Leaving Las Vegas (23 page)

“I know,” he says, and goes to the kitchen, where he splashes water on his face and drinks another tumbler of vodka.

The first stop on the way to the grocery store, which is nearby but not yet open, is a small casino-restaurant-bar, which is not so nearby but always open. He pays the cab and enters the building, passing through a glass door and a tattered red velvet curtain which lies behind it. The bar, dirty, dark, and instantly familiar, is just what he had in mind; this place has outlived more than a few of its regulars. A man sleeps at one end, his face in a puddle of spilled beer. A middle-aged woman in hot pants dances alone at the jukebox. Ben takes his place on a chrome-legged stool with a black vinyl top. Behind him eight slot machines wait to be handled; two blackjack tables wait to be uncovered; the morning cook waits for any orders that may be forthcoming. The bartender bids Ben good morning and slaps a cocktail napkin down in front of him. He asks for a beer and a double kamikaze; the bartender nods. Sitting at a table in the back of the room, a biker couple argues with slurred words and non sequiturs.
Get Up, Las Vegas!
is airing live on a silent television which hangs over the liquor bottles.

His plan, his reason for being here, is to make Sera feel a little bit better about him. He’ll first drink himself sober at the bar, starting with kamikazes and moving into bloody marys. Next,
he’ll try to eat some saltine crackers, and if that goes well, he can try to get down an egg and some toast as a way to prepare his stomach for the impending unpleasantness. Then he’ll go home with a sack of groceries and make them both breakfast. A perfect balance gets more difficult to strike with each new day, but if he handles all these preliminaries properly, he should be able to eat an actual breakfast, his second, in front of her. This is a trick that she hasn’t yet seen, in fact, she hasn’t seen him eat a single meal since they’ve been together, and it should allay some of her fears about his condition.

Still wearing his suit and the shirt that she bought him, he is fifteen minutes into his kamikazes when the better half of the motorcycle couple comes and presses up to him.

“Why are you all dressed up, honey? Don’t you look fine,” she says, with her cheek on his arm. She looks up to him and outlines her mouth with her tongue. “I am very bored with my date. Would you like to buy me a drink?”

Trapped, he looks over to her friend, across the room. The man is big, drunk, and probably witless. Against his better judgment, but seeing no other way, he says loudly, “Do you mind if I buy her a drink?”

“Fuck her. I don’t care what the fuck you do with her,” he replies, glaring.

“Maybe I could buy you both a drink?” tries Ben.

“Fuck you. Don’t fuck with me, motherfucker. Fuck off. Leave me alone. Go to it, she’s waitin’ for her drink.” He stands, walks over to a slot machine, and drops in a quarter, never taking his eyes off of Ben and the girl.

“See what an asshole he is,” says the girl. “I’ll have a rum and coke.” And she smiles her best smile.

He orders the drink as the girl moves closer and puts her hand on his crotch.

“Can I come stay with you for a while?” she asks.

“You mean move in with me? Isn’t this rather sudden?” he says, going along.

But she thinks she is serious, at least she is for the moment. “Oh, I don’t have a lot of stuff.”

“I don’t think my wife would dig it too much,” he says, instantly pleased with the facile lie. He looks over to her friend, who is still watching them, and feels himself standing on the edge of a chasm.

“Well,” she says, nuzzling up to his ear and sucking on the lobe, “maybe we could just go find a room and fuck all day. You wouldn’t have to tell your wife about that, now would you?”

Ben looks down at her fuck-me eyes and evaluates her. Clearly, she is doing this for the benefit of her companion, still lurking behind them. But it doesn’t end there; he can see that this is the sort of thing she enjoys, that if he were to walk out with her she would be very happy to follow through with her part, perhaps looking forward to the beating that she would ultimately face when, later that night, she caught up with her friend.

He thinks about Sera and how good she has been to him. He simply cannot imagine a woman that he would rather be with.

Suddenly, the biker throws down his beer can and comes marching across the room. “Now listen, motherfucker,” he says loudly, grabbing Ben’s shoulder and turning him around on his stool. “I’m not gonna sit here and watch her suck on your ear. Now, I know that she came over to you—she does that a lot—so I’m gonna pretend that you’re innocent and give you one chance to walk out of this place. Right Now!” He looks at Ben, close and hard, with eyes full of alcohol, fury, and pain.

