Leaving Las Vegas (17 page)

“Hello. You shouldn’t stand out on the street like that. You might get hit,” says Sera.

“Are you working?” he asks.

“Working? What do you mean working? I’m walking,” she says.

As if to demonstrate walking she takes a few steps and pauses on the passenger side of the car. They look at each other across the roof. Ben is quite taken with this girl, with her dark beauty, and so remains silent rather than say the wrong thing. Far from the mechanical process of picking up a prostitute, to him this is more like asking for a date. He looks around. If he waits too long she will be suspicious and leave. If he is anything but direct she will
think he’s a cop. He reaches into the car and grabs the can of beer that he was drinking before he stopped. After draining it quickly, he tosses it back into the car.

“Isn’t it illegal to drink and drive?” she says.

“That’s funny,” he says. “I wonder if you’ll take two hundred and fifty dollars to fuck me? That is, if you’ll come to my room for an hour I’ll give you two hundred and fifty dollars.”

He bites his lip and waits for her response. His never-steady nerves are not helped by the modified moderation that he attempted this evening in anticipation of driving. Less than a mile away, his roomful of liquor beckons.

“You’re pretty drunk,” she says.

Seeing that she will go with him, he relaxes a little and says, “Not really. My room’s not far—the Whole Year Inn—-you can drive if you want, or we can walk, or I’ll give you cab fare, whatever you want. I’m in room number two.”

“Why don’t you give me the money when we get in the car, and I’ll drive with you,” she says, her hand now on the door handle. She falls easily into the groove of another trick, another simple hour of doing what she’s told and getting some more bread for Al. It allays her anxiety, this procedure; it has too quickly become her only sure way to draw approval from him, the cheese at the center of her rat’s maze.

Ben gets behind the wheel and reaches over to unlock the passenger door.

“I’m Ben,” he says as he hands her the money, freshly extracted from his left front pocket.

“Hi. I’m Sera.” And as if momentarily beheld by a doppelganger, she hears herself say, “That’s with an E, S-E-R-A, Sera.”

They shake hands then smile together at this. Though her smile seems to be in reaction to his, she is pleased to have
impulsively identified herself to him in a way that was slightly beyond the call of duty. It felt clean, like the first totally self-motivated thing she has done in days.

Ben pulls back out into traffic for the short drive ahead. Instantly there is between them, however slight, that elusive chemistry which occurs only occasionally when two people meet. Always a welcome surprise, it is a sort of quick familiarity, implied permission to conduct relations at a level which is a bit deeper than the superficiality of introduction. Ben senses this and is beaming. But realistically he knows that his alcohol riddled brain may be overstating the case and that an hour from now he will never see this girl again. Though she is much friendlier than other hookers he has met and seems to like him, she is with him because he gave her two hundred and fifty dollars. She would probably be here whether she liked him or not, regardless of how much liquor per day he may be consuming, irrespective of any need she might perceive in him. And then it hits him. He adores this girl because she has a valid reason for liking him: two hundred and fifty dollars.

“I’m sort of curious,” she says as they near the motel. “If you’re willing to pay me two fifty—not that I mind… I mean, I’m okay with that—why aren’t you staying at a real hotel? I have the feeling that you can afford it.”

“We can go to one if you like,” he says quickly, worried over her disapproval.

“No, this is fine. I was just wondering,” she says.

He pulls into the parking space in front of his room, tires spanning the white spray painted
2
on the blacktop. “Well,” he says, turning to her, “I’m here because I’m a drunk who tends to pass out at odd hours for unpredictable stretches. They’re willing to leave me alone here as long as I pay for the room by the week, in advance. But it is sort of dreary. I’ll probably move to a hotel
soon, a room with a balcony for me to pass out on… or off.”

Turning off the car he falls silent but makes no motion to open the door. Sera waits for something to happen. Common wisdom would indicate that she should be a little apprehensive but her instincts tell her differently; this person wishes her no harm. Too, she hasn’t felt inclined toward apprehension lately. She has quickly faded into an observational fatalism—or is it bland apathy? She doesn’t really care. She knows only that Al has certain expectations of her.

“Umm,” she starts, trying to break the silence gently, “we can stay here in the car for an hour if you want, but I really have to go then. It’s your time.”

“Right,” he says. “Sorry. I tend to fade in and out lately.” Finding this quirk genuinely amusing, he smiles. “I’ll get your door.”

“I guess I do too,” she says, almost to herself.

“You what?” He didn’t quite hear her, but he wants to encourage even this, assuming it to be her patter.

“I sometimes fade out.” A little embarrassed, irritated at the repetition, she would have denied having spoken at all but failed to think quickly enough.

He is caught off guard, surprised by her candor. “Oh… well, maybe we’d better synchronize our spells… or stagger them,” and he half grins, half frowns, ready to support her reaction to his quip.

“You were going to get my door.”

He rises out of the car and crosses over to her side, pleasantly surprised to see that she is indeed waiting for him to open her door. His arm offered and accepted, they leave the car and proceed to the room. The orange Day-Glo door opens with a tiny click, and Ben pats the wall immediately to his right, searching for the light. The switch is flicked and the room springs to life,
telling its story to Sera.

“What this place needs,” she says sarcastically, looking here and there at all the stashed bottles, “is a few more bottles of booze stashed here and there.”

“Probably,” he says.

Standing five foot four to his six feet, and at arm’s length, she looks up at him and says with a tentative frown, “Why don’t you undress. Mind if I use the bathroom?”

“Of course. Want a drink? I’m having one.”

“A shot of tequila, if you can spare it, and a beer,” she says, her tone laced with undirected defiance, and closes the bathroom door.

