Sam smiled. Sometimes it was really was good to be the daughter of the king.
“W
hat's the address?” Sam asked Anna as the limo drove them back toward the Strip. They'd passed various massive hotels and the ubiquitous tourists, plus a billboard for Siegfried & Roy that still hadn't been taken down.
Anna looked at the advertisement she'd torn out of
Las Vegas Weekly,
the Sin City equivalent of NYC's
Village Voice.
“Two-ten Flamingo Road. Feelings USA.”
“Let me see the ad again.”
Anna handed it over. Feelings USA featured a line of clothing called Hey, Baby—the blond Hey, Baby model in the ad had a Barbie-doll body clad in an ultracheesy tiger-print bra-and-thong combo. She was on all fours, with a faux-sexy do-me look on her face.
Sam frowned, then leaned forward and pressed a button on the stereo. A female voice that Anna didn't recognize filled the limo with its soulful sound. “You know,” said Sam, “I so love that she's not stick-skinny.”
“Who?” Anna asked.
“Alicia Keys. On the CD.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She's not a twig, but she still looks totally hot. I could never—”
Anna regarded Sam dubiously. “Has it ever occurred to you that you're obsessed with your weight?”
“Gee, you think?” Sam shot back.
For a moment, Anna couldn't figure out why Sam was being so nasty. Then she realized it had to be Cammie's tacky Vegas outfit contest. The idea of competing with Cammie in any kind of appearance-based contest had to be stirring up every last one of Sam's insecurities.
“We could always just show up at Lush in our regular clothes,” Anna suggested. “Cammie would be the only one dressed to thrill. She'd win the contest for sure, but she'd look like an idiot.”
Lush was a well-known club not far from the Strip. The guys had insisted that this was the place they had to meet, at nine o'clock, in their showgirl costumes; Anna had no idea why. They claimed they had an awesome first prize all cooked up.
“Cammie's my friend,” Sam commented quickly. “And yeah, I know about all the bitchy stuff she's done to you. But she's been my friend since we were little kids, and old habits die hard.”
Fine, Anna thought. Psychological overload. Let it go.
Feelings USA was located in a strip mall—the limo driver pulled into a parking lot that also served a cell phone store, a palm reader, a taco takeout place, and a nail salon called Sexxy Nails. Anna and Sam got out of the limo, told the driver to wait, and stepped inside.
The store itself was actually quite small, brightly lit with fluorescents. A Las Vegas rock radio station blared Green Day from its loudspeakers. Anna scanned the aisles; there were rack upon rack of shiny, cheap women's clothing that gave new meaning to the word
tacky.
Not a single natural fiber in sight.
Sam grinned as she took in the selection. “Well, well. We've hit the mother lode.”
The place was deserted, save for a cute college-age brunette behind the cash register. She wore a Playboy bunny getup, complete with ears, and was intently reading a book.
Anna couldn't help herself. What could a salesperson in store like this possibly be reading? She cocked her head to take in the book's spine.
The Collected Poems of Sir Walter Scott.
“Umm, excuse me?” Anna got the girl's attention.
The salesclerk looked up, startled. “Sorry. I didn't hear you come in.”
“I love his poetry.” Anna chucked her chin at the book. “Sir Walter Scott.”
The girl put a blank sales slip into her book to mark her place and then closed it on the counter. “I'm a junior at UNLV and I've got a killer midterm tomorrow. They make us take one literature course. This is it. I should have just called in sick.”
“‘O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive,’” Anna quoted.
After a momentary blank look, a light of understanding washed over the salesgirl's face. “That's from
Hamlet
, right? I
hated
my Shakespeare class. Why couldn't he just write like everyone else?”
“Actually, the line is from the guy you're reading,” Sam corrected. “From a long poem called
Marmion.
”
Anna glanced at Sam with admiration. Sam was smart. She read actual literature. She thought about things. If she got a little testy sometimes, so be it.
The salesgirl puffed some air out of her lips. “I wish you two could write my essay for me tomorrow. Anyway, sorry and all that. How can I help you?”
“The Hey, Baby clothing line?” Sam prompted.
“In the very back,” the girl pointed. “Next to the feather boas.”
Anna hesitated. “Do you mind if I ask you a question? I hope this doesn't seem rude. Does the store make you dress like that for work?”
