Levitating Las Vegas (9 page)

“Glitterati!” Shane exclaimed without looking up. He pulled the slack string out the back of the guitar and bent down to fish in his case for a replacement. “That’s a dance club for girls and transvestites. We won’t fit in.”

He had a point. Perhaps fifty percent of Glitterati’s patrons would be wearing feather boas. Elijah might not fit in, but he was used to that. MAD was never far from his mind. He didn’t fit in anywhere. And he could have said something droll in response to Shane’s claim that Shane himself didn’t fit in with weirdos, what with the tux and the slick 1960s hairdo. But Elijah wasn’t in the mood to laugh right now. He was in some serious shit.

“I asked Holly Starr to meet me at midnight because she may have an extra pill she can loan me,” he explained.

Shane looked up from unrolling the new string from its package. “Holly Starr has a
Mentafixol
pill?”

Elijah nodded. “She has MAD like I do.” Next Shane would ask how Elijah knew this, and Elijah wouldn’t know what to say. He’d probably overheard her talking about it to a friend sometime in the past seven years and subconsciously filed it away, but he couldn’t know for sure. And he didn’t want to admit that the way he perceived things, he’d read her mind when she came to their house with Rob last night. He hated to lie, especially to Shane, but he wasn’t sure how the whole
I have a delusion that I can read minds
thing would go over.

Shane only watched him intently.

“And . . . girls like girly bars,” Elijah ventured. “I chose a place she might go on her own, so it won’t seem strange to her parents.”

“Why do you care what her parents think?” Shane asked. “Why don’t you just go up to her here at the casino and ask to borrow a pill, instead of sneaking around like this? In ninth grade, if her dad and Mr. Diamond told me to stay away from her, I would have shit my pants. But now?” He raised one eyebrow. He was thinking that Elijah was even more of a pussy than he’d previously assumed.

Elijah glared at Shane as if he’d only seen the raised eyebrow. He did
not
kick over the chair and throttle Shane. That would give away that he’d sensed the pussy accusation because he could
read minds, hello
!

“Holly’s dad had enough clout even back then to order me around while threatening my mom’s job, with the owner of the casino in the room,” Elijah explained. “Mr. Starr has even more sway now. I have to be careful not to get my mom fired.” Res Res Res blah blah blah.

“But even if you meet Holly and get your pill without her parents knowing, she won’t be able to go to Glitterati without the casino tagging along,” Shane said. Kaylee jumped into his mind.

Elijah’s pulse picked up to match Shane’s excitement about Kaylee. “Exactly,” Elijah said. “The beautiful, blond, five-foot-four casino.”

“The beautiful, blond casino who packs a subcompact Beretta,” Shane said.

“You pack a Glock,” Elijah pointed out. In fact, he’d never understood Shane’s paranoia about the dangers of Vegas. But it was an attitude Shane seemed to share with the rest of his well-armed family. After a year, Elijah had begun to grow used to the idea of guns in his house—until Rob shot a hole in the ceiling last night.

“I need you to go with me and distract Kaylee,” Elijah explained. “It’s easy to get lost in Glitterati. All I need is five minutes to convince Holly to give me one pill.”

Shane drew the new string all the way up the neck of the guitar and threaded it into the tuning peg. He’d tried to ask Kaylee out dozens of times in the past year, but for some reason, just as he was about to open his mouth, he changed his mind. It wasn’t like him to freeze around the ladies. He should probably give up and stay away from her.

“I would do it for you,” Elijah said.

Shane knew this. Then Shane was thinking something very complicated about Elijah being a better brother to him than his own brother. He recalled the last time he and his brother had beaten the shit out of each other.

Elijah grabbed the guitar out of Shane’s hands to snap Shane out of it. Elijah had enough problems. He couldn’t handle Shane’s too. Not now.

