Headlock

by Adam Berlin

Genres: General Fiction; Action & Adventure

Synopsis

A powerful debut novel. --Booklist, starred review

"The crowded bar had made space an I could hear other people screaming byt no one came near me. It was a smaller circle than the one I had wrestled in but it was a circle and I went to work. I turned him around and pulled him to me, put a half nelson on him, forced his neck down. The circle opened up. There was a free space at the bar and I drove him forward, drove his face into the side of the bar. I moved my hand down his back and between his legs, picked him up and held him there, feeling his weight above my head, feeling the power in my muscles and I threw him to the floor. I wiped my shoe across the blood, lifted my foot and brought it down and brought it down, triumphant, foot on the back of a fallen opponent like a classical statue, like in the pictures my college wrestling coach showed the team at the beginning of each new season. White marble figures graceful in victory." --from Headlock

Release date: May 12, 2000

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 265

Sample

THE ONE IN FRONT of me was looking at me like I was the stupid one. He was the one walking through the bar, he was the one with the full drink, he was the one in my way and he hadn’t moved his shoulder just like he thought I hadn’t moved mine. I had moved mine. I had moved my shoulder into his shoulder to send the alcohol over the edge of the glass to make him stop walking and he’d stopped. He’d turned around. He looked at me like I was the stupid one but he was the stupid one. He didn’t know what I did best.

He told me to watch where I was going. I was watching. I had watched his head turn when I bumped him and I had watched his eyes focus on mine. I was watching his mouth talking, one of those losers who talked first. I had been talking to myself in the bathroom mirror but that was to myself. I had to do something. He was still holding the glass and some of the spilled alcohol made his hand wet and that was the hand I took. I held his wrist with my one hand, held his hand around the glass with my other hand and pressed his palm hard and harder into the glass until the glass broke. He screamed and I pressed harder until a triangle of glass came out the back of his hand. All his focus went to his hand and away from me. He couldn’t take his eyes off his hand that was squirting blood on the sleeve of his shirt. The crowded bar had made space and I could hear other people screaming but no one came near me. It was a smaller circle than the one I had wrestled in but it was a circle and I went to work. I turned him around and pulled him to me, put a half nelson on him, forced his neck down. The circle opened up. There was a free space at the bar and I drove him forward, drove his face into the side of the bar. I moved my hand down his back and between his legs, picked him up and held him there, feeling his weight above my head, feeling the power in my muscles and I threw him to the floor. His head bounced once and his body relaxed. The hand with the glass sticking out of it was leaking blood onto the floor. I wiped my shoe across the blood, lifted my foot and brought it down and brought it down, triumphant, foot on the back of a fallen opponent like a classical statue, like in the pictures my college wrestling coach showed the team at the beginning of each new season. White marble figures graceful in victory. I pictured my grandfather like that, standing over some long-ago Russian opponent, his mouth set firm like I remembered, like in the old photographs from a time when people posed without smiling. Strong and beautiful the way it was supposed to be on the mat when it was done right.

I ran out of the bar. I ran through the streets. My breath was heavy in my chest from all the drinking but I needed to run to get the other rush out of me and I ran past the meat-packing warehouses with the smell of dead blood and past the cut-rate garages closed for the night. I was at the West Side Highway and I ran across the highway with the headlights coming too fast and the feeling was almost out of me and I ran to the promenade that bordered the Hudson and I stopped running. I walked downtown along the river. The Statue of Liberty was in the distance, the torch lit up. A car slowed and I could feel eyes looking over my body but it was almost all out of me so I didn’t do anything. The car drove off and I kept walking and I walked until it was out of me.

I WAS A ROSE. A good name my dad told us when we were kids. Be proud of your name. Beautiful. Vibrant. Red. The color of love which Derek and I didn’t really care about. The color of bravery which we did. My grandfather had come up with my name. Odessa. After the Russian city. Dess for short. As we grew older, my dad told us other connections to Rose. A symbol of a dying Jesus, thorns cutting into his head, a wound at his side. Giving roses to Mary, the rosary, a penance for sins. Juliet’s line about a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. The thing about a name was that we couldn’t escape it. That’s what my dad told us, always trying to make us think, always trying to teach. He tried to make me look outside of myself, outside of my body, but finally he stopped trying.

