Leaving Las Vegas (2 page)

“What’s the problem?” says the man, dropping his hands. “You on strike?” This amuses him, and he walks away laughing loudly, so as to confirm to anyone who might be watching that it was he who commanded the situation all along.

(She couldn’t help it. He had bought them all that beer, and she had had more than her share. But it didn’t help, ’cause when her turn came she was so nervous that she peed right on his hand. He got mad and looked like he was gonna hit her, but he didn’t.

He stopped and looked around at them, all her girlfriends laughing at him, and he took his hand out of his own pants and walked back to the clearing in the front of the park. Sera was sorry to have ruined things, sorrier still about the look on his face as he left, like he had just gotten beat up.)

“Aren’t you a cute little trick,” says another good-natured, lecherous cab driver to Sera as she falls into his backseat. He chats about his last fare and takes her back to the part of the Strip that she likes to work.

She, feeling pretty good about finding herself in yet another harmless evening, chats back freely. This is standard fare, replete with the simple details of breathing and talking, of tasting and swallowing, of washing and drying, of watching and defining. She can and will do this forever. Rare in her race, rarer still in her class, she touches—even now—the things that others only grasp for futilely at the instant of unavailability. Her grass is very green indeed.

And to it she returns as she rises from the cab and glances
down the street, only to glimpse the same yellow Mercedes that she noticed earlier. The car backs quickly out of view, leaving behind the urgent echo of hot rubber on pavement and a protesting horn amidst the waning scream of internal combustion.

This is bad news at best, for she once knew a man with a penchant for Mercedes and a proclivity for amateur surveillance, a man lurking in her past, lurking, hopefully, elsewhere. There is only one other girl in sight, and she was not here earlier, nor does she appear very attentive now. Furthermore, as far as Sera can tell only one thing happened immediately prior to the car’s hasty departure, and that was her obvious sighting of it.

She settles on one more look at the empty space next to the silver camper, and relegating the matter to the back of her mind, she turns her attention back to the business at hand. After all, this Mercedes—this
yellow
Mercedes—is not quite in the same league with the very expensive, very tacky, gold-plated German chariots in her past, and it is not at all unusual for girls working the Strip to be watched for hours by nervous men or cheap-thrill masturbators.

(“This is what you are, Sera! This is what I say you are!”

She waited, almost hungrily, for the blade, the metal that would go into her flesh then be in her flesh. She wanted it, perhaps, because her experience had taught her that that which begins will also end. Face down, she bit the pillow.

“Sera!” he cried. He was crying now. There were tears.

But she preferred to concentrate on the sensation of warm, flowing blood. It seemed the simpler of the two fluids.)

The Strip is swinging up, acting up as the midwesterners embrace their newly found early a.m. options. Sera really has no immediate need to be here, as she has earned enough already tonight for a full day at the tables tomorrow, but working full-time has become a sort of habit for her, and she just doesn’t feel
right when she goes home much before two in the morning. She decides that she’s about one trick away from her morning shower, just as three college boys, each wearing numbered jerseys and carrying the ubiquitous Heineken bottles, walk toward her from the street.

“How much will it cost us to fuck you?” says the tallest, amidst the titters of the other two. His shirt bears the number sixteen—his age minus three, she guesses.

Sera starts to turn away, then pauses to button her blazer. “Sorry guys, but I don’t know what you mean. Anyway, I never date more than one guy at a time,” she says.

“Come on, we got money. Show her the money, Mike,” says sixteen. Both hands firmly entrenched in his back pockets, he gestures with his chin to his comrade.

Number twelve opens his wallet to her, exposing several hundred of what she knows are daddy’s poorly-placed dollars. Of course it’s possible that this little episode is exactly what daddy had in mind:
Where’s your son, Frank?
—chuckles from around the club locker room—
Why hell, Charlie, I sent ’im off to Vegas to learn the one thing I couldn’t teach ’im!.
She realizes it’s a bad idea, but she bites just the same.