“No.” The girl blinked her big brown eyes, confused. “Why?”
“Just curious,” Anna said with a bright smile. Anna had been to various far-flung corners of the Earth, and yet this was her first trip to Vegas. The place was just so … bizarre. “So … back there. Thanks.”
She found Sam already pawing through a rack of black latex dresses. “These are for you,” Sam intoned darkly. “If I tried one on, I'd look like an overripe black Bavarian sausage.”
“One of us could wear what the salesgirl is wearing,” Anna suggested.
“Way too early
Bridget Jones
,” Sam decreed as she made her way to another rack and extracted a very short, cherry-red dress. Imitation leather strings laced it up from nonexistent neckline to crotch. Sam twirled the hanger around. “Check it out. It even has a built-in underwire bra.”
Anna looked tentative. “You meant for you, right?”
“No, I meant for Parker,” Sam spat sarcastically. “
You
.”
Anna flashed back to her first date with Ben, how she'd gotten up all her nerve and suggested they go into the giant Hustler sex store on Sunset Boulevard. She'd wanted to shock him, and she had. She'd loved the way Ben had looked at her—Anna, the proper girl, suggesting something so nasty. She'd actually purchased some vinyl pants with a zipper from front to back, bisecting her crotch, so tight she had barely been able to breathe. It had been so much fun to wear them for Ben, to see the look on his face, to feel his arms around her. …
“Uh, Anna Percy? Hel-lo?” Sam waved a perfectly manicured hand in front of Anna's face.
Anna blinked. “Sorry.”
“Where'd you go?”
“Ben.”
“Ah. You did call him from the plane, right?”
“Right.”
Anna hoped Sam would let it go at that. She didn't.
“Did you actually talk to him?”
“No. Just voice mail.”
“So call again.” Sam pulled another dress from the rack, possibly even shorter than the other one: a slinky yellow tube number with a cutout middle.
“Sam, if he cared even the tiniest bit, he'd get the voice mail and call me back.”
“Okay, so he sucks. It's on to the next.” Sam turned the dress around. The rear of the skirt was cut out too, evidently to expose butt cheeks and a thong.
“Not in this lifetime,” Anna avowed. Something white with crystals at the neckline caught her eye, and she took it from the rack. A crystal collar attached to a silver O-ring connected the collar to the dress. There were crystals along the hem of the dress, which was a tiny bit longer than the other two horrors.
“Try it on,” Sam admonished.
Anna realized that Sam hadn't yet selected anything for herself.
“When you do,” she retorted.
Then she spotted something: purple chiffon harem pants and a matching purple bra top covered in ornately hideous gold scrollwork. Anna knew that Sam was especially self-conscious about her figure from her hips to her ankles. Well, the flowing pants would cover all that, while the bare midriff would be sexy enough to qualify her for the contest
“What do you think?” She took the outfit off the rack and thrust it at her friend.
Sam smiled a truly genuine smile. “Thanks.”
“You're welcome.”
They went into the tiny changing cubicles and tried on their outfits. Everything fit perfectly. Anna thought she looked like someone trying way too hard to get into a party at, say, the Playboy mansion. Sam looked like she was going to a costume party and was going to lose the contest for best costume. But then, they weren't entering a best-dressed contest. “I guess we're set,” Anna surmised as they surveyed themselves in a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree mirror.
“To work here, maybe,” Sam cracked. “But actually, we aren't set.”
“What else do we—”
“Think, Anna. Put that New York private school education to use.
Accessories
.”
They found a glinting purple faux stone that Sam decided should be attached to her navel. The salesgirl gave her some false-eyelash adhesive, and it stuck perfectly. Then Sam went to a small shoe rack and removed a pair of platform shoes, Anna trailing along. The shoes had six-inch hot pink heels, and hot pink lips hung suspended in clear liquid in the soles' two-inch Lucite platforms. Sam dangled them in front of Anna.
Anna shook her head. “You must be on drugs.”
“Come on, you want to beat Cammie, don't you?”
“I couldn't even stand in those things!”
“What about all those years of ballet you told me about? Come on, you're graceful enough to walk on stilts.” Sam turned one of the shoes over. “It's destiny. These are size eight. Your size.”
Anna raised a dubious eyebrow. “What about you?”
“I'm a harem girl. Flat thongs.”
