The Fading (32 page)

‘That’s who I wanted to be,’ Julie said, eyes glinting. ‘When I grew up, I was going to be that woman, strong and adventurous
and free, taking care of all those wild animals, living with a handsome man in a little red tent. We’d go to Africa and Asia
and South America, meeting new animals and dazzling crowds everywhere with our amazing shows. Look how strong she is, standing
there with her whip. She’s not afraid of anything and even the lions love her. Doesn’t she look happy?’

‘Yes.’

She didn’t speak for a long time, only stared at the Adventure People.

‘We could still do that,’ Noel told her. ‘If that’s what you want, I’ll live in a tent with you. We can travel, go on safari,
buy some tiger cubs and a zebra, all of it.’

‘No, it wouldn’t be the same,’ Julie said. ‘Look at them. This isn’t a vacation for them. This is their life. They are fearless
and this is what they do.’

When the bartender came back with their tab, Noel asked him why there happened to be a set of twenty-year-old safari toys
sitting in a place normally reserved for old photos of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. The bartender said he didn’t know the
whole story, but it
involved a vintage toy collector who’d come through the casino one night. The toy collector, an old man with a drinking problem,
had run some con and tried to skip out on a tab, but the manager busted his ass and started to lead him off to security. The
old man had pleaded for mercy and offered some toys in lieu of payment, promising they would be worth a lot someday. The manager,
who was a nut for model cars and boats and dolls, had taken pity and set the old booze hound free, and now there was a set
of Adventure People sitting behind the bar, collecting dust until the manager decided enough time had passed for them to be
worth real money.

Noel had promptly stood and counted everything in his wallet. ‘I’ll give you three hundred and six dollars for the whole set.’

‘Sorry,’ the bartender demurred. ‘The manager’s holding out for a couple grand.’

Noel was incredulous. ‘Some old man toy collector drank two thousand dollars’ worth of booze?’

‘No, but the manager’s gotten attached to the little guys. Especially that dude with the beard. Don’t ask me why. He’s a weirdo.
Likes to go home and make sculptures out of melted Barbie dolls.’

‘I want to talk to him,’ Noel said. ‘Call him at home.’

‘Forget it,’ Julie said, leading him away. ‘That’s crazy. We’re not spending two thousand dollars on some old toys.’

‘I’m getting you those Adventure People,’ Noel promised her. ‘Soon as we strike it big, I’m coming back.’

‘Aw, Noel.’

But he never did. In the heady rush of their rise and fall, he’d forgotten about Julie’s Adventure People. Now he wondered
if they were still there. Probably not. Probably the hotel had remodeled and the entire bar was gone, replaced by one of those
ridiculous slushy machine places, where waitresses in halter tops served thirty-two-ounce blue and orange frozen margarita
and hurricane concoctions that poured out of transparent volcanoes and came with a glow-in-the-dark straw.

But damned if he wasn’t going to find out. If the set was there, he’d steal the Adventure People for her, or leave two grand
on the register with a thank-you note. Either way, it would make a nice gift, one he hoped would convey all the right things
about their future. We can go anywhere and do anything, baby. We can be whoever we want. All we need is a tent and each other.

That, and maybe a couple of lions to guard the $6.3 million I stole for you.

He woke early on a warm May morning and set out for the Strip one final time. He made it to hotel’s main entrance and paused
in the lobby to read the signs. Funny, he’d spent so much time here and couldn’t remember behind which bar Julie’s souvenir
was kept. It had been set deep in the Palace, tucked back somewhere between the sportsbook and the newer mall that led to
the Forum Shops. The kind of place you could walk by three times and never even notice.

Noel veered right, into the casino, past the noodle restaurant with its large tanks of bright orange goldfish. Business had
picked up with the warmer weather and the solids swarmed all around him. He knew there was a short cut through Cleopatra’s
Barge, and he followed the signs and arrows in that direction. He took his time, careful to avoid bumping into anyone. He
watched the people, families and a gaggle of businessmen, a beautiful young couple sharing a waffle cone filled with pistachio
gelato. Good people, average people, happy people.

Less than ten paces later Noel forgot about Julie’s Adventure People.

