Las Vegas Noir (2 page)
There is plenty of heartbreak and humor (albeit of the blackest order) too. In Tod Goldberg’s “Mitzvah,” for instance, a con man masquerading as a rabbi feels trapped in the suburbs until he plans a brutal means of escape. In Scott Phillips’s “Babs,” an ex-stripper turned bar owner drags along a visiting Midwestern cartoon aficionado to reclaim some meth for a mutual friend. And Vu Tran’s devastating “This or Any Desert” explores the fractured psyche of a renegade cop looking to avenge his Asian ex-wife’s physical abuse at the hands of her new husband, a Chinatown businessman, with searing emotional and psychological insight.
Like we said, as fantastic and diverse as the Strip can be at night, it’s got nothing on the vast array of stories collected here. Indeed,
Las Vegas Noir
, as you will soon discover, brings you into the gaudy bosom of our fair city—that is, the gaudy, lethal bosom that eventually presents itself once you wander far away from the Strip.
Jarret Keene & Todd James Pierce
Las Vegas, Nevada
March 2008
P
art of me wished that I had asked the cab to wait. I hadn’t. I stared up at the big double doors, weathered from the desert sun, yes, but still so imposing that you half expected to see a muscled bodyguard when they opened. The doorbell didn’t work. It never had. I felt the familiar quiver begin in the back of my neck as twice I dropped the ornate knocker, an upside-down black iron cross. I peered over my back to see if the cab was still in sight. The long drive was empty.
Despite the impending nightfall, I noticed the German shepherd asleep on the grass, his white face a beacon in the otherwise black lawn. I knew this dog and wondered if he would remember me. I walked over to nudge him awake.
When I had last left this house over ten years ago, I was certain that I was through with this all-consuming part of my life, but as I bent over to pet the dog, it was clear this place was far from finished with me; rather, like the dog, it was merely lying in wait for some new awakening. The shepherd lifted his head and growled, but whether the snarl was for me or something else, I did not know. I followed his gaze and was startled to find that I was being watched by a tall slim figure, standing where only moments before the closed doors had been.
“Timmers, you’re back,” she said, not at all surprised to see me.
I cringed at her easy, reflexive use of my nickname; at her prosaic manner of observation, as if I’d just returned from a short walk—when in fact I had been gone for a decade. This meeting was nothing less than heart-stopping for me.
“Melinda, I … I didn’t hear the door open. You startled me …” So much so, in fact, that I couldn’t remember anything that I had planned to say. “You sound as if you’ve been expecting me.” She ignored this.
“Come in,” she said.
As I followed her through the foyer and into the heart of the house, I began to feel a sort of resignation; a feeling that, now that I had set things in motion, I could sit back and relax, free from the burden of decision making. It was not an unpleasant outlook.
“Christ,” I said as we walked into the living room, its windowed ceiling a full twenty feet above me. “I’d forgotten how damn big this place is.”
“I doubt that,” she responded. “Still drink bourbon?”
“Finally a question. Apparently there is at least one thing that you’re not sure of.” I was starting to feel cocky. How else could I feel? I’d come this far into the house, into my past. The less I thought about it, the better it felt. I was comfortable here. Melinda understood me in a way that no one else could.
“Not really, Timmers.” She reached into an antique Spanish sideboard and extracted a dusty bottle of Wild Turkey.
“My brand, even. I’m impressed.” I narrowed my eyes and grinned at her. Her presence was making me giddy. I was excited—this was so easy. She knew why I was here. It was like being in a cathouse—no pretense. You ask for sex and they give it to you. But a cathouse would seem like a church compared to this place.
“Your bottle, actually,” she said.
“Fuck it,” I said. “We can drink all we want later.”
Without missing a beat she set down the bottle, picked up my hand, and turned silently toward the staircase. I willingly followed her determined walk and flowing silk robe. This was the beginning of the end of ten years’ anxiety. It seemed as if I’d barely been away. Right now nothing seemed less relevant than my time away from her.
But I did have that time, and I had to remember that. I had to remember the futile years of trying to ignore this hidden life, with Melinda and this extravagant house standing at the center. I had to remember why I was here.
Why was I here?
