Chapter 10
The hotel room cost four hundred dollars a night and had a view of the Hollywood Hills that I hadn't looked at once.
I was on the floor in a split, laptop open on the carpet in front of me, watching a hockey game on a streaming site I'd had to pay twelve dollars to access.
The Rio Rancho Ristras were playing the Fort Worth Longhorns, broadcast on some local New Mexico channel with a viewership of maybe thirty people.
Thirty-one now.
I'd looked up their schedule before I left New Mexico and told myself it was idle curiosity. I'd found the streaming site Sunday night and bookmarked it and told myself that was idle too. Today was Thursday. The game was from Tuesday night. I'd missed it live and was catching up.
None of it was idle. I just couldn't stop.
The Ristras were losing badly, 4-1 in the second period, and Red had been on the ice for two of those goals against. He skated back to the bench, slammed through the gate, and put his head in his hands.
I switched legs and kept watching.
The photoshoot had been that morning, some athletic wear brand that wanted me for their spring campaign.
Four hours of holding poses while a photographer told me to look fierce but approachable.
My agent had tacked on a dinner meeting afterward for contract negotiations, and I'd smiled and said all the right things while my mind kept circling back to a parking lot in the desert and a voice saying "Robert. My name is Robert."
I hadn't planned to run. When Red said he'd see me Monday, I'd meant it when I agreed. But Saturday morning I'd woken up with the taste of him still in my mouth, and I'd known that if I went to that rink and saw him again, I wasn't going to be able to pretend it was nothing.
So I'd called my agent and said I could make the LA meetings after all.
On screen, Red was back on the ice. He was skating slower than usual, favoring his left side. The camera followed the puck instead of him, and I leaned closer, trying to track his movements in the background.
The Longhorns scored again. 5-1. Red was on the bench when it happened, but his jaw tightened as the puck hit the net.
Armijo said something to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Red looked up. The corner of his mouth lifted.
My fingers dug into the carpet. I made myself let go.
My phone buzzed.
I paused the stream. Two notifications. One from my father: Heard the shoot went well. Don't forget the dinner with Meridian Sports. These relationships matter. The other from Mom. She'd called three times in two minutes.
Which meant she'd done something stupid and needed me to fix it.
I answered on the fourth ring. "What's wrong?"
"Joe Lee." Her voice was thick and slurred. "Baby, I need your help."
I closed my eyes. There was a time when I would have corrected her, reminded her that I'd changed my name years ago. Now it was just: "Where are you?"
"Vegas. I'm in Vegas, and I just... I made a mistake, baby, I made a bad mistake..."
"How much?"
She was silent. Then: "Fifteen thousand."
"Fifteen thousand dollars."
Last year it had been eight thousand in Reno. The year before that, twelve thousand to a boyfriend who'd cleaned out her bank account. She was fifty-three years old, and she still believed the next bet would fix everything.
"Who do you owe it to?"
She didn't answer, and that was worse than the number.
"Mom. Who do you owe fifteen thousand dollars to?"
"His name is Vic. He's... Joey, he's not a nice man. He's really not a nice man, and I told him I could get it. I told him my son..."
"You told him about me?"
"I didn't say your name. I just said my son could help, and he said..." Her voice cracked. "He said I have until Sunday."
The frozen image on my laptop showed Red on the bench with his head bowed and Armijo's hand on his shoulder. I'd been sitting here watching another man touch him while she gambled away money she didn't have to men who would hurt her to collect.
I reached for something, and she called. She always called. I always answered.
"Where are you staying?"
"The Sandstone. Room 212. Joey, are you coming? Are you going to help me?"
I should say no. I should tell her to figure it out herself.
But I wouldn't. We both knew it.
"I'll be there tomorrow. Don't leave the room. Don't talk to anyone. Don't answer the door."
I booked a flight and started packing.
The Sandstone was the kind of motel that advertised hourly rates on a sign missing half its bulbs. The parking lot was cracked asphalt and cigarette butts, and the ice machine by the stairs had an OUT OF ORDER sign that looked older than I was.
Room 212 was on the second floor. The stairs smelled like mildew and piss.
She opened on the third knock, just a crack, the chain still on.
"Joe Lee." Her voice was a whisper. "Baby, you came."
"Let me in."
The chain rattled. The door swung open. And behind her, sitting on the edge of the unmade bed with a beer in his hand, was a man I'd never seen before.
He was maybe fifty, thick through the shoulders, with a gut that strained against his t-shirt. He looked at me the way men like him always looked at me, sizing me up and deciding I wasn't a threat.
"This the son?" He took a pull from his beer. "The figure skater?"
My mother's hand found my arm, her nails digging in through my jacket. "Joel, this is Danny. He's helping me with the Vic thing."
Danny. There was always a Danny. A Ray, a Mike, a Steve. Men who drank too much and hit too hard, and stayed too long.
"Danny," I said.
"That's right." He didn't get up. "Your mama's told me a lot about you. Says you're famous. Says you got money."
There was a bruise darkening on my mother’s cheek, and she wouldn't meet my eyes. "Who did that to your face?"
She touched her cheek. "It's nothing. I fell."
“Right into his fist,” I muttered.
“The fuck did you say to me, boy?” Danny found his feet.
"Joel." My mother's voice was thin. "Baby, let's just talk about Vic. Danny's got nothing to do with it."
