Headlock by Adam Berlin

Author:Adam Berlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2000-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

15

IT WASN’T EXACTLY LIKE the movies but with the lack of sleep and the desire to get there and the darkness of desert miles it was close. The winter seemed to break as soon as we went over a hump of mountains. The air that had been cool coming in from Gary’s window turned warm. And then it was in front of us. Las Vegas. All lit up and someplace to go, the place we were going, the getting there gone. One long strip of lights and from the center of that line the lights separated into the outskirts of town, then separated more into the desert. As we approached, the strip became more defined, colors more distinct, the outline of tall buildings with flashing lights a row of beacons calling us in from a far-off shore and like a couple of sailors we were pulling into port with big dreams or at least Gary was. It wasn’t yet midnight. We’d made it by Sunday. Almost twenty-six hundred miles. I leaned back in the seat and watched the lights come closer and Gary started to point out the casinos, naming the names.

It was one of those moments and in feeling high I felt how low I’d been lately. The lights were beautiful. I already knew that the view would change up close like zooming in on a seemingly flawless face but while we drove closer I tried to just concentrate on the lights illuminating this piece of desert and it really did look like an oasis. Lights instead of palms. Casinos instead of water. A stewardess I met at a bar described to me what it was like flying into Las Vegas at night, jetting through miles of sky and then seeing the strip. I pretended we were flying. It wasn’t that hard. It wasn’t much different from what the stewardess had described before she took me to her hotel room.

My garage suit chafed my skin. I was overtired. I didn’t want to stand on line at a buffet. I didn’t want to stand behind Gary at a table. I wanted to stay in the passenger seat with Gary driving to the lights but never getting there. I wanted the lights to remain at a distance where they stayed beautiful.

Gary wanted to start playing right away. He’d seen these lights many times and to him they were just casino lights. I didn’t know how many hours Gary could gamble but I guessed his stamina would be good. He was a Rose. For hours on end my grandfather had breathed in the mattress feathers that filled the room until his lungs were coated. I pictured his two lungs, covered with white feathers like a pair of angel’s wings inside. My father had stamina in his own way. When I came home from school, he’d be upstairs in his study correcting tests, marking papers, working on his books about economic theory of which I knew nothing but saw in the hands of students as they walked across campus.

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