The Motel Life (15 page)

‘It’s not the best move,’ his uncle said and looked at me.

‘I know,’ I said, and shrugged.

‘Look, kid, I’ll buy it from you for five, but I’ll hold on to it for a month or two or three. If you need it back, just pay me, or at least set up a pay schedule. If we do decide to sell it, I’ll cut you in on twenty percent of my end.’

‘All right,’ I said.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I got to give it a better look over, recheck the numbers to make sure it wasn’t stolen, and then it’s a done deal. Tommy, why don’t you take Frank in the back and give him a cup of coffee and make him take the rest of those donuts.’

Tommy nodded and led me to the back and I poured myself a cup of coffee.

‘You guys are gonna leave, aren’t you? That’s why you need the cash, hunh?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘$500 ain’t much to run away on if that’s what you’re gonna do.’

‘We don’t even have a car.’

‘You could probably pick up a decent car for $400, but I don’t know.’

‘I was thinking about going over to Earl Hurley’s lot. He’d set up credit with me.’

‘The only other option is the fight. The Tyson versus Holyfield fight. That’s what I would do. Holyfield’s gonna win. The odds are good too. That’s in two days.’

‘Beside Jerry Lee,’ I said and shook my head, ‘you’re the unluckiest guy I know. As far as gambling goes, you’re the worst.’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know I ain’t lucky, but I know this time Tyson’s gonna lose. I can feel it, and I feel it more than anything I think I’ve ever felt. Plus my aunt, she’s a worse gambler, worse than me, she bets the football games and the fights and she never wins. Never. Maybe one out of fifteen. She told me she’d bet her house on Tyson. Said she’d bet her whole goddamn life on Tyson. The odds at the Cal Neva are thirteen to one. Probably better now. You read the paper? Everyone’s against Holyfield.

‘Junior, that friend of my uncle’s, the old guy, he called today wondering about those grenades I told you about. Jesus, I know it sounds like I’m trying to work you, but I need your help. I need some cash, I do, or I’m finished. I’m out of a job, my whole future.’

‘It’s Jerry Lee. I can’t think past him.’

‘Look,’ Tommy said as tears filled his eyes. His voice broke and got shaky. ‘I’ll give you my car, and I’ll get you at least a hundred cash to make the trip with. We’ll only bet $400. That’ll leave you with $200 cash and a car to make the trip with.’

‘You sure about doing that?’ I asked him.

‘Look, if Junior doesn’t get his money back I’m finished anyway.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But I want the keys to your car. Right before we place the bet, I get the keys. I’ve got to know I have the car.’

‘You can trust me, Frank. I’m right,’ Tommy said. ‘This time I’m right. I know I am.’

23

WHEN I GOT HOME
that night from the hospital the dog was laying on the bed. I poured out some food for him and filled his water. He stretched and yawned and after a while got up. I turned on the radio, put a can of soup on the hot plate, and sat down at my table. I lit a candle I kept and ate. Afterwards, I made instant coffee and opened the sports page searching for the odds on the upcoming fight.

There were two articles I found, both favored Tyson. Holyfield had cardiovascular problems, his endurance was in question, he was too beat up, he was too old. By the looks of it no one really seemed to think much of him. I searched around more and found the Reno odds all favored Tyson. Twenty to one odds against Holyfield a day before the fight.

The dog was restless and so after I finished my coffee I snuck him out and we walked up Lake Street to the University. I threw
him the old tennis ball and he chased it down the deserted grass courtyards which ran alongside the college buildings.

I slept good that night and woke early, around six a. m., and decided to go down to the day labor office and try to pick up a job for the extra cash. I took the dog on a quick walk, put him back in the room, made a coffee to go, and went on to the temp office.

I ended up with a warehouse job near the sheriff’s station, off Spice Island.

I picked up a ride with another guy assigned to the same place, an old man. The job that day went easy, mostly stacking shipments and putting them in shrink wrap to be sent off. I worked the job that Thursday and Friday. I told the guy I’d be back on Monday although I knew I probably wouldn’t be.

