Sex, Lies and the Dirty (21 page)

He keeps pushing.

He gets closer, saying, “One more time. You can do it one more time.”

I’m wearing board shorts, flip-flops, sunglasses, a fedora,
and a white Venetian robe that I stole from the hotel room. My head hurts. I’m still drunk. The gash on my leg has a soft scab but still bleeding, and Sal Wise is telling me about last night, some bullshit about how he’s seen a lot of celebrities come through Vegas and he’s never seen someone get as crazy as I did. He’s saying this, but he doesn’t sound impressed. He’s worried, so this is Sal’s indirect way of asking me if I’m truly okay.

Maybe I’m an alcoholic.

Maybe this isn’t that cool.

I’m in a cabana at Tao Beach with Scooby and those twenty-five girls from ASU, drinking the hangover away, and some of them are coming up to me in their swimsuits, telling me I’m such a great kisser and whatnot. Some overweight, not-very-attractive chick is saying I kissed her, made out with her. Denial kicks in and I snap at her, saying, “I didn’t fucking kiss you. Get the fuck out of my face.”

Tao Beach is doing some kind of bullshit where they’re going to baptize me in the pool to “wash away my sins,” as they put it. I don’t find it particularly clever, but Scooby says that I’m contractually obligated to play along and get my picture taken. He keeps pushing, but unlike last night, I don’t try to kill myself with alcohol again. I turn on the Nik Richie persona for the next ten minutes, walking into the Tao Beach pool. A bolt of white-hot pain shoots up my leg from the chlorine licking the gash, but I force a smile, wading out toward the middle of the water where Reverend Marklin is waiting to dunk me. To save me.

I do the baptism.

Take the pictures.

I tell Scooby I’m leaving, that I’m going to check into Promises or something. He gives me this weird look like,
Oh…you were serious about that?

Everyone keeps drinking. The party continues. Even when I leave, it’ll keep going. I’m right in the middle of sneaking out of Tao Beach in my wet bathrobe when I get the call from Lonnie Moore. He’s also in Vegas for the weekend, asking me if I’m okay and if everything’s cool.

“I heard about Lavo,” he says over the background noise. It sounds like he’s at one of the casinos or Sports Book. Maybe a restaurant.

“Dude, Lonnie, I need help, man.”

He says, “Come over and meet me at the bar. I’m down 50K at the tables—
I
need help.”

Lonnie makes light of the situation, but that’s more or less his way. He’s the devil. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. He’s a friend. We’re close, and that’s largely to do with the fact that we’re so similar. We’re both in “the scene,” as they say. Lonnie still runs Geisha House in L.A. He’s a good businessman. Charismatic as fuck. Gets people to do bad things, but they’re the bad things that are fun. Others have said the same thing about Nik Richie, but Lonnie is on another level. He can wake up hungover with five chicks in his bed and be cavalier about it. Lonnie doesn’t play by the same rules I do, and now he’s wanting me to meet him at a bar in The Palazo.

He says, “Dude, you gotta meet my blonde friend.”

I tell him I’m not in the mood to meet anybody.
Anybody
. If you say no to Lonnie, you might as well say it twice. “I’m going back to my room. I’m going to bed,” I tell him. “I’m shutting the whole thing down. I’m never doing another event ever again in my life,” and people are walking by. Staring.

Lonnie says, “That’s fine, but I’m still down 50K. Be a fucking gentleman and have a drink—or don’t drink. Just come by.”

So I figure,
what the hell?
I’ll stop by, have a quick chat, and then go back to the room and start getting my shit together. Lonnie’s down 50K and my life is falling apart. Maybe we can get each other’s minds off of things…shoot the shit…whatever. I ditch Tao Beach and walk over to The Palazo, which is only about a five-minute walk through the hotel. A few people give me weird looks because of the wet bathrobe.

Lonnie is posted up at the bar having a drink, something mixed. I walk over and he’s sizing me up, making sure that I’m okay. Functional. Of course, Lonnie is surrounded by chicks. He always is, and normally I’d be down to talk to every one of them, but I’m set on making this quick and
easy so I can get back to the room. In my head I’m making a mental list of shit I need to do: pack, book plane tickets, contact the rehab place,
etc.
Lonnie can tell I’m not feeling social, so he has to give me a reason to stay. It’s the thing he’s good at: giving people reasons to keep going.

He says, “Nik, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine.”

