“Shhh,” Penny said, meaning don’t look. I began to feel a slight tingle of nerves. I had emptied my wallet of tips at home the night before, and there was only twenty dollars in the billfold I had shoved in the dash. These rooms might have air-conditioning, but I wasn’t looking forward to breaking into one. Penny circled the lot around the blocks of guest rooms, pulling up to a metal gate surrounding the motel’s modest pool, padlocked for the night. Penny turned off the engine but left the keys in the ignition. We eased open our doors, resting them gently against their frame. I followed Penny to the fence. The pool hours were posted clearly on a metal placard by the door, 11 A.M.–7 P.M., SKYLARK CUSTOMERS ONLY. I linked my hands to give her a boost. I kept watch while she climbed over, the gate squeaking loudly under her weight. She dropped to the other side and unlatched the door. It was still shackled to the fence, but she leaned against it with all her weight, and I wormed my way through the tight opening, scraping my elbow on the rusty mesh.
Once we were together we groped each other’s arms and faces, blind as mice, seeking our boundaries in the moonlight, where one of us began and the other one ended. My fingers closed around the tip of her nose. I honked it.
“How’d I do?” she whispered.
We stripped down and eased ourselves into the pool. The water was cold, holy against my skin like every wish I ever made all coming true at once. I ducked my head underneath and opened my eyes, watching our weightless limbs tread water, luxuriating in the bodiless sensation. I resurfaced to take a breath. Penny pushed her long hair back from her forehead. We grinned at each other, our teeth flashing in the dark.
“On your mark—” she said, drawing an invisible gun from the water. She fired. We swam four laps back to back, her long, even strokes easily outpacing mine. After several more I swam to the edge and hauled myself out, beads of water clinging to my skin. I lay back on the warm concrete, watching Penny pirouette in the deep water.
“Water ballet,” she said, raising her hands to fifth position. She shifted forward into an arabesque, kicking up a splash of water with her toe. “Didn’t you want to be one?”
“No,” I said, closing my eyes. “But I wanted to want to.” After several minutes the water on my skin began to evaporate. The greedy heat returned, pressing close.
Some part of me must have heard the man’s footsteps approaching, the rattling of the gate. Still it seemed to happen all at once, the sound of his keys turning in the padlock, my eyes flying open and hurrying to stand, the flood of dread as the metal door squealed. Panicking, I looked to Penny, but she had gone perfectly still in the water, hands clutching her breasts. I covered my slim chest and the mound between my legs just as the stranger crashed through, flourishing a beam of light across us both, his shape mostly hidden in shadows. He swept the flashlight up, shining it directly in my face. I squinted, automatically lifting my hands to shield my eyes. Penny made a small, surprised noise from the pool. I realized how quiet the motel was, the only sounds the trucks accelerating on the on-ramp in the distance, the crickets chirping nearby. At some point we had forgotten to whisper. Our giggling and splashing had brought him here—we, the trespassers—though it still seemed an invasion.
Slowly, I lowered my hands. He swept the flashlight over the bushes and the perimeter of the gate, our T-shirts and underwear balled on the concrete. A sound in the back of his throat. Displeasure, a hairball.
“Keep it down,” he growled. He turned around, his flashlight lighting the way as he lumbered back the way he’d come, banging the metal gate behind him. We held ourselves frozen, fat as ticks with guilt, until the sound of his jingling keys faded away, both of us straining for any sound from the motel, the road; a truck laboring on bad brakes, the rusty gears carrying freight downhill. I took several steps backward and made a running leap into the deep end of the pool, the splash slapping water onto the concrete. Penny’s laughter ringing out against the night.
