"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 theexact 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.
