The Secret History of Las Vegas (12 page)

Y
ou look like shit, Sunil said to Salazar.

Salazar, unshowered, unchanged, unshaven, sporting bloodshot eyes and nursing a cup of coffee, stared at himself in the reflective glass of the casino door. Yeah, he said. Well, you're no fucking beauty queen yourself.

When his cell phone rang thirty minutes before, Sunil had just walked into his apartment and was quite looking forward to some downtime with a beer and basketball on TV. Salazar wanted Sunil to meet him at Fremont Street in front of the Golden Nugget. Immediately. Salazar sounded so like a B-movie gangster, Sunil was tempted to laugh. But there he was, meeting a surly Salazar and wondering to himself how much neon there was in this city. Now, that was a question he was sure Water had an answer for.

See those kids over there, Salazar asked, pointing to a group of kids lounging in the middle of the covered pedestrian walkway that sheltered this part of Fremont. They were sprawled across a white bench reflecting the crazy video projections on the roof of the walkway, eating hamburgers and sipping noisily on drinks. You remember that text you sent me about Fred, Salazar said.

Yeah, did you find anything on her?

No, no record, nothing in the system, not even a social security number.

Then why am I here?

Well, I figured if you were looking for a freak lover with a sideshow, where better to start than with the freaks themselves.

And you need me for what?

Freaks are your thing. Besides, I don't have a partner so you're it.

Who are these kids?

Street kids. I try to watch out for them and they in turn keep me informed on things I want to know. They're kind of like CIs.

Hey guys, Salazar said to the kids. This is Dr. Singh. Dr. Singh, meet the gang. This is Horny Nick, he said, pointing to a teenager with star-shaped horns implanted in his forehead.

Coral probably, Sunil thought. With time it would fuse to look like real bone. They were disturbing but beautiful. When Nick smiled, Sunil could see that his teeth had been filed to points and he was sporting two-inch-long fingernails painted black.

And this, Salazar said, pointing, is Annie.

Annie took off her sunglasses and tucked them over her hair, revealing pointed ears, like an elf or a Vulcan. She ran her tongue over her lips and Sunil saw it had been split down the middle, but it was her eyes that transfixed him. Her sclera were a deep purple and her pupils a royal blue. There were two other teenagers with Annie and Horny Nick, a boy and another girl, and although their entire bodies, faces included, were covered with tattoos and piercings, they looked normal in comparison.

These two delinquents here are Peggy and Petrol, Salazar said.

Sunil nodded. Salazar thinks you might know someone we're looking for, he said. He reached into his back pocket and took out a photo of Fire and Water. The kids studied the photo for a while before passing it around. Sunil watched their eyes, noticing shifts in expression, but it was only Annie who said: a real freak! She sounded envious.

We haven't seen them, Petrol said, passing the photo back almost reluctantly.

Who else might have seen them? Where would they go, Salazar asked.

You should ask Fred, Annie said. Fred knows everything.

The others glared at her and Sunil caught the look.

I'm not a policeman, he said. I'm a doctor. I don't want to harm Fred. I just want to talk to her. In fact, Sunil said, pointing to Water in the photo, this one says he is in love with Fred.

The kids laughed.

Everyone is in love with Fred, they said, almost in unison.

Where can we find this fucking Fred person, Salazar asked.

The kids looked away.

Please, Sunil said.

She lives out in Troubadour, Horny Nick said.

The ghost town, Sunil asked.

Fred doesn't like uninvited guests, Petrol said.

Here, Sunil said, digging into his pocket and passing a twenty-dollar bill over to Peggy.

As she took it she leaned into him. Be careful, she whispered. Someone is following you.

Why would anyone follow me, he asked.

How the fuck should I know, she said. But I'm never wrong.

As they walked away, Salazar turned to Sunil. What was all that about, he asked.

She thinks I'm being followed, Sunil said.

Do you think you're being followed?

No. Why would anyone follow me?

Salazar looked Sunil over for a minute, then said: Listen, is the ghost town far from here?

Yes, a couple of hours.

When do we leave?

Why don't we go tomorrow morning? Come by my place about nine a.m. You're driving, by the way.

What's your address?

Like you don't know, Detective.

As Sunil drove home, he kept glancing in his rearview mirror. Two cars behind him, Eskia smiled.

I
n this dream, Selah is an angel oak and all her leaves are yellow, a bright yellow like the soft down on a chick and irradiated by sunlight so the very air, the sky, is all yellow.

The tree is in a field of yellow shrubs: a yellow sky, a yellow field, and a yellow tree. The only things that are not yellow are the black limbs of the tree.

Water stands in the soft down of the shrubs and looks up at the tree. Selah, he says, crying, Selah.

The yellow tree shakes in a sudden wind until it is stripped of leaves, of everything. Now Water is standing in a brown field next to a small cabin leaning drunkenly.

