Ceremony of Flies (2 page)

His smile looks like he’s about to tell a joke. “I didn’t say I wanted one. I asked if you ever tried one.”

There’s something about him that seems comfortable already. It’s a weird déjà vu feeling. Maybe we met in another life. I don’t believe in that shit, but the feeling is weird.

“Yeah, I’ve tried one.” I can feel Mort watching me, so I take a pen out of my glass and pretend to write something on my tray.

“Well?” he says.

I look into his eyes. He’s got lashes that are too long for a dude, like maybe he used a little mascara. His teeth are too bright to be real. But I like the way his hair falls down over one eye, like he planned it that way. Like he knows he looks good.

“To be honest, you’d think something as good as a Twinkie would be even better fried. But the truth is”—I lean in close and breathe in his scent—“fried Twinkies are disgusting.”

“Whoo! Whoo!” He rocks back on his stool, grabbing the seat like the bull is about to start bucking and he’s afraid he’s going to fall off.

What the fuck? Ugh, what if he’s a retard? I did not say anything funny.

I cast a sideways glance in Mort’s direction. He’s still watching. Doesn’t he have some money to count or something?

“So you want a fried Twinkie?”

“I’ll have a boilermaker. You know what’s in that?” He winks again.

Maybe it’s a nervous tic.

“Yep,” I say as I move over to the side of him and lean against the bar to get his drink. “Boilermaker,” I call out to the bartender.

“You’d be surprised how many people don’t.” He rubs his hands on his thighs like he’s wiping something off. His hand grazes me.

Does he expect me to think that was an accident?

“Mixology is a fine art. A craft a man can be proud of,” he says with a know-it-all smirk.

“We’re professionals around here.”

It’s a shot dropped in a beer, dick-wad, not the Mona fucking Lisa. I smile at him but I’m not feeling it so much anymore. There’s really no reason for me to get this guy’s drink. He’s sitting at the bar after all. But I take the glass from the bartender and set it on my tray.

“Hey. You think in a while you can show me where a guy can get a decent burger around here?” He’s making eye contact. Really making eye contact like he wants to sell me a stolen car or something. I get a little tickle in my gut like something shifty is up. This guy works the angles. I can tell by the tone of his voice and his hypnotist’s gaze. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Who doesn’t work an advantage every now and then?

He better not think I’m some stupid mark.

I am not.

No idiot cowboy, Elvis-wannabe motherfucker is going to get one over on me. He’s going to have to come up with something better than that. How is it even possible that he can’t find what he wants in
Vegas
? I’m going to figure out what’s up with him. Two can play this game.

“I guess.” I watch him. His eyes aren’t wandering over me like he’s trying to figure out how much I’ll charge for a blow job. So that’s something.

I’d charge him twenty. He’s good-looking. Or maybe fifty, because
Whoo! Whoo!
seriously?

“Don’t think you’re going to pull anything on me,” I say. “It won’t work.” If he’s trying to snuggle up and get the goodies for free, I will fuck him up.

He gets a surprised look on his face like no one has ever called him on his bullshit before. His mouth opens to say something at the same moment the red-faced Midwestern prick snaps his fingers in my direction.

I twist when I hear the sound and totter on my shoes. The drink still on my tray sloshes a little. The guy at the bar grabs my elbow to steady me.

Fucking shoes.

That Midwestern dick is going to be seriously lucky if I don’t take off one of these glittery spiky monstrosities and bash in his head with it.

I stomp over to his table. I can feel the heat rising up inside me. “You really know how to snap those fingers, don’t you?”

“I was trying to get your attention,” the red-faced man says.

“No shit. I kind of got that impression.”

His face turns an even darker shade of red. Let’s go for purple, shall we? I lean over real slow and put my face down close to his. In my coldest, hardest mean girl voice I say, “What-do-you-want.”

It’s not a question.

He knows it.

“Is there a problem here?” Mort plasters a smile on his face that looks about as cheap as the Mardi Gras beads waitresses are supposed to give out.

“This asshole snapped his fingers like I’m some kind of dog.”

Aaaand we’ve got purple. Better cool this boy down before he has a coronary. I drizzle the boilermaker over his head. The little shot glass falls out. Clunk. Right on his big old bald head. His stupid wife gets all flustered. Her hands fly up to her face. Just the reaction I’d hoped for.

Behind me I can hear the guy laughing,
Whoo! Whoo!

Mort reaches out like he’s going to grab me. I snatch my arm away and start to do some serious teetering on my ridiculous shoes. “Don’t put your hands on me. I will stab you.”

The words ring out as loud as the bell for the 10K jackpot.

Fuck.

I should not have said that.

I don’t have words to describe the look on Mort’s face.

“You know what, Mort. Don’t even say anything. You’re right. This isn’t the place for me.” I jerk the headdress off my head. It snags on my hair and makes my eyes water.

Now it fucking wants to stay in place.

With an extra hard tug I pull it free and shove it at Mort.

“I quit.”

Mort’s eyes grow large behind the thick greasy lenses of his glasses. He should be glad I quit. It saves him having to fire me. So why’s he just staring like that?

I want to go. It’s time to go, but something about the way Mort’s looking at me keeps me frozen in place. A single fly hovers in place between us. Slowly, like an ice sculpture melting, like the shift of a tectonic plate, his head tilts down. I follow the trajectory of his eyes.

A mysterious, inexplicable substance seeps, like soup on a carpet, into the taut white fabric stretched over his belly. A red Rorschach blot in the shape of a heart expands and spreads.

