I went online a while back and was reading the names and ages of our soldiers who had died. It broke my heart, and I still cry when I think of it. I don't believe I will be able to watch Nightline tonight, although I have listened to Fox News every morning since this started, and every soldier that has lost their life is like a friend you will never see again. On the brighter side of life, I spoke with my son at 1 a.m. this morning and he was on standby for the day, so he was getting his laundry done and reading e-mail. His friend is a medic, and Joey says he had to treat a child that was hit by mortar when insurgents fired at them. I guess I didn't stay on the brighter side very long. I am starting to babble so I'll get back to work.
—E-mail from Cheryl Agrellas, proprietor of The Book Magician on Charleston Boulevard, mother of Joey Agrellas, 1st Calvary, 91st Engineer Brigade, US Army, Current assignment: Baghdad Airport, Iraq
My first week here, last October, when the weather and my life turned oh so cold, I sold a lot of personal possessions, partly for money, partly to purge the past. I liquidated my vast stacks of vinyl, mostly to the wonderful dudes at The Record Trader back on Pico in my beloved LA. But I brought my books to Vegas. I had three boxes in the trunk as I drove down Charleston Boulevard that frosty afternoon the day before Halloween. On the north side of the street, across the parking lot from the legendary Omelet House, bearing the address 2202 W. Charleston Boulevard, sat the Book Magician. Unassuming, humble, peaceful, mysterious. I stared through the front window and knew that I had found not just some spending money, but sanctuary.
A middle-aged, blond-haired lady greeted me with a graceful and skeptical smile. I told her the truth, 'cause that's all I have left. It didn't take long before I'd made my first indigenous friend. Her name is Cheryl Agrellas. She hails from a gorgeous, Northern California coastal community called Half Moon Bay, an hour south of San Francisco, where I spent a most delightful golf weekend 15 years ago. It's nice to have a connection to a certain place if you're being told a story about that place. Allows you to paint a more vivid mental picture. She bought a couple hundred dollars worth of my old books. Cheryl knows books. And she knows people. Because they are the ones who have made her quiet little shop an institution on this city's most vital east/west artery. They are the freaks who wander in to find escape in her once-owned volumes or seeking signs in the sentences to lead them back to themselves. Her store is an eclectic mix of "out there" and "in there" pulp, ranging from historical texts about war to poetry tomes about love—and virtually everything in between.
I began to visit the Book Magician. But more than that, I began to visit Cheryl. There was always music playing in the store, from Norah Jones to George Jones. Her love of music is authentic, right down her guiltiest of pleasures. "Kid Rock is my favorite," she confessed on more than one occasion. "I just think he's the coolest." Each time I dropped by to sift through her new piles of paperbacks, I'd learn a little bit more about the proprietor. One day in December, just before the holidays, she had a visitor, a handsome, crew-cut young man sporting a Slipknot T-shirt, tapping away on the computer. "This is my son, Joey," she said. "He loves rock 'n' roll. Tell him a story."I actually had a good Slipknot tale from a Nuremberg, Germany, music festival. I liked the kid. He had a strong presence for someone so young. I didn't know until later that day that on January 5, Cheryl's 19-year-old son was leaving this desert for another one on the other side of the globe. Joseph Gleason Agrellas was Army, and his first active tour of war duty was about to commence. Goodbye Vegas. Hello Baghdad.
Cheryl is Native-American, Cherokee nation. Her father was locally stationed Air Force. She moved here to develop a relationship with him in 1979, when she was 23, and never left. "I read constantly as a kid," she says as we have some Thai food on the tiny yellow table next to the War bookshelf. How fitting, I thought, as William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich stared down at me while I munched my lemon chicken and rice. "Nancy Drew, Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon, tons of fantasy. Tolkein," she smiles. She collects all things Tolkein. A model of Gandalf sits on the shelf behind the cash register. There is an aura of magic here, of comfort. You can almost feel the ghosts attached to the millions of pages, and sense the lives behind the eyes that read the words before they somehow got here. In this way, Cheryl's store is magical, but that wasn't the inspiration for the name. "I wanted to put out to people that we were magicians in that we could find any book they wanted," he says dryly. "But you're right. There are a lot of personalities in this place. I'm not a brand-new kind of person. I like used clothes, used furniture, used books. I just like things that somebody else has touched. And used men, of course [laughs]. That's my favorite."
There are a number of autographed Gregory Pressman photos of noted writers along the north wall of the store, like fantasy scribes Robert R. McCammon and Spawn creator Neil Gaiman.
