One-Eyed Jack (2 page)

We parked the truck in the Four Queens garage and went strolling past the courthouse. The childhood-summer drone of cicadas surrounded us as we walked past the drunks and the itinerant ministers. We strolled downtown arm in arm, toward the Fremont Street Experience, daring somebody to say something.

The Suicide King and I. Wildcards, but only sometimes. In a city with streets named for Darth Vader and for Seattle Slew, we were the unseen princes. I said as much to Stewart.

“Or unseen queens,” he joked, tugging me under the arch of lights roofing Fremont Street. “What happened back there?”

Music and cool air drifted out the open doorways of casinos, along with the irresistible chime of the slot machines that are driving out the table games. I saw the lure of their siren song in the glassy eyes of the gamblers shuffling past us. “Something must have called her. I was just going to deface a national landmark. Nothing special.”

Someone jostled my arm on my
otherwise
side, blind with the eyepatch down. I turned my head, expecting a sneering curse, but he smiled from under a floppy moustache and a floppier hat, and disappeared into Binion’s Horseshoe. I could pick the poker players out of the herd: they didn’t look anaesthetized.
That
one wasn’t a slot zombie. There might be life in my city yet.

Stewart grunted, cleaning his fingernails with a pocketknife that wasn’t street-legal by anyone’s standards. Sweat marked half-moons on his red-striped shirt, armholes and collar. “And Goddess showed up. All the way from the City of Angels.”

“Hollywood and Vine.”

“What did she want?”

“The bitch said it was her fucking Dam.” I turned my head to watch another zombie pass. A local. Tourists mostly stay down on the Strip these days, with its Hollywood assortment of two-dimensional mockeries of exotic places. Go to Las Vegas and never see it.

I’m waiting for the LasVegas-themed casino: somewhere between Paris, Egypt, Venice, and the African coast. Right in the middle of the Strip.

This isn’t the city that gave Stewart and me birth. But this is the city we are now.

“Is it?”

“I don’t know. Hoover should be ours by rights. But I’m convinced that empty date forges a link between Vegas and L.A.”

He let go of my arm and wandered over to one of the antique neon signs. Antique by Vegas standards, anyway. “You ever think of all those old towns under the lake, Jack? The ones they evacuated when the reservoir started to fill?”

I nodded, although he wasn’t looking and I knew he couldn’t hear my head rattle, and I followed him through the neon museum. I think a lot about those towns, actually. Towns like Saint Thomas, where I spent a few very happy years around the turn of the century, before Laura and my old man died. Those towns, and the Anasazi, who carved their names and legends on wind-etched red rocks within the glow of my lights and then vanished without a whisper, as if blown off the world by that selfsame wind. And Rhyolite, near Beatty, where they’re building the nuke dump: it was the biggest city in Nevada in 1900--and in 1907 it was gone. I think about the Upshot Knothole Project: these downtown hotels are the older ones, built to withstand the tremors from the above-ground nuclear blasts. And I think too of all the casinos that thrived in their day, and then accordioned into dust and tidy rubble when the men with the dynamite came.

Nevada has a way of eating things up. Swallowing them without a trace.

Except the Dam, with that cry etched on its surface. And a date that hasn’t happened yet. Remember. Remember. Remember me.

Stewart gazed upward, his eyes trained on Vegas Vic: the famous neon cowboy who used to wave a greeting to visitors cruising into town in fin-tailed Cadillacs—relegated now to headliner status in the Neon Museum. He doesn’t wave anymore: his hand stays upraised stiffly. I lifted mine in a like salute. “Howdy,” I replied.

Stewart giggled. “At least they didn’t blow him up.”

“No,” I said, looking down. “They blew the fuck out of Bugsy, though.”

Bugsy Siegel was a California gangster who thought maybe halfway up the Los Angeles highway, where it crossed the Phoenix road, might be a good place for a joint designed to convert dirty money into clean. It so happened that there was already a little town with a light-skirt history huddled there, under the shade of tree-lined streets. A town with mild winters and abundant water.
Las Vegas
means
the meadows
in Spanish. In the middle of the harsh Mojave, the desert bloomed.

And there’s always been magic at a crossroads. It’s where you go to sell your soul.

