Avey stirred at my side, I rose to the surface, I knew where I was, on solid ground at last.
“Open up, you fools,” Basil shouted.
I went to the door in a blanket. Lucille had a cocktail, a bourbon and coke on a pile of ice, and was smiling like a little girl.
“What have we here?” Basil said.
“Some hanky panky no doubt,” Lucille said.
“We got married,” Avey said.
“That’s just about the most stupidest thing I ever heard,” Basil said.
“This calls for a celebration!” Lucille said.
“We don’t want a celebration,” Avey said, and hid beneath the sheets.
“But it’s New Year’s Eve,” Basil said.
“And it’s still my party,” Lucille said. “Besides, that’s what Dinky would’ve wanted.”
Basil flipped the lights. “Get on uppa!” he sang, doing his best James Brown.
“Basil won 600 bucks at the table,” Lucille said.
“What about the Cruiser?” Avey said.
“It’s totaled,” Lucille said.
“We’ll rent a car tomorrow,” Basil said.
“We’re going to tear this place up,” Lucille said, and emptied a bag on the bureau, bourbon and cokes and magazines and smokes and beer. “It took us a while to get things right,” she said, “but now we’re back on track.” She spun round to Basil. “Turn on some music, squeeze.”
“Ah baby, for Pete’s sake, when’re you going to stop that?”
“Squeeze got a boom box,” Lucille said.
“Magnavox,” Basil said. “A hundred and sixty-nine bones at K-Mart.” He flipped a switch and out came “Let Me Drown.” “So you really did it?” he said. Avey held up her hand. “What’s that?”
“My wedding ring of course.”
“You got a problem with it?” I said.
“It’s from a box of Cracker Jacks.”
“Gumball machine,” I said. “Twenty-five cents.”
“When are you going to pop the question to me, honey-buns?” said Lucille.
“See what you went and did?” Basil said.
“You know Chris Rock,” Avey said.
“Do I know Chris Rock,” Basil said. “Of course I know Chris Rock. I know everything.”
“Then you’ve heard his routine about the old man in the club.”
“I haven’t,” Lucille said.
“‘You don’t get married,’ he says, ‘pretty soon you’ll find yourself a single man, too old for the club. Not really old, just a little bit too old to be in the club.’”
“He’s already too old to be in the club,” I said.
“Fix yourself a drink,” Basil said. “For some crazy reason, I’m in a decent mood.”
We took turns in the shower, slamming cocktails as we went. None of what had happened had happened at all, it seemed. No one mentioned Dinky. Everyone was happy. It was like we were truly friends.
As for the rest of the world, it too may as well have forgotten the storm with all its havoc. Up on the strip, from state line to Caesar’s, the 50 was jammed with boobs galore.
Oily women with giant hair and turquoise jewels squealed at their men. His hand trembling with uncertainty or hope, a one-legged man spooned sugar on a napkin. When a cocktail girl with tits so big they had to’ve cost ten grand apiece asked the man his pleasure, he stuck a fifty in her cleavage and said, “Hows about twenty with you?” Blackjack dealers dealt their cards and waited for deliverance. A bald man flung his toupee at a man with too much hair while a tubby guy in spandex on a circular stage crooned “Tiny Bubbles” so well Don Ho would’ve liked to see him dead. Everywhere we went, obscenity and artifice swam in the general eye. Voices sang out, grunts were heard, the smell of money and booze and costly steaks oozed from every door.
Basil paid a bag lady dripping with mud five crazy dollars for a photo of our bunch. Super appeared and disappeared, we could never say why or how. A woman at least three hundred pounds hit the jackpot on a dollar machine, then burst into a fit of laughter. When her money spilled from the pan, she dropped to the floor and rolled among the coins. The night raged on. Hostesses in corsets handed drinks to any who asked, the world was overjoyed. I clung to Avey and she to me, we were hugging and kissing and laughing and shouting and tripping and stumbling and shouting. And then we heard a drunk cry out midnight was on its way.
We found ourselves in the street, on the state line outside Harrah’s. All around people had joined hands and begun to rally in a single line, twisting and turning as the countdown neared. I tried to keep up but tripped in the gutter, a strange hand before me, and five behind it. I hadn’t yet reached my feet when, dimly at first, a voice rolled through the crowd. Only after it had swelled to a roar did I know it was the voice of the crowd itself, a unified chant, counting down from ten.
