Pocket Kings (31 page)

“Or,” she continued with aplomb, “you just name any Cirque du Soleil show and the chances are good I can get you in.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” I said, “but I don't think we'll be going to too many shows.”

“Just came to play, huh?”

Still no change in her expression. She
was
a statue.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Second grunted, grabbed a kitchen towel and girded his loins with it. He looked ready to appear as an extra in a gladiator movie, had they been filming one in the hallway.

Laurel, whose sapphire ring was as big as a doorknob, rattled off the names of a few restaurants she could get us into and gave us four business cards. I thanked her and saw her to the door.

A few seconds after she left, Second drank some coffee right out of the pot and asked himself aloud, “I wonder if she's got the tickets on her?”
Th
en he ran into the hallway in nothing but his jerrybuilt loincloth.

A minute later he came back in wielding four ducats to see Cher.
Th
e seats weren't the best, but I wasn't surprised: the water in the Jacuzzi in the room didn't get that hot and barely bubbled, the flat-screen TVs were flat but weren't that big or that good, the shag carpeting was musty, stained and not that shaggy. We weren't truly whales, not if we were staying here at Jimmy's.
Th
e truth was we were just blowfish.

“Gee, Johnny,” I said, “I don't see you liking Cher. I had you figured more as a U2 or Arctic Monkeys fan.”

“
Th
e hell with Sonny and feckwad Cher,” he said. “I'm sellin' these tickets on the street.”

“You're bloody daft, you are, lad!”

He may have been daft but he did get $500 for them.

Th
e four of us had breakfast together at a Denny's on the Strip and with every foul, mealy forkful I thought of calling Laurel Dodge and asking her to reserve me a table, all by myself if need be, at the most expensive place in town. Second finished half his breakfast—the Lumberjack Special—then complained about the steak being overcooked to the waitress, who apologized and then, five minutes later, brought him the Lumberjack Special v.2. In this way he managed to eat, for the price of one, one and one-half Lumberjack Specials and, as he stuffed steak, sausage, and flapjack into his mouth, he told us his Vegas brainstorm. “I think I'm going to call,” he said, “Steve Wynn's secretary and maybe try to get an appointment with him. From what I've seen all his concepts are stale lately.
Th
e Wynn and Encore don't even have feckin' concepts for Chroist sake—they're just called Wynn and Encore.
Th
ere's not even a ‘the' in front of 'em. Look, there's New York, New York and there's Paris, Paris and the Venetian, the Venetian. Well, these are my ideas . . . Atlantis.
Th
e world's first undersea hotel. Ten thousand rooms, all underwater . . . guests all have oxygen tubes, like Jacques Cousteau. Live dolphins in every room. Walruses in the halls. Or how about this? Hell. Ten thousand rooms. All in Hell.
Th
e dealers and maids would be dressed up as devils and you could rig it up so they breathe fire.
Th
e water in the swimming pools would be black and boiling, like it was tar. Okay, one more. Instead of New York, New York, you do:
Th
e Las Vegas. Ten thousand rooms and it's a mini Las Vegas
within
Las Vegas, a reproduction of the city you're already in. You'd have a fake Eiffel Tower and Empire State Building but they'd be fake fake ones. . . . Okay, it was just an idea.”

After breakfast History Babe called her fanatical sister in Colorado Springs. She was still praying. Praying for what, I asked History. Well, she answered, now it's for my wretched soul. Toll House Cookie called his wife in New Jersey. Mrs. Cookie asked how Cousin Cleon's funeral was and Cookie told her, “
Th
ey ain't had it yet.” See, he told us after he got off the phone, I didn't really lie. You know, Marvis, I said to him, the Lord may not be filling in your pages for telling lies but he's probably scribbling tons of notes along the margins.

We walked down the Strip on one side of the street, then came up the other, going as far south as the squalid, doomed Tropicana and then as far north as the equally squalid and doomed Circus Circus. Cookie was too scared to take a gondola ride at the Venetian. He was afraid of cars, he'd admitted to us, but that was nothing compared to his fear of gondolas. It was almost noon and it was in the low eighties and his toll-collector outfit was back on.

But that day, we finally bought new clothes. Second sprang for History Babe's new dresses (Valentino) and skirts (bebe) and they didn't come cheap. I was glad we'd picked her up. Her gentle presence alone, I believe, prevented the three males among us from either separating from each other for good or from slitting each other's throats.

In the casinos sometimes we stayed together, sometimes we drifted apart. I watched craps and blackjack, Second hung around the roulette tables over at the Rio, together all four of us stood on the periphery of a poker tournament at the Bellagio, separately I almost started to play craps at the MGM Grand.
Th
e table there was boisterous, people were winning and laughing, but they weren't truly interacting, not like they did online. In that world you see the same people over and over again, every day, but these people gathered around the table, I knew, would never see each other again. It was too transitory and was ultimately meaningless, the difference between an empty one-night stand and an actual relationship, and I didn't want any part of it.

