Leaving Las Vegas (6 page)

On a perpendicular axis to that, the roulette wheel divides the world into red and black, even and odd, or the more specific numbered prejudices of one to thirty-six. Occasionally the freakish green zero or double zero, real losers, are favored by the silver ball. Blurred to the eye, rolling on a wheel, the little sphere rides its race indecisively, eventually dropping to the slower, lower track of imminent commitment. It drops into a slot for a while, then starts again.

At the blackjack tables dealers stand behind other dealers, awaiting their turns to shuffle up and take the house’s chances against the inept infantry of American gamblers. The game can be difficult, for winning brings to a player careful scrutiny by the powers that be, and winning too much can cause him to be conspicuously ejected from the game and the casino. Bad players make foolish plays by definition; good players make foolish plays for the same reason, but only at appropriate moments. Fours and fives get split, so do threes and sixes. When? Why? The dealers watch quietly, knowingly. When they play in a player’s seat they insure their blackjacks. See, they know this game.

Low key competence, pungent in the air of the poker room, always keeps Sera out, despite the informative flashes from the attendant. He is apt to make known to a passerby that a seat is available on table two, Texas hold-em. In this room players face players. The house doesn’t care what happens here; it draws commission on all pots. Unlike the craps table, green is welcome here. Fresh players are chewed and digested in short order. The games continue with more cunning opponents. Methodically the money flows across the table from this one to that one, then to the new one, and back again to the first one, who is taking and giving, biding his time as he waits for one who isn’t here yet.

The baccarat balcony is very quiet, well dressed and dignified. Many are the glances upon it from frequent players of other games who would never dare enter this realm. Beautiful women surrounded in black felt feign to play with each other. If a guy had a lot of money he could probably get fucked here. They never give up. It’s all really neat, sort of European.

“More Herradura?” asks the bartender. He holds ready the bottle. He likes Sera, having identified her as an experienced but not habitually excessive drinker. He is, in his own domain, much like the better dealers who, spotting a competent gambler, will treat him or her as an insider who can be relied on to not do anything stupid or unpredictable, can be trusted to know what they want. More Herradura is served.

She is more than a little surprised at the ennui. It’s not that she doesn’t understand her life and all its implications, so far she does—as well or better than anyone does. But she didn’t expect to be at such a loss simply because she can’t work for a while. Her dependence on her routine, such as it is, has grown so slowly over the years that it has escaped her notice. Now that the coffee is on the wall, it’s shocking for her to think that her life requires some sort of regular punctuation in order to make it manifest. Though
maybe it doesn’t, maybe it just does right now.

Like an experiment that is radically affected by the removal of one variable, her situation demands assessment. She can’t really come up with one; in truth, she’s not convinced it’s that important. Drunk, she feels the odd inclination to take a long walk, right into the next few days; walking, then rolling, continuously. She leaves the bar and passes again through the hotel doors. Outside it’s still dark and cool enough for this kind of walking. The relatively undiminished activity of pre-dawn Las Vegas raises her spirits, reminds her of why she thinks she originally came here. Long and straight, the sidewalk has inherited the desert’s characteristic disregard for conventional distance. Here she can walk for hours, and since the Tropicana lies virtually at the end of the Strip, hours of walking are available to her.

She walks slowly, thoughtfully, observing as much as she can and allowing the alcohol to temporarily delay the waiting soreness. Walking now where she normally wouldn’t, not looking for a trick where she normally would, she immerses herself in the perception of, without participation in, the business of Las Vegas. The hotels appear as mirages in the distance, and though each one seems to take forever to reach, they fall quickly behind her. Soon, where she has been looks like where she is going, so she apparently stands on the face of a mirror, the two directional options either identical or opposite to each other.

(“Where? where are you going?” Sera whispered, so as not to wake him.

“Just away from him. I don’t care, maybe San Diego,” said the girl. Her purse fully stuffed with clothing, she wore baggy denim jeans with no underwear. She was the sort of girl who could make herself well-liked for one evening; that evening was a long time ago, and now only Sera would spend any time with her.

“Good plan. I hear tricking is a booming industry down
there.” Sera regretted this sarcasm, and in fact had no heart for this conversation at all.

“Fuck you, Sera! You know you should be coming with me.”

The marble was cold under her bare feet, so tucking her negligee between her thighs, Sera sat down. “I just don’t think I could start all over again,” she said.

The girl threw her purse over her shoulder. “Yes you could. You know you could, Sera. You of all people could.” Then under her breath as she left: “You could do it a thousand times.”

Rather than watch her leave, Sera went back to the bedroom and slipped quietly between the sheets, so as not to wake anyone.)

