperwork. She could buy this. She had.
“T
he worst that could happen now,” Lacey said, “with the team at least, is that you make some money and maybe sell a little bit of your soul. People do it every day.”
“A sock with holes in it,” Roy said.
“What?”
“My soul. It’s a sock with holes in it.”
Lacey smiled and touched his leg, slid her hand up to his left-leaning bulge and squeezed. His cock was sore from all the fucking but in a good way.
“This place is posh,” Roy said. “The Pearl, it’s glitzy, right? Fucking downy, but nice. I remember when it was shit, warehouses and nothing else, a fucking dead zone. Couple of great loading-dock skate spots though. I’ll miss that.”
“It’s OK,” Lacey said. “It’s shiny and new.” She smiled at Roy. “But that’s not necessarily a good thing, is it?”
Roy had gone with her yesterday when she’d signed the lease on her brand-new condo. The oven and fridge still had cardboard and Styrofoam packing material in them. The windows in the stairwell still had the manufacturer stickers stuck to the glass and the Otis guys were putting the trim on the elevators.
“Posh food, posh drinks, driving around in your posh ride,” Roy said, thinking, Now I say posh. What kind of a whamby am I turning into? Cheers. Bird. Suss.
Like a mind-reader, Lacey explained to him the etymology of posh, how it came from England, old times, where the rich people on steamships, bound for India or wherever, preferred the port side of the ship on the way out and the starboard on the way back, port out, starboard home, but Roy couldn’t be bothered. His silence seemed to upset her. She’d gone to Oberlin and had the pajama shirt to prove it.
“Do you know what etymology means?” Lacey asked.
He did or he had once but he didn’t any longer. “Does it mean your hair stinks when it gets wet?”