53
After lunch I dressed in a pair of jeans and one of Lamb’s old chambrays and took the walk over to Jackson’s small single-story next door. His Chevrolet C1500 was parked in the drive, the aqua paint chipped off the driver’s-side panel. A black Pontiac Bonneville sat marooned in the gravel with its hood ajar and, next to it, an Impala, her rear windows and long, sky-blue tail partially obscured by a car cover. As a young child, tripping up this car-littered yard after Lamb, Jackson had seemed the remainder between them, a grizzled old bachelor benefiting from all of Lamb’s magnanimous kindness. But Jackson was several years younger than Lamb and never married, always seemingly content in his own company. He turned plenty of favors our way, watching the dogs when we drove to the casinos, mending the fence between our two houses when it rotted through, fixing Lamb’s old truck for what I had come to understand was much too fair a price.
When Jackson opened the door now, he took his time on the threshold, drying his wrists with a flowered dishtowel, his eyes roving over my face with the same grave scrutiny he paid the truck’s engine under a popped hood, cocking an attentive ear to the machine’s low hum. It was clear I had never appreciated this man for his singular worth. Lamb had always overshadowed other men, he had long been my sole reference for any other human being, the rogue variable in every equation I struggled to compute. Solve for X. Solve for Lamb.
Jackson slung the dishtowel over his shoulder and took a step back into the room. I followed him to the L-shaped kitchen at the rear of the house with its speckled yellow countertops, the teal-colored tiles that Lamb had helped mortar onto the backsplash above the stove. Didn’t I wonder why Jackson’s patience for me, like Cesar’s, was always so easy to come by? Because I was an extension of Lamb? Because Lamb had lost more than they? Or because both men had deep, whole hearts, like Lamb himself, indifferent to the deficits of an orphan and her unyielding famine of affection?
“Is it a good time?” I asked, but I was already walking toward the table, pulling out my old seat near the window. Jackson turned into the small kitchen and grabbed the kettle off the stove, filling it with water, firing up the range. I should have offered to help; I was no longer a child who waited to be served. But death granted favors, and Jackson, like Lamb, preferred minimal fuss. While we waited for the water to boil I surveyed his backyard out the window, the earth weeded over, the carcasses of several other cars in amputated disrepair: a busted Riviera and slick, purple Electra like fossils excavated from bygone eras. Those that found a buyer, Jackson would mend. Twice a year, he’d load one to the hitch of his Chevrolet and pull it down our road in glorious, solo parade; these vintage cars meant for new lives in Vegas or Reno, where they might sparkle among their kind. How much easier for an object to inhabit a second life.
The kettle whistled and Jackson moved about in the kitchen, opening cabinets. “I’ve got a Nova out there,” he said, knowing where I’d been looking. “Want to try it on?”
“Wouldn’t fit,” I said. “My head would get too big. Wolf thanks you for all the small beasts nosing around that peach tree, by the way. He almost got a starling the other day, or at least he thinks so.”
Jackson brought a pair of oversized mugs to the table, setting one down in front of me. I wrapped my hands around it, palms smarting from the heat. He took the seat across the table and raised his cup to his mouth, swallowing a mouthful of tea, impervious to the curls of steam rising from the surface. His tongue, like the rest of him, invulnerable to any mortal wound. Men like him, survivors of so much already. He watched me carefully over the rim.
“You’re not so big I can’t see how you’re taking it.”
“I’m tougher than I look,” I said, and because I thought he might really worry, “I’m Lamb-made, remember? I’m jerky.”
“How long have I known you?” he asked.
“Before I could count.”
“Picking up my tools, following Lamb around that yard. If he fixed a fan belt, you wanted to fix one, too. He
had a drink, you ripened a god-fearing thirst. Clinton over that sink, pouring apple juice into empty beer bottles.”
Jackson took a sip, the creases pulling deep around his mouth. Still handsome in the forgotten way of old men, the solitary kind. Wolf and Trixie were the only creatures left in earnest competition for his heart, growing more attached each visit. But hadn’t they become reluctant experts, in the shepherding of august men? From outside came a squeaking sound at the side of the yard. We watched together as the short, squat man waded into view, the tall weeds snapping against the calves of his cowboy boots as he navigated islands of patched tires and coupe skeletons.
“Last chance Nova. Rocky’s not worried about his head fitting.”