When the day of the fight came, Saturday, November 11, I took a bus down to the record store and sold off the CDs I still owned. I took an antique silver dollar my grandfather had given me and sold that at a silver shop. In all, I walked to the Cal Neva with $810.

The sports book was half full and I saw Tommy at the bar with Al Casey and Jim Finer and his girlfriend Diane.

‘Jesus, I didn’t think you’d make it,’ Tommy said when he saw me. ‘We only got an hour before the fight.’

‘I told you I’d be here,’ I said.

‘You’re a crazy bastard if you go ahead with it,’ Al Casey said. He was drunk, but looked better than when I had seen him last. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and black pants. His hair was washed and combed. His face was healing, the black eyes were yellow, and the nose had deflated some.

‘I thought you were going skiing?’

‘That son of a bitch Darren was lying to me. He didn’t have the room, the tickets, or nothing.’

‘Darren’s a fucking idiot,’ Jim Finer said, laughing.

‘I wouldn’t bet a dead dick on Holyfield,’ Al said.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Tommy said. He gave Al a look, then turned to me. ‘Al don’t know shit, Frank, how much you got?’

‘$810,’ I said, ‘but I’m keeping twenty dollars to drink on.’

‘The odds are dropping, it’s ten to one now. But I still got the strong feeling. Holyfield’s gonna knock the shit out of him.’

‘You’re fucking crazy,’ Al Casey said and laughed.

‘For once I agree with Al,’ Jim Finer said.

‘Me too,’ his girlfriend Diane said halfheartedly and giggled.

‘It’s gonna happen,’ Tommy said.

‘It ain’t,’ Al Casey said and laughed again. ‘Might as well just get a hooker.’

‘Don’t worry about Al,’ Tommy said, shaking his head. ‘He’s a certified fuck up.’

‘Fuck you, Tommy.’

‘I’m gonna go bet it,’ I said.

‘Goddamn right you are,’ Tommy said.

I walked to the window and placed the bet. When the clerk gave me the receipt I put it in my wallet and went back to the bar, sat on a stool next to Tommy and ordered a beer and a shot.

People began filing in. All types of people. Most of them men, middle aged and older, alcoholics and gamboholics, casino rats.

Sometimes, in the past, Jerry Lee and me would sit in the casinos, the Fitz or the Cal Neva, and we’d make up stories about any guy that passed us.

‘There’s one for you,’ Jerry Lee would say. ‘Look at that sorry looking bastard.’ And the guy he would point to was always a sorry looking bastard. Most likely a drunk who gambled the remainder of his life away. Dressed in old clothes which were always wrinkled and unwashed. There’s thousands of them. If I was in a good mood I’d say the guy was an astronaut who had to lie and say he made it to the moon when really he was just stuck in a warehouse that was made up to look like the moon. The man was so upset about lying to the whole nation that he fell off, disappeared, and ended up in Reno. Other times I’d say it was a Vietnam vet who was tortured for years and escaped on a raft and made his way to Hawaii drinking blood from the sharks he caught with his dog tags.

Sometimes I’d make him a porn star who couldn’t get it up anymore or a sports hero who had blown out his knees or had a weak blood vessel in his brain and if he got hit one more time he’d die or become institutionalized.

Other times if I was in a bad mood I’d say that he’d lost his whole family in a car wreck, or a crazed madman ate his wife on a barbecue while he had to watch. Or that he and his kid were camping and a mountain lion or a cult captured the kid and took him to a cave and he was never seen again. And then the old man spends years alone walking through the mountains yelling out his poor kid’s name, and then finally gives up and sits alone at the Cal Neva.

My mind went racing like that through a thousand thoughts before the fight finally started. By then my nerves were completely shot and the odds were down to seven to one. The sports book was full and I was half drunk and nervous as I’d ever been. The commen
tators on the TV favored Tyson, the people around us cheered him even though he was a rapist, a felon, and I began to lose hope before it even began.

