daylight, everything looked faraway, out of reach. If people came here to lose themselves, did they ever come to find anything?
As traffic picked up, I closed my window and let its tint darken Vegas once more. I wondered then if peace was a thing that one achieved or that one could only be given.
Last time I took this road, I felt like I’d just escaped a burning house that I’d ignited in the night, that had singed my backside and sent me fleeing my own shadow. I didn’t understand it then, but I admitted it to myself now: I had wanted all along to kill Sonny. There was no logic or morality behind it. Just an overwhelming desire to do something to him, at least hurt him badly, and maybe then things would feel right again. Except they never did, because they never do, not for people like me. I was back on the highway, steering blind, hoping for a clear path beyond the horizon.
This had become my life since Suzy left: a constant fumbling toward peace that lies only and always in the distance.
4
W E TOOK THE HIGHWAY south of the Strip until the city turned into a succession of clay tile roofs and stuccoed strip malls lined with palm trees. It was typical suburbia, distinguished by a pervading newness as bright as the sunlight. You could almost smell the sawdust and drying paint.
We approached a large park. Softball fields and basketball courts. Picnic tables. More trees and shade than I’d seen anywhere in the city so far. By the entrance, crowning the treetops, a giant digital screen flashed the words S UNSET P ARK ! H APPY H OLIDAYS !
After some distance inside the park, we appeared to reach its end at a gravel lot that yawned into a vast desert of brush and dirt mounds. We parked. The brothers got me out. We were still deep in the suburbs, but this felt like the edge of the city, the point where it surrendered itself entirely to sand and dust and silent sunlight and people vanish by simply walking into the distance. A few lonely cars peppered the lot. My Chrysler was not among them. For the first time since leaving Oakland, I regretted ever getting out of that car.
But I only had to turn around to see life again: the tops of pine trees ahead and then, as we mounted a short grassy hill, the enormous pond that glistened beyond them.
It was like stumbling upon a man-made oasis, burnished gold in sunlight. The pond was around fifteen acres, its grassy banks dropping over a short brick wall that encircled the waters like the coping of a swimming pool. A few people sat at picnic tables bundled in their coats beneath shady pines, watching the ducks, the pigeons flapping about like seagulls, the toy boats buzz-sawing across the glimmering water.
As my two escorts scanned the area, I spotted the small island at the center of the pond, a mirage within a mirage, adorned with a giant Easter Island head that loomed out of a grove of palm trees.
The older brother pointed at someone in the distance. As they flanked me, we walked toward a chestnut tree with a large branch overhanging the water. Beneath the tree, wrapped in a dark coat, sat a hooded figure in one of two lawn chairs. He held a fishing rod in his lap, its line in the water. I wondered if Sonny was a man who ate the fish he caught or threw them back.
As we came closer, the figure turned his head, and I realized it wasn’t Sonny at all. Even under the hood, Junior’s angular, elegant face was easily recognizable. His expression did not change when he saw me. He just sucked at his cigarette and returned his attention to the pond. His father was nowhere in sight, and I couldn’t decide if that relieved or disappointed me.
With my two escorts hanging back, I approached the empty lawn chair beside him, stepping into the shadow of the chestnut tree.
“Please have a seat,” Junior said without turning to me. He was wearing a long black duffel coat and leather gloves, holdingthe fishing rod indifferently in one hand and smoking with the other. As stoic as a
As traffic picked up, I closed my window and let its tint darken Vegas once more. I wondered then if peace was a thing that one achieved or that one could only be given.
Last time I took this road, I felt like I’d just escaped a burning house that I’d ignited in the night, that had singed my backside and sent me fleeing my own shadow. I didn’t understand it then, but I admitted it to myself now: I had wanted all along to kill Sonny. There was no logic or morality behind it. Just an overwhelming desire to do something to him, at least hurt him badly, and maybe then things would feel right again. Except they never did, because they never do, not for people like me. I was back on the highway, steering blind, hoping for a clear path beyond the horizon.
This had become my life since Suzy left: a constant fumbling toward peace that lies only and always in the distance.
4
W E TOOK THE HIGHWAY south of the Strip until the city turned into a succession of clay tile roofs and stuccoed strip malls lined with palm trees. It was typical suburbia, distinguished by a pervading newness as bright as the sunlight. You could almost smell the sawdust and drying paint.
We approached a large park. Softball fields and basketball courts. Picnic tables. More trees and shade than I’d seen anywhere in the city so far. By the entrance, crowning the treetops, a giant digital screen flashed the words S UNSET P ARK ! H APPY H OLIDAYS !
After some distance inside the park, we appeared to reach its end at a gravel lot that yawned into a vast desert of brush and dirt mounds. We parked. The brothers got me out. We were still deep in the suburbs, but this felt like the edge of the city, the point where it surrendered itself entirely to sand and dust and silent sunlight and people vanish by simply walking into the distance. A few lonely cars peppered the lot. My Chrysler was not among them. For the first time since leaving Oakland, I regretted ever getting out of that car.
But I only had to turn around to see life again: the tops of pine trees ahead and then, as we mounted a short grassy hill, the enormous pond that glistened beyond them.
It was like stumbling upon a man-made oasis, burnished gold in sunlight. The pond was around fifteen acres, its grassy banks dropping over a short brick wall that encircled the waters like the coping of a swimming pool. A few people sat at picnic tables bundled in their coats beneath shady pines, watching the ducks, the pigeons flapping about like seagulls, the toy boats buzz-sawing across the glimmering water.
As my two escorts scanned the area, I spotted the small island at the center of the pond, a mirage within a mirage, adorned with a giant Easter Island head that loomed out of a grove of palm trees.
The older brother pointed at someone in the distance. As they flanked me, we walked toward a chestnut tree with a large branch overhanging the water. Beneath the tree, wrapped in a dark coat, sat a hooded figure in one of two lawn chairs. He held a fishing rod in his lap, its line in the water. I wondered if Sonny was a man who ate the fish he caught or threw them back.
As we came closer, the figure turned his head, and I realized it wasn’t Sonny at all. Even under the hood, Junior’s angular, elegant face was easily recognizable. His expression did not change when he saw me. He just sucked at his cigarette and returned his attention to the pond. His father was nowhere in sight, and I couldn’t decide if that relieved or disappointed me.
With my two escorts hanging back, I approached the empty lawn chair beside him, stepping into the shadow of the chestnut tree.
“Please have a seat,” Junior said without turning to me. He was wearing a long black duffel coat and leather gloves, holdingthe fishing rod indifferently in one hand and smoking with the other. As stoic as a
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