Reinventing Mike Lake (17 page)

              To say that I wasn’t lonely over that time period would be a lie.  For many months I associated loneliness with just my wife.  Over time that thought of loneliness became a broader feeling, one not just associated with my wife.  I knew the day would come that I would have a chance to not be lonely, but again, I didn’t expect it too soon.

              There was also a very good chance that I was overanalyzing things with Jen.  Just because one girl gave you a phone number on a receipt didn’t mean you were going to marry her.  Sure, I was already 1 for 1 at that point, but Jen giving me her number that way was purely coincidental, right?  If you are the type to believe in signs, and I never fully embraced the idea personally of believing in signs, then this was one as clear as it would get.  During my darkest days I had asked for a sign, but now that I was coming out of my funk it seemed I had received a pretty easy one to interpret. 

              Perhaps Jen was just looking for a fling.  We were in Las Vegas.  She knew from our conversation, when I told her I was a traveling writer, that I probably wouldn’t be around for long, and maybe after my third or fourth beer I was giving off the impression that I wouldn’t mind a fling, though that certainly wasn’t my intention.  At the very least, it was a chance for me to potentially have a real conversation with a woman, even if the actual relationship amounted to nothing. 

              After staring at the receipt for longer than I had ever stared at any other receipt in my life, with the exception of one, I put it into my pocket and sat down in front of the computer, knowing I wouldn’t get much work done that day, but would pretend to try.  The taking out of the receipt and putting it back into my pocket was an occurrence that happened another 100 times, give or take, over the next three days, so much so I had to cut back on that habit for fear I would smear the ink or rip the receipt and not be able to read it.

              At some point over those few days I knew I was going to call her, but still held back.  It wasn’t enough for me to just say I’ll call her and see what happens from there.  No, I went through every possible scenario imaginable.  I wondered if she gave her phone number to every lonely guy that sat at her bar.  I also wondered, this being the city of working class girls, if that when I called I would be directed to her pimp.  This was silly, but this is what you do when you haven’t made a phone call to a woman with relationship potential in over a decade.

              On the third day I decided I was going to call.  After all that thinking, my game plan going into the conversation was to not think.  Say “hello,” and go from there.  I called.

              She answered on the second ring.

              “Hello,” she answered hesitantly, most likely because she didn’t recognize my number.

              “Hey, this is Mike from…,”

              “Oh, hey, I was wondering if you were going to call me.  How do you like Vegas so far?”

              “Um, ahhh, I like it, I haven’t done much more than eat,” I followed that with nervous laughter.

              “Maybe you should change that.  What are you doing tonight?  I get off at 11, I can show you around some if you’d like.”

              “I would like that, should I meet you at your work or…”

              “Yeah, that will be fine, see ya then,” she said.  I could picture her smile from a few nights before, in turn, making me smile.

              “Ok, see ya then.”

              I’m glad I had eaten breakfast already.  No way was I eating again until after our date tonight, I thought.

              Our date.  Wow.

26

              I waited patiently and comfortably with Bahama until it was time to go.  Yeah, right.  I was a wreck.  Going through all the potential outcomes of our phone call had be stressful enough.  Going through all the situations of what could happen when I was physically with Jen was a different ball game. 

              Every hour progressed the same way.  I would work myself up, and then calm myself down.  I told myself all I was doing was just meeting another person, a fellow being from the human race.  Even if it turned out to be a horrible experience it wasn’t like I hadn’t been through worse.  That line of thinking helped for about ten minutes.

              I tried to write, but wrote just a few sentences.  I was stuck in some universe I could never hope to comprehend.  When it was finally time for me to go, I was both in a full sweat, but thankful it was at least time to move.  I left early, a specialty of mine, to guarantee I would get there in time.  After leaving the car with the valet I still had 45 minutes before I had to meet Jen. 

              That was great.  That left me plenty of time to go to the bathroom four more times, and wipe my hands on my pants thirty times to ensure that my handshake didn’t bathe hers.  With about 15 minutes to go I found Burger Bar, as if I had forgotten to get there. Not wanting to seem over anxious, I walked around the shops and timed my entrance to be right at the front door of the Burger Bar at exactly 11, casually as I possibly could.

              I didn’t see her right away, and my mind went right to thinking she probably stood me up.  I envisioned her hot friends calling her up and telling her they were going to do something better than have her hang out with some loser she had met at her bar.  Near the end of that ridiculous idea, she walked out.

              In all my thoughts leading up to that minute, I had envisioned her going on our date with her tight pants and corset.  Instead she had on a pair of jeans and a blue sleeveless shirt, cut low. 

              “Hi there,” she said, and came in for a hug.  I was only previously worried about my hand sweating during a handshake.  Now I had to hope my 14 layers of deodorant did their job, as I was unprepared for such a physical gesture this early in our date.

              “Hey, what do you have in store for me tonight?”  I hoped this sounded platonic, but if you think about it you can make a sexual innuendo about just about anything.

              “If you like rides, I thought maybe we could go to the Stratosphere and try out some of their rides.  I have been here eight months and I have never done them yet,” she said with the smile I had thought about many times over the last few days.

              I gulped once, stronger than I anticipated, and said, “Yeah, that sounds fun.”

              I hadn’t been to the Stratosphere yet, but any tourist can see from looking up at the needle shaped structure that the rides hang precariously off the side of the building.  From the ground the rides look like they are 10,000 miles in the air.  That’s just another desert mirage, it’s really only closer to 1,000 feet.  Hearing that information from Jen didn’t do much to calm my stomach.  Yet another reason I was glad I hadn’t eaten much today.

              We decided to take a cab over to the Stratosphere.  I had hoped to use this time for getting to know her better, but unfortunately we had a very talkative cab driver.  I think Sal thought we were longtime girlfriend and boyfriend because he kept bringing up all the chapels around town where we could get married. 