Tommy bought us each a double whiskey and I drank it as the first round began and ordered another. The second round came with Holyfield keeping his ground. The third and fourth were the same. The fifth was the round that Tyson looked like he might be taking the fight. I almost had a heart attack then. I almost walked out.

But in the sixth round Holyfield cut Tyson’s left eyelid. They stopped the fight and the doctor looked the cut over and signaled for the fight to continue. The crowd on TV began screaming ‘Holyfield’ and then with forty seconds left in the round Holyfield knocked Tyson down, nearly finished him. In the seventh and eighth rounds the two fighters tired and stood there clinching each other and it looked like Tyson had recovered from the knockdown. Then in the ninth Holyfield came alive and began to beat down Tyson. By the tenth Tyson was in trouble. Holyfield landed five hard rights in a row and Tyson was saved by the bell. Would he win? COULD HE WIN??? I got so excited I felt like I might pass out. Round eleven began and I could barely breathe and just as the bell sounded the referee stopped the action to look over Tyson’s now swollen eye once again. He resumed the fight but Tyson looked tired, he looked beat. Holyfield began a series of punches that all landed. He was destroying Tyson and the referee let it go on for a while, but then, finally, he stopped the fight.

It was the greatest feeling you could ever have.

Tommy and I cheered. I was screaming like a maniac and we were jumping up and down hugging each other. We all kissed Diane, Jim Finer’s overweight girlfriend. Al Casey began crying
and got so broken up that he went to the bathroom to wash his face and never came back.

We waited a long time, until the crowd died and Jim Finer and his girlfriend left, to go to the sports book and collect the money. When I finally got up there, I was shaking and I could barely put the money in my wallet.

‘You get the money?’ Tommy asked nervously when I came back to the bar.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Put the wallet in your front pocket,’ he said, looking around. ‘Jesus, I can’t believe it. How much?’

‘$5,720.’

‘Holy fuck.’

‘It’s more money than I’ve ever had,’ I said.

‘It’s more money than I’ve ever seen.’

‘It barely fits in my wallet.’

‘We should get out of here, go somewhere safer. You never know what kind of crummy bastard’s been watching us.’

We left and walked down Second Street, both of us in good moods, drunk and finally, at least momentarily, successful. We went to the Sundowner and drank beer and whiskey, then to the El Cortez. We got a table in the back and I counted out money and gave Tommy the $2,000 he needed to pay back the old man he owed.

‘For once I was right. Wasn’t I?’

‘You were,’ I said.

‘Now I can pay off Junior, and now my uncle won’t find out. My whole life would have been ruined.’

‘You don’t have to worry about that now.’

‘What are you going to do tonight?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Probably stop by Jerry Lee’s then go home. I’m already drunk and I don’t want to get much worse with all this money on me. How about you?’

‘Probably finish up this round, maybe get another, and head home myself. I got to work tomorrow.’

‘We got lucky.’

‘I thought I was cursed.’

‘You ain’t cursed.’

The jukebox began playing and we each got another round, and watched a group of women at the bar. They were middle-aged tourists, dressed in jeans and sweat tops. They were laughing, smoking cigarettes, and drinking. After a while Tommy went up to one of them, and when he did, I finished my drink and left for the hospital.

The night was cold, and the sky was dark and brooding, and it seemed like it might snow again. I put on my hat and gloves and began the walk.

I stopped by the Eldorado and got him a pint of chocolate chip ice cream and two cookies. Then I walked the last bit to the hospital and made it to his room.

There were two old men in there with him. Jerry Lee was asleep. I whispered in his ear a couple times but he was out. I was gonna shake him awake so he could hear the news, but I didn’t. I just found the notepad and wrote:

Jerry Lee
,

We won! TKO by Holyfield, 10th round. We have $3,700. I’ll
pick up a car from Earl tomorrow, but will call to see what kind
you want. You know I like Cadillacs, but understand if you don’t. They do break down and suck up gas
.

Your brother
,