Selah, he calls again, Selah.

Where is your brother, the tree asks.

Water looks down to his side and Fire is gone. He runs his hands down his sides and he is healed, his skin unmarked.

I don't know, he says, his voice heavy with awe. What does this mean, Mother?

The tree turns white. A rude tree in a field of green and white and in the distance the white shrubs. Water looks around, confused.

Where am I, he asks no one, because there is no one to ask.

And the sky grows dark and brooding like a storm was coming, but there is a purity to the tree, to it all.

Selah, he calls one last time to the tree.

There is nothing but the searing whiteness everywhere.

Wake up, Water.

When he opened his eyes, a nurse was standing over him in the glare of the fluorescent overhead lights.

Time for your medication, the nurse said.

Water took the pill and swallowed it, then lay back, his breath shallow and ragged. Beside him, wrapped in the smoothness of his caul, Fire snored.

BUTTERFLIES

 

T
he sign outside painted in uneven lettering on a piece of plywood read:
GOGO
'
S
CURIO
AND
BOOKSHOP
. Run by Gogo, a shriveled old woman who could have been colored or Indian or even a sunburned Boer, it was a place where people from different races overlapped without worrying about the authorities. Perhaps it was Gogo's racial ambiguity, or her reputation as a fierce witch with so much muthi that even the police were unwilling to come up against her; whatever the reason, Gogo's curio shop was probably the most liminal place in all of Jozi, sitting as it did in a dead zone between the Wits University campus and the Fort. The wall facing the street was covered in a colorful mural, and a ditch and a fence hid the entrance, which was down an alley.

Her customers included university students, interracial lovers hiding from anti-miscegenation laws, sangomas, curio hunters, rare-book collectors, and more. It seemed sometimes to Sunil that all the misfits in Jozi met up there.

He had been coming to Gogo's since he stumbled on the store as a sixteen-year-old and Gogo had given him a torn paperback copy of
Tropic of Cance
r. He came because he imagined his parents must have met in a place like this. Gogo's always smelled of frankincense, which she kept burning on coals in a small black cauldron behind the counter.

Keeps the customers honest, she said to Sunil once with a wink. Besides, it smells like church, holy and mysterious.

He had to agree. Seen through the thin haze of smoke, everything looked mysterious. The mummified animals; the mummified human hand and head; the strangely formed rocks; animal pelts and skins; freshly killed owls; bones; dried herbs; the books—stacked everywhere; and strange jewelry from Tibet (malas and turquoise rings)—amber with insect fossils, and rings and necklaces with butterfly wing fragments encased in resin.

It was the last place Sunil expected to meet Jan. He'd never seen her at the bookstore. She looked up at him when they both reached for the same book. They each knew the risk of it, in those days, but that only made it more exciting; and during a conversation on the amazing hummingbird moth, held over the book neither would let go of, she touched his hand and asked if he would like to go back to her place. Her forwardness both attracted and frightened him.

Her small flat was made smaller by the glass cases and frames that covered every surface: walls, tabletops, couch, the dining chairs, and the floor.

Come in, she said, walking in and dropping her handbag in the middle of the rubble. He followed somewhat timidly, fighting a strong urge to tidy up. Jan grabbed mugs from the draining board in the kitchen, poured wine from a half-empty bottle, and handed him a mug.

Cheers, she said, clinking. Well, it's not much, but it's all mine.

Quite, yes, Sunil said, thinking the untidy mess of her apartment didn't match the somewhat severe Jan of the classroom. But then, that wasn't uncommon among white South Africans. It was common knowledge that most led a double life. What was shown in public was a repressed, conformist, and exaggerated morality. But the home life was completely different, revealing everything from messiness to deviant sexual behavior. A double life, however, was a privilege no blacks had because while whites were safe from scrutiny behind their front doors, blacks were always under scrutiny.

Come see this, Jan said, and sat at her kitchen table, bent over a butterfly she placed carefully under a microscope. Come see, she said. He shook his head and sipped the cheap wine. Watching her, he'd loved that she could get lost so easily in her study. He thought it a wonderful thing to sort and label whole species, to mount them behind glass as proof of certainty. She smiled up at him and he smiled back, wondering in that moment if what Lacan said was true: that loving someone else is impossible. That all we love is the space between our own desires—to be seen and to be wanted. It wasn't unusual, he supposed, that as a psychiatrist-in-training he would think of Lacan when he thought of love, but he did find it irksome the way his mind seemed to get between him and his body, between him and the world. He imagined it was different for Jan. She seemed to have a more visceral engagement with things when she was in her own world.

And he knew her power, her raw power, when she got up from the table and came to him covered in the tinsel from the butterfly's wings—iridescent and multicolored. Knew from the way she moaned when they made love later that night, from the way she got out of bed and ran into the cold kitchen to get something to eat because sex made her hungry. Knew from the way she bit into a pear and closed her eyes for a second as though tasting it for the first time. For him it was second-hand always, the facsimile of the experience.