Behind his own eyes, Ben must admit that he is impressed by the man’s attitude. He would not have guessed the man capable of
this sort of rational self-control, such as it is.

He shakes his arm free of the man’s grip and says, “I’m sorry, but she and I have decided to spend a few hours together.”

Not being a fighter, Ben is amazed, not at the fact, but at the swiftness of the first punch, which, delivered to his jaw, sends him and his stool crashing to the dirty floor. No sooner does his head crack against the tile than he is lifted again and feels a fist skim across his face, crunching his nose and spraying blood into his eyes. He falls again to the floor, where he tries to hang on to consciousness, and listens to their footsteps as they vanish out the door.

Then the bartender is over him with a wet towel. He has seen this sort of thing many times before, so he is not without experience. “You’re quite a fighter,” he says, his voice laced with friendly sarcasm. He helps Ben back up and wipes his face, goes behind the bar, wets another towel, and makes another kamikaze. “Here’s a drink on me, but then I’m going to have to ask you to leave. It may sound silly in your case, but that’s what we do when there’s a fight here. Men’s room is in the back.” And he goes back to washing glasses.

After drinking and cleaning up, Ben takes a cab to the grocery store, and arrives home carrying a sack, still determined to eat what he can in front of Sera. He finds her reading on the couch.

“I’m back.” Putting the bag in the kitchen, he goes to kiss her.

“Oh no!” she says, seeing his face and dropping her book. “Oh fuck, Ben, look at your face. You got in a fight, I thought you didn’t fight. Goddammit. How do you feel?” Not waiting for his response, she disappears into the bathroom, returning with towels, tissues, and medicinal looking bottles. A little calmer, and reacting to his smile, she says, “What happened? Muggees normally don’t walk around so happy. Of course I knew that you
would stop at a bar. Did you say something stupid to someone stupid?” She shifts into nurse mode and goes to work on his face.

“Absolutely not,” he says. “I was defending the honor of some poor wayward maiden.”

She stops to read this, and swallows it without comment. Stinging an open cut with a dab of Mercurochrome, she says, “Why don’t you go finish this up in the bathroom. Shower and put on your other shirt. I’ll make breakfast, and then we’ll go out and buy you some clothes. I think that suit is unlucky.” She playfully tosses a wet rag at him and, with a critical look, kisses his forehead. He watches as she walks away, shaking her head.

In the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror, he looks at his now slightly-crooked nose, his bruised, swollen, and cut cheek, his puffy eye. His fingers find the rising bump on the back of his head, causing him to wince as they inspect it. He smiles widely, spins on his heel, and, laughing to himself, takes the first sip of a freshly made drink, and starts the shower.

The day ticks on; Ben strikes and savors a high point. Without thinking too much about why, he knows that he’s pretty damn happy and will stay that way for at least the next few hours. So, counting on a fuckupless afternoon, he endeavors to brighten and entertain Sera with gifts and more-carefully-timed drinks during their little shopping trip. Initially, he is resolved to acquiesce to whatever fashion choices she cares to make for him, but in the stores he feels a little more conservative, and finally decides on a pair of black jeans and two white dress shirts. As a compromise, the socks are chosen for their improbable colors and patterns.

“Very creative,” she says. “Now we’ll get you a black bow tie, and you can look just like one of the casino dealers.”

“No,” he says. “The dealers wear this stuff because they’re told to; I wear it because I want to. That makes me look different.”

They are sitting in one of the less objectionable restaurants of the shopping mall, reviewing the day’s purchases. It has indeed been a fun afternoon for Sera, and though she finds the marks on Ben’s face deeply disturbing, almost an evil portent that she can’t quite dismiss, she is willing to pretend that her anxiety is due mostly to her own recent beating, still very clear in her mind. She marvels at his feigned normalcy. He can be so high and happy, so able to ignore the cloud that seems to loom just above his head. He drinks amazing quantities with apparent impunity, then disregards the obvious punition. Tossing down her tequila, she embraces, as he makes it so easy for her to do, the wellness of prosaic laughter, and reaches across the table to accept the small box that he is holding out to her.