Muttering under her breath, Anna tried on the dreadful shoes. She took a couple of steps. Okay, she could walk in them. Barely. Then she checked out her reflection again in the three-way mirror.
“I'm six-foot two in these things! I look like a freak.”
“Uh-huh,” Sam agreed smugly. “And we are so going to get our freak on tonight.”
“I don't know, Sam. …”
“Consider them a gift. And by the by, we aren't changing, since we're going straight to Lush.”
Anna sighed. There was no use protesting.
Sam marched back to the girl in the Playboy bunny outfit and paid for all her stuff, as well as for Anna's shoes. The salesgirl applauded their choices.
“I haven't committed to keeping this stuff on,” Anna pointed out as she handed over her credit card. “I can always change.”
“Oh, you'll wear it,” Sam assured her. “Because as much as you don't want to look like a ”ho, you
really
don't want Cammie to win.”
D
ee paid the taxi driver and walked through the massive mirrorlike doors that led into the Venetian Hotel on the Strip. Wow, this place was so incredible! It was much larger than the Palms and infinitely fancier. Everywhere she looked, there was ornate Italian art, gilded angels, and pasty-faced royalty. There were even frescoes on the soaring ceiling of fat ladies who had never heard of a suntan, lolling on jewel-toned cushions.
Renaissance art, she'd tell her friends. This time she was certain she'd be using the right word, because just inside the front doors of the Venetian had been an oversize video monitor that guided visitors through the hotel's extensive collection and the bigger collection of the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum housed in an annex to the hotel. The video boasted how the Venetian had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its arty image.
She checked her D&G C'est Chic platinum watch with the tiny free rubies scattered over the face; there were still twenty minutes before the past-life-regression yoga class she wanted to attend. It was to be taught by a renowned Indian master in the Venetian's Canyon Ranch SpaClub.
Dee had read in
Casino Player
magazine that the second floor of the Venetian had been designed to look exactly like Venice, Italy. So she got directions from a helpful concierge, then cut through the crowded hotel casino—to get anywhere in most Vegas hotels, you had to go through the casino—and rode the escalator to the second floor.
A short tourist-dodging walk past a gallery of upscale boutiques—Prada, Chanel, Le Petit Enfant—took her around the corner to a sight that made her gasp: It was Venice's Grand Canal, right there inside the hotel! Two-story storefronts lined the canal on both sides, along with broad walkways for pedestrians. Above was a magically blue sky with fleecy clouds lit from behind to look as if the sun were peeking through the clouds. Dee felt almost dizzy, because it just seemed so real.
It reminded Dee of what Jim Carrey saw at the end of
The Truman Show
: how it all looked real but wasn't. Here, by this mock Grand Canal, it was daytime 24/7. The weather was always perfect, the sun always shining.
Dee sighed. She wished life could really be like that.
The fake Grand Canal was a big tourist attraction. All along the canal, Dee saw tourists leaning against the restraining fence. She went to the restraining fence that bordered the canal and found room for herself just as an authentic Italian gondola boat swished by. The gondolier was completely authentic—he wore a red-and-white shirt with black pants and a black Italian beret. In the stern of his wooden vessel were two couples in their late twenties—one girl wore a silver Britney Spears T-shirt, the other a cropped shirt from which her stomach pooched before disappearing into her too-tight jeans. The guys, who both sported goatees, were clicking their girlfriends' photos with disposable cameras.
Then the gondolier started to sing—an aria from
La Traviata,
he announced to his passengers and the people looking down on them. His voice was rich and romantic; it echoed off the fake second-story store-fronts and the false sky.
Wow, this had to be even better than the real Venice. You didn't have to deal with weather problems. Like, if it was hot, you might sweat and mess up your makeup. Or if it rained, it could totally wreck your blowout. Best of all, no one spoke Italian.
A woman to Dee's left nudged her. Dee turned to see that the nudge had been unintentional—the woman was kissing her boyfriend. Dee stared indiscreetly for a few moments, deciding that the guy looked like a “before” participant on
Extreme Makeover
, with a vampirelike overbite and pockmarked skin. But clearly his girl-friend/wife loved him, anyway. Unless she was a hooker. This was Vegas, so he could be paying her to
pretend
to be into him. But no, Dee decided, they were really in love.