I shifted my eyepatch to get a look
otherwise
. Vic shimmered, a twist of expectation, disappointment, conditioned response. My right eye showed me the slot-machine zombies as a shuffling darkness, Stewart a blinding white light, a sword-wielding specter. A demon of chance. The Suicide King, avatar of take-your-own-life Las Vegas with its record-holding rates of depression, violence, failure, homelessness, DUI. The Suicide King, who cannot ever die by his own hand.

“I can see why she feels at home here,” Stewart said to Vic’s neon feet.

“Vic’s a he, Stewart. Unless that was a queer boy ‘she,’ in which case I will send the ghosts of campiness—past present and future—to haunt your bed.”

“She. Goddess. She seems at home here.”

“I don’t want her at home in my city,” I snapped as if it cramped my tongue. It felt petty. And good. “The bitch has her own city. And sucks enough fucking water out of my river.”

He looked at me shyly through a fall of blond bangs. I thought about kissing him, and snorted instead. He grinned. “Vegas is nothing but a big fucking stage set wrapped around a series of strip malls, anymore. What could be more Hollywood?”

I lit a cigarette, because everybody still smokes in Vegas—as if to make up for California—and took a deep, acrid drag. When I blew smoke back out it tickled my nostrils. “I think that empty inscription is what locks us to L.A.”

Stewart laced his arm through mine again. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will turn out to be the schedule for The Big One.”

I pictured L.A. tumbling into the ocean, Goddess and all, and grinned back. “I was hoping to get that a little sooner. So what say we go back to the Dam tonight and give it another try?”

The Russian and the American.

Somewhere on the Island of Manhattan, 1964.

A tap on the Russian’s door: one he wasn’t expecting but recognized. He lifted his head, checked the gas on the stove to be sure the noodles wouldn’t boil over, and walked around the breakfast bar to the peephole. Shadows in the crack above the threshold told him one individual waited beyond; he checked the peephole out of habit and he threw both locks open, palming his pistol anyway before he slipped the chain.

Oh, he knew that look. The tilt of the head, the hopeful pout. The scent of expensive cologne and the fresh haircut and shave. The American’s date had stood him up, and he had decided an evening with his partner was preferable to a Friday night alone. His words confirmed the Russian’s suspicions.

“Can I buy you dinner, my friend?”

“I am cooking,” the Russian answered, slipping his pistol back into his shoulder holster. “Your date stood you up.”

“Am I so obvious?” The American slunk into the living room like a lean, self-satisfied cat, wrinkling his nose at the scents of charcoal and boiling pasta. “It’s burning,” he said mildly, turning to throw both locks and set the chain.

“No,” the Russian answered, going back to the pasta and picking up a wooden spoon. “That’s the charcoal.”

“You’re grilling in the living room, perhaps?”

The pasta had cooked. He drained it, clouds of steam wreathing his face and his broad scarred hands as he shook the colander. “Are you staying for dinner?”

“Not if it’s, er, charcoal—”

“It is casserole,” the Russian answered, and set about opening cans—cream of mushroom soup, tuna fish, green peas—while the American winced and turned away, picking a box off the counter.

“Kraft Macaroni?
Partner
.”

The Russian’s mouth quirked at the disappointment in his partner’s voice. He didn’t turn, but kept one ear tuned as the American poked about his living room. “Clear off the coffee table,” the Russian said. “There is clutter all over the dining room. We’ll have to eat in the living room.” He’d turned the stereo off and the evening news on before he started to cook, and the muted tones of Walter Cronkite underlaid everything he and the American said.

“Are you sure I can’t buy you dinner?”

“And let this go to waste?” He scooped canned goods into the emptied pot, added a double handful of grated cheese, fresh chopped parsley, garlic salt, pepper, and dried oregano, and dumped the cooked macaroni elbows back on top along with the contents of the faux cheese package.
Stir well.

He couldn’t see the American’s shudder, but he could visualize it. “Mad Russian. Is there
nothing
you won’t eat?”