“There was no time for me to have it wrapped,” he says, “with you breathing down my neck all day. So you’ll have to wing it, baby.” An attempt to chuckle brings on, instead, a fit of coughing followed by a rush of nausea, which he suppresses, though not without some difficulty. Downing the balance of his drink, he calls for another and immediately tries to move things along as if nothing has happened. “I think you’ll find it rather easy to open.”

She follows his prompt and snaps open the box, revealing a pair of black onyx earrings set in white gold.

“Your color,” she says, though she is obviously pleased.

“I think you should wear one at a time—one of those, and some other earring on the other ear. In fact I would have bought just one, but I didn’t think it would fly … as a gift, I mean.” His new drink arrives and he takes a deep swallow, then another.

“I’ll wear them tonight. I’ll wear one of them tonight,” she says. At first she thinks that she may have made a tactless slip, as she is planning to work tonight. But then she relaxes, recalling that this issue, when last discussed, was left on a comfortable note.

But Ben has one of those moments that are the liability of any drunk, when the meaning that he is attempting to convey is mismatched with unfortunate words, and by the time the whole thing leaves his mouth even he is unsure of what he feels.

“Yes,” he says, looking into his again empty glass, “you’ll be able to feel it sharp and hot under your ear as one of the brothers is driving your head, face down, into a penthouse pillow.” He tries to look grim, but he is shocked at his own remark. Realizing that she does not deserve this, yet nonetheless disturbed by the image, he stands and walks quickly from the table, unable to bear her gaze.

“Ben, wait!” she calls after him. She fumbles with her purse, trying to leave money for the check. “Please, wait for me.”

When Ben reaches the door, a large Black man steps into his path and places his hands on Ben’s shoulders. “Maybe you should wait for her,” says the man.

“Why,” says Ben, trying unsuccessfully to shake himself loose from the grip.

The man pauses, as if searching for words that Ben will understand. “Because,” he says, “you can hear in her voice that she really wants you to.”

As Sera catches up to them, the man lets go of Ben and steps aside. Ben takes up the packages from her, and they step out to the mall.

“What was that? I don’t understand any of that,” she says.

“Can we forget it?” he says, imploring. “Can we just ignore it?”

The mall’s public address is yakking inanely above them. Ben looks back at the interloper in the restaurant, and sees him walking into the men’s room.

“Yes,” says Sera, “I’ll give you that.” And she does.

That night, as Ben drinks bourbon in the silent kitchen, waiting for his use, in turn, of the apartment’s single bathroom and shower, Sera delivers herself to the temporary solitude of her bedroom and prepares to repair to the streets, bars, and hotel rooms of Las Vegas. In her room, at her mirror, she finds that each familiar action has changed slightly, has slipped sideways into a new light, a new meaning. This will be the first time that she goes to work and leaves a man waiting for her at home—a man whom she wants to come home to—and though she finds herself very attached to him, she is looking forward to this time alone with her regular life, this somewhat defiant break. It’s getting hard to watch him, and she could stand a dose of pain on her own terms—the addict’s thrill of the self-administered injection, sometimes performed just for the sensory sting, long after the heroin has run out. Her face, oddly, has never shown the miles; at least she doesn’t look as hard as most girls. There is only the scar from Al’s ring, now trying out its final form on her cheek and behind her eyes. A heavy lick of really red lipstick, a double slash of black mascara, everything is a bit overdone this time. Clear cut boundaries overcome the thin lines. A long time actress, now she’s playing for an audience that will never see the show, but this she does not realize. Here, as she flips off the bedroom light out of habit, then back on, remembering that he will be using the room to change for his own treacherous evening, she stops, and, in the flash, catches a real glimpse in the mirror of a hooker and a girl. She doesn’t dare think of what it would be like to not have to work.

“I’ll be home around two or three. If you’re back by then we can watch TV or something,” she says, bending to kiss him. “I guess I’m saying that I hope you’ll be home when I get home, but in any case, whatever you end up doing,” this with a raised eyebrow, “please be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me, Sera. God watches over the likes of me. You know that.” He laughs under his breath, having never been able to decide if the old saying is ridiculous or obvious. “Seriously, ninety-nine percent of my feeling about this is concern for your well-being. The rest is… I guess it’s plain old separation anxiety. I’m going to miss you.”