I parked cars. Good cars. That was how I made money. The suit and ties drove up, grabbed briefcases, left keys in the ignition and I did my job, sliding into bucket seats like the cars belonged to me, driving forward looking for the end of the line. Squeezed Mercedes, Jaguars, BMWs, sometimes even a Rolls into the allotted room. Room was always a premium there, everywhere in the city. Even the guy with the Rolls didn’t have the space he wanted in Manhattan, I was pretty sure of that. I certainly didn’t. I lived in an illegal sublet in the Village with the background noise of Seventh Avenue traffic moving downtown. I parked cars for tips that kept me in rent, food and beers from the bodega. A buck a car or sometimes two. Around Christmas time they’d throw each of us a twenty or a fifty if they were feeling like good sports and for a fifty they expected us to be extra pleasant all year round. I’d been parking cars one full year round. Christmas was coming. The big tips hadn’t started but the commercials were already constant. I killed a lot of time watching TV. Going out. I killed a lot of time.

Two other guys were penned in, Magic Markered really, on the white board inside the booth where Mr. Caparello collected the money. There was Lou, about my age, slicked-back hair, gold chain around his neck, a real hustler. His dream was to make enough money to open his own garage. Not to park cars but to fix them. On weekends he did tune-ups and oil changes off the sidewalks of his Bay Ridge neighborhood where he lived with his mother, a view of the Verrazano and Staten Island beyond. I’d visited him one Saturday afternoon, drank bottles of Budweiser, ate veal scallopine, homemade cannolis for dessert, actually watched his mother point the cloth pouch into the pastry shells and squeeze the cream. Lou loved cars. He gunned engines as soon as the owners were out of sight, not to make look-at-me noise but to hear the power. He made tires squeal to feel their grip and tested brakes on the cement ramp going down. That was his way to make the day move. His mother stitched his name into his garage suit, LOU on the pocket in cursive.

“There’s a beauty,” he’d say when the rush slowed and one car came in at a time while we stood around outside, the minutes clicking off audibly on the punch clock. Lou liked fast cars best. Porsches. The occasional Lamborghini.

“I’ll take that one,” he’d say when a Corvette rolled in.

There was Berger, high man on the totem pole in age and years on the job. Red faced in the morning, every morning, hung over, the lines around his old eyes defined by drunken nights. He smoked Marlboros tucked between his thumb and middle finger when he wasn’t parking. The suit and ties didn’t want their cars getting stunk up. He cursed them all, stinking rich motherfucking bastards need to be separated from their money. He was a communist. He quoted from Marx whenever he could and Lou would laugh at his constant anger. Berger lost his index finger, all three fucking knuckles of it he’d say, in a machine shop pressing dominoes. Working workingman’s work while the boss got fat on profits, Berger would say. The suit and ties always thanked Berger when he took their cars, more than they ever thanked us, silently leaving their cars in our hands, just kids in their eyes, but Berger could have been their father, their fucking grandfather Berger would say. Berger never said a word back when they thanked him and he just stuck his hand out when he took their tips. He didn’t care what kind of car came in. He stood away from the punch clock so he didn’t have to hear the minute by minute clicking. As soon as the shift was over he changed out of his uniform. Underneath he wore a white button-down and a thin black tie. When the days were cold he added an overcoat and hat. After work he drank at a bar on Church Street. I’d seen him stumble out of there one night with his head down and his tie pointing off to the side. Weaving and talking. He came to work the next day and drove the cars straight, steering wheels poised between thumb and middle finger.

I wore my uniform to work and kept it on for the walk home. I’d cut the sleeves off practically at the shoulders to make me feel free. Work boots all year round. A grease smudge across my temple or forehead always there when I washed up in front of the broken mirror before lunch like it was part of the look. I went through the motions, parked cars, pocketed tips. I was living in the city. That was something. I worked from before rush hour to after rush hour when most cars were parked. I ate lunch at the diner every day to keep me going through the shift. The waitresses let me sleep in the back booth when it was slow and I had a few more minutes until my break was over. Then they’d touch my leg, whisper, Dess, Dess, wake up, Dess, and I’d go back to work.