She clucks her tongue: the disapproving mother. “How much of that did you guys want to spend?” she says.

Sixteen brightens visibly, but catches himself; his earlier boasting has not embarrassed him as he feared it might when they actually came up with the money. All business: “How much you want? How about two hundred for an hour?” he says: not my money.

“Don’t your friends talk?” she says, growing annoyed, despite herself, with this kid’s presumption. This is not a good idea; they’ll end up disliking her, probably mistreat hundreds of
women down the road because of her. “Try three hundred for a half-hour.”

“Three hundred for an hour,” says double zero, grasping the next logical step as he speaks for the first time. Mistake. Though her manner has put him at ease he can hear a quiver in his own voice, and he resolves not to speak anymore.

“Three hundred and we’ll see how it goes,” says Sera, wondering if they could possibly all be virgins. Certainly one of them is, and she bets that this is some sort of ritual for his benefit.

They all nod and twelve starts to count out the money to her with a certain dejected resolution. He hadn’t expected this to go so well, and hoping to be absolved from all responsibility by the older boy’s leadership, he had other plans for these crisp bills.

She stops him with a gesture. “Where’s your room, what hotel?” she asks.

They tell her, and it turns out to be a little motel, not far from where they are. Not exactly top security for her, but she just can’t muster a rational doubt about this trick. Anyway, they’re all impressed with their friend now—he’s so well-bonded that he’s practically glowing—and she would hate to let them down.

“I’ll see you there in fifteen minutes,” she says. “You can pay me then. Why don’t you all take a shower while you’re waiting.”

“In fifteen minutes?” whines twelve.

“Don’t you guys live in a dorm or something? You must have some experience with quick showers, right? Didn’t you ever have two dates in one night?”—everybody’s all smiles now—“Look, I’ll only need one of you at a time, RIGHT? UNDERSTOOD?”—nods all around—“Well then, the other two can shower while I’m there.” She snaps her lips shut and stares at them: end of conversation.

They walk off giggling. Sera goes into the store and buys a bottle of beer to help her decide whether or not she really wants
to go through with this, but she arrives on time at their door and sixteen opens up in his Jockey shorts. She feels the tension as she goes into the room and is about to leave when twelve pushes the three hundred dollars at her. Against her better judgment, she stays, and starts undressing as double zero emerges from the bathroom, looking rather pale.

“Who’s first?” she says.

(Of all the girls, she always went out first. Once she came back and they were all still there, watching TV, laughing, some of them fucking.

“It’s because I love you the most,” he said, “that I allow you to work the hardest.”)

The boys look around at each other and at her. She doesn’t want to think that they’re checking relative positions, but she’s been in similar scenes before. She still can’t believe that these guys are dangerous.

“I want to fuck her in the butt, Jim.” says twelve, looking hopefully at Jim. “You too, right?”

“Forget that,” she says. “No one’s doing that. You’ll all go straight, one at a time. If you want I’ll suck you instead, but that’s all. Then I’m out of here.” Yes, now it moves fast. I can feel it getting fast in here, she thinks.

“Jim, you said I could fuck her in the butt,” repeats twelve.

“That’s it, I’m leaving,” she says. “Here’s your money back.” She picks up her purse.

“No! Stay,” says Jim. “Shut up, Mike!”

“It’s my money and I want to fuck her in the butt, Jim!” screams Mike.

She turns on him. “Maybe you want to fuck JIM in the butt! Have you thought of that?” she says.

