Sin City (16 page)

I try and follow her directions, get lost before I've even left the hotel. It's so huge, so overwhelming; too much crystal, velvet, bronze, to dupe the senses, too many attractions and distractions to trap me, hold me up. Cul-de-sacs which end in cocktail lounges, stairs which lead to bars or balconies instead of to the street, vast mirrors which confuse and duplicate, taped music to make me moon instead of march. I'm on the ground floor now, at last, drifting past a long arcade of shops. I stop, peer in a window. Perhaps there's a drugstore here in the hotel and I shan't need to brave the streets. The window glares with jewels – greedy boasting diamonds; emeralds, amethysts; great chunks and chains of gold. I walk on, past a kiddies' fashion shop selling tuxedos for toddlers and spangled plastic pants, and an Eastern bazaar offering everything from yashmaks to alligator boots – but nothing for loose bowels.

It takes me ten more minutes to locate the exit, and then it's the front one, not the back, which means about-turn and another hundred miles of daunting carpet. No one seems that eager to direct me to the back. I understand why when I finally stumble on it for myself. It's the Cinderella exit, the ugly-duckling cat-flap. Instead of golden palace portals opening on to palms and plashing fountains, this is a furtive sort of doorway, flanked with dustbins. I stare in shock. Rain, puddles, litter, an overflowing drain. This can't be exotic Vegas. All the brochures show it sunny with blue skies. This sky is the colour of smudged charcoal. Even the clouds look stained and tatty, ragged round the edges. My “awful weather” has become a dismal fact. A waste of car park stretches on both sides. I cross the concrete, find myself in a side street, but looking towards the Strip.
Can
it be the Strip? It's a different place entirely from the Magic Colour Show of after-dark. The glitter and the sheen have disappeared. No peacock-blues, no fairy-pinks. Only drab grey pavement, ugly posters, a petrol station, a huge sign shouting “LOANS”.

I struggle on, huddled against the rain, pass a cheap motel built of plasterboard and signs (“Lowest Rates in Vegas”, “Fourth Nite Free”), and a Woolworth's-type shop spilling its goods out on to the pavement – curvaceous coffee mugs with red-nippled breasts as handles, Las Vegas tee shirts (“I Lost my Ass in Vegas”), toy fruit machines made of tin and plastic.

“Wanna fun-book?” A man steps out from the entrance of the shop, presses something in my hand. I barely glance at it, stick it in my pocket. It's too wet to stop. I'm soaked already, had forgotten I would need a coat – not just coat, but umbrella, gloves and snow-boots. It's colder than back home. Shouldn't I have crossed the street by now, and which street did that woman mean, in any case? I try to re-run her directions in my head, but they're drowned out by the drumming of the rain, the cough and belch of traffic. I stop at the lights, watch the cars flash past. Judging by the empty pavements, everybody drives here. Only losers walk. There are two huge hotels in front of me, a gap between them like a missing tooth, a vacant lot piled with builders' rubble. I cross over, take a look. I can see the desert struggling to break through – sand beneath the rusting strips of iron, grey-leaved scrubby plants pushing up between girders and old pipes. Beyond me rear the mountains: brown, bare, jagged, desolate.

I break into a run, to try and outwit the rain, but it follows, cold and sullen, slams against my back. Where in God's name is that drugstore? I've hardly seen a shop at all, except those cheap bazaars stuffed with souvenirs. No supermarkets or grocery stores, no friendly little corner-shops selling life's essentials such as bread and aspirin, milk and cigarettes. All you can buy are huge great ugly clocks with their figures made of dice or cards, naked-female playing cards, roulette-wheel key rings, nesting pairs of dice – and every type of instant meal and snack. I pass a Diet Centre wedged between “Frankie's Foot-Long Frankfurters” and “Have a Whopper – Visit Burger King”. I'm completely lost by now, though at least the rain is easing. I remove the soaked fun-book from my pocket. I'm not sure what a fun-book is, but it may include a fun-map. I separate the pages, print smudged from the wet. “Thirty-nine-cent breakfast; Big Six Wheel of Fortune; craps 3 for 2 Match Play; your own personal Jackpot Photo taken next to a genuine slot machine.” No fun Diar-Aid, no free dry toast.