Ah, my friend. If only you knew.
The American
was
remarkably worldly, for an American. But every so often the Russian was reminded of his friend’s nationality, usually with regard to some squeamishness or naiveté. “I prefer tuna fish to rats,” the Russian admitted, turning the flame down to low and covering the pot, knowing without looking that the American had glanced over his shoulder, considered the Russian’s impassive back, and decided the Russian was joking.

“Everything you own is black, or white.” An idle comment, following the sound of shifting clutter.

“Is it?” The Russian measured loose tea, but not yet into the pot. The British knew how to do some things properly, and tea was one of them. Of course, when it came to tea—
chai
—Mother Russia had advantages of her own.

“Are you sure I should be smelling something burning?”

“Absolutely,” the Russian said, and carried pot and tea around the breakfast bar and toward the darkened niche that served him as a dining area. “My friend, would you get the lights in the ‘dining room,’ please?”

The American hit the dimmer switch without looking. And then turned at the sound of water running from an unexpected direction. Hiding a smile, the Russian watched the American’s reflection in the darkened window; his eyes widened at the ‘clutter’ dominating the Russian’s serviceable Formica table.

“Good lord,” the American said with sudden reverence, as the Russian warmed the teapot and emptied the steaming water back into the top of the ancient, gilt-brass, red-enameled samovar that dominated the room. “Where did you
get
that?”

The Russian bit his lip to stop the laughter. “Greenwich Village, of course.”

“Of course.”

His partner strolled over as the Russian added the tea to the teapot and filled it again, setting it to steep. The American’s lips were twitching. “It must be two hundred years old. How long were you going to wait to show me this?”

“I had thought,” the Russian said, catching the American’s wrist a moment before he could brush his fingers over the crimson enamel, “that I would give it to you when I returned home. Be careful. That’s hot.”

“Go—home? You haven’t been recalled—”

The Russian didn’t miss how the American’s face paled when he said ‘go home,’ and it warmed his heart the way standing close to the charcoal brazier under the samovar did. “No,” he said. “But if I am, I could hardly bring that back with me. Would you like some tea?”

“Very much,” the American said, stepping away, although the American did not like tea.

The Russian fetched glasses. Two of them, ruby glass in gilt holders that matched the samovar. He shouldn’t have bought it, of course. But he hadn’t been able to resist. And it wasn’t as if an agent whose housing was provided had all that much to spend money on, unless he was a clotheshorse. Like the American. “Sugar?”

“If I’m going to do it I should do it right, nyet?”

The Russian set the sugar bowl on the coffee table and filled the glasses with tea while the American turned off the gas and spooned their yellowish-beige dinner into a pair of unremarkable bowls.

“Spoon or fork?”

“Fork, please.” He took a lump of sugar for himself and sat on the floor beside the coffee table.

“It’s very red,” the American said, settling down kitty-corner to the Russian and bending forward to examine the glass. He did not lift his fork, but reached for the sugar instead. The Russian stopped him a moment before he dropped the lumps into his glass.

“This is Russian tea,” he said. “You put the sugar between your teeth.”

“Rot your teeth doing that.”

“A good communist will be provided teeth by the state as needed—”

“—stainless steel ones—”

“—bah. See? Like so.”

Dubiously, the American followed his example, managing to sip his tea through the sugar without choking, much to the Russian’s surprise. More surprising still, he smiled. “It’s good.”

“It’s like home,” the Russian answered. “Except not.” He shrugged and picked up his fork. They did not speak again until they had finished eating.

“This is better than it looks,” the American said grudgingly, setting his fork down and picking up his tea.

“Peasant cooking American style.” But said without defensiveness, for once. The Russian leaned against the sofa. The tea had cooled enough to hold the glass between his hands instead of by the handle.

The American nudged his ankle with a foot. The American had always to touch people; he was also very European in that. Perhaps another reason the Russian felt comfortable with him. “Are you thinking about going home?”

I’ve really unsettled him.
The realization delighted the Russian. “No,” he answered. He stared into his glass, and leaned forward to fetch himself another lump of sugar. The American handed it to him without looking, knowing what he needed before he knew it himself. “The glasses
are
very red,” the Russian said. He looked through the glass at the American, and then lowered it to take a sip. “You know, in Russia, red—
krasny
—also means
beautiful
. It is a very patriotic color, red. It reminds me of the Motherland.”