Vegas

by
Robert Dall

All at once I get the odd sensation that I have been living for this moment, sitting in the parking lot of Caesar's Palace at 6:00 a.m., listening to the roar of my idling '72 Imperial, watching the sun begin to fill the desert sky with streaks of red then gold, squeezing the last drags out of my Camel filter, belting down shots of Southern Comfort with Jolt Cola chasers and preparing to make my entrance. I feel immense pride in my country, my traveling companion, myself.

My traveling companion made my acquaintance some ten hours ago in the smoking section of a Denny's off I-40 in New Mexico. At the time, she was everything I needed to complete my journey: an attractive (if weathered) woman in distress, open to suggestion. Right now, however, she is annoying me, taking an occasional pull on the SoCo but turning down the Jolt despite my insistence that she participate fully. "All the sugar and twice the caffeine," I say, but she's got her own butt going and is looking past me, past the Vegas sunrise, back toward Albuquerque and, no doubt, her lousy husband whatsisname. She fiddles with the knobs on the tape deck, punches a couple of buttons, and up pops the Clash: "I'm so bored with the U.S.A.," Joe Strummer screams again and again. The third time around I reach over and hit the "off" button, growling "totally inappropriate, no sense of proportion, wrong aesthetic" and other words to this effect until she comes back around, looks at me with her big gray eyes, speaks for the first time in hours.

"You're fucking crazy," she says.

"Listen," I reply, "all that's crazy here is your musical selection. There's a time and place for everything, and this isn't the time and place for the Clash. You'll understand someday, if you don't now. Put on some Janis Joplin." I raise the SoCo to my lips as if receiving a sacrament.

"Janis Joplin, Janis Joplin. I still say you're--you haven't got any Janis Joplin."

"Aw, fuck." The booze and Jolt course through me, converging on my heart; I rip the keys out of the ignition and pound my fists against the steering column. "Well, we better move before something else fucks up," I blurt. "Let's go. Now."

"Look. I'm very tired and I just want to finish this cigarette and--"

"We don't have time to be tired!" I take what I intend to be a final swig of SoCo. "Come on," I say, squeezing my traveling companion's thigh. "If you think you feel good now, wait'll we walk in those doors." She shows no signs of movement, so I turn the squeeze into a claw hold and start to pull her leg over the shift.

"Fuck off," she yells, balling her hands into bony little fists and whacking away at my arm like Keith Moon badabambadabam badabadaBAMBAMBAM but I hold on, it's a matter of principle now, twisting and pinching at the flesh beneath the black denim. During the struggle, I lurch sideways into the dash, jamming the Clash tape back into the deck and getting Joe Strummer's voice snarling back into my head through all four speakers at once.

"Get this shit off," I growl. Twist, pinch, pull. "No more angry music."

"It was already in the deck." BadaBAMbadaBAM.

"Because it was appropriate to have it in the deck. Because I was angry when I put it in the deck. But these are happy times." I fling myself over the console to keep her from wrenching free; I land roughly, whacking my knees against the floorboard, clutching her left calf tight against my chest, perching my chin on the edge of the white vinyl seat and looking straight up into her crotch, thinking back to that rest area outside of Flagstaff. Happy times indeed.

"Lemme go, you crazy fuck." She begins to squeeze my neck between her knees, obviously unaware of what happy times these are.

"But, love cup." I am not fond of sweet talk but will use it when necessary, and the flow of oxygen to my brain is now in jeopardy. "Can't you see that I need you with me?" She squeezes a little tighter; an aurora forms before my eyes. "All right," I croak, "we'll play the Clash. Fuck all that America shit. Just stay with me till we're inside the--"

"Shut up, shut up." She begins to cry, just a few trickles at first then an out-and-out flood, rocking back and forth with great sobs. I take the opportunity to bull my way out of her vise hold, spring up from my crouching position, slam her shoulders back against the seat with my hands.

"What is it?" I ask. "Is it that I'm younger? That I'm from the East? That I vote Democratic? That my chaser of choice is not your chaser of choice? That I am not, as you are, married?" She does not answer, except to make a sound like the whine of a rusty faucet, but continues to shake and smiles at me weakly through stringy clumps of black hair. "Aw, hell," I sigh. This is how she got me in the first place: a smile and a sob story over coffee and a smoke back at the Denny's.

She was there to cool off after another fight with whatsisname. ("What made this one any different from the rest?" I asked; "He took his gun from the nighttable," she replied; "Aha," I said.) I was there because it was on the way here.

She worked in a telemarketing boiler room, shaking down total strangers in all four time zones for a less than decent wage. I worked here and there, doing this and that, for a good deal less.

She was worried about leaving her car unattended in the Denny's parking lot. I was not the least bit worried about leaving her car unattended in the Denny's parking lot.

She had the idea that it would be a short ride. I'd been on the road for two weeks and had lost my sense of what a long ride was.

She favors the missionary position. I also favor the missionary position. ("No mere coincidence, we were fated to happen," I said, back in those happy times at the rest area outside of Flagstaff; "What the fuck are you talking about?" she said; "Don't disturb me," I said.)

She dreams of confronting whatsisname, fleeing whatsisname, eviscerating whatsisname with a bread knife, obtaining a condo with soundproof walls and a pool, winning whatsisname back. I dream only of the moment to come, the moment I enter Caesar's Palace and banish all my dull workaday ghosts forever.

A little Janis would fit the moment like a shot of Southern Comfort, warming my body just below the skin. But there is no Janis to be had, and if I start to drink again I will likely stay there, curling up against the body in the passenger seat and humming the tune to "Me and Bobby McGee" for, I don't know, a day or two, certainly till the moment's gone. So I sing the one line that matters--"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose"--then slide off my traveling companion, who has finished crying for now, and pop open the door.

"It's time," I tell her.

"Maybe I don't want to go." Her face has taken on a hard look, one I didn't pick up in the muted light of the interstate at night.

"You don't seem to understand." I am trying to remain calm but the sun is banking higher and higher, bleaching the gold out of the morning sky, and soon the glitter of the Strip will be washed out entirely. "I have left an entire life, or the remnants of it, behind to begin a new one inside the doors of that casino, and whether you've thought about it or not you've done the same thing. You can't ask whether you want to go along at this point because there is no going back." I pull the pack of Camels out of my pocket, light two at once (not as hard as I thought), and hand one to her; she reaches out slowly and accepts it with trembling fingers.

"I'm pretty lucky at blackjack," she says, trying to smile.

"Fuck that!" I scream, not caring who might hear me across the expanse of blacktop. "This is my gig!" Sometimes you just have to set clear limits. It's best that she know this, if somehow she didn't. But it seems to take. She nods her head, a little slowly but clearly in the vertical or affirmative plane, takes a long drag on the cigarette, pushes herself out of the seat to stand listless but beautiful beside me.

I turn to face Caesar's and walk proudly, the SoCoJolt buzz just beginning to ebb, one hand on my cigarette and the other on my traveling companion's ass. We pass the millions of white lines in the outer lot, the acres of sensible mid-size sedans in the inner lot, the rows of Mercedes and BMWs in the VIP lot, the centurions at the portal, the hollow stares of those on their way out, step at last through the doors to the casino floor, into a blinding million-watt burst of pure incandescent light, and--

Now. It begins.

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