“I have the opposite problem. I came to ask about Lamb’s truck. Would you take it? I don’t need two.”
“Is that all?”
“Also. I can’t stay here.”
Jackson’s eyes, both easier and harder than Lamb’s to lie to. “You want to sell?”
“Not right now. All his things are there.”
“You don’t have to go through them right away.”
“When will ever be good? I need a break, maybe.”
“You want to leave the dogs here.”
“For a little while.”
“They’re going to want you back.”
“I’m going to want them back, too.”
He took another mouthful of tea. “You won’t be gone too long.”
“I don’t expect it.”
“You will take care.”
“I will.”
“You don’t know how yet. You think you do.”
I finally tried the tea, my eyes watering from the scald. “No. I know I don’t.”
Why had I always seen myself as so alone? When there was Jackson, Maria, Rico, Rena—a dozen faces Pomoc gifted me, to sew up holes inside myself I hadn’t known existed?
“It’s hard to learn,” he said.
59
The sky above the Leaspoke Casino was on fire. Traffic on the freeway began bottlenecking two miles from the exit; we inched along faithfully, captive spectators to a violent, blood orange sunset. I took the off-ramp and was nearly clipped by a white sedan with a bad bumper, cutting me off with a millimeter to spare. We were all heading in the direction of a tall casino just visible from the freeway, its giant pink and blue feathers glittering in lights. Everyone eager to begin their debauch.
The Leaspoke was big enough to poach tourists on their way to Reno and small enough for locals to retain the sense of familial ownership. After a mile I pulled into a long wraparound drive, a giant asphalt lot bordering seventy thousand square feet of grimy ivory paint, a wooden mannequin in warbonnet and breechclouts pointing an outstretched hand down the center lane. I parked in the back of the lot, trailing a pale, swollen couple in Birkenstock sandals to the entrance. A gaunt, glass-eyed speed walker, obviously tweaking, overtook us all, only to stop and wait for us at the door, sucking intensely on his Slurpee. His eyes pinballed on the couple, turning sticky over my face and chest. I felt the ghost of Fischer’s hands pressing into my shoulders, his scent lingering on my neck and hair. I was sorely aware of everything between my legs, its impractical value.
I had hoped that once I arrived, I’d be gifted with spontaneous intuition, that I might understand instantly the reason why Penny came. But crossing the casino’s wide, tiled lobby under a frigid blast of air-conditioning, it was still difficult to imagine Penny here just hours after we’d escaped the desert; Penny milling among these strangers’ faces, the stale cloud of cigarette smoke clinging to her yellow dress and long black hair. Had she come to meet the man in the photograph? Did they arrive together? Or had Penny come alone, without any intention at all? And if the real Penny traveled to out-of-the-way casinos to meet strangers in the middle of the night, was it also the real Penny I giggled with on weekends at the diner; Penny who danced banda with Rico between customers on slow summer afternoons? How could it have been Penny in the desert that night, raising the heavy weight of the tire iron in her hands?
The gaunt man brushed past with his Slurpee, and I stepped in the check-in line behind the pale couple from the parking lot, digging out a handful of twenties from the depths of Penny’s purse. The man behind the counter took it and asked for ID. I slid him another wad of cash instead, waiting for him to object. I had two hundred dollars in tips and the sealed white envelope from Jackson as an advance on Lamb’s truck, along with all the cash from Penny’s coffee can—but no real sense of how long any of it might last. I wanted to embrace all of Penny’s recklessness, her insensible disregard.
“Will two keys be enough?” The man’s elfin face, and the wry expression he sent over the top of his plastic drugstore readers, conspired to make my skin crawl.
“Fine.”
He slid a small cardboard envelope across the desk and I pocketed it without having to answer anything else. Our transaction complete, I followed the path of the Slurpee-toting stranger onto the escalator and began the slow descent into the pit of the casino, the beeping, whirring sounds of slot machines and quarters clinking in coin trays tugging the worn contour of memory. Here is the moment Lamb would reach for my hand.
