Lost December (19 page)

“He’s disconnected his phone,” I said. I dialed my father’s direct number at Crisp’s headquarters. A female voice I didn’t recognize answered. “Mr. Price’s office.”

“This is Luke Crisp. Is my father in?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is Carl Crisp in?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Crisp doesn’t work here anymore.”

“What do you mean my father doesn’t work there anymore?” I said angrily. “Let me talk to Henry.”

“I’ll see if Mr. Price is available. Who may I tell him is calling?”

“Luke Crisp,” I said again. She put me on hold. It was a full two minutes before Henry answered. “Speaking of the devil,” he said. “How are you?”

“Henry, where’s my father?”

“Am I your father’s keeper?”

“The receptionist said he’s no longer there.”

“She’s my new assistant,” Henry said, “and no, he’s not. He retired, Luke.”

I was speechless. “Retired?”

“Isn’t that what you suggested? How do you not know this?”

“I haven’t spoken with my father since I left.”

“Then you don’t know about his surgery.”

“What surgery?”

“What surgery? His triple bypass.”

“Wha … Henry, no one told me,” I said.

“You broke his heart, you know. Maybe literally. I’m not surprised he hasn’t been in contact with you. You let him down and you weren’t there for him when he needed you. Now I understand why he said what he did.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me you’re dead to him.”

The words hit me like a bucket of ice water. “He said that?”

“His exact words were, ‘I have no son.’”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

“So what brings you back now—run out of dough?”

When I didn’t answer, he said, “I thought so. Good luck, Luke. You made your bed, now sleep in it.” He hung up. I slowly dropped the phone to my lap. I sat frozen, Candace staring at me. My worst fears had been confirmed.

“What did your father say?” she asked.

“My father’s no longer at Crisp’s.” I looked down, fighting the wave of emotion that swept over me. “My father had a heart bypass.”

“You need to go back to him,” Candace said.

My eyes welled up. “I can’t. He’s disowned me.”

Candace buried her head in her hands. After a few minutes I put my hand on her back to comfort her. “We’ve got to keep it together,” I said. “Everything will be okay.”

She looked up at me, her mascara running down her face. “Are you in denial? What part of this will be okay? How will we live?”

“Like the rest of the world does. We’ll get jobs. We’ve got M.B.A.s, we’ll do all right.”

Candace didn’t say anything. She dropped her gaze and slumped forward, hiding her face in her hands. For the next fifteen minutes Candace just sat, crying. When she finally stopped, she looked up at me. “I’m sorry. I think, with how things are, we need to rethink things.”

I looked at her. “What exactly does that mean?”

“It means I’m not sure about all this.”

“All this? You mean us?”

“Yes. Us.”

My chest constricted with anger. “There wasn’t a problem with
us
when I had money.”

“Don’t make me into a gold digger. Did I ask you to go to Europe? Didn’t I tell you that you were spending too much?”

“Then what’s the problem?” I said.

“It’s
this
. Starting from scratch. I can’t do it.”

“We can do it together. We’ll build a life together.”

“And lose the best years of our lives.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. These could be the best years of our lives. We’ll be together.”

“We’ll learn to hate each other.”

I couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Why would you say that?”

“You have no idea. I’ve lived through it. I watched it my whole life. I watched my parents sacrifice and scrimp and
save until it destroyed their marriage. When they finally started getting ahead, my father left. That’s how it is.”

“That’s not how it is,” I said angrily.

“You don’t know.” She exhaled slowly. “I love you, Luke. But I never signed up for that kind of life—clipping coupons to survive. It’s not what I want. I don’t know if I can or can’t do it, but I know that I don’t want to.” She looked into my eyes. “I’m really sorry.”

She got up and began packing her things while I just sat on the bed, watching her. When she finished, she walked to the doorway, then stopped. “I really am sorry, Luke. We’ll talk in a few days, okay?”

I just looked at her. She walked out, closing the door behind herself. Something told me I’d never see her again.

The only thing more universal to the human condition than love is loss
.

Luke Crisp’s Diary

I drank until early in the morning and slept through the rest of it, well into the next afternoon, when the room’s phone rang. My head was throbbing. I answered hoping it was Candace. It was the front desk asking if I was going to check out or if they should charge me for another day. I told them that I was leaving. Without showering or changing my clothes, I grabbed my suitcase and carry-on bag and left the room.

Where would I go? I felt like a man who had just stepped over a cliff wishing to take back just a few steps. Even the $3,000 I’d spent on the cabana could have provided several months’ stay in a cheap hotel. What do you do when you have no place to go? I was in a daze as I walked out of my room.