I had stamina. It was a necessary part of wrestling. The most important part, my high school coach told us, the coach who had taught me how to wrestle, to perfect the moves that seemed to be in my blood. To build our stamina he had us run around the high school after practice, the whole team in a line, lightest to heaviest, the sound of sneakers on polished linoleum floors echoing off the lockers on each side of the corridor, the senior corridor blue lockers and the junior corridor green lockers and the sophomore corridor beige and back to the senior corridor, around and around, sweating off the excess weight, stripping us down to muscle, expanding our lungs until a breath could keep us going a long time.

After work at the garage it felt good to strip off my clothes and take a shower, scrub all the grease and the exhaust smoke off me. I felt I’d done a day’s work. If I didn’t have to think, it didn’t matter right then. The hot shower and clean smelling soap and the feel of my skin, squeaky clean when I rubbed the excess water off before I grabbed the towel, a trick my dad taught me and I guessed my grandfather taught him, it felt earned somehow. Like outdoor work. Raking our yard or shoveling the driveway as a kid. Painting the house every third summer. Like some indoor work, I assumed, since the suit and ties seemed a little high on Fridays when the work week was done and not just from a couple of beers with the guys. Like wrestling. The showers always felt good after practice, better after a match, best after a match I’d won and I’d won most matches. It was in my blood. The balance. The strength. The speed. The instinct to find weaknesses in another man’s body.

THE DAYS WENT BY, the Christmas commercials increased, the sky above the Hudson turned pink then gray then dark before the rush hour home began. I turned on the headlights at the end of the day before I got out of their cars, leaving two even beams like bright skid marks along the cement and out to the street where they dimmed against the curb. It didn’t change the amount I palmed, stuffed into my front pocket, money to be unraveled and separated into neat piles, singles and singles, sometimes a five, all turned in at the end of the shift for bigger, crisper bills. I folded those in two and walked the streets home, kept a free single for a beer at the bodega.

I stayed in shape running late at night through the streets, took Greenwich Street past the UPS warehouses down to the World Trade Center, around the courthouses, back across town on Houston. I did push-ups and sit-ups and bar-dips on park benches and pull-ups on the metal supports set up under construction sites. I didn’t wrestle. I didn’t practice the cradle, the switch, the high crotch, the classic half nelson. I’d lost my wrestling scholarship when I was a second semester senior. I still owed the university the last semester’s tuition. When I was kicked off the team my scholarship went with it. I was in no rush to pay the money back and threw the loan service’s envelopes away as soon as they came in the mail. Interest was accruing but not enough to think about.

My grandfather had been a wrestler. A real wrestler. For money and not the WWF bullshit on TV beating out Saturday morning cartoons in the ratings and no more believable. Stone Cold Steve Austin. Hulk Hogan. Macho Man Savage. The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase. Slam dunks. Sleeper holds. I doubted any of them knew what a real wrestling mat looked like.

My dad was not a wrestler. He was an economics professor. He believed a sound mind was more important than a sound body. Instead of the physical exercises my grandfather had forced him to do as a kid, I had to do math problems and compose essays. My mom taught Latin at the high school and she’d work my language skills and vocabulary. I had to keep my grades up if I wanted to wrestle. Mind over muscle. My parents wondered what I was doing with myself in New York and their voices on the phone were quizzical, listening for clues when I responded to their questions about how life was treating me. I said it was treating me fine. My dad gave me lectures about having to establish a future. He told me about wasting my potential parking cars. He asked if I planned to work in a garage the rest of my life. I made the mistake of bringing my uniform home to Massachusetts one visit and dropping it into the washing machine without doing the laundry myself. My mom washed it and folded it beautifully but the look she gave me when she handed over the uniform made the perfect creases practically cut my hands. My kid brother had graduated valedictorian and was making the dean’s list every semester at Harvard. Whenever we were home together he would run to the end of the driveway, open the garage door with a flourish and ask me if everything looked okay and I’d think about taking him down.