I mapped the layout from my vantage point on the escalator: craps on the left, slot machines on the right, pennies on the periphery, quarters inside. A row of felt-covered tables housed twenty-one and three-card poker, hold ’em and fold ’em. I stepped off the escalator past the rackety whirl of a roulette wheel; it was late afternoon but the anticipation of the evening’s big bets already thrummed in the air. I took a lap of the floor, ignoring the flat stares of local seniors glued to their slot machines, the out-of-towners easy to spot in their zip-up anoraks and cargo shorts. The serious gamblers were still ten miles down the road at the Triple Eagle, filling up on the early-bird buffet or warming up at home, testing their luck with rapid-fire rounds of online blackjack.
At the very back of the room was an area secluded by velvet rope and leafy faux ferns, where players cycled through day tournaments from brunch to dusk. After dark, the space transformed for private parties; a poker table was carried in like a palanquin by casino personnel, leather wing chairs lined up on either side. If Penny hadn’t already met the man in the photograph, this might have been where their paths first crossed. The man with his city haircut flush enough to play a round, Penny’s discerning ability to know a high roller when she saw one.
A beaky cocktail waitress walked by, offering fluorescent plastic cups for coins. I took one and sidled up to the cage, trading another one of Penny’s twenties for rolls of quarters. I parked myself at a slot machine in the corner of the room with a clear view of the tables. The dealers were dressed in pressed white shirts, cheap black vests, and pink and blue bow ties, the former so bright and deep a shade it might be mistaken for red in an indistinct photograph. The colors echoed the sparkling feather motif outside, the patterned carpet that had first stirred my memory. I had a vague childhood recollection of the mannequin in the drive and the feather-shaped keychains sold in the gift shop, but I hoped more memories would surface. So far, they had remained buried, this casino just one indistinct evening in a succession of early impressions.
The pale couple from the parking lot reappeared at the blackjack table, the wife snagging a seat at third base. Closer to the slots, an older croupier spun the roulette wheel for a row of locals, her auburn hair shining brassy under the lights. After each spin she touched her face, adjusting large, red buttonlike earrings. She looked like one of the women who came into Jake’s for a solitary booth spent hours gazing out the window, requesting three refills of hot water on a single teabag. If Penny saw her, she might have thought the same.
I fed the slot machine a quarter and pulled the lever. Lemon, lemon . . . cherry. From the corner of my eye I spied a flash of long black hair and nearly spilled my coins turning to
look. But it was only another cocktail waitress swooping by to collect the empty cups.
I played the slots for two hours, switching seats when prompted by a group of elderly women in matching lilac velour tracksuits with The Max Betties embroidered across their backs, fixated on an intrinsic pattern of musical chairs intended to court fortune. I watched them and tried to decipher their system, but gave up halfway through. At the roulette wheel, a small crowd gathered around a young woman in a short denim skirt placing her bet. A nondescript man in a football jersey placed a hand on her back as she bent over to roll the dice. Catching my stare, he grinned. It was as if, after living innocuously alongside men for years, I had woken up to their intense attention, or they had awoken to mine. Maybe they could sense an unconscious shift within me, a willingness to endanger myself. I left my empty cup on the table for the waitress to find and rode the escalator up to the lobby to the parking lot, needing air.
The evening had grown soft and damp, gray sheets of cloud hanging low. I spent several disoriented minutes walking around the parking lot, trying to locate my truck among all the cars. When I finally found it, I fished out the duffel bag from behind the seat and headed back toward the casino. Several yards out I spotted two women emerge from a back entrance, identifiable at a distance by their uniforms. One disappeared back inside while I was still too far away, but the other looked up as I approached. It was the roulette croupier, auburn hair from a bottle. She took a long drag on a cigarette, holding a paper coffee cup between two fingers, her red nails filed into long, polished ovals. I felt for my own pack in the front pocket of the duffel, stopping a few feet away. “Can I borrow a light?”
A Prayer for Travelers Page 20
