Mr. Monk on the Road (27 page)

I glanced back at Ambrose, who was watching the movie in rapt attention, a goofy smile on his face. I was reexperiencing the childhood I’d lost, and he was experiencing the childhood he’d never had.

I looked over at Monk, whom I expected to find scowling at my sleeping bag, which was draped over the edge of the chair onto the dirt like a mermaid’s tail. But his attention was distracted by something in the distance. He got up to look at it.

I craned my neck to see what had distracted Monk. But I couldn’t see past the motor home from my seat, so I reluctantly got up out of my sleeping bag, put on my flip-flops, and chased after him.

Monk was drawn toward a bunch of people holding candles at the far corner of the grounds, where a cluster of identical motor homes was arranged together to create a camp within the camp and where someone was massacring “Stairway to Heaven” on a harmonica.

But none of the people here were wearing horns, or masks, or long capes. These were all men wearing overalls or T-shirts and jeans. Some were wearing bright orange reflective vests over their clothes so no cars would hit them. I brilliantly deduced, without any help from Monk, that they were road workers.

As we got closer, I could see they were gathered in front of an RV where a shrine of candles, bouquets, and buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken had been created on the steps around a pair of well-worn, tar-covered work boots, a construction hard hat, and a framed photograph of a big, barrel-chested man with a broad smile. Not what I’d call a Satanic altar.

“What is this?” Monk asked.

“It’s a memorial service,” I said.

A man near us turned, clearly having overheard us. He was deeply tanned, and his clothes were covered in a fine layer of dirt and tar, but I could still read the name on his patch: Lenny.

“It’s for a buddy of ours. PJ Starks. We all worked together laying down highway.”

Score one for my brilliant deductive abilities.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

Lenny shrugged. “He got high two nights ago and wandered barefoot out onto the dark highway. Ended up as roadkill. A hit-and-run in the middle of the night. We found him when we went out to work in the morning.”

Monk leaned over and whispered to me. “Let that be a warning to you about your love of the evil weed.”

I ignored the comment. “What are the buckets of fried chicken for?”

“It was PJ’s favorite meal. He’d eat a bucket by himself for a light snack. Two with fixin’s if it was a meal.”

Monk leaned close to me again and whispered, “He wouldn’t have lived much longer anyway.”

I elbowed him hard. Monk let out a little yelp. “We’re sorry for your loss.”

Lenny nodded. “Those are going to be hard boots to fill.”

We turned to head back to the Newtons’ motor home when we saw that the Newtons were standing right behind us, close enough to have overheard the conversation.

“Please excuse us for intruding,” Rodney said, “but whenever you’re done here, you’re welcome to wander over to our RV. We’re watching
Avatar
outside and we’ve got an endless supply of popcorn. We’d be pleased to have you join us and take your mind off your troubles.”

One of the other men spoke up. “Are you the guy in the Windermere Superlative?”

“Yes, sir,” Rodney said. “That’s us.”

“That rig is so cool. PJ would have loved it,” the man said and started to blubber.

“You bet your ass we’ll be there,” said Lenny. “Because PJ would’ve been the first person at your door to welcome you to camp, a bucket of chicken in each arm, a big grin on his face.”

“Just so he could get a peek inside your rig,” another man said.

“And then he never would’ve left,” yet another man said. “You’d have had to adopt him!”

All the construction workers shared a hearty, knowing laugh at the memory of their friend. The warm, spirited laughter seemed to end the memorial service on an upbeat note. We moved to the Newton’s RV en masse, the construction workers dragging lawn chairs and benches along with them.

Despite all the extra seating, Monk and I decided to give up our chairs and watch the movie from inside our motor home with Ambrose instead.

It was actually much better that way. I folded down the dinette, made the bed, and curled up in my sleeping bag between Ambrose and Monk. They were so entranced by the movie, I don’t think they even noticed that my shoulders were against them both.

Or how happy and safe I felt.

I was in the way-back of my dad’s station wagon once again, watching a movie at the drive-in with my friends.

 

We left for Las Vegas early the next morning, but not before saying good-bye to the Newtons, who let us keep our 3-D glasses as mementos of our night at the Grand Canyon.

