The Vegas Diaries: Romance, Rolling the Dice, and the Road to Reinvention (5 page)

When we got to the showroom, I followed Nancy as she bulldozed her way through the crowd and into our seats, trying my best to keep up with her as all eyes were on the two women who were walking in at the last minute. When we finally got to our row, Nancy had already bounced back up to grab drinks from the lobby. Instantly, the stunning redhead with porcelain skin seated next to me caught my eye. She tossed her long auburn mane over her shoulder, revealing a touch of décolletage and dramatic cat-eyed eyeliner. She was wearing leather pants that appeared to be painted on, gorgeous black boots, and a black cashmere sweater that draped perfectly on her slim figure.

She hissed at me from a few seats away.

“Psssst,” she half whispered. “Want a cigarette?” She mouthed the words while putting two fingers to her lips to emulate a drag.

“Sorry,” I said, smiling. “I don’t smoke.”
Wait, can you even smoke in here?
I wondered. Something about this woman made me nervous—in a good way. I got the distinct impression that things
happened
when she was around, and I was craving as much
happening
as possible.

Several scenes later, she leaned toward me with a groan. “I’m dying for an excuse to ditch this guy,” she whispered, not so subtly gesturing to the clueless-looking man next to her.

“The show’s almost over. Maybe you can lose him in the crowd,” I suggested. “Are you staying here?”

“Nah,” she said, pulling a cigarette out of her purse and lighting it up. “I have a place nearby. I just moved here from Texas,” she said, pausing to take a long drag. “I came with him tonight because I thought it would be a good time, but I’m over it.”

No sooner had she finished her first inhale, security was headed our
way. She squished the butt under her boot and held up her hands as if she were being seized at gunpoint. All I could think about was the cigarette burn scarring the red soles of those $4,000 boots. The guard gave her a stern look before returning to his post.

For some reason, I was fascinated by this woman, despite her having the worst theater etiquette ever. Just like Vegas itself, she had captured my attention.

“I’m Hannah,” she whispered, reaching her now-cigarette-free hand toward me.

“Holly,” I whispered back, meeting her grasp. “Hey, I’m going to dinner with a few people before this club appearance I’m doing. You want to join us?”

“Sure,” she said with a shrug. “Why not?”

After the show, Nancy led us quickly through the crush of people exiting. As predicted, getting out of the showroom was a nightmare, so we easily lost Hannah’s companion. With a swipe of a card, Nancy slipped us into a private hallway and out of the madness.

“Well, isn’t this nice?” Hannah commented, with a sly smile. Nancy shot Hannah a cutting look—at least I thought she did—as she turned the corner into a brightly lit stairwell, then quickly turned on a radioactive smile as she began her ascent.
Was she annoyed I asked Hannah to join us?
I wondered.
Noooo. Why would Nancy care?
Maybe the madness of the crowd was just putting her on edge.

“Ladies, we’re not tourists,” Nancy purred, her gravelly voice echoing off the concrete walls. She pushed open a set of heavy doors to the outside. A luxury town car was waiting for us right in front of the exit.
Nancy really did think of everything,
I thought, impressed at the ease with which she navigated this town.
Did she know the secret escape routes from all the buildings?
I wondered, laughing to myself. For most visitors, Vegas could be a tough city to traverse, but Nancy made everything so simple.

Whipping around corners and through stoplights, the car zipped
through the back streets of the sprawling MGM Grand property and drove across Harmon Avenue to get to Planet Hollywood’s valet entrance.

The newly renovated hotel sparkled like a bright yellow diamond. The glittering Planet Hollywood sign ran across the top of the resort, beckoning to me like a beacon. Ironically, local legend had it that the resort was cursed, haunted, and perhaps even built atop a native burial ground, but to me, it looked like nothing but opportunity. At the time, Planet Hollywood was the most energetic, youthful-feeling resort on the Strip. While many of Vegas’s casinos still reeked of stale cigarette smoke that hung underneath the low ceilings and settled onto the clothes and hair of their mainly fifty-plus demographic, Planet Hollywood looked like the vibrant new toy in a box filled with dusty old relics.

