Free The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin Page B

out the window into the black, starless sky. Jerry Lee was moving around in his bed, I could hear him, and I knew he wasn’t asleep either. It was past midnight when finally I called to him and told him what Earl Hurley had said that day.
    ‘Makes sense to me,’ Jerry Lee announced when I had finished.
    ‘Me too, I guess,’ I said.
    ‘I like Earl Hurley.’
    ‘He’s a good guy,’ I said. ‘We ate ravioli and steaks for lunch. He drank four Long Island Iced Teas, and then I spent three hours watching him play roulette at the Cal Neva.’
    ‘What’s in those again?’ Jerry Lee asked.
    ‘Long Islands?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘I don’t know, but they’re strong. I took a drink off one of his while he was in the can, and it almost made me puke.’
    ‘I like ravioli,’ he said. ‘It’s probably in my top five favorite meals. Shit, I wished I worked for him and not for the Connelly brothers.’
    ‘It’s a pretty good job,’ I said.
    ‘Seems like it. Anyway,’ Jerry Lee said, ‘what’s your place gonna be like?’
    ‘I don’t know yet,’ I said, still unsure of what Earl was really talking about.
    ‘I’m making a place where the Connelly brothers have to work for me. And I’ll beat the shit out of them every couple weeks, and I’ll get it on with their wives. I’ll fuck both their wives at the same time, while they’re busting their ass for me, up to their hips in wet concrete. “Hurry up, you lazy son of a bitches,” I’ll yell. Then I’d bury my head in one of the bosses’ wives’ tits.’
    We both began laughing.
    ‘I don’t know where I’m going,’ I finally said, ‘but you’ll be there, and so will Mom.’
    ‘That’s a nice thought, Frank,’ Jerry Lee said. ‘If you come up with any good ones, let me know.’
    ‘I will,’ I said.
    ‘Now let’s go to bed,’ he said, ‘’cause, unlike you, I got to get up at five a.m. and get yelled at all day by the Connellys.’
    ‘Night,’ I said.
    ‘Night,’ he said and rolled over. I stared back out the window and tried to be still. In time I heard the slow rhythm of Jerry Lee’s breathing and I knew he was asleep. When I woke the next morning at seven he was already gone and his bed was made.

16
    WHEN VISITING HOURS ENDED I left the hospital and wandered around. I wasn’t tired, but I didn’t want to see anyone, and I didn’t want to go back to my room and sit there all alone. So I went downtown to the strip. The neon lights glowed in the cold, and I felt better just seeing them. Casinos always make me feel better, and I can’t really even explain why.’ Cause when you look at it, really look at it, mostly all they cause is misery.
    I walked around for a long time, down Virginia Street then along Second Street and Center Street. I went in and out of Harrahs and the Fitz and the Eldorado and the Cal Neva. When my feet began to get cold I finally went back to my room. A maintenance man had come in and fixed the broken window. They didn’t believe me about the bird and said I was going to have to pay for the window and the labor. I said I would, but I knew I couldn’t, that I had less than sixty dollars to my name, and itdidn’t seem like I could get a job with the way I was feeling.
    I turned the lights off and undressed as the small box heater glowed in the darkness. I turned my electric blanket on and got into my bed. From there I can stare out at Fourth Street. I can see if any people walk by, or just watch the cars passing in the night.
    It was then as I lay there watching the street below that a horrible feeling came down over me. I felt that the room was going to catch fire and that I’d die in flames and smoke. That I might have a heart attack. That I might die before I hit a good stretch in my life. That Jerry Lee would die. The uncertainty of everything. Spinning and spinning round. It went on like that, even when the electric blanket had kicked in. It was all horrible, the thoughts in my mind were, and I can’t