"I met Joey's father here in Vegas, married him in '82, and Joey was born June 3, 1984. I started coming to this store when I was pregnant. They specialized in sci-fi and fantasy, my favorite. I introduced my mom to this store because she was a big Steven King collector. The original owner, Lou Donato, would find rare King for her all the time. I got a job here part-time, became the manager, went back to Community College, studied photography, got a divorce when my son was 2. My ex and his second wife are my best friends. In 1997, my mom finally bought the store for me. Joey was raised amongst these stacks, because he was always with me growing up and I was always here."
Joey Agrellas went to school in Summerlin. He attended Palo Verde High and got into computer games and heavy metal. But he never got in trouble. "Joey's a good kid," she says. "He never gave me one moment of trouble growing up. Not one. I didn't remarry; didn't have enough energy to focus on somebody else. I decided to stay single while raising my son." When Joey was 7, he found the war programs on the History Channel, Black Sabbath and his mom's cache of war books. "War Pigs," she grins. "I love that song. But I showed him alternative mind-sets. We used to go to this metaphysical church down on Decatur, I think it was. I wanted to expose him to various approaches to life and God but never pushed him in one direction or the other. I always let him find his own way."
Joey discovered his path in the wake of 9/11. He was in his junior year of high school. As he and his mother, like millions of other mothers and sons, watched the dark day unfold on TV, in real time, Joey came to a decision. He wanted to protect his country. "We started talking to military recruiters," she recalls. "We talked to the Marines first. I asked all the questions and told him to keep an open mind throughout the process. He wasn't interested in the Air Force, so the Army was next stop. He clicked with this Army recruiter ..."
We pause our conversation as one of Cheryl's regulars enters the store: a frail, curve-backed little man with smudged glasses and a disheveled appearance. "He comes here all the time," she says. "We think he's schizophrenic, probably homeless. I give him books. Last winter, he came in and his hands were frostbitten, just awful. We bought him a pair of gloves, bought him soup." He's brought in a Billy Graham book to trade in for a mystery novel. "We get a lot of freaks," she adds. "One guy spit on me, flicked a cigarette at my face and condemned me to death for naming our cat Merlin. This old guy's a sweetheart, when he's on his medication."
When did her son's military adventure begin, I asked. "He left on his father's birthday, July 30, 2002." She pauses and swallows. Her eyes start to glaze over. "God, that's hard on me. Sorry. I gotta work through that. When you only have one child, and you separate from that child, it tears you up, whether they're going off to marriage or the armed forces." I stop and swallow, thinking about my daughter back in Los Angeles. When Megan was here in March, I brought her by to meet Cheryl. They discussed their mutual hero, Tolkein. Joey's father, by the way, was born one day after me. Just some passing synchronicity.
"He was never a physical kid," she says of Joey. "So to get through [boot camp] was amazing. He has a very strong, disciplined mind. Came out top three in his class of expert shooters. My dad taught him to shoot a gun. He's had a lot of male influence in his life. "
In recent weeks, the news coming out of the Middle East has gotten progressively uglier. The death of former football star Patrick Tillman saturated the media. Ted Koppel spent last Friday evening reading the names of the 800 plus soldiers who've perished since America went after Saddam in March of last year (we started bombing on Cheryl's birthday, March 19). She doesn't sit and ruminate on whether her son is in harm's way from one day to the next. Joey calls home every couple of weeks. "He's a gunner for a lieutenant colonel based at Baghdad airport," she explains. "They go out on raids at night. They've shot at people, people have shot at them. But he doesn't talk about that really when he calls. He wants to talk about mundane things. He doesn't know anyone who's died, yet. Thank God. And he doesn't want to make the military his career. When his tour is done, he'll be back. He wants to be a Las Vegas cop."
Does Joey believe in God? I ask. "His girlfriend is Jewish," she says. "He's been learning Kabbalah from her. I like Kabbalah.To me, all faith is good faith. I'm a pagan, really. I believe in the Earth and its ability to remain in balance. Must be my Native-American heritage. No matter what we do to this planet, it will survive and stay in balance. Like Las Vegas. The spirit here will always balance the sin."
I'm packing my stuff, preparing to leave, and Cheryl sidles over to a freshly scored stack of used books she must now price for resale.
"Hey, look at this, Lonn," she laughs. "Talk about synchronicity." She holds up a copy of Unholy Babylon: The Secret History of Saddam's War. "This'll be gone in a day."