The property originated as the Aladdin in 1966, quickly gaining a reputation as one of Vegas’s most famed casinos with its giant illuminated golden genie lamp and opulent Arabic décor. When Elvis Presley married Priscilla at the property in 1967, it cemented its status in history as one of Las Vegas’s most iconic hotels.

Throughout the following three decades, the property was plagued with a series of criminal investigations, loan defaults, and bankruptcies, leading to the legend of the “curse.” But that didn’t stop the resort from continuing its expansion, first with a twenty-story hotel tower in 1971, and again in 2000, when the tower was imploded and rebuilt as a 2,500-room, multi-tower hotel. A giant shopping mall was also added to the resort, along with a massive Strip-side facade featuring a faux mountainside and Moorish architecture.

But just as the MGM bartender had warned me, all Vegas novelties eventually grow stale. In 2007, the establishment dropped the Arabic theme, opting for a more modern, contemporary feel, rebranding the resort as Planet Hollywood.

Though the rooms were decorated with pieces of movie memorabilia, such as a hoverboard from
Back to the Future Part II
or Dorothy’s dress
from
The Wizard of Oz
, the era of theme-heavy hotels had long since passed. Resorts were instead opting to capitalize on creating “luxury experiences” for guests, or, for some lesser quality hotels, “luxury adjacent” motifs. The casino itself boasted a six-story atrium, the entrance to which was lined with sparkling floor-to-ceiling chandelier columns.

Nancy, Hannah, and I walked over the bustling modern casino floor covered in deep reds and shimmering golds and took the escalators up to the mezzanine level, which housed the resort’s VIP check-in, nightclub, showroom, and its finest restaurants. Strip House, where we were having dinner, was just a few feet away from Privé, the nightclub where I was hosting. Nancy smiled at the restaurant’s hostess and walked straight past her into the dimly lit, velvet-drenched steakhouse. As she led us back to our table, we passed walls covered in vintage boudoir photos and flocked wallpaper. The candlelight bounced off the glass door Nancy opened as she led us into the private dining area. Already there waiting for us were my publicist, my manager, and my friend Angel Porrino. Angel was an adorable, friendly blonde, a Las Vegas native whom I met when she came to Los Angeles for a centerfold audition.

As I introduced Nancy and Hannah to the table, Angel stood up to shake Hannah’s hand.

“Oh, my god, you’re pregnant!” Hannah exclaimed. “I would have never guessed! You look so tiny! I couldn’t see your bump until you stood!”

“Ha-ha, thanks!” Angel laughed in her cute high-pitched voice. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“So, the other day, I learned a new word,” Hannah said, rapidly putting the attention back on herself, “
Blumpkin.
Anyone care to guess what that means?”

“I have a feeling I might not want to know,” one of the men at the table responded, jokingly.

He probably didn’t. Angel and I (as well as Hannah, apparently), loved gross-out humor, but I had a feeling this word might not go over
well with everyone present. Hannah took a seat next to Angel at the far end of the table and leaned in toward her to show her something on her phone. I could tell by the laughter that followed that these two had hit it off right away. I decided that I definitely wanted Hannah as part of my new Vegas family.

“I thought you hated doing club appearances?” Angel asked me, brushing her long, dark blond hair out of her face, innocently unaware that Nancy worked with the venue.

“Usually I do, but I have a feeling tonight will be different,” I said with a smile and a reassuring nod toward Nancy, who was now fiercely hanging on every word exchanged. “After all, you guys are here,” I added, gesturing around the table.

Club appearances and hosting opportunities were commonplace among public personalities. Everyone from Jude Law to Britney Spears turned a few bucks showing up to a nightclub for a few hours, but for me, there was something soul-crushing about the ones I had done so far. Sure, they paid well, but they also made me feel isolated and adrift. When I left the mansion, I was already feeling very emotionally unstable and unsure of whom I could trust. Flying all over the country by myself, only to sit alongside some nightclub liaison I barely knew, just exacerbated my feelings of loneliness and insecurity. Not to mention, I was surrounded by strange men in random venues, so the thought of even having a single drink felt unsafe to me. During these appearances, you are expected to look like you are partying it up. The best I could do was a bit of dancing while ferociously clutching a Red Bull (too fearful of getting roofied to let it out of my sight for even a moment). While I knew I was fortunate to have the opportunity to make good money for basically doing nothing, my soul craved something with a bit more substance. Luckily,
DWTS
came along, so I had been able to put all hosting engagements on ice for a while.