Ben feels like a teenager on his first date. A shot, a beer, and sarcasm to boot: this girl may be perfect. After preparing her shot in a plastic motel cup and putting it, with a can of beer, on the nightstand, he impulsively downs as much bourbon as he can in one continuous swill—about six ounces—and puts the bottle down so that he can pick it up as if for the first time when she walks back into the room. The reflexive old habit surprises him, for he has not felt the need of this sort of sly drinking behavior since his wife left him. Hearing that the water is still running in the bathroom, rather than being watched in the awkward act of pulling off his pants, and in line with her suggestion, he quickly undresses and slides between the sheets.

Sera emerges from the bathroom wearing nothing except one of the Whole Year Inn towels wrapped around herself. But upon seeing that Ben is already undressed and in the bed, she nonchalantly discards the towel and walks naked to the nightstand where her drink is. Draining the cup with one swallow she sits on the bed next to him and pulls the sheet from over him.

She tells him prosaically, “For two fifty we can do pretty much anything you want. You’ve been drinking, so it might be better if I got on top, but the other way’s fine too. I have some jelly in case
you want to fuck my ass… that’s up to you. If you want to come on my face that’s okay too, just try to keep it out of my hair and eyes.” She thinks about asking him not to hit her, but decides that he’s not the kind that would anyway. In any case, he wears no rings, and it is doubtful that her cut would open from just a slap. “It stings my eyes, and I just washed my hair. I’ll suck you for a while… to get started.”

Before he can speak, he is in her mouth. Though he is hard, he knows he won’t come: the experienced alcoholic whoremonger. Thinking that she will be more comfortable having done something, he lets her go on for a few minutes, but he wants a drink more than he wants a blowjob. He sits up, putting a hand on her shoulder as he does, and so indicates that he would like her to stop.

“Do you want to fuck now?” she asks.

“Maybe another drink first. More tequila?”

“Okay,” she says. Then with piqued confusion, “Whatever. What’s the story? Are you too drunk to come?”

Ben, just now refueled by the recently consumed bourbon, responds to her challenge. There is just enough liquor in his voice now to mask the tones of adolescent puppy love.

“I don’t care about that,” he says. “Just stay with me for a while. There’s time left. You can have more money. You can drink all you want. You can even have my car; I’m selling it in the morning anyway. You can talk or listen. Just stay. That’s what I want.”

She sees that this is all true, and part of the hooker in her runs away from that vision. Nor does she have the tools to manage him; Al has taken them away. The vacuum remaining can be filled only by some of what is left of her real self. Befuddled, she drops her head in thought. She sees her breasts, her vagina. She could talk to him, she thinks. It might be nice to talk a little.

So, left with no good rap, and also because she wants to know, she asks, “Why are you selling your car?”

Having won he smiles and hands her drink to her. Propped up on his pillow with a girl and a bottle is exactly where he wanted to be, and that’s where he is right now.

A combination of discretion—he does not want her to think that he has time for such nonsense—and boredom—the girl seems to have a proclivity for mysterious disappearances—caused Al to make his last passes of the Strip and Sera’s house relatively early in the night. He will see her in the morning.

And it will have to be a good performance, for once again he has been unable to make any contacts. Even strangers are avoiding him. In truth, Al himself is beginning to detect the odor of desperation; it seems to follow him around.

This morning, after being awake all night, he resolutely showered and dressed so that he might at last go and retrieve his pawned jewelry, only to end up at a slot machine trading silver dollars back and forth until, not-so-much to his surprise, it was dark outside, and he had lost more than two hundred dollars.

She’d better bring home a lot, he thinks, angrily stuffing another twenty in the patient garter before him. He contemptuously regards the men around him: all drunk and lecherous, not a shred of dignity to be found in the whole place. The women—he once owned many women that make these look like dogs—are prideless puppets. Without meaning or direction they stand naked before these pig-men, all for a few lousy pennies. “Another drink!” he yells, thrusting his glass in the air then slamming it back down on the table. She’d better bring home a lot, he thinks, lifting another twenty from his stack. The dancer gyrates down to
accept it and spreads her legs for him. Al looks at her cunt, his eyes baleful and glassed over.

Noticing through her kitchen window that the first light of morning is beginning to drive away the dark, Sera sits and continues to drink from the bottle of tequila that she pilfered from her trick last night. She had stayed and talked with him for over two hours, and would have stayed longer if he hadn’t passed out. The tequila was taken as an improvised overtime payment, and because she wanted to go straight home without stopping to buy a bottle.

She is confused and intrigued by this man, Ben. He asked her none of the usual
What’s it like
… or
Why do you
… or
How can you
… questions that she has always heard from well-meaning tricks in the past who have tried to be her buddypal. Many times she has been through the would-be-social-researcher scene that tends to pop up now and then with tricks who don’t realize that they just want to fuck her or, worse, think that they want to save her. She has encountered all types of men with as many different quirks who, for one reason or another, must separate themselves from what they are doing and make it clear that they are her social and moral superiors. Ben showed no trace of this. The fact that he had paid her to suck his dick and to do whatever would have come next had no bearing on the conversation that followed, conversation which flowed from her so effortlessly that it might have occurred two weeks ago, when simple eloquence was still reflexive in her. Apart from a little superficial vanity, she can remember nothing deceptive about him, no pretense. He was drunk. He was gentle. He managed to speak to a part of her that had been hidden even from herself. If he would have acknowledged her as a
whore—which he didn’t—she is sure it would have been with the same matter-of-fact acceptance that he used when calling himself a drunk. He seems to have no use for judgments, not even of himself—if true, a vacuum that must make it difficult for him to get along—and she wonders if that is because he is him or because he is a drunk. In any case, it is refreshingly simple, a splash of spring water to rinse off some of the toxic waste she lives in.