The pins, the torture devices designed to hold my headdress in place, as long and as sharp as hypodermic needles, are stuck into Mort’s shirt. If the horrified look on Mort’s face is any indication, the spike holding the crown jewel has found its way into his heart.

Fuck.

The sounds of Bon Jovi or Journey wavers and warbles until it turns into a buzz like a swarm of flies. The
Whoo! Whoo!
from the guy at the bar is noticeably absent.

That train has left the station.

As Mort’s knees buckle and he heads for the floor, I jump down from the lofty heights of my shoes and do the only sensible thing.

Run.

Las Vegas

In prehistoric times, marshes receded from the Las Vegas Valley, leaving an arid, inhospitable desert behind. Millennia later, water trapped in labyrinthine geological formations underground spewed forth, creating an oasis.

Many years later, gold diggers on their way to San Francisco and Mormons expanding their empire from Salt Lake City vied to settle the patch of green, the Meadows in Spanish, Las Vegas.

On October 1, 1910, an especially harsh law that forbade all gambling, even the flipping of coins for purposes of decision making, inspired Las Vegas gamblers to take their games underground. With the help of secret passwords and officials willing to look the other way, gambling flourished.

By 1931, gambling was legal, and Vegas was booming. The gold diggers, in a substantially different guise, had won.

2

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

This is not part of the plan. This is some tangential alternate reality. I have been transported to some new coil of string in someone else’s theory. Plus I’ve got no shoes and I’m wearing a green and purple dress that would put a Puerto Rican welfare queen to shame.

I slink back into the shadows of the basement level of the parking garage for the Cortez. I’m not kidding myself. I know I’m not hiding. I fucking glow in the dark. But it’s empty down here. There’re hardly even any cars.

It should be cooler in the darkness than it is. The air feels like the inside of a mausoleum, still and oppressive. I’ve really dug my own grave this time.

Fuck.

I listen for sirens or the shouts of police. All I can hear is muffled clatter and the blast of Downtown Vegas noise.

That’s a good sign.

Maybe things aren’t so bad after all. Maybe Mort’s all right and he’s shining ashtrays and giving out Mardi Gras beads because I’m not at my post.

Yeah, keep dreaming.

I should take the stupid dress off. Find some shoes. That’s the first thing I need to do. That’s how you solve a big problem. Break it down into little pieces. I only wish my heart would stop pounding in my ears so I could think and the tightness in my chest would let up so I could breathe.

Think—breathe.

Things aren’t any worse than after me and Joey ran away to New York and I tried out to be a singer in the Slipper Room. I was scared shitless that night. When I stepped up on the stage to audition, I had a panicky feeling like a wave was cresting over my head. I held my breath and walked right up to the mic anyway. The wave crested and the feeling receded. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. I was pretty good. They even told me to come back. I would have too, if the situation with Joey hadn’t gotten out of control. I wanted that job really bad.

Things aren’t any worse now. They’re about the same actually. Except this time I’m the one who killed somebody. Feels about the same.

Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.

I catch a glimpse of something moving in the dark cave of the stairwell. My heart jumps up into my throat.

A little black kid with a head full of unruly curls pokes his head out and stares right at me. He looks just like the kid who was always hanging around us back in New York trying to steal our food. Two dots of red glow from out of the darkness like a dog’s eyes reflecting light. The kid sticks his tongue out, then turns and runs up the stairs. The sound of his footsteps echoes through the parking garage. Did that kid spit something at me? I could swear I saw something fly out of his mouth.

Just a kid. I relax a little. Just a kid.

I march up one sparse row of cars and down the next, glancing in car windows like that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I try the door handles. Nothing opens, but at least no car alarms go off. Do cars even have those anymore? I need a break right about now. I need to find an open window, an unattended suitcase.

Against the far wall parked sideways in two and a half spaces, I see an old-fashioned convertible the color of midlife crisis. Oh please, oh please, oh please, I chant to myself as I run to it.

Yes!

On the backseat is the saddest overstuffed suitcase I’ve ever seen. It’s bulging like a bloated corpse and just barely held together with bungee cords and gray rope.

The car’s got nice leather seats and shiny chrome. The car and the suitcase don’t match but I don’t have time to think about that. The door’s locked but the top is down so I reach in and unlock the door. Some real genius must own this vehicle. I climb in.

I snap off the bungee cord and tear at the knot in the rope. It gives and the guts of the suitcase spew all over the backseat. Right on top, I find pair of jeans that look about two sizes too big, but they’ll work. There’s flies close by, I can tell by the buzzing sound. This is exactly the kind of suitcase that would have something disgusting in it. If I plunge my hand into Fluffy’s rotting corpse, I’ll deal with it.

I toss aside some framed picture of an old lady and dig through the T-shirts and man panties until I find a white shirt with a collar and a monogrammed
B
on the pocket. Bet the guy is
Bill
or
Bob
. Maybe even a
Billy Bob
. A smell like smoke and liquor and something manly clings to the clothes. It reminds me of someone, but I can’t put my finger on who. I don’t really have time to worry about it anyway. My dress clings and scratches as I pull it off. I cannot think of one single piece of clothing I have ever been so relieved to be out of. I wriggle into the too-big jeans and thread the bungee cord through the belt loops. It would be a whole lot easier if my hands would stop shaking. Just as I’m buttoning up the shirt, I hear the tap of footsteps on concrete.

Fuck!