What if I did like it? Liking it—living it—had been the whole point. I was back now and it was time to unlearn compassion and let Melinda take me again.
We climbed the staircase to her bedroom; ten years since it had been
our
bedroom and yet it looked exactly the same to me. Perhaps it would always be our bedroom. Melinda dropped my hand and turned to face me. She stepped back and looked into my eyes as she untied her robe and let it fall to the floor. I was amazed at her perfection. Though life had left its many marks on my body, she was just as I remembered—flawless, still possessing all the curves and textures of a nineteen-year-old showgirl.
She unbuttoned my shirt and in a moment I, too, was naked. Melinda wrapped herself around me. I lifted her onto the bed, the raw heat rising inside of me. It was exactly as I remembered. I ran my hands along her thighs, stopping short of the cleft of her. Her nipples were hard and brown. I took one between my teeth, one between thumb and finger, and bit and pinched with exacting pressure. Melinda cried out, but did not move to stop me. She was open beneath me, ready. It was time. I licked and tasted her until her legs quivered on the brink. I stopped short of her orgasm and lay on top of her, breathing in the intermission. Finally, I pushed into her. She climaxed in waves, acute bursts of pleasure. I was close behind, teetering on that exquisite edge.
Melinda sensed this, as I knew she would, and stopped all her motion. At once my imminent climax was completely in her control. She slid from beneath me and sat up on the side of the bed. She opened the nightstand drawer. I waited, trembling, as she extracted a stainless steel tray and with slick efficiency prepared the injection. The glowing black fluid filled the syringe. My hardness raged. I swallowed against it all, my throat dry.
At that moment it was impossible for me to understand how I had stayed away from this drug—we called it “The Tik”—for all those years. I had never heard of it outside this room and had never looked for it elsewhere. Somehow I knew that it existed nowhere but here. This place was as much a part of The Tik as I, moments before, had been a part of Me-linda. She lived here in a desert oasis with it, and the whole scene had always been one great, indivisible, seductive, eternal entity to me. I had once believed that I could escape it by running. Now I had run back, and was going to try to escape another way.
Melinda tapped the needle of the syringe with a long red fingernail. The sexual tension and my own anticipation had my heart nearly beating out of my chest. My bloodstream was primed to rush the drug to my brain. Melinda turned, ready with the needle. I closed my eyes and offered my arm.
The beautiful pinch.
As the hot fluid rushed through my veins, Melinda prepared another hypo and injected herself. Then she dropped the syringe onto the tray and kicked it, lunging into me. As the stainless steel and empty vial clattered to the floor, Me-linda clutched my waist and took me into her mouth. The heat of The Tik inside of me and the heat of Melinda’s tongue outside of me combined into that perfect euphoria I’d known only within these walls. She held me on the brink for as long as she could. Then I yelled out, pumping into her.
The feeling of being alive poured over me, elemental and singular. We were finally together again.
The Tik.
We blinked in the aftermath, verifying it was real. I lay on my back, Melinda’s head on my stomach. Then she reared up and playfully bit me. I laughed and pushed her off. Full of new energy, I bounded out of the bed and down the stairs, returning with the bottle of bourbon. Melinda already had her panties on and was rolling up her fishnets. I sucked the bottle as I watched her dress. She grabbed it from me and took a big swallow.
“I have a surprise for you,” she said. She shoved the bottle back into my hand and pulled open the door of what had been my closet. I was stunned. Before me hung all my old clothes, just as I had left them.
I laughed. “Unfuckingbelievable. Do you still have the Jag too?”
“In the garage,” she said.
Nothing had changed.
Melinda and the drug were working in perfect harmony. My head spun with satisfaction and lust. I grinned wildly and shook on the leather jacket that had always fit me like a second skin. It still did. My boots, my jeans, everything was in place. I gulped some more bourbon and pounced on Melinda. We fell onto the bed and I ripped off the black lace bra she had just put on. She laughed as the zipper on my jacket scratched her. We fucked again, more perfunctorily this time, then got dressed.