My grandfather took people down. He came to New York from Russia and while he was walking to work, a job where he stuffed mattresses with goose feathers, a man tried to pick-pocket him. A bright summer morning on one of his first days in America and my grandfather felt another man’s hand in his pocket. My grandfather could not call out for help. He didn’t know the language. So he grabbed the pickpocket’s hand while it was still in his pocket and walked the guy to the police station. Inside the precinct my grandfather pointed to the hand he held in his pocket and that was all the evidence the cops needed. My grandfather’s hands were mighty. This was the story I told about my grandfather when the discussion turned to histories, ancestors, bloodlines, which of course wasn’t often. I didn’t tell the other stories. How as a kid my dad had to stop my grandfather from stuffing their landlord down the incinerator, his ten-year-old frame clinging to my grandfather’s back. How my grandfather threw the local butcher through the butcher shop window because he didn’t help my grandmother when it was her turn. How my grandfather broke a man’s arm when he gave my grandfather the finger.

Growing up we would drive down to Florida in the summers to visit him. My grandfather would always be standing at the curb in front of his building keeping a parking space open for us and there was always a space. There was no way he could have known when we were going to arrive and there was no telling how long he’d been standing there, stopping other cars from pulling in. Even at eighty he could keep a space free. We’d get out of the car and I’d watch him hug my dad and my mom and then it was my turn. He’d kiss me on the cheek and I’d kiss him and his skin was soft from age and smelled sweet from the cologne he used and only his hands gave him away.

“I’LL TAKE THAT JAGUAR,” Lou said.

I watched the Jaguar pull in and the lights hit my eyes and I waited to give the guy a ticket. It was my turn. The Jaguar was yellow with a black roof, a sports car model and not one of the sedans. The shift was almost over. I was looking forward to my beer, my walk home, my shower. The automatic window went down and there he was. Cousin Gary. The smile just for me.

“Your folks said you were still working here,” he said.

“I am. What are you doing?”

“Taking a drive. When’s your break?”

I looked at the punch clock.

“I’m out in eighteen minutes.”

“Great.”

A new Lexus pulled up behind Gary. The guy stayed inside his car. They hardly ever got out until they reached that line where the garage wall began, thinking once the car was there it was safely in our hands. Berger was next and he dropped his cigarette butt to the ground, didn’t bother to crush it with his foot.

“You work all five days?” Gary said.

“Monday through Friday.”

The clock punched off another minute. The guy behind Gary hit the horn. Gary ducked his head back inside the car to look in the rearview mirror. It was easier for him that way than to lean out the window.

“Everyone’s in a rush,” he said. “Do I trust this place?”

“I don’t think this guy will let you back out.”

“You want to bet?”

“I’ll keep an eye on your car. I’ll park it in the best space in the house.”

The car horn went off again. I looked past the windshield and found the guy’s eyes.

“Forget it,” Gary said. “You dent this thing I’m telling your folks.”

Gary got out of the car. One leg, then another and then he stood. That’s when Berger took full notice and even Lou took time out from admiring the Jaguar’s sleek lines to check out Gary’s body. He was my height but he’d packed four hundred pounds onto his frame. His back was as wide as two men. That was the most impressive feature about him. He stepped away from the car door and waited for me to get in. Other parts of his body were also impressive. His giant thighs. His stomach stretched with red zebra marks that my brother and I would talk about after Gary visited when we were kids, the crazy cousin from Long Island always our favorite. His fat neck. His small hands that were quick for a big man. And his smile that could be so disarming it took the focus away from his body. Gary’s smile. Like he got a kick out of the whole world. I got into the Jaguar and drove it forward, nice and easy for my cousin’s benefit to show him that I could park a car like nobody’s business, which was a joke in the large scheme of things but it was my joke.

When I walked up the ramp Gary was talking and Lou was laughing. They were arguing about which was a better car for the city, a Jaguar or a Porsche. Gary was insisting a Jaguar since it was made in England and the English were experts on traffic congestion. He waited for Lou to ask him how come. He used to do that to my brother and me, direct us to wherever he wanted us to go. Lou said How come on cue. Gary explained it was because the Brit car manufacturers had stick shifts shoved so far up their assholes that they knew about congestion first hand. Gary asked if Lou had ever seen a relaxed Englishman and Lou said he didn’t know whether he’d seen any kind of Englishman. Lou started reciting statistics about horsepower and zero to sixty ac. . .