“So, if you get
Peepshow
, how long do you think you want to live in Vegas?” Angel asked me. She knew I was determined to land the part
and was looking forward to my potential move. I didn’t have a huge support network, so I was extremely grateful for her encouragement.

“About four years,” I blurted out, realizing I hadn’t really given it much thought. I had been on survival mode ever since I left the mansion, thinking about what my next few steps would be and how I would stay afloat, not really thinking about a long-term plan.

As Angel nodded her head, I asked myself,
Why four years?
Where had that number come from? Was it a biological clock thing? I was thirty. Had I subconsciously noted that a woman’s egg quality drastically drops off at thirty-five, so I should be starting a family and moving on to the next chapter by then? After all, I always knew that I would want a family someday.

Or was it my hunger to recapture some of my lost years? People always reminisce fondly about the social importance of their time in college. People often refer to that time as the best years of their lives, a time when they met their closest friends and made some of their favorite memories. When I was in college, I chose not to socialize, instead concentrating on getting good grades so I could transfer to a better school and keep my scholarships. Even before finishing my education, I moved into the mansion with its bizarre rules and strict parameters. Needless to say, the wild college experience had never been mine. Is that why four years was such an instinctive time frame? I didn’t have the answer, but I decided that it sounded (and felt) right. I had four years to get my shit together. It seemed like a fair amount of time to figure out my life, learn to stand on my own two feet, and have a little fun along the way, and Vegas seemed like the perfect place to do that. I needed to find myself in the process, and only after I did that would I allow myself to consider moving back to Los Angeles.

As we were finishing our meal, a towering twenty-five-layer chocolate cake arrived at our table at Nancy’s insistence. After a few bites—okay, more like half the cake—I left the restaurant with my guests and hugged Angel good-bye.

“By the way,” Nancy asked as Angel walked toward the escalators, “what
is
a blumpkin?”

“I’m gonna let you google that,” Angel said with her megawatt smile. “It’s pretty gross,” she added with a giggle.

Nancy shrugged her shoulders and motioned for us to follow her across the mezzanine. She led our group over to the nightclub’s back entrance to begin the evening’s festivities.

Once we were settled in our booth, I felt comfortable enough to have a few drinks, for the first time in a long time. For a photo op, the servers carted out a giant cake with “Vote for Holly” scribbled across the top in chocolate frosting, accompanied by a giant chocolate Playboy bunny. Inside, I cringed. I understood that Playboy was my claim to fame, but I was eager to put my bunny past far, far behind me. To outsiders, Hef’s and my split was amicable and I seemed to revel in being identified as a “bunny.” How could they possibly know any different when they were only sold the sugarcoated fairy-tale version of events?

Quickly I shook it off and enjoyed this fabulous reintroduction to the nightclub scene as we partied at the club into the wee hours. Nancy introduced me to a few acquaintances of hers, some Vegas residents and others regular visitors. One man in particular stood out. Eric was a handsome, impeccably dressed, dark-haired gentleman with piercing brown eyes, who sent me a bottle of Dom after we were introduced. Once we had spent the required two hours at the club, Nancy brought us out for a tour of the casino. At around four
A.M.
Hannah and I found ourselves at a popular blackjack table in the high-roller lounge. I had a stack of chips in front of me, playing a second hand for the man to my right, when he got a little too comfortable and started rubbing my back. My spine immediately stiffened. Reading my mind, Hannah jumped up from her spot across the table and yanked me away.

“Time to get back to the suite!” she announced, putting on her heaviest Texas drawl complete with a dramatic drunken slur. “And leave these motherfuckers behind!” These guys didn’t seem like pushovers, but I
think they knew better than to mess with this southern firecracker who looked capable of causing a major scene.

“Thanks for the rescue,” I said, yawning as we navigated our way through the crowded casino floor.

Waking up the next morning, I was happy to find myself safely in bed and grateful to Hannah for getting me back to my room. Less than twelve hours after meeting her, she had already proven herself an invaluable wingwoman. I grabbed my phone to text her my thanks when I realized she had already beat me to the punch.