Stopping off here or there, she uses the rest room or has a drink of water. The montage of casino interiors lends more clearly a vision of their subtle differences. Not obvious things like decor or employee costumes, which are really just similarities, but the more significant indications of management and money. The type of gambler can vary widely from place to place, as well as the type of dealer. She never really thought of the casinos as having the same distinctions as other businesses, but now she sees that some make more money, keep things cleaner, have a happier staff than others. It just follows; there’s nothing special, nothing universal.

(“Will you talk to this girl!” Her mother stormed out of the kitchen, leaving her alone with her father.

“I know,” Sera began after a long silence, after waiting respectfully for him to speak, knowing all along that she would speak first, that he wanted to listen to her, “that travel may not be a Darwinian imperative—”

“Oh, it is,” her father corrected, then shut his mouth decidedly.

“Well then,” she said, her suspicions now confirmed that her old ally hadn’t failed her, “I guess we can also agree that certainly it must be, at least, broadening.” And they both fell to laughter,
though she could see the pain in his eyes.)

She’s tired, has too much alcohol still in her blood. It’ll leave her at its own glacial pace, regardless of how much she walks. She bears up, decides to execute directly the remaining two miles to her home. Her body wasn’t ready for this. Some aches return; others take hold for the first time. As her head clears and the distance diminishes, she feels better. At home she lies down in her bed, sleeps until she wakes, is awake until she sleeps.

“Who is there?”

“I have your cleaning, Mr. Fathi.”

Gamal Fathi, a single gold chain around his neck, walks to the door of his hotel room clad only in a towel marked
Aladdin.
To him the hotel is a travesty which he finds repugnant, but it is also in a location that might prove useful should his Mercedes fail to start, something it has been threatening to do.

“Yes,” he says, opening the door and taking the hanger and bundle from the boy. “This is it all?”

“Yes, sir,” says the boy, though he was just asked a moment ago to make the delivery and has no idea whether or not it is complete.

Pushing a five dollar bill into the eager hand, Gamal Fathi shuts the door without a word of thanks. This gratuity, though it represents a substantial percentage of his capital, is woefully inadequate and embarrassing to him. He is accustomed to flashing much larger denominations; indeed, there was a time when he would not even trouble himself to pick up the change from a hundred dollar bill, preferring instead to handle only those decimally rich
see-notes,
the most visually appealing attempt in the monotone American currency.

Very much alone in the room, he drops his towel in preparation for a shower. In the corner of the room the bolted-down television plays silently, its screen absently graced by an oft rerun episode of Happy Days, but this is not the object of his attention. No, he is inspecting himself, standing naked in front of the mirror; he is inspecting himself and thinking of a woman whose nearness he can sense. Gamal Fathi would like to touch himself, but this is something that he cannot bring himself to do. And he intends to not have to.

“Inshallah,” he says aloud to the mirror.

Klaaaaick……mmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM,
the refrigerator turns itself on. It sounds happy, secure in the knowledge that it is doing its job; even if no one opens it, the food—or just the empty interior—will still be cold; you can be goddamn sure about that.

Sera rolls over on her couch. A sentence, she thinks, it’s like a fucking sentence: mandatory vacation. The whole thing is irrational and new to her. Traditionally ignorant of the comfort of a real schedule, she’s never before had to face the absence of one. For her it is far too restrictive, too involuntary to enjoy, and she feels no longer in synch with her think. Television amounts only to a series of cruel plays about people with purpose; she even envies characters who are killed on screen or doomed to die during a commercial. If faced with her own imminent death, she could at least release the relentless anxiety of futility. A suicide though, even one portrayed ineptly on a daytime drama, fills her with vexation, makes her feel alien to a species that can produce such options. Rejecting the contradiction, afraid of pursuing the logic, she has never pondered the line that runs between death
and death at one’s own hands. It is a non-question, irrelevant. It is one of those tricks of reasoning that can only be seen on an abstract level, for brought to terms with bread and water, it comes undone.

Barely a whisper, imperceptible movement of the dark lips: “I must still own her… she knows that I am here… she knows that I still own her and she is afraid to admit this to herself,” but still the street, on this, his seventh pass, contains not the one he seeks. “I must have at least this one thing still in my life”—Gamal Fathi does not realize that he is speaking aloud, for these are not words that he would consciously pronounce—“this one thing, this one key to everything that I am, that she is.”

The yellow Mercedes falls away from the Strip and moves in the direction of what he has learned is Sera’s apartment. The clock in this car runs sporadically, on then off. The time it reflects seems always to have changed whenever he enters the car, though he has never seen the hands move. So it stands disadvantageously to even a stopped clock, which is assured of proudly facing the correct time at least twice a day. Gamal Fathi’s determination unflagging, he has not admitted to himself his doubt, the impossible possibility that she has vanished from this city, and that this is the reason he has not seen her in—could it be two?—days. He must stay outside her apartment for longer this time, he resolves, must take a chance, must wait for some movement or a change of lights. She will emerge, he knows. She must work. Sera must work; this has always been her weakness, even at the start.