It was amazing to look back, once it had all gone down, just how remote the odds were. Astronomical, really, and heart-stopping
to behold. That the two of them should ever cross paths, that the two of them should be able to
see
each other at all.

A middle-aged man whose tweed sport coat, wavy brown beard and slightly befuddled demeanor suggested something along the lines
of a dealer in antiques or a professor of philosophy. He was alone when he vanished under the sign for the sunglasses store.
Two minutes later, donning a new pair of white Oakley shades with fire-orange iridescent lenses, he re-manifested just three
doors down, on the other side of the walkway near the coffee and dessert bar, where he took out his wallet and paid for a
crepe smothered in blueberries.

Following, heart jackhammering, Noel did not
believe what he had seen. He must have imagined it. He trailed cautiously as the man took a bite of his crepe, wiped compote
from his beard and stepped into one of the Palace Tower’s eight elevators.

Inside, just before he vanished for the second time in less than five minutes, the professor faced the open elevator doors,
raised his obnoxious white sunglasses, and
winked
at him, mouthing three words that shattered almost every illusion Noel had come to hold about his condition and his very
place in the world.

I see you.

There was another and, whoever he was, his veiling was an instrument of his will.

When the stranger vanished, the white sunglass frames with their fire-orange lenses fell down to his invisible nose and hung
suspended ‘in the air’ for an extra second or two, then they, too, were absorbed into the man’s bubble, and the elevator doors
began to close. Dumbstruck, Noel lunged but did not arrive in time to get his hand between the rubber safety bumpers.

A hand
.
My own hand.

Noel saw it reach out and slap the elevator’s brushed aluminum fascia. He looked down. His arm, his legs, clothes, shoes,
bridge of his nose, a lock of hair dangling near the corner of his eye. Everything, him. Just like that, his ten-week spell
was over and he was back amongst the solids.

Why? How? Had the stranger done something to him? Surely it wasn’t a coincidence. For a crazy moment Noel wondered if the
man had stolen the thing from him, as if there were but one bubble for all mankind and somehow the oddball had usurped the
power with a passing glance. No matter. It was just one more thing he needed to ask the guy about
everything
. His world had
been rocked. Something huge was happening here and his mind was reeling.

Noel stabbed at the buttons in vain; the elevator was already rising. He watched the row of floor numbers above, each glowing
as the elevator ascended. There was no way to guess which floor the man would exit onto, of course, but when the number 13
glowed orange and stayed there for at least thirty seconds, Noel couldn’t stand it any longer and took the next available
elevator, pressing 13 as he stepped on.

He had the cage to himself but at the last moment someone yelled, ‘Hold it, hold it!’ and loped in, jostling the doors back
open. Noel cursed under his breath as a father with curly black hair and his wife and two daughters trundled aboard with a
mass of shopping bags. He had been gone so long, he wasn’t used to people seeing him and his instincts for self-preservation
drove him back into the corner. The possibility of attention left him ill at ease, reminding him that he was now visible not
just to people but to the eyes in the sky, to the Caesars Palace security team. Suddenly being here did not seem like a good
idea. He should be leaving town, now, taking his money and getting as far away from Vegas as possible.

The family paid him no mind. At the sixth floor they exited and mercifully no one else stepped on, which would only mean more
stops, more time for the stranger (Noel kept thinking of him as the professor, even though he had no idea if the schlub was
one) to get away.

Noel jabbed 13 again. ‘Come on, come on.’

The elevator lifted. Dinged. He hopped off, eyes already surveying every corner, every hall. He took a right and walked fast,
looking over his shoulder every few seconds. The odds of finding the professor were not good even if the man were roaming
in a solid state, and they dropped to nil if he didn’t want to be seen or had already shut himself in one of the hundreds
of rooms.

Noel hit a dead-end hall and reversed course. His mind was racing, alternately joyous and dying of curiosity for having spotted
another like him, going in and out at moments of his choosing. That couldn’t be, could it? But how else to explain the timing,
the casual theft of the sunglasses, that knowing wink? And to top it all off, the man had somehow allowed the sunglasses to
linger, a clever magic trick that said,
Look what I can do
.