We certainly could have stayed at the Grand Canyon another day or two, but Ambrose felt he’d seen as much as he could from the RV, and he was probably right about that. Besides, he liked the ritual we’d established of going somewhere new each day. And Monk liked rituals, so everybody was happy.

We headed west on I-40, back to Kingman, but since we weren’t on Route 66 this time, we weren’t covering exactly the same ground again, so it was new to Ambrose.

In Kingman, we gassed up again and took Highway 93 northwest into Las Vegas. The road took us through some craggy mountains and then, much to Ambrose’s delight, down to the Colorado River and the Hoover Dam, which we had to cross to reach Nevada on the other side, but not before our RV was inspected by Homeland Security and bomb-sniffing dogs.

Once again, Monk reminded me how lucky I was that he’d thoroughly vacuumed the motor home, removing any trace of marijuana.

As I drove slowly across the dam, Ambrose recited facts about the structure from memory.

“The dam weighs 6,600,000 tons, contains 4,360,000 cubic yards of concrete, and is 726.4 feet tall from the foundation to the roadway we’re on,” Ambrose said. “There’s enough concrete in this dam to pave a highway, sixteen feet wide, from San Francisco to New York, which is 2,906 miles—2,582 miles if you were able to travel in a straight line instead of utilizing existing highways. But you know what the most amazing fact of all is?”

“Those are all even numbers,” Monk said.

“Then it must be a very good dam,” I said.

“It’s my favorite dam,” Ambrose said.

“You have favorite dams?” I asked.

“Who doesn’t?” he replied.

It was a good thing we’d taken the trip when we did, because driving over the Hoover Dam wasn’t going to be possible for much longer. Soon all the vehicular traffic was going to be diverted downriver to the nearly completed Hoover Dam Bypass, an arched bridge that was a breathtaking 820 feet above the river and 1,900 feet across. It was a sight to see in its own right, even uncompleted. The bridge looked similar to the one in Big Sur, but this one was higher, longer, and even more audacious, which was fitting for a structure that would be a companion piece to the Hoover Dam.

The drive into Las Vegas wasn’t remarkable, but as the skyline came into view, I was struck by how often and radically the city changed, particularly the Strip, where the construction never seemed to stop. New resorts were constantly being built while old hotels were continuously being remodeled and expanded. Even the street itself was continuously in flux, with new medians, pedestrian overpasses, and traffic-flow schemes.

It had been only a few years since I’d last visited and even longer since I’d lived and worked there as a blackjack dealer, but it was as if the old city had been razed and a new one was built in the interim. Caesars Palace alone had more face-lifts and additions than a Marin County trophy wife.

The Strip is pretty spectacular at night, with all those lights flashing, pirate ships battling, video screens blazing, and volcanoes erupting against the dark desert skies.

But during the day, it was bleak and tawdry.

The resort towers looked gaudy and overwrought in the sunlight, their massive scale and exaggerated architectural flourishes a blatant cry for attention, like a streetwalker in a halter top, fishnet stockings, and high heels trying desperately to catch a man’s eye.

But Ambrose was transfixed, seemingly as awed by the preposterous re-creations of the New York skyline and the Venice canals as he’d been by the Grand Canyon.

Monk directed Ambrose’s attention to the Paris Vegas Resort, with its replicas of the Arc de Triomphe, the Paris Opera House, and the Louvre beneath the footings of its half-scale Eiffel Tower.

“I’ve been to Paris, France, and saw all of that,” Monk said. “They have a magnificent sewer system, too.”

“The sewer of sewers,” Ambrose agreed. “Did they recreate that here, too?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“I don’t see why they didn’t,” Monk said. “It’s a much more important historical achievement than a tower.”

“Because nobody wants to gamble, eat, sleep, or shop in a sewer,” I said. “Would you?”

“No, but they could have re-created it for educational purposes. If it wasn’t for the sewer system, Paris wouldn’t be known as the City of Light. It would be known as the City of Filth.”

