what she might tell me about this fake, he’ll never again be this vividly corrupt to me. And Art lied, too. At least he had a need.
I push back my chair and stand to leave, still watching Wall Street hang there like a possum. I used to think there was a code up there. Not true. Well, let them all feast on each other; I’ll be out soon. I’ll look up at their contrails and I won’t miss it. Ever. Though it might be nice if some of them missed me.
five
homestead Suites has three classes of rooms, their specifications the same from Maine to Texas. I like to stay in the mid-range L-shaped rooms. You could fill me with morphine and pluck out both my eyes and I’d still be able to dim the lights, place calls, and locate an outlet for my noise machine.
Not in Reno, though. This room is different. When I go to hang my jacket in the closet, feeling bloated and slow from too much beef and booze, I open the door on a shrunken, substandard bathroom lacking the usual double toilet-roll holder and equipped with a shower but no tub. Even worse, instead of a lamp beside the desk and twin swing-out sconces flanking the king bed, there’s a bare, fluorescent ceiling strip bright enough to interrogate a gang lord. And just one bar of soap: deodorant soap. Deodorant soap for the face! They’re kidding me.
I call downstairs from bed but no one answers. I’m not so much angry as out of sorts, confused. Even the mattress seems tilted and out of true, while the blanket is one of those foamy nylon jobs that offer a trace of warmth but no security. I consider stripping the curtains off their rods for added insulation, but I need them to block out Reno’s all-night glare. It’s a madhouse out there, and louder by the minute as America’s seniors seek out cheap prime rib and six-figure jackpots on the nickel slots. I turn on the air conditioner to “high fan” and tuck myself in like a bum under a newspaper.
At the end of the bed the TV screen pulses blue. Still hungry for punishment, I click around and manage to catch the last few minutes of Wall Street’s daily show. Though he must have taped it in Reno this afternoon, the set features a lit-up New York skyline. It’s the little deceptions that no one catches that are going to dissolve it all someday. We’ll look at clocks and we won’t believe the hands. They’ll forecast sun but we’ll pack our slickers anyway.
Feeling a need to halt the swirl, to stabilize, I dial Great West’s toll-free mileage hotline to check the running tally on my HandStar. I’m wading through the lengthy options menu when my mobile rings on the nightstand.
It’s my mother.
“Where am I reaching you, Ryan?”
She feels this matters. My mother has a developed sense of place; her mental map of the country is zoned and shaded according to her ideas about each region’s moral tenor and general demographics. If I’m in Arizona, she assumes that I’ve spent my day among pensioners and ranch hands and driven past the Grand Canyon at least once. If I’m in lowa, sensible, pleasant lowa, I’m eating well, thinking clearly, and making friends. Though my mother gets around in her RV and ought to be more sophisticated by now about our American psychedelic rainbow, her talent for turning new experiences into supporting evidence for her prejudices overrides all else. Once, while gassing up in Alabama, a state she considers brutal, poor, and racist, she got to talking with a black attorney driving a convertible Mercedes. The man paid for his gas with a hundred-dollar bill and was forced to accept, in change, a roll of quarters and stacks of ones and fives. Instead of noting the man’s prosperity, my mother seized on the pile of coins and bills—an act of humiliation, she decided, by the station’s white clerk.
“I’m in Portland,” I say. Nevada would worry her. “It’s awfully late. Is everything okay?”
If it’s not, she won’t tell me—not at first. The worse the news, the harder she’ll work to counter it with cheerful tidings from the Busy Bee Cafe.
“Did you hear about Burt’s medal?” The Lovely Man. “Our congressman finally cut through the red tape and it looks like the Navy sees things our way now. They might do a ceremony at Fort Snelling.”
“Great.” I cross to the mini-bar for a pick-me-up, set the down the receiver, grab a beer, twist off the cap, and get back on the line, confident that I haven’t missed a thing.
“It only took thirty years,” my mother is saying. “It all came down to the definition of ‘combat.’ ”
“How’s the wedding coming along? Excited?”
Throat clearing, nose blowing. I’ve hit on it.
“We spent all day stripping thorns off yellow roses. My hands are all scratched. I’ll need gloves for the reception. Julie’s gone missing. They’re cabbage roses—beautiful.”
It’s out, and she’d hang up now if she could. Now it’s my job to press her for details. So she can feel the pain all over again and I can fear I caused it.
“How long’s she been gone?”
“Ten, eleven hours.”
“Are she and Keith fighting?”
“No.”
“You have to talk, Mom. This isn’t a cross-examination. Talk.”
“Keith is here. Should I put Keith on?”
“Please.”
“What time are you getting here Friday? I need a flight number. There’s a special line that I can call to find out if you’re on time. I need that number, though. Our weather’s been crazy, hail and thunderstorms, so there might be delays.”
“I’ll find it. Give me Keith.”
My future brother-in-law’s Minnesota accent—the one so many comedians make fun of and which I don’t hear in myself, though others do—prevents me from judging his level of concern. “Ryan, I’ll get to the point here: she
