The Animals: A Novel (9 page)

They were already thick in the casinos, their lit facades towering over the car, all in flashing lights and colored signs. Harold’s on one side and the Silver Dollar on the other, between which hung the arched sign proclaiming Reno the Biggest Little City in the World. They had driven under that sign when they first came out from Battle Mountain for the concert, and it had seemed a magic archway into some other world. Now he had driven under it a thousand times on his way to and from work, driven this way even though there were certainly other paths he could have taken, paths with less traffic, but the sign and that strip of casinos along Virginia Street still seemed to hold some power over him, over them both, the rotating metal star above the four yellow octagons that held the letters R-E-N-O shining its way into some universe that he had not known or was even possible, their dreams always a kind of abstraction: a way out of Battle Mountain, a way out of the cupped sagebrush desert of their lives.

And it had actually worked out that way for a while. Even though they never had any money and struggled each month just to pay the rent, it still felt like some kind of grand adventure. And yet he also knew, had known almost from the start, that it could not be the actual destination. It was like visiting a theme park or being on some kind of semipermanent vacation where reality could be forgotten but only for a moment. Even encased in that small brightly lit world that was forgetting, he knew somehow that another life reverberated in the darkness beyond the blazing casino lights, a darkness brought flat black and featureless by the glare.

I don’t know, Nat said. His heart was still racing from Mike’s visit but his voice was steady now. At least he had that much. I was playing blackjack. And I was up, I mean way up. And then I just started losing.

He stopped talking then and in the gap of silence the cigarette lighter popped and Rick took it and lit the bent cigarette in his mouth and drew upon it, the tip glowing bright and fierce for a brief moment like an orange star. Then what?

Well, I saw Johnny Aguirre there and I thought, you know, that maybe I could get a few hundred to try to win back what I lost.

You dumb fuck.

Thanks a lot, Nat said.

What the fuck were you thinking?

I was thinking that I had to pay the rent and that I’d need to eat. That’s what I was thinking.

Christ.

Yeah, no shit.

So he gave you a thousand dollars?

No, he gave me three hundred. And I lost that but I made a couple of payments and so he loaned me three hundred more and then another five about a month later.

What the fuck, man? If I knew that I would’ve taken it easy last night. We probably blew through a hundred bucks.

It was your first night back.

You can’t spend money you don’t got, Rick said.

Seemed important.

It wasn’t.

Nat shrugged.

What are you gonna do?

I don’t know, Nat said. Hopefully I can get something together. I got two weeks. Maybe my boss will give me an advance on my paycheck or something.

His pulse continued to throb, a wild, galloping rhythm, and what flooded into him now was the abrupt and rushing desire to pull into a vacant parking spot and enter one of the big casinos that slid everywhere across the Datsun’s windows, a desire that was surprising only because it made him realize, in the same moment, that he had somehow stopped circling that desire for several days, that it had simply evaporated from him as the date for Rick’s release approached and finally arrived. But for nearly every day of Rick’s absence from his life—most of those thirteen months—he had found himself focusing all day upon the moment his shift at the dealership would end and he could enter one of those vast carpeted rooms with their jangling slot machine bells, the pervasive odor of sweat and ammonia overlaying everything like a freshly cleaned locker room, time slipping out from under him so that the only thing that mattered was the possibility of the next card or the next pull on the slot machine’s handle and the weird feeling that he was somehow in control flowing through him from everywhere at once. He knew that it was absurd to want to gamble right after Mike’s visit but he could not shake that desire, optimism and despair riding upon him in equal measure like some dark skeleton the bones of which overlapped his own.

LANDRUM’S WAS
not much bigger than the living room of the apartment they now shared, a prefabricated rectangle like a curved art deco boxcar, with room for eight stools along its counter. The cook and server was an older woman with orange hair whose face was perpetually caked with makeup, a ring of bright red smearing her sour wrinkled lips. She peered at them owlishly as they entered. It was rare to find any open stools but there were two open at the counter now and they slid onto them and ordered and the orange-haired woman turned away from them to resume cooking. Around them a few bleary-eyed locals sat eating and smoking and drinking sodas. Nat and Rick had sometimes come to the tiny restaurant at two or three in the morning to find it packed, a small crowd of nighthawks lingering outside with their winking cigarettes, high on cocaine and pot and beer, their eyes alternately blazing and sunken in, depending on which side of the evening they were riding. Once, when Rick was in prison, Nat had driven by during a break from work and had seen Susan standing out front, her arm around some man Nat did not recognize, the man’s hand on her ass. He had thought about that for a long time, had even thought of asking her about it but never had.

Rick hardly stopped talking as they waited for the food. He asked Nat what movies he had seen and then told him a story from prison, the story of an inmate named Tiny who had seen a movie where Paul Newman had eaten fifty hard-boiled eggs. It had become the talk of the prison—although Rick could not recall the name of the actual film—and eventually someone had convinced the warden to allow a hard-boiled-egg-eating competition in the cafeteria. Tiny had boasted that he could beat Newman’s record, if it even was a record, but only reached three dozen eggs before entering into a bout of vomiting so severe that he had to be admitted to the prison hospital.

He didn’t come out of that for like a week, Rick said, clapping his hands and rocking back on his stool with laughter.

Man, that’s awful, Nat said. They had received their omelets midway through the story and Nat sat chewing a forkful, smiling.

His belly looked like an egg, Rick said, holding his arms out in front of him to demonstrate. I thought he was gonna blow up. Like that guy in that Monty Python movie.

Nat was laughing hard now and it was into this laughter than the man’s voice came: a sharp, gruff sound.

You just get out?