“The Las Vegas Strip isn’t about education, Mr. Monk. It’s about thrills and spectacles, come-ons and distractions, fantasy and illusion, entertainment and seduction, anything to get you to lose your self-control, to spend and gamble without thinking.”

“I don’t see how re-creating the Venice canals does that,” Ambrose said.

“Think of the resorts as enormous fishing lures, and you’re the fat, happy bass. All they want to do is attract your attention and get you to come inside. And it’s hard to resist spending money on something once you’re in a casino.”

“They won’t get me,” Ambrose said.

“Or me,” Monk said. “But they will probably get her.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

The only resort on the Strip that welcomed RVs was the iconic T-Rex, with its three hotel towers, designed to look as if they were made of enormous blocks of carved stone, rising over the misty rain forests and spewing volcanoes of prehistoric earth, where monstrous animatronic dinosaurs roamed, battling one another and tumbling into rivers of molten lava from eight to eleven p.m. every weeknight.

The adjacent T-Rex RV Park had a magnificent view of the dinosaur show and the Strip, which Ambrose would surely appreciate once the sun went down.

I left the Monks in the motor home and went into the rocky grotto of the T-Rex lobby, famous for its lights disguised as stalactites, to check us into the RV park.

I thought it was smart of the T-Rex folks to make campers go into the casino to register for a camping spot rather than erect an office outside for check-in. It gave the resort an opportunity to use the grandeur and spectacle of the lobby and main casino to lure campers into gambling or shopping.

It certainly worked with me, as Monk had accurately predicted. To be honest, I didn’t fight it much. There’s no point in going to Vegas if you don’t gamble just a little bit.

So I took a moment to try my luck at one of the slot machines that ringed the edge of the steaming pools of Dinosaur Grotto, where you could lose a buck a pull while watching a very lifelike brontosaurus chew on leaves.

I lost twenty bucks, so I gave up and went over to the blackjack table, where I bought another twenty dollars worth of chips.

I figured that I had more control over the odds playing blackjack or, at least, the illusion of it. I played a couple of hands, won another twenty bucks, and decided to stop while I was ahead.

In Vegas, breaking even is a win.

I went to the cashier’s cage and cashed in everything but one five-dollar chip to take back to Ambrose as a souvenir.

When I got back to the RV, Monk and Ambrose were passing the time with another rousing game of peanuts. I set the five-dollar chip down on the table in front of Ambrose.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Since you’ll never gamble, I made a sacrifice and gambled for you. I won that. It’s a five-dollar chip from the T-Rex casino.”

He picked it up and examined it. “I assume people gamble more readily with token currency instead of cash because it doesn’t feel real.”

“It also makes it easier for a dealer to keep track of how much money is in play on the table since each denomination is a different color,” I said. “But the chips also make great souvenirs. Every casino has their own chips.”

“In essence, their own currency,” Ambrose said. “These casinos are like countries unto themselves. But what country would ever have created coinage with a snarling Tyrannosaurus rex head as its emblem?”

“Bedrock,” I said. Monk and Ambrose both looked blankly at me. “You know, ‘a place right out of history’? Where the Flintstones lived? Fred and Barney? Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm?” I got more blank stares. “Never mind.”

“Thank you for getting me that chip, Natalie. It was very thoughtful. I’ve never owned genuine token currency before, unless you count the money in a Monopoly game.”

“Should I add the chip to your collection?”

“Please,” Ambrose said.

Monk cocked his head. “His collection?”

I opened the drawer in the galley and took out the seashells, the clog key chain, the Little Mermaid figurine, the desert rock, the Snow Cap postcard, and the 3-D glasses I’d collected and placed them all on the table.

“His souvenirs,” I said.

Ambrose looked at the items with pleasure, holding them up, one by one, as if they were precious jewels. “I never appreciated souvenirs until now.”

“That’s because until now you’ve never gone anywhere or done anything,” Monk said.

“That’s not true, Mr. Monk,” I said. “Ambrose has lots of souvenirs.”

“I do?” Ambrose said.

“Souvenirs are tangible things that remind you of the experiences, events, and relationships that make you who you are,” I said. “There are some things you don’t want to forget, even for a moment.”