It’s the blonde he mentioned. She’s small. Beautiful.

Lonnie says, “This is Shayne Lamas.”

Nik Richie hosting LAX nightclub at the Luxor in Las Vegas, Nevada with staff and random groupies.

Shayne

Shayne Lamas is about to save my life.

Neither of us know that yet. In fact, by the look on her face, this little sneer she’s giving me (probably due to the wet bathrobe), I can tell she’s not into it. Into me.

Lonnie bolts, saying that he’s going to use the bathroom real quick, but that’s total bullshit. He knows I’m in a bad way. Something’s off, and he’s thinking Shayne will get me back on point. She’ll bring out the classic Nik Richie and everything will be okay again. I’ll stop talking about shutting it all down and rehab and changing my ways, and for a second it almost works. Old instincts kick in and I almost start to flirt, to turn on the old charm, but then I remember two almost-suicides and pull back. Shayne’s beautiful, but she’s not what I need right now. I need to go home. I need help. Not another distraction.

“Your fingernails are painted black,” she says. Out of all the things she could point out, she notices that. “So…what? Are you a DJ or something?”

“No, I run
The Dirty
.”

She sips her drink, shrugs cluelessly. “What’s that?”

“I’m a blogger…Nik Richie,” I tell her, pausing to see if the name rings a bell, but none of this is registering and it’s pissing me off a little. I ask, “How do you know Lonnie?”

“How
everybody
knows him,” she rolls her eyes. “Through Geisha House.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of you.”

“I’m Shayne Lamas—I’m on a show called
Leave It to Lamas
⁵⁵
,” and she says this much in the same way I did when I rattled off my credentials: like I should know this already. “My father is Lorenzo Lamas,” she tacks on.

“Okay, name-dropper…relax for a second.”

“I’m totally relaxed, buddy,” she says half-mockingly. “So what are you doing here? In Vegas,” she flutters her empty hand in the air. It’s like she doesn’t really care what my answer is but she’ll talk to me just until Lonnie gets back, so I get a little smug.

“Well, I’m actually hosting Tao this weekend,” but I say this flatly—not like I’m bragging or anything. Shayne takes a sip of her drink, thinking about what I’ve just said to her.

“So…you’re a blogger, and you’re out here in Vegas…hosting events?” she recaps. Her face sours a little, and she says, “I don’t know. Sounds like kind of a loser thing to be doing if you ask me.”

She calls me a loser. Not teasing or poking fun. She genuinely means it. For the first time in two years, someone is calling me a loser to my face and treating me like I’m just some random dude. Then, to top things off, Shayne loses control of her drink and spills it on me. Jack and Diet soak into the Venetian robe and Shayne blushes, apologizing profusely, so I take advantage of the situation and offer to buy her another drink.

Like a goddamn gentleman, I say, “Let me get you another one.”

“But
I
spilled it on
you
. I don’t need your money.”

“Look, it’s not about money. I was trying to be nice is all.”

I’m thinking,
What a fucking bitch!

And Shayne, it’s obvious something along the lines of
This guy’s an arrogant prick
is going through her head.

It’s the worst ten minutes of conversation I’ve ever had with someone in a very long time. We have no connection, no chemistry. In fact, the whole first impression is a bust—a pissing match of who’s more famous, who has more notoriety. You’d never look at the two of us and think we’d be married in the next 24 hours.

I’m walking Shayne over to a cheerleading competition
that’s going on inside the hotel, limping a little bit because the gash on my leg is still on fire. Bum leg or not, there’s no way I’m letting this girl call me a loser and walk away scot-free. Nobody does that.
Nobody
. Certainly not some chick who thinks she can name-drop me into submission, so in a way, Lonnie’s plan worked. He got my mind off things.
Shayne
got my mind off things, I should say, and that puts me in a hard situation: making the choice between going home and getting better…or chasing. Chasing this girl.

“My sister—she’s thirteen,” Shayne says, “and we’re all here to see her cheer but my stepmom was annoying the hell out of me, so I left.”

“What was she doing?”

“Drinking,” she says, giving me a look to see if I’m passing any sort of judgment. I don’t bother mentioning that I almost got alcohol poisoning last night or how I got the gash on my leg. Shayne says she’s thinking about going back to L.A. in a tired voice. We walk through the hotel, but now I’m not thinking about how to one-up her or anything like that.

I’m trying to figure out how to get her to stay.