That night passed in a blur of sex and sleep, and he woke to a proliferation of color and wings, and in that cold morning light irradiated with butterflies, he felt an ache unlike anything else before or after. He knew then as he watched her sleep that he would leave and never come back. If he stayed, his life would never be the same. The mystery of it, the danger of its change, also carried with it the terror of healing. He wasn't ready for that. The ache he felt could never be filled, not by her, not by anybody. He knew enough to know that if he stayed, she would become the scab over a deeper wound that he would pick and pick until there was nothing. Before she woke, he left.

That day he went to Gogo's and bought a beautiful men's signet ring in silver with a Blue Mormon wing fragment in a clear mount. Beautiful, it was more than he could afford. When Gogo found out it was for a girl, she slipped it onto a silver chain.

For her neck, she said. Strange gift for a girl, but she will never forget it. Bound to make an impression, she added.

The next day in class, he sat next to her. She ignored him at first, but then he placed the unusual gift on top of her red Bible, blue on red, and she blushed and smiled, her hand coming to rest on it.

For me?

Yes.

Thank you, she said.

But before class was over, he left, and a week later he was on a plane to Holland on a government educational exchange program. While he was away, he found out through an old acquaintance that Jan and Eskia became an item, that they even dropped out of school to be together. He would not see Jan again until Vlakplaas.

SUNDAY

T
he sunlight was filtered to a muted blue by the stained glass of the kitchen window. It was the only room in the house that had only one window—high up and small, like the opening in a monk's cell.

Asia paused in front of the fridge, her reflection catching her by surprise. Long black hair, full lips still stained a little red from last night's lipstick, a long lean neck, and a body taut from dancing. The pristine steel of the fridge door bothered her, and before she opened it to take out the eggs she made sure to smudge it a bit with her fingertips.

Normally Asia would be turning in after a long night. The only other time she was up this early was when she'd slept over with a client who'd paid for the whole night. Then she would wake and sneak off, unless of course there was breakfast. But everything was different when it came to Sunil. Even the money he still left in the Bible for her was now a mere formality for her. She took it and paid it into a bank account that she never touched. She only took it because it allowed her to maintain a certain distance to protect her heart. He'd called her late and asked her over, and even though he was a client she'd spent the night with, she was up making him breakfast. She never made breakfast for herself.

But there was something so ordinary and everyday about cooking for a loved one that left her breathless with anticipation. Coffee percolating in the pot, made from fresh, rough-ground beans and distilled water; toast burning slowly, held down twice in the toaster because he loved to scrape the burned crumbs off with a knife, the sound like metal on wood; and scrambled egg whites; and for her, a quartered grapefruit and green tea with honey.

It was like a curtain being pulled back on a magic show. The quotidian nature of other people's lives was fascinating to her. She had grown up in the cold, crowded squash of Chicago and had loved nothing more than riding the train, staring into the lit windows of other people's lives trying to read something about them from those brief glimpses. She came to believe that those lives were better than hers, the tease of those windows proof of the fact. Breakfast was just one of the ways she pursued the lives hidden from her.

And what might make a person desire another's life so much? Someone perhaps whose real name was Adele Kaczynski, a biracial woman born on the east side who turned out darker than her white mother could live with, and was left on the steps of the Northwestern Teaching Hospital. Someone who had grown up on the South Side moving from foster home to foster home. Someone who fell in love with her last foster father and who began dancing in strip clubs at sixteen to pay for his drug habit and who finally left him and fled to Las Vegas to pursue her dream of becoming a real dancer. Someone who changed her name first to Egypt, then Nile, before deciding they were too common, finally settling on Asia; maybe that kind of person.

She had a couple of dance auditions in the afternoon for some new shows that would open in the New Year that she was excited about. It was tough competition, though, and with each year it got tougher as she got older and her competition grew younger, a ridiculous thing for a twenty-six-year-old to be worried about, but this was Vegas.

Landing a role in a show like
Zumanity
would mean she could give up prostitution. It was possible to make fifty, sometimes sixty thousand a year in a show like that, minus tips. Perhaps then she could give in to Sunil, give in to her own feelings. But until then, there was breakfast.

When she'd first shared her dream with Sunil, about dancing in a big show, he'd asked: Why not just dance in one of the strip clubs until then? That way you can give up prostitution. She'd never told him about her past, but that didn't make it hurt any less. Sunil's impression of her was the only one she cared about, and the fact that he thought she was a prostitute through some thoughtless action on her part felt unbearable. She wanted to tell him all of this. Instead she'd said: What would we have if I weren't a prostitute? And although she'd been happy to see the look of shame cross his face, she regretted saying it.