"Danny's got everything to do with it." I kept my eyes on him. "How much of that fifteen thousand went to the tables and how much went up his nose?"
Danny clenched his fists. “Boy, you better watch your fuckin’ mouth.”
"Here's what's going to happen," I said, pulling my gloves out of my pocket. "You're going to pack your things and leave. You're not going to call her. You're not going to come back. And if I ever see your face again, I'm going to break it."
Danny laughed. "The figure skater's gonna break my face."
He stepped closer, reeking of stale beer.
“Last warning,” I said, and pulled my gloves on.
Danny swung first. They always did.
I stepped inside the arc of his fist and drove my elbow into his solar plexus.
The air left him in a grunt and he doubled over, which put his face at the right height for my knee.
Cartilage crunched. Blood sprayed across my jacket.
I noticed the pattern it made: a fine mist across the gray wool.
Dry cleaning or replacement? Probably a replacement.
I didn’t want to pay for the dry cleaning, and Danny didn’t look like the type who could afford to reimburse me.
He staggered back, hands going to his nose, and I followed him with two quick jabs to the ribs. He tried to grab me, and I ducked under his arm, planted my feet, and put everything I had into an uppercut that snapped his head back.
My mother was screaming somewhere behind me.
Danny hit the dresser and knocked the lamp off. Glass shattered. I grabbed a fistful of his hair and slammed his head into the edge of the dresser once, twice, and let him drop.
He went down hard and stayed down.
The whole thing had taken maybe fifteen seconds. My breathing was even. My hands weren't shaking.
Danny groaned. His hand twitched against the carpet.
I crouched next to him, close enough that he could see my face through the blood in his eyes.
"If you ever touch her again," I said, "I'll kill you."
Then I peeled off the gloves and dropped them in the trash can by the door. They were ruined anyway. I'd buy new ones before next time.
There was always a next time.
"Pack your things," I told my mother.
She was still crying, mascara running down her cheeks. She looked at Danny on the floor, then at me, and her mouth opened and closed without sound. Her eyes tracked from my face to my hands and back again, and she took a half-step toward Danny before she caught herself.
"Joel, I can't just leave him..."
"You can. You will." I picked up her purse and held it out to her. "Whatever you can carry in five minutes. The rest stays."
She took the purse and started gathering her things, stepping over Danny's legs like he was furniture.
I waited by the door. Danny's breathing was wet and labored behind me.
We drove to the Bellagio in silence. It was too expensive and too far from wherever Vic was. That was why I chose it.
The valet took my rental car without glancing at my mother's tear-streaked face or the blood on my jacket.
I paid for a week. The woman at the front desk smiled like people walked in off the street at nine p.m. and dropped two thousand dollars on a room without a reservation.
Maybe in Vegas they did.
"Here." I handed my mother the room key and an envelope with sixteen thousand in cash, enough to pay Vic off and live on without enough left over to waste at the blackjack table. "Pay Vic tomorrow. Then stay here until your flight home. I'll book it for you."
"Joey." She was crying again, quieter now. "Baby, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I keep doing this to you. I'm going to get help this time. I mean it. I'm going to find a program or a therapist..."
"Okay."
Her face crumpled. "You don't think I can change."
I sighed. "I think you're my mother," I said. "And I love you. And I'll be here the next time you call."
I got my own room three floors down. I didn't trust myself to drive.
The door clicked shut behind me, and I stood in the dark for a long time. The city glittered through the window, all that neon and noise, and none of it reached me.
I made it to the bathroom before it started.
The shaking came on slowly at first, a tremor in my hands that spread up my arms and into my chest. I braced myself against the sink and watched my knuckles go white against the porcelain.
When I looked into the mirror, my mother’s eyes stared back at me. I had her face, her charm, her weakness. Maybe not the exact same one, but my father was right. I was as weak as she was.
I hit the mirror with my palm, and then I hit it again, harder. The crack spread from the point of impact like a spiderweb. The heel of my hand split open on the edge, a shallow cut that bled immediately onto the white countertop.
Better. This was better. This was something I'd chosen.
I slid down the wall and sat on the cold tile with my back against the bathtub. Blood dripped from my hand onto the floor. Not much. Just enough to watch.
She was never going to change. I knew that. I'd known it since I was twelve years old and cleaning blood off the kitchen floor while she slept off whatever she'd taken. She was always going to call. I was always going to come.
Somewhere in New Mexico, there was a rink with my name on the schedule.
Red had looked at me like I was worth looking at. He'd raced me on the ice and brought me terrible coffee and told me his real name in a dark parking lot like it meant something.
By now he'd figured out I wasn't coming back. By now he'd stopped waiting.
I pressed my bleeding palm against my thigh and sat there until the shaking stopped. The tile was cold. The cut was starting to clot. Outside, Vegas kept glittering, indifferent to everything.
I'd text Natalia in the morning. Tell her to reschedule my ice time. Tell her I'd be back in a few days.
Whether I'd actually go back to that 5 a.m. slot was a different question. One I didn't have an answer for yet.
I got up and rinsed my hand and wrapped it in a washcloth from the rack. The crack in the mirror ran from corner to corner now, bisecting my face.
I stood at the window instead and watched the lights of the Strip pulse and flicker below, all that noise and motion and desperate wanting, and none of it had anything to do with me.