“All right!” Shane said. “I’ll go with you to Glitterati and do my best to keep you out of trouble.” He took the guitar carefully out of Elijah’s hands and plucked the new string. “But you’re playing with fire.” His voice switched to a spot-on imitation of his dad impersonating Ol’ Blue Eyes. “Thank you very much. Here’s another one for my good friend Elijah Brown, who’s in a world of hurt.” He strummed the opening of “Someone to Watch Over Me.”

6

“Do you feel okay, kiddo?” Holly’s dad asked her. “You missed a cue or two. You never miss a cue.”

Holly shrank back against the velvet couch that had seen the rise and fall of more than one Vegas showbiz career. She’d spent so much time in this dressing room that the couch seemed like her second home—until her dad questioned her about the night’s performance. She didn’t want to get Elijah in trouble.

Before she could think of an excuse for zoning out during the act, her mom swept in from behind a battered Japanese screen in her billowing silk dressing gown. “Elijah Brown,” she said.

“What?” Holly and her dad both exclaimed.

“Elijah Brown was in the audience,” her mom told her dad, “shining a mirror in Holly’s eyes to distract her.” She turned to Holly. “I can see out of that box, you know.”

Looming closer over Holly on the couch, her dad flexed his fingers and said through his teeth, “I’ll kill that little shit.”

“Dad!” Holly protested.

“Peter.” Holly’s mom rebuffed him without taking her eyes off Holly. Sliding onto the couch, she squeezed Holly’s shoulders. “We told you a long time ago to stay away from that boy, for your own good. His mother is a
dealer
. My God. I’ve seen him hanging around the casino, doing menial labor.”

“It’s called carpentry, Mom.” Holly was leery of defending him when she was trying to stay on her parents’ good side. But their distaste for him made zero sense. After they’d gotten so upset when he’d asked her to the ninth-grade prom, she’d expected them to turn snobby about her other friends too, but they hadn’t. Their snobbery was reserved for Elijah only. And she couldn’t stand to hear them talk about him like that. “He just graduated from UNLV like m—”

“What if you made a mistake one night and got stuck with him?” her mom wailed, as if Holly had just revealed a grand plan to seduce Elijah and bear his children. “You have to look out for yourself better than that. Your father and I won’t be around to take care of you forever. What was wrong with that nice policeman you went out with?”

Holly straightened on the couch, pulling her shoulders away from her mom’s hands. She half understood her mom’s antifeminist perspective. Rob was gainfully employed in a hunky man-job. And Holly had a mental disease that required ongoing treatment. Behind her mom’s words lurked the specter of Holly in middle age, off her meds, unkempt and ugly, stumbling down the Strip in a ripped spangled bikini, skipping her appointment for a manicure. Only a strong man would stand by her when times got bad.

Rob was not that man. Holly flared her nostrils in distaste as she explained, “Mom. Rob and I went on one date. We won’t be going on another. I don’t think he’s stable.” That morning he’d skulked outside her apartment in his sheriff’s deputy car until Kaylee made a point of taking her pistol out on the porch to polish it in plain sight. Then he’d cruised out of the parking lot and down the palm-lined street.

“He can’t be any less stable than Elijah Brown,” her mom muttered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Holly asked. “Elijah’s not unstable.”

Her parents exchanged a look over her head. Holly’s mom took her hand. “Sweetie. We didn’t tell you this all those years ago when he asked you out, because Elijah’s mom doesn’t want it spread around about him any more than we want it spread around about you. But Elijah has MAD.”

“Oh.” Too late Holly realized her
oh
should have sounded shocked, as if she’d discovered a corpse, rather than sympathetic with a lilt on the end, as if she’d found an adorable, wriggling puppy. Elijah and she had the same mental disease!

In what universe was this
good
news?

Her mom was still talking. “You remember how crazy you felt before you got on Mentafixol?” She raised her eyebrows and nodded, willing Holly to nod along. “Maybe Elijah’s having an exacerbation. You see now why we didn’t want you getting involved with him?”

“You mean you made me break my date to the prom with him just because he had the same condition I have?” Holly croaked in disbelief. “You’re supposed to bring together people with the same disease, Mom, not keep them apart. We could have supported each other.”