After a late lunch we retired back to our suite at Jimmy's, where Second called the hotel manager and let him have it: “
Th
e soaps in the bathroom say they're French-milled on them. . . . It says it on the wrappers. ‘French-milled.' I'm lookin' at one now. . . . I know French-milled soap when I see it and this soap isn't French-milled. . . . At best this is Belgian-milled or maybe Luxembourg-milled. . . . So either take money off our bill or get some real French-milled soap up here straight away. . . . Okay, cheers.”

I went online and sent an e-mail to Barbara Bennett at Egregious Pictures asking if there was any news about Pacer Burton, whose
Breakthrough
was due to open around Christmas. So much for me depended on the
Plague Boy
movie coming to pass. I sent an e-mail to Courtney Bellkamp at the Reno Brothers asking for the list I needed. I sent an e-mail to Ross Carpenter reminding him I was still alive.

Second and I began playing poker on our laptops. We made sure not to play at the same tables at the same time. I was going up and down but mostly winning, he was doing the same.
Th
en History stood over my shoulder, watched what I was doing, and told me she had played against three of the players at my table. She sat down next to me and helped me out since she knew their style of play. Meanwhile, THC was doing the same with Second. After losing three hands (and $900) in a row I called THC and Second over, so it was all four of us playing as one. It was extraordinary, it was teamwork at its best; we were like Secretariat and were
moving like a tremendous
machine.
I won ten of the next thirteen hands. I recouped all my losses at Big Lou's and then won $9,400 more.
Th
e four of us then shifted to Second's laptop and our
Th
umpin'
Th
ink Tank did the same for him. We all worked together, the gears spun and meshed beautifully, and we were unbeatable.
Th
e Incredible Four-Headed Doyle Brunson. In an hour Second won $7,000. Yes, a tremendous machine.

At one point I said to Second, “Hey, I could seek out Bjorn and we could really win a lot.”

But he wouldn't go for it. “It's not a good idea,” he said, suddenly agitated. “We've taken enough from him.” He told me he felt sorry for the Insufferable Swede and I dropped it.

We four blowfish then took a taxi to the Flamingo. Only one of their pools was open and it wasn't very crowded, this being autumn. (I slipped the towel boy a twenty and he let us through.) We were in brand-new bathing suits: the thoroughly unreliable Cookie had bought the guys yellow banana hammocks and History an imperceptible Corona Beer yellow bikini. Her skin was pigeon gray but she had skinny legs and a sexy ankle bracelet I had trouble not looking at. Cookie, Second, and I each drank three beers and History had a peach margarita and while he held a sun reflector up to his stubbly chin, Second related to me the brainstorm that had just struck him: “Your writing career isn't goin' too well. As a matter of fact, it's not goin' at all. Well, there's got to be a university here, like a College of Las Vegas University, right? So why don't you become their writer-in-residence? You could live at the Bellagio, some of your students would be showgirls who wanted to become writers, the weather would always be great, and you could gamble between classes, and you could keep writin' all yer books here that don't ever get published. . . . Okay, you don't have to give me that look, it was just a feckin' idea.”

After listening to that I went inside the hotel and found a cool pair of round tinted glasses in a gift shop and bought them. I wanted a new look and this seemed to be a good start.

Th
en I decided to take a walk around the pool.

Th
e last time I had done such a thing I collapsed.

It almost happened again. And this one would have been a book-related collapse too.

I saw a woman reading
Saucier: A Bitch in the Kitchen
and let out a quiet groan and kept walking.
Th
en I saw another woman reading it and groaned so loud that the people around me assumed I was in some sort of extreme anguish. (I was.)

I had to do something about this. And I vowed that I would.

Back in our rooms the three of us were gathered around History Babe as she sat and won money on Second's laptop, when Laurel Dodge dropped in on us again, looking as suede as ever. Her upper lip seemed a little puffier than the first time I'd laid eyes on her. Either she'd had some work done that day or had jogged into a mailbox.

Johnny pulled her aside, over to the window, and when their conversation become heated I went over and joined them.

“I can't do this!” Laurel said. “Stop it!”

Second said, “Yes you can!”

“I can't and I won't.” She turned to me and said, “Your friend here wants me to arrange hookers for him! And for you and the other guy.”

“What,” I said to Johnny, “Tracey doesn't get one too?”

“I hadn't gotten around to her yet!” he said. He turned to Laurel and asked: “What about that old Texas geezer in the next room? You didn't arrange his harem for him?!”

“Look,” Laurel said, “do you want tickets to a Cirque show tonight or what?”

Second: “Fook the feckin' Cirque du bloody feckin' Soleil!”

After Laurel left, Second said to me: “You would've liked it, I promise.”

He told me he was going to get one woman for Cookie, two for me, and three for him. History could join in if she wanted. When I told him that those numbers seemed skewed towards him, he told me he was counting on Cookie not taking part, so I would have gotten his girl and then it would have been even. “See, I've always got your back, Chip,” he said, “don't I?”

I took the elevator downstairs, found Laurel about to drive away in her red Jag convertible, made nice with her, and took the Cirque du Soleil tickets. Later THC, Hist, Second, and I went to Burger King for dinner. Second, after complaining to the manager that our meal in no way involved all four flavor profiles, sold the Cirque tickets for $200 to a family from Arkansas in the next booth.