              “Hell, we could do a drive-thru and you won’t have to get out of the car,” he added with a New York accent.  He’d be our witness.  How nice of him.  I had heard taxi drivers try to get you to strip clubs because they get paid by these establishments by bringing in customers.  I had never heard of one getting paid for getting people to get married.  The economy had been down, so who knows?

              The Stratosphere wasn’t as sparkly as some of the other casinos, but it had plenty of customers that night.  Jen told me that they have a loyal customer base because it’s the closest casino to a lot of the surrounding neighborhoods.  Also, many tourists like it for the reason we were there:  the views of the Strip and the rides on the top of the needle.

              I was nervous to be going on these rides, but I was also nervous because I was about to go on these rides with someone I had just met.  Should I scream?  Should I wear a poker face?  What will she do?  Will she grab onto me if she gets scared?

              We walked through the casino and stopped at the ticket booth.  I paid 50 bucks for the two of us for a ride up the elevator to the top and unlimited access to the rides. 

              We entered the elevator with about 15 other folks.  One of them asked the elevator operator “how’s it going?”  He replied, “up and down.”  Ah, elevator humor.

              When we reached the top I was awestruck by the view.  The huge circular windows showed the best view in the city of the entire Las Vegas Strip

              “What brought you out to Vegas?  Are you from here?” was all I could come up with for my opening line.  Smooth.

              “I don’t know what exactly brought me out here,” she said.  I can relate, I thought.

              “What do you mean?  Just traveling?”

              “It’s complicated, but at the same time it’s not.  Three years ago I had a pretty tough break-up that got kind of nasty when we finally broke up for good.  At the time I felt like my life was shattered – he was my high school sweetheart – but after thinking long and hard about what he put me through I realized it was  for the better,” she added a nervous laughter at the end.

              “I’m traveling too; I just came from Florida,” forgetting I had told her that a few nights ago.  Again, smooth.

              “Oh yeah, you started telling me about that at the bar.  The Keys, right?”

              “Yup, that’s right, sorry I forgot I told you this.  I was in Key West.”

              “Lucky dog!  I’ve always wanted to go there.”

              With that, we had walked outside and found ourselves standing in front of our first ride of the night, X-Scream.  X-Scream didn’t look all that intimidating.  That is, if it had been on the ground.  At 900 feet in the air and the fact it thrust you 50 feet away from the building into the open air changed my feelings.  I made a joke about the “X” in X-Scream being reserved for the cuss word you yell before screaming on the ride.  Not my best work, but it received a polite chuckle in response.

              The ride was a half teeter-totter, half roller coaster contraption.  Jen and I, and about 15 other passengers, hopped on.  Luckily we were sitting in the back so I wouldn’t get a direct look at the ground.  This also improved my chances of not crying like a baby in front of my date.

              We got in and the ride operator made sure we were secure.  I checked three more times just to confirm.  The actual ride doesn’t move much.  You are on a short track, but your cart shoots over the edge, then straight down.  It was certainly the most my heart rate had raised in a few months, which probably wasn’t a bad thing.  The ride was great, but what I was left pondering was if Jen’s hand and sizable nails digging into my thigh were a result of her trying to make contact with me, or just holding on for dear life.

              Without having a chance to catch our breath we walked over to the other side of the Stratosphere observation deck and jumped on Insanity.  While I hadn’t seen it in action, it was pretty clear what it was going to do.  When the ride started a mechanical arm reached farther and farther out until there was only air between our shoes and the Las Vegas land.  Then, we spun.  Once again I was glad I hadn’t eaten anything, though on this ride I briefly considered I could faint from fear.  Luckily each rider was in their own separate compartment on this ride so I was free to close my eyes and imagine myself in a fetal position until we were back on solid ground.  The first few steps off the ride were shaky, at best, but it was a much shorter fall if I tripped here than if I would have fallen off Insanity.

              I already knew we were heading for another ride, Big Shot.  Big Shot operated on the needle of the Stratosphere.  Of all the rides I thought this one seemed the sanest.  You sit in a circle with the other passengers, facing the open air. 

              I was wrong.  I was in mid-sentence when the Big Shot took off for the top of the needle.  I spent most of the remaining part of the night trying to get my breath and hoping my stomach would remove itself from my throat.  After shooting up a couple of hundred feet at a couple of hundred miles an hour we stopped.  I didn’t remember much from high school anymore, but I remembered what Newton taught me.  What goes up must come down.  My brief hope that we would be allowed off the ride at the top lasted just that long – briefly.  We shot back down at another couple hundred miles of hour.  Again, I was thankful that nobody could see you on this ride, so you were left with your own fears, and tears, should they come.

              When we returned safely to the ground I suggested to Jen maybe we can get a drink before she suggested seconds on any of the previous rides.

              “Yeah, we can get hammered and then go do the rides all over again!” she said, striking fear in me.

              “Um…yeah…we…”

              “I’m just kidding!” she said, adding a punch to my arm for emphasis.

              “Whew.”

27

              We considered getting drinks at the Top of the World bar, but the music was so loud we changed our minds.  I thought of this as a good thing – that she wanted to move locations – because we had hardly had a chance to talk yet.  We went back downstairs, and after making a round and seeing the other three or four bars were just as loud and busy, we decided on a quieter looking restaurant.  It wasn’t exactly the hippest place in Vegas, but at least we wouldn’t have to scream at each other.

              When we sat down in our booth there was a moment of quiet that I was afraid would remain.  Maybe I had been lucky we hadn’t had a chance to talk because maybe we would have just sat there and stared at each other until we found our chance to retreat.  I spoke first.

              “How’d you like those rides?  You said it was the first time you’d been on those?”