I took the elevator down to the lobby. The electricity and cash of the casino flowed around me, past me, like a river. I sat down at a bar and ate the free bar nuts and crackers and drank more and mostly just watched. Around midnight I fell asleep in the chair. The bartender woke me. “Sorry, sir, you can’t sleep here.”

I got up. I dragged my luggage to another part of the
casino, fighting my exhaustion. My thoughts rolled and bounced around in my head like a ball on one of the casino’s roulette wheels. The world looked different to me now. Changed. I realized that I had lived my life on a different level of humanity—one where money was both ubiquitous and intangible. Most of my life I didn’t even carry money, just magical plastic cards that got me whatever I needed—like a VIP pass to the world. Unlike paper money, the plastic never diminished. It did, of course, but not where one could see it.

I never checked receipts; I rarely looked at price tags. I realized that Candace was right—I didn’t know want or scarcity. I had lived in a different world than most people. Now I was in their world. Actually, I was below their world. I had no job, no home and no money. There was no safety net below me. How could I have been so stupid?

I thought back to that dinner with my father when he suggested I go to business school. How ironic—he said he didn’t want me to have any regrets. That’s all I had now. Regret and hate. I hated Sean more that I could say. I wished that I had let the gamblers take their pound of flesh. But I hated myself even more for being taken in by him.

What weighed just as heavily on me was Candace’s betrayal. I was in love with her. I thought she was in love with me. I had heard it said that men want beautiful women and women want beautiful situations. I didn’t believe it at the time. I did now. Is that really all I was to Candace? A lifestyle? The thought of it was like putting my heart between the hammer and the anvil.

Here I was in a neon jungle just as helpless as if I were lost in the Amazon jungle. I took out my wallet. Worthless plastic and a little more than $500. Then I remembered Candace’s ring. It had cost nearly $30,000. I just needed to find a place to sell it. I would sell it in the morning. I felt some peace again. Thirty thousand was enough of a safety net to get me through this. I put my wallet in my bag, then closed my eyes and fell asleep. It was around three o’clock in the morning when a security guard woke me.

“Sir,” he said.

I looked up. “Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“Sorry, I just fell asleep. I’ll go.” I slowly stood up. “Sorry.”

I put my carry-on on top of my suitcase and dragged it behind me out of the casino. I felt like I was sleepwalking. Once outside the lobby, I looked around for a place to go. Despite the hour, the traffic on the street in front of the hotel was nearly as heavy as at midday. The strip stretched on for miles and I was too tired to walk. I just needed a place where I could lie down for an hour or two.

At the end of the resort’s massive parking lot, there was a clump of trees. I crossed the parking lot, pulling my bags behind me. When I could see no one was looking, I entered the grove, lay my jacket out on the ground and fell asleep. I woke late the next morning to a light kick in my side.

“Stand up, sir.”

I looked up to see a police officer standing above me. “I haven’t been drinking,” I said.

“I’ve heard that before,” he said.

I sat up. “You can smell my breath if you want.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

“I’ve been staying at the Bellagio. I just lost all my money.”

“I’ve heard that before too. May I see your I.D., please?”

“It’s in my bag.” I turned to get it. My bag was gone. My suitcase was still there, but my carry-on bag had disappeared. Everything I needed was in the bag: my wallet, my I.D., my money and my cell phone. Then it hit me, the ring was gone too. I looked around frantically. “I’ve been robbed.”

The officer just looked at me. “No I.D.?”

“I had a ring in there. It was worth thirty thousand dollars.”

“I just need your I.D.”

“Didn’t you hear me? I’ve been robbed. My bag had everything!”

He looked at me dully. “Do you want to file a report?”

I wanted to scream. “Will it do any good?”

“It will for your insurance claim. Or if someone turns it in, we can contact you.”

“Contact me on what? My stolen cell phone?”

“Sir, settle down.”

I wanted to throttle this guy. When I had gained control, I said, “I have nothing. I have no place to go.”

“There’s a rescue mission up off Bonanza. They have beds and a soup kitchen.” He pointed. “It’s straight up the boulevard from here.”

“I’m not sleeping in a homeless shelter.”

“I don’t care where you sleep, as long as it’s not here.”

I stood and wiped the dirt from my pant legs. “Eight months ago I had a million dollars,” I said.

“Vegas is magic. You can see David Copperfield make an elephant disappear or go to a casino and make a fortune disappear.”

“Are there any pawnshops around here?”

“That’s like asking if there are any casinos.” He walked back to his patrol car and sat there until I walked away.