I've reached another set of lights. The pedestrian sign says “STOP”. I'm glad to stop – I'm tired – jet-lagged maybe, or just fed up with trying to walk in a pair of squelching court-shoes. The rain has stopped as well. I lean against a newsstand to remove one shoe, peel off my sodden sock, squeeze the water from it. There are these little perspex newsstands at every junction, with magazines and newspapers inside. No vendors, as in England, shouting “
Standard, Standard
!” or “Twelve killed in Armagh”. Here, you help yourself. “DON' T BE ALONE IN LAS VEGAS” is printed across one stand. They must know how I'm feeling.

I open the flap, remove a magazine. “FREE”, it says. “Take one. Adults only.” I leave my shoe and sock off, eyes on stalks as I skim through the first page. “Classy lasses (or lads) direct to your room. Golden girls and guys available twenty-four hours a day. Call our sensual, sensational Vegas play-pals.” I stare at the pulsing bosoms, the pouting lips, the lace and whalebone corselettes, the micro g-strings. “Call Angie Ample – the girl your mother warned about”; “Brigitte Bardot look-alike gives French lessons – very strict with naughty boys”; “Mistress Marilyn, experienced in bondage”. My hands are trembling. I feel disgusted, yet horribly excited. Classy Carole. Champagne Carole. Experienced in … The pedestrian sign says “GO” now. I pick my shoe up, step forward automatically, eyes still on the print. “Double your pleasure. Two blondes are better than one. Let Blue-Eyes and Bombshell work on you together.” “Call Dawn – prettier than a sunset …”

“God! I'm sorry. I didn't hurt you, did I?”

I've collided with some guy, dropped my shoe and sock. The magazine is face down in a puddle. I blush as he retrieves all three, hands them back to me. The light has changed to red again. I dither, dart back, forwards, back again, as an Oldsmobile bears down on me with hungry scarlet jaws.

“Oh, Christ!” I shout, confused by all the curses and the honks. Another car is panting on my legs, some Goliath of a driver winding down his window to add to all the uproar. Someone grabs my arm, hauls me back to safety.

“Gosh, thanks,” I say, glancing up at him. It's the same guy I bumped into – tallish, middle-aged, with greying hair, and wearing a black mac. I look straight down again. Men in macs have a frightful reputation. My mother was always warning me about men in dirty raincoats (or was it dirty men in raincoats? I don't recall. Anyway, I freeze.)

“On your own?” he asks.

“Er … no. I'm with a friend. Just waiting for her – him.” He'll know I'm lying. I'm really scarlet now. I hate it when I blush.

“Oh, are you an escort girl?”

“No, no. I'm not. Of course I'm not. I'm just a visitor, a tourist.” I'm back by that damned newsstand and still brandishing that girlie magazine. He must assume I'm a demonstration product, a sort of on-the-spot free sample. I'm disproving all their advertising – not a golden girl in whalebone and black lace, but a drenched and wringing wreck wearing a plain white cotton Marks and Spencer bra (one strap safety-pinned), beneath mud-splashed dungarees. The Brigitte Bardot double probably looks appealing in a sack. I need props and help, and preferably dry hair. I've still got one bare foot. I stop to put my sock on, overbalance, almost topple over. The black arm is there again, steady as a rock.

“You okay?” His turn to ask me now.

“Y … Yes, fine.” I think I must be pissed still, reeling from champagne. I don't feel pissed, just scared of him, but I suppose he's sort of saved my life, so I force a smile, let him act as prop while I ram my shoe back on.

“You must be from England with that accent.”

“Mm.”

“London?”

“Mm.”

“I've never been to England. I had a trip planned once, but … Hey! Watch your step.”

I'm so keen to get away from him, so clumsy from sheer nerves, I've just tripped again on a broken piece of paving stone. He must think I'm some spastic, or completely paralytic drunk. He steadies me, steers me round the hole.

“What's your name?”

“Er … Jan.” I keep staring down. So many hazards to avoid.

“Nice to meet you, Jan. My name's Vic.”

“Vick?” My mind's on drugstores still. Vick to rub on chests.

“Well, maybe Victor, if you're English. I had an English buddy once and he was Edward, never Ed. Though I guess Jan's short for something, isn't it?”

“Yeah, Janice. But no one calls me that.” Too right they don't. I'm impressed, despite myself. Victor's just the name to have in Vegas. Careful, though. He may be Victor Capone.