They did not at first register that the voice was directed at them, or rather at Rick, but after a moment Nat looked down the counter to where a thin figure sat with a hamburger clenched in one fist, a man distinguished by the tattoos that swung in a tangle of black lines and blurred colors around his wiry arms.

Their laughter died out.

You mean me? Rick said.

Yep.

Yeah, I got out yesterday.

Congratulations.

Thanks, Rick said. He was still smiling.

What level?

Medium.

Lucky you.

Yeah I guess so, Rick said.

You guess so? the man said. He had not looked in their direction. Word of advice. Don’t tell prison stories while people are trying to eat.

Rick chuckled a moment and then sat staring at him. Why’s that? he said at last.

Medium was a walk in the fucking park, I guess?

Come on, buddy. I didn’t mean nothin’. Just telling my friend a story.

A cage is a cage, he said. Nothing to laugh about.

It’s just a story.

Just a story? What do you weigh? One fifty?

Something like that.

Something like that. Yeah. You know what that says to me? Says you were someone’s bitch in there. Medium or not. That’s what it says. Bitch in a cage.

Hey, look … , Nat said, but Rick was already off his stool.

You calling me a bitch? Is that what I heard?

The orange-haired woman was saying something from behind the counter now, calling to Rick first and then to the thin man, who still did not look up from his plate. Nat did not move from his seat, did not even set down his fork, instead seemed frozen there, watching them, the man’s burger descending so slowly that it seemed to float at the nether end of an arm that appeared to be constructed entirely of coiled brown rope and smeared tattoos. On his forearm, Nat could read the word
Woods
. Just don’t be making it seem like it’s fun and games, he said.

Don’t call me a fucking bitch, Rick said.

It’s a cage, the man said.

And again: Don’t call me a bitch.

A beat of silence. The man still did not turn, although the hamburger rested upon his plate now.

Then Rick said, Fuck you.

And now, at last, the man turned to look at him, to look at them both, his eyes drooping in his tight skull like the eyes of a hound, the skin around them like gray leather. You know what I think? the man said. I think you go eat your omelet and shut the fuck up before you get hurt. That’s what I think.

Let’s go, Nat said quietly.

Rick stood with his hands clenched at his sides. The room around them seemed frozen, the other few diners waiting for whatever was to come.

Let’s go, Nat said again.

Rick shifted his weight slightly and took a first tentative step backward. Then another. Asshole, he said.

Watch out, little boy, the thin man said. He had returned to his hamburger now and sat chewing.

Rick stood for a moment longer and then turned and disappeared out the door. The entire exchange had not even taken a minute. Nat fumbled with his wallet and laid a few bills on the counter.

Your boy needs to be more careful, the man said, and when Nat did not respond he said, You hear me?

I hear you, Nat said then.

Your boy needs to be more careful.

No one was talking to you, Nat said, his voice quiet, as if even in saying it he hoped it would not be heard.

Do I need to teach you a goddamn lesson too? the man said.

Nat looked up at him but the man only stared down at his dinner plate, the hamburger held in his hand above a plate ringed by fries and spattered condiments.

We’re leaving, Nat said.

I thought so, the man said.

Outside it had gone full dark, the sky a black slate without depth or dimension, the streetlight in front of Landrum’s pooling a brief lit circle upon the sidewalk. Rick was already a few dozen yards away, moving up South Virginia Street toward the car and the long hopscotch of bars they had run too many times to count. Grady’s. The 715 Club. Del Mar Station. The Zephyr. And Rick’s favorite: the Grand Ballroom.

He jogged up the sidewalk to Rick, saying nothing, only walking next to him along the street in silence.

That guy was bullshit, Rick said at last.

For sure, Nat said.

I should go back there and kick his ass.

Well, maybe, Nat said. Don’t forget you’re on parole.

Fuck.

Plus, you probably wouldn’t be able to eat there anymore if you started a fight.

I didn’t start a fight, Rick said. That motherfucker started a fight. His pace was furious up the slow rise, moving past a dark yard beyond which a house sat with a faint yellow light burning in the window. A small dog yapped at them from somewhere within.

For no reason he could think of, Nat remembered the nature documentary he had seen on Channel 5 that afternoon. Even now there was a place where lions and water buffalo and white birds circled a muddy watering hole in the center of a vast undifferentiated plain. The animals eyed each other warily, the birds fluttering between the backs of the buffalo and the branches of a scraggly olive green tree that provided a few bars of shade under which the lions sat, watching the water, watching the buffalos, watching the birds.

I’ve got that pipe in the car, Rick said. You got anything in the trunk?

Like what?

I don’t know. A fucking tire iron or something?

Really?

Yeah really. We already let some guy steal our fucking Atari, Rick said. I’m not gonna pussy out again. Not twice in one day. He was silent for a moment. They had reached the car and stood now beside it on the dark sidewalk. You got anything in the trunk or what? Rick said.

I think I got that old baseball bat in there still.

Well? Rick said.

Well what?

Unlock the car.

Nat did so and leaned through and unlocked the passenger door and Rick pulled the short length of steel pipe from the floorboards.

You’re really gonna do this? Nat said.

Yeah, goddammit. He held the pipe in his fist and swung it from side to side. You in or not?

Nat stood looking at Rick and then looking down at the mote of light below. OK, he said at last.

That’s what I’m talking about, Rick said. Just to put some scare into him. No one fucking talks to me like that. Not anymore.

Nat unlocked the trunk and indeed the baseball bat was there. Part of him had hoped the trunk would be empty, but the bat had been there since long before they even came to Reno, an innocent implement now made sinister, as if he had somehow stepped into someone else’s story.