“
And
his mother is a dealer.” Holly’s mom examined her biggest diamond.

Holly shook with fury. All those years of feeling like she was utterly alone with her illness, and her parents had prevented her from seeing the one person she knew who had it too—Elijah, so sweet and funny, even back then. Her life would have been very different if they’d had each other to lean on.

She was on the verge of telling her parents to butt out of her business, once and for all. She was twenty-one, almost twenty-two, and no longer lived under their roof. They had no right to tell her what to do anymore. They’d done it for years. This was the last straw.

There was only the pesky point of sucking up to them so she could ease into the illusionist business herself.

Breathing through her nose and talking herself down, she convinced herself that standing up for her right to date Elijah wasn’t worth the trouble. Not yet. She didn’t even know what he wanted from her. He’d signed G-L-I-T-T-E-R-A-T-I to her during the show, not M-A-R-R-Y M-E.

Holly’s dad paced in front of them, waving his fists in the air. “How long are you going to sugarcoat it for her, Lanie? That kid has an
exacerbation,
as you call it, and the first thing he does is come looking for Holly?”

“He was in the audience,” Holly murmured. “He didn’t
do
anything.”

Now he pointed at Holly. “Don’t go out with him. You hear me? Don’t go anywhere near him, and don’t let him get you alone.”

“Don’t let anybody strange get you alone, either,” her mom said. “If strangers try to talk to you, tell us.”

This odd directive struck Holly as something a parent would say to a five-year-old:
Don’t get into a stranger’s car when he offers you candy
.

“We’ll take you to your apartment in the limo,” her dad informed her, “in case that kid’s hanging around.”

“He’s not hanging around.” Holly yawned to show her dad how little she cared about Elijah Brown. “And you’re not taking me to my apartment.” No way was Holly giving up a crumb of the freedom she’d finally gleaned from her parents, just because Elijah was having an episode.

“We’ll sit with you at the bus stop, then,” her mom called.

“I’m going out with Kaylee. She’ll pop down from her office and drive us.” Holly wasn’t supposed to drive while taking Mentafixol. Actually she’d never learned to drive, since she would probably take Mentafixol for the rest of her life.

“Oh, sweetie,” her mom said. “I don’t like the idea of you going out so late, especially without Rob.”

Holly
hoped
she was going without Rob. She was so exasperated, she almost told her parents that Rob, alleged dreamboat, was rapidly morphing into a stalker. But then they
really
wouldn’t let her use mass transit by herself. “Mom, the act lasts until 10 p.m. almost every night of the week. When else can I go out? And how can you worry about my safety when I’m with the head of security for the casino?”

This shut both her parents up. She’d always been surprised there hadn’t been more commentary from them about how Kaylee
shouldn’t
be the head of casino security as a twenty-two-year-old wisp of a girl. Sometimes Holly heard other employees at the casino make comments like this, but her parents never had.

With a few more sighs from Holly’s mom and a very pointed threatening look from Holly’s dad, the two of them donned matching white fur capes (on an eighty-degree June night in Vegas =
style
) and breezed out of the dressing room, headed for the casino limo that would drive them to their gated mansion on the outskirts of town.

The second they left, Holly stretched her arms over her head—ahhhh, free of them—and fished a single Hershey’s Kiss from a secret compartment in her purse. Mmmmm.

Then she searched through the hangers on the wardrobe rack for something to change into for Glitterati. She chose a pair of jeans to wear with her sequined show shoes, her show bikini top, and a midriff-baring sweater.

She stood back and looked at herself objectively. Her eyes scanned her hair and makeup, down her body, and stopped below her belly button, hovering at the fly of her jeans. She turned to the side to make sure that long expanse of exposed tummy was perfectly flat, despite her mouthful of chocolate. She wondered if she looked as good to Elijah as she had seven years ago. His fingers, roughened from carpentry work, would find softness as they explored downward, fumbling below her navel to ease her jeans open. . . .