Who was he? Where did he come from? What did he know about it and what could Noel learn from him? The prospect of answers
to the questions that Noel had been wrestling with his entire life made it difficult to keep from running down the halls,
pounding every door, shouting for the man to come back, reveal himself.

He passed a sign which read
USE STAIRS IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY
and his heart sank. What if the man had taken the stairs? But
then, why would he? If he wanted to hide, he could hide anywhere. If he wanted to be seen, he would have—

Wait. At first the man’s casual blink in and out had seemed a random thing, or a trick to help him steal the sunglasses (sunglasses
which looked flatly ridiculous on
a middle-aged fellow in a tweed coat and cushioned loafers). Noel realized now the whole thing had been staged for his benefit.
The man had showed himself to Noel on purpose.

He found me when I was bubbled-up, so obviously he knows what I am. What if he knows who I am? How long has he been watching
me? What if he had a front-row seat to half the things I’ve done? To all of it?

Which raised the most troubling question – how had he seen Noel to begin with? It had happened so fast, Noel had almost forgotten
he himself was invisible. Was it possible the man had the ability to see what the rest of the solids could not? What kind
of power was the professor wired into?

He was sweating now, racing up and down the halls. He took another elevator to the twelfth floor and checked every hall. He
did the same with the eleventh. This was crazy. He could do this all day and night and get nowhere.

Calm down, you idiot. Use your head. Pick a spot and wait
.

The stranger had gone up to one of the floors in this tower, the Palace Tower. Logic mandated he had to come back down. At
some point he would want food, drink, a game, a girl, whatever he was into here. Noel didn’t like the idea of standing in
the hall or parking his ass at one of the bars or restaurants for what could be hours or days, but he had to find this guy.
The information such a creature might provide could prove far more valuable than the millions Noel had buried in the desert.

Noel rode another elevator down to the lobby. He needed to find a perch as close to the source as possible. The bell dinged
and the doors opened. Noel took his first step and a warm breath of faintly sour milk passed before him.

‘Giving up so soon?’ The low, playful voice was already moving away.

Noel flinched, then froze up. The stranger had been in the elevator with him on the way down. The doors began to close and
Noel jumped off.

‘Hey! Get back here!’ he called.

Into the thoroughfare, looking both ways. To the right was a narrower hall of shops, to the left were the restaurants and
the widening mouth of the main casino floor. He started toward the narrower passage but glanced back once more, just in time
to see the professor walking backwards, solid-state, shaking his head with condescending disappointment. Incredibly, a group
of young guys in various basketball jerseys over their white tees and baggy jeans passed the professor as he vanished again,
and none slowed or gave the expected double-take.

Shit. Noel darted back toward the casino, weaving between tourists and a security guy in a black and gold windbreaker. He
made it as far as the noodle restaurant with the high tanks of goldfish when the voice came from behind him and to the right.

‘Why always in such a hurry?’

Noel turned and the professor was nowhere to be seen, but seconds later a short woman with a cropped
black hair and a black paper ALDO shopping bag in one hand yelped, turning to swat whatever had just pinched her butt.

Noel walked toward her and twenty or thirty paces beyond her the professor left another breadcrumb for him, this time in the
form of a cocktail glass filled with ice. One second it was sitting at the edge of the banister wrapping around a bank of
oversized slots, the next it was soaring, drumming the carpet with ice cubes. One or two people saw it land but no one seemed
to question who was responsible. Thus did the professor create a trail for him to follow through the winding circle of casino
rooms, daring in his disruptions, flagrant in his offenses, keeping far enough ahead and weaving side to side so that Noel
could track him without ever coming within arm’s reach.

In one aisle of cheapie slots, a silver fox griped ‘Hey, now!’ as her plastic bucket of nickels crashed to the floor. On the
rear perimeter of the sportsbook, a padded armchair fell on its back. One, two, three, four glass ashtrays were flipped like
coins. The sound a large bell being rung sounded to Noel’s left and he turned in time to see the life-sized statue of Joe
Louis wobbling on its foundation. On and on, deeper into the bowels of the resort the professor led him, taunting and teasing.