After finishing the bottle of bourbon we went down to the garage. Melinda’s vintage Jag, a black 1967 XKE, was still in perfect shape, just as I, by now, expected everything to be. The car had also fit me. I slid into the driver’s seat and palmed the bulb of the stick shift. Melinda’s perfume blended with the smell of leather and night air. We squealed down the driveway and onto the moneyed side street. The ragtop was down and the wind blew Melinda’s hair all around. I flew through a red light. We vanished into the night.
We headed for the Strip, battling traffic. I didn’t mind. I basked in the stares this beautiful woman and car garnered beneath the streetlights and neon.
“Let’s go to the Barbary Coast,” I said.
“The Barbary Coast? You’ve got to be kidding,” said Me-linda. “Why?”
“Dunno,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “The $3.99 prime rib dinner?”
Melinda laughed, throwing her head back. “Oh, Tim-mers,” she said. “I’d forgotten how you make me laugh.”
We parked off the Strip and starting walking hand in hand through the crowd. The Tik pulsed inside me and mixed with the bourbon. Melinda was on my arm. I was ten feet tall.
Overweight Midwesterners stared at the two of us, wishing they could be us. We were the Las Vegas they came to see. A middle-aged man in Bermuda shorts eyed Melinda’s long legs.
“Loosest slots on the Strip,” I said to him with a conspiratorial nod as we passed. Completely stunned, he looked up at me, his mouth agape. Melinda and I folded with laughter, then broke into a run.
After a few minutes, Melinda stopped, breathless, and turned to me. She squeezed my hand. Her nails broke the skin.
“It feels so good to have you back, Tim,” she said.
I pushed her against the cold brick wall and put my mouth on hers while pressing my thigh between her legs.
“I love you,” I whispered. My hand was sticky with blood.
She returned my kiss, our tongues rolling together until Melinda pulled back.
“Why then,” she said, “are you going to make me go in there?” She nodded toward the billowing entrance of the Coast.
“Come on,” I said. “I feel so good. I feel like slumming. And if we don’t find any action in there”—I indicated the space in front of me with a grandiose sweep of my arm—“the entire Strip awaits us.” We stepped through the forced air plenum and into the clanging miasma of the casino.
A semi-attractive blonde with a very large chest caught my attention. She was sitting alone at a blackjack table.
“I’m going to the girls’ room,” Melinda shouted over the cacophony of bells and chimes that rang from the slot carousels. “I’ll catch up to you in a couple of minutes.”
I nodded and watched her meander off, as did most of the people she passed. The fishnet stockings had that effect.
I sat down next to the blonde and threw a hundred dollars on the table. The dealer set a short stack of chips in front of me as a cocktail waitress in a bad pirate costume appeared at my elbow.
“A double bullshot,” I said, placing a chip on her tray.
“What’s that?” said the blonde as she slurped at a frothy blender drink.
“It’s beef bouillon and vodka,” I said, peering at my cards.
She wrinkled her nose into a grimace. “
Ewww!
Why are you drinking
that
?” The end of her straw was coated in waxy orange lipstick.
“I’m hungry,” I said. After all, I was. I nodded yes to a hit from the dealer.
“That’s so gross,” she said.
“Fuck you,” I said. Maybe semi-attractive was too generous a description for her, stacked or not. The bad casino lighting wasn’t shoring up her odds either. “Now shut up and finish your snow cone.”
“Okay, I will,” she said. “And then you can.”
“I can what?” I said, rolling my eyes. The waitress set down my drink with exactly the speed a pre-tip buys. I placed another chip on her tray and turned back to the blonde.
“You can fuck me,” she said as the dealer flipped over his jack and ace.
“Who the fuck are you?” With characteristically perfect timing and an equally perfect brunette, led by the hand, Me-linda intervened. The blonde sized up the two women and picked up her drink. “I’m more than you could handle anyway,” she said, then collected her remaining chips and walked away, flipping us off.
“Tim, this is Teena,” said Melinda, not even looking after the blonde. “She’s new in town. Just got a job as a waitress over at the Peppermill.”
“After I finish the training course,” said Teena. “Of course,” she added, giggling at her own quip.
“Right,” said Melinda. “After you finish the training course.” She wrapped an arm around Teena’s waist and turned to me. “She’s coming home with us for a nightcap.” One look at Teena and I could see that Melinda had bribed her with the coke she always kept in her purse.