Because that was what he wanted from her, right? Some sort of mutual MAD hookup? They must have subconsciously sensed each other’s mental illness at his house last night. Otherwise their attraction was too much of a coincidence. He was having an exacerbation, his inhibitions were down, and he made a beeline for Holly, just as her dad had suggested.

With her fingertip she touched a little line between her brows, her first wrinkle, smoothing it away. Only a crazy girl would choose an insane carpenter over a cop, especially when going out with the insane carpenter would anger her parents, who held her career in their hands. But if that’s what Elijah really wanted from her, that’s what he would get.

At five before midnight, Holly and Kaylee hugged the petite Marilyn Monroe impersonator carding at the door, whom they knew because s/he also performed in the Peacock Room at the casino. Inside Glitterati they squeezed past the girls and transvestites writhing on the dance floor and found a table.

They sat close enough to hear each other over the throbbing beat. Holly hoped Kaylee might have a good time tonight, despite herself. She certainly
looked
the part of a fun-loving chick gone clubbing. Her wide blue eyes and platinum-blond hair made her appear younger than twenty-two, but her ample cleavage in a gold lamé top canceled that out. Holly often had to remind herself that her roommate kept a pistol in her cute sequined handbag.

Kaylee nodded past Holly’s shoulder. “There’s your Elijah Brown.”

“He’s not
my
Elijah Brown.” Holly felt herself blush. She was glad the nightclub was dark except for the pink strobes. On the drive over, Holly had tried to explain why she was meeting Elijah here. She hadn’t implied Elijah was hers, because he wasn’t—but now Kaylee’s words heated Holly’s cheeks with guilty pleasure. She looked where Kaylee was looking.

Although dancers filled the floor, the tables were empty save for a few frightened-looking women, obviously tourists. Holly had a clear view all the way across the room to Elijah. She marveled at the difference seven years had made. She remembered him being so hot in ninth grade, and so tall. As a college grad, he was still tall and lean, but his face was rugged with stubble, his wavy hair darker and wilder, his green eyes narrower. Now that she’d found out he had MAD, he looked to her like a dark and dangerous man—

—and then he leaned across the table toward Shane and laughed at something Shane had said. He looked like ninth grade when he laughed, she thought wistfully.

He and Shane had what appeared to be beer bottles in front of them. This surprised her again—not on Shane’s account, but on Elijah’s. Mentafixol and alcohol did not mix. The warning label said so, just as it said patients on Mentafixol should not drive or operate heavy machinery.

At first Holly hadn’t believed the label. She didn’t feel sleepier than normal on the drug. There was only a notable lack of hallucinations that she could make the furniture move. So she’d tried a few sips of beer once in tenth grade because all her friends were doing it. She’d blacked out, woken up the next morning under her friend’s bed, and felt groggy that whole day. Though it
looked
like a beer from this distance, Elijah’s drink must be a nonalcoholic beer or something else entirely.

Watching the guys sip from their bottles, she had an idea. “Kaylee, do you know Shane Sligh? I mean, you know all the casino employees, and I’m sure you have his Social Security number in your laptop, but do you
know
him? He plays guitar in that Frank Sinatra band in the Peacock Room. He’s Elijah’s other roommate. Come with me and I’ll introduce you. Wait—Kaylee, don’t look, but Shane’s staring at you
hard
. Oooh, he’s so handsome, too, in a retro way. Maybe he’ll take you for a hamburger and a Coke float at the malt shop.” She laughed at her own joke.

“I don’t think so,” Kaylee said.

“Or you could cheer him on when he races his car down at the aqueduct,” Holly giggled. “He
is,
he’s totally staring at you. Here he comes.”

Still focused on Kaylee, Shane rose from his seat.

Kaylee watched Holly from beneath her white-blond bangs. “No, he doesn’t.”

Shane sat back down.

Rising herself, Kaylee grumbled, “I need a drink to brave this place. I’m ordering a cocktail and making a phone call. You go over there and talk to Elijah. Can I get you a diet soda?”