Then, as she will remember it later, the scene begins moving
really
fast—way too fast to even think about fast—or perhaps it
simply compresses, crystallizes into a complex moment of images. Her challenge brings the room to silence, and she sees that the boy’s eyes are filling up with tears. Feeling bad, she tries to apologize, but is stopped by a blow, catching her full in the face. A flash of colored sparks lead her into darkness, unconsciousness. She wakes hurting, her face in a bloody pillow and someone on her back. A scream and struggle bring only a glimpse of the tall one—Jim… his name is Jim—in his underwear, then more darkness. Sounds and cries come to her ears as she fades in and out between blows. “Go on! fuck her!” … “Fuck her in the rear!” … “Can we go home now?” … “Look at me, I’m fucking on her!” Hot semen falls on her back, but she is too sore to know for sure if she is being violated at any given moment. She hears someone throwing up, and as she turns to look her hair is tugged hard, snapping her head back and exposing her face to another punch. “Stop that puking, Bobby.” … “What’s she gonna do, call the cops?” … “This is what she does for a living.” … “Don’t worry, she’ll be fine.” She is rolled over, wakes to see two of them urinating on her breasts, and is kicked sharply on the side of her head. There is a final flash of sparks, and she goes under, way, way under.

She bleeds freely, asleep on the well-bleached sheets, alone in the little room.

(They were just boys, unwittingly paving their lives with misery.)

A passing truck grinds by outside of the quiet room, its low rumble entering her dormant ears and echoing unnaturally inside her head.

(The bars were covered with blood and spit. The cop’s hand
slipped off the iron rail as he rose from her, and the girls in the lockup pretended to rush him. They mocked his panic as he bolted, his pants still around his ankles. She saw other cops laughing, and wondered if he would ever live it down.)

Oooooooommmmmmmmaaaaaaaa,
the sound oozes to the front of her head, first in a dream; then she almost knows it’s a real sound, and she starts to pry her eyes open.

(Sera could tell, just by looking across the circular bar at them, that the expensive West Hollywood call girls had no time for her, and probably wished she wasn’t around.)

The room is incandescent yellow at first, then white, altered by her mind as it recaptures awareness and strives for normalcy.

(They were afraid, afraid to be with her and with each other. Their bodies moved too fast for their brains to keep up.)

The pain knows that she is finally awake, and starts to assault her from all directions. Quivering, she pulls on her clothes. She knows that they won’t be back, and ignores an impulse to run from the room. She guesses that she has been sodomized more than once, and each step to the mirror brings tears to her eyes as the pain rips through her. She wipes the blood and makeup from her swollen face, realizing that she won’t be able to work for at least a week. She hopes that she can do well at the tables today, for a change. Finding her purse intact, she calls for a cab from the room phone; it arrives, and Sera, with visible difficulty, opens the door and sits gently on the bench seat.

“What’s the matter honey, get a delivery at the back door that you weren’t expectin’?” says the driver, laughing at her discomfort. He’s a veteran, seen it all. Long ago, dues paid, he dispensed with his obligation to be courteous; never even had the inclination—
goes with the territory,
he tells the new guys. He goes with the territory. “Looks like you been knocked around, too. You got any money left? You gonna be able to pay your fare?”

She silently pulls a twenty dollar bill out of her purse and, reaching forward, drops it on the front seat.

“Oh, don’t wanna talk to me?” he says, offended. “Well don’t take it out on me, I’m just tryin’ to cover my ass. What the hell do you expect sluttin’ around like that, dressed like that? What the hell do you expect? You just oughtta be glad the creep didn’t nail you the way I would. At least the way you got it you know you ain’t knocked up. You oughtta be glad, that’s all. Where you goin to?”

She mumbles her address through swollen lips.

“Fine,” he says, easing up. “That’s fine, and you’ll have change comin’. How’s that? See, it’s not so bad. Hell, I didn’t mean to laugh at ya, but you should have seen the way you sat down: like it was on eggs. I’m sorry you got hit, but you oughtta be glad cause it could be worse. I’ve seen worse. But this is fine, you got change comin’ and you could be worse. See, I’m not such a bad guy. Now this is fine, okay? Whaddeya say?”

“Yeah,” says Sera, “I’m fine. Thanks for asking. This is fine.”