“You look cold, Jan. Want my coat?”

“No. No, really …” It's the old old story. They give you sweeties (coats), then lure you into the woods. Actually, there's hardly a tree to be seen, only garish hoardings and a sign saying “Breast sandwiches” which makes me fear mutilation as well as just plain rape. Perhaps I ought to wear the coat. My blouse has gone transparent in the rain and my own breasts may be outlined in full uncensored detail – red rag to a bull. Anyway, he's already struggled out of it and is draping it round my shoulders. Probably just an excuse to feel me up. I side-step, mumble “Thanks”, steal another glance at him.

He looks quite different in his suit, which is almost boring in its dull and formal grey, but what my father called superbly cut, and obviously expensive. I should guess he's pretty rich. He's got a diamond in his ring, another in his tie-pin. Okay, so men in diamonds aren't my style, but this is Vegas, and half the men I've seen so far wear so much jewellery they clank. His at least is tasteful. I saw one guy with a great 3-D crucifix dangling round his neck, the dying Christ picked out in dazzling rubies.

Victor turns and smiles at me – a nice smile, shy and honest. I really like his eyes. They're a brilliant blue and very kind and gentle, not rapist's eyes at all. In fact, it was only that black mac which made him seem so sinister. I slow my pace a bit.

“Are you a tourist, too?” I dare.

“Kind of.”

I think he prefers to put the questions himself. “Where are you staying?” he asks, before he's really answered me.

“The … Tropicana.” Best be careful still. “What about you?”

“Caesars.”

“Caesars Palace?” Now I really am impressed. According to the guide books, Caesars Palace is the one hotel in Vegas which comes anywhere near the Gold Rush, both in opulence and sheer lunatic expense. He must be loaded if he's staying there, and without Players No. 6 to foot the bill.

“Do you know it, Jan?”

“Well, no, I don't. But …” I've seen the pictures, read about the place. Caesars is as famous as the London Ritz.

“I only come to Vegas for the poker. I've just played a big tournament Downtown, but I prefer staying on the Strip. The tourney finished a whole week ago, but Caesars' Christmas sounded kind of fun, and I'd won a few bucks, so …”

I stop dead in my tracks. “You're a
gambler
, a high roller?”

He laughs. “Oh, no. I just like playing poker.”

“But if you play in tournaments and win and …” My voice tails off. Surely poker players don't look so … so ordinary? In movies, they wear hats – cowboy hats or huge sombreros, or have scars across their faces and narrowed flinty eyes, and puff on fat cigars, and carry guns.

“I like to win – who doesn't? – but it's not so much the money, more the game itself. It's fascinating, poker. It can be thrilling or infuriating or dangerous or boring – sometimes all those things, and more, just in one hand. D'you play at all yourself, Jan?”

I shake my head. Helping Norah with her patience is about the limit of my skills.

“I used to have a weakness for blackjack, but it depends too much on luck – just sheer blind chance. Poker needs skills, quite a few different ones, in fact, which makes it more of a challenge. Yet luck still enters into it, and can make or break anyone. There's always that element of risk. And …” He grins. “I guess risk is exciting.”

“Gosh,” I say, still staring at him. Have I missed a scar, a hidden holster? “I've never met a poker player, never in my life.”

“Well, I'm afraid I'll disappoint you. I only play for fun. The world-class players are something else entirely. I met them at the tournament. Some of them are real flamboyant characters, but for a lot of them, there's nothing in their lives beyond the poker table, or some other form of gambling. In the end, nothing really grabs them unless they're betting heavy money on it – a hundred thousand dollars, say, on just one hole of golf or one Sunday football game.”

“You're kidding.” I try to imagine a hundred thousand dollars, all the things one could buy and do and be with it; then losing every cent just because the Redskins beat the Rams.

“That's gospel, Jan. Their world gets so unreal that money means everything and nothing. I saw one player tip a cocktail waitress a thousand bucks, just for bringing him a Pepsi.”

“Wow!” I let out a low whistle.

“Even recreational players can get totally obsessed. Poker's like a gaol sentence for some of my old friends. They never leave the table, never breathe fresh air or see the daylight, are hardly aware there's an outside world at all. And ‘friends' is the wrong word. They don't have friends, not really. They play for blood. One guy lost so much he was forced to sell his kidney.”

“His
kidney
? Why?”