I stood up. Faces had turned to the sky. When the roar descended to the number zero, rockets went sighing to the heavens and exploded all around. That was it, then, midnight, no longer New Year’s Eve, not yet New Year’s Day. Everyone was kissing everyone, you couldn’t have stopped them if you tried. A thousand laughing faces, every single face, had melded into one. We spun in circles, Avey and I, round and round, until the dizziness took us, and we fell into the crowd. Goddamn, it was a celebration.
GRATITUDE
I have so many people in my life who’ve done so much for me in so many ways, I hardly know where to begin to thank you all. If you’re not here, but know you should be, I hope you won’t be too hard: it’s my oversight entirely.
Jeanine, Jeanine, Jeanine, without whom this book wouldn’t be.
Bharati, who supported me when I didn’t deserve support and gave me the best advice a writer could have, what kept me going all those times I wanted to stop: I’ve never forgotten, Bharati, I am so grateful.
Clark, man of wisdom and grace.
Hillary, who knows why.
Tony, through thick and thin.
Andy, who’s always had my back.
James, absurd hustler, artiste supreme, bad motherfucker, my man.
Eric, who saw what no one else had seen, then walked his talk the way we’ve all come to appreciate (and expect).
Eliza, powerhouse extraordinaire.
And, in no special order, for reasons big and small (you all know why, too):
Augustus Rose, Nami Mun, Jennifer Deitz, Nick Petrulakis, Bridget Hoida, Jenn Stroud Rossman, John Beckman, Snorri Sturluson, Sean Madigan Hoen, Neil Wiltshire, Brendan Burke, Stephen Stralka, Jack Hicks, Brett Beutel, Butch O’Brien, TT O’Brien, Janis Finwall, Todd O’Brien, Christopher O’Brien, Tim O’Brien, Mary DeMartinis, Lauren O’Brien, Christian Kiefer, Xander Cameron, David Gutowski, Gabrielle Gantz, Jason Diamond, Karolina Waclawiak, Jeff Jackson, Joshua Mohr, Anne-Marie Kinney, Grace Krilanovich, Barbara Browning, Don DeLillo, Emily Gould, Matthew Specktor, Gabino Iglesias, Luke Goebel, Richard Nash, Terese Svoboda, Adam Wilson, Jocelyn Tobias, Samuel Sattin, Mike Young, Cari Luna, Robbie Egan, Mark Cugini, Gregory Henry, Adam Robinson, Benjamin Dreyer, Scott McClanahan, Laura van den Berg, Halimah Marcus, Deborah Hay, Hilary Clark, Eric Palmerlee, Andrea Johnston, Molly Poerstel, Ros Warby, Sher Doriff, Luke Degnan, Oona Patrick, Stephen Corey, Mindy Wilson, Germán Sierra, Cal Morgan, Kyle Minor, Stephen Dunn, Brian Bouldrey, Nicole Elizabeth, Lauren Cerand, Molly Gaudry, Renee Zuckerbrot, Chris Parris-Lamb, Andrea Coates, Michael J Seidlinger, Oren Moverman, Brian Bennett, Victor Giganti, Eddie Evanisko, Michele Durning, Douglas Durning, Carole Doughty, Joseph Fuqua, Ben Austin, Anneke Hansen, Daniel Scott, David Duhr, Deborah Lohse, Eddy Rathke, Erika Anderson, Penina Roth, Graham Storey, Major West, Leslie O’Neill, Gregg Holtgrewe, Julian Barnett, Daniel Sullivan, Julie Mayo, Melissa Maino, Ron Tanner, Ryan Johnston, Jason Ross, Sean H. Doyle, Susie DeFord, Tamara Ober, Virginia Konchan, Will Jones, Michael Harris, Scott Cheshire, Alice Peck, Jason Russo, Virginia Hatt, Kashana Cauley, Christine Onorati, Emily Pullen, Jenn Northington, Mark Snyder, WORD Books, Monica Westin, Aaron Garson, Caitlin Elizabeth Harper, Elvis Alves, Donald Ray Pollock, Joseph Salvatore, Jean-Pierre Karwacki, Deb Cameron, Adam Pieroni, Jennifer Pieroni, Minna Proctor, Renée Ashley, David Daniel, Jeff Johnson, Jen Loy, Kaya Oakes, Jennifer McCulloch, Kymba Bartley, Boris Hauf, Litó Walkey, Martin Nachbar, Zoë Knights, Austin Wilson, Brooks Sterritt, Julia Fierro…