Today there would be no real fight, just the pretense of one, the kind that added to her fantasy of domestic ordinariness. Things like—I wish you'd take your head out of your paper and look at me once in a while. Or—Why do you always leave burned toast crumbs in the butter? Or—That's way too much milk. You should watch your cholesterol. And he would reply in safe, predictable ways. That kind of fight turned her on and she would make sure she got one this morning.

Hey, he said, kissing her on the cheek before reaching for a cup and pouring some coffee—black, two Equals. The casual manner of that peck on her cheek turned her on, made her sticky and breathless. He sat at the table and turned on his Kindle to read the
New York Times
.

Sleep well, she asked, pouring the whipped egg whites into the melted butter in the pan.

Not really, he said, sipping loudly on the hot coffee. You?

I always sleep well when you hold me, she said. But the muttered words seemed stirred into the sizzling contents of the pan, drowned by the scraping of the plastic spatula on the Teflon.

He looked up briefly and then returned to the
Times
. The little electronic pad wasn't the same as actual paper, but it was just as good in different ways.

Eat while it's hot, she said. She put the eggs onto a plate, laid the toast next to it, and gave it to him.

Thank you, he said, scraping the toast slowly. The black granules of burned bread gathered in a small pile in the corner of his plate. A few black crumbs missed the pile and flecked his eggs like pepper.

She had her back to him, cutting the grapefruit, releasing a zest of citrus into the kitchen. The sun was higher now and the earlier deep-blue light was now much lighter. He studied her. Every movement she made seemed calculated—no, not calculated, deliberate. As though she was in total control of every muscle in her body.

What, she asked, blushing as she turned into his gaze. She placed the bowl of grapefruit on the table opposite him and sat. There was something in your look, she said.

There was, he asked, looking up from his toast.

Yes, she insisted, spoon poised like a snake ready to strike. He thought he'd never seen her look so beautiful. The whistle of the kettle reprieved him.

Well, she asked, and dunked a bag of green tea in the hot water. The mist reached in a thin column for her face as though in caress. He watched intently, and while part of him wanted to smile, the other felt lost. He had never felt less certain about anything than he did now. The last few days had proved unsettling. In the early years of his internship in Europe he'd had a stint as a family counselor and he always asked his clients what kind of animal their relationship would be, if it were an animal. Now he found himself thinking the same thing about him and Asia. A startled colt came to mind, a colt trying to find its way out of a paddock on a cold winter day. At once terrified and thrilled by the moment and all that it had to offer.

I don't know what you mean, he said, and his voice trailed off as he shoved some toast into his mouth.

In any other context she would have left the comment where he had, dangling. But this was breakfast and she had made it and it was, well, it was different. This was what couples did, she thought. Fought over nothing.

It sounds like there's something, she said.

He shoveled the last of the eggs into his mouth, swallowed some coffee. Asia always made him feel this way. Like he had done something wrong, like if he wasn't careful, he would break this thing between them. He wanted to tell her he loved her. But she knew that. He wanted to have a different life, but he couldn't articulate what that would be. So he said nothing, gazing into his coffee with resolve. The cup was almost empty, but he didn't think it was a good time to push back from the table and get some more.

You say you love me, but you keep things from me, she said.

This was getting ridiculous. Might as well get more coffee, he thought, standing.

This was such a nice breakfast, she said. Her grapefruit sat untouched, the cooling green tea clutched in her fist.

I love breakfast with you, he said, pouring coffee into his cup. He returned to the table, where he stirred the fine white powder from the Equal packets into the dark cup. Some of the sweetener spilled around the cup. He thought it looked too much like top-grade heroin and wondered if that was what they used in the movies—all those scenes where actors heaped fingers of uncut heroin into their mouths to test the drug. That much uncut heroin would probably kill a person, he'd said to Asia as they sat watching
The French Connection
one rainy Saturday. Shh, she'd said. It's just make-believe.

You're not eating, he said.

Not much of an appetite, she said, and stood up. At the sink she emptied the fruit down the garbage disposal and ran the tap. He wanted to tell her that the rinds would gum up the works, but the noisy whirring made it impossible and he thought it was probably just as well. He wasn't sure why they were fighting, not sure if it was just what he'd said or if there was something else, something he would never guess at. Psychiatry wasn't much use in a relationship.

She turned the garbage disposal off but left the tap running, playing her fingers through the water. With her back to him, Sunil couldn't see the small smile forming on her lips. She was ridiculously, unaccountably happy. She loved him, that was true, but she loved these moments more, where she got to play at being normal, fights and all. The way it felt in her body. Like an itch that released deliciously under a slow scratch.

Asia, he said. I'm sorry.

She was so happy, she thought she would cry. Don't be, she said. I'm just being foolish.

And then his cell phone rang. He looked at the display. It was Salazar calling to tell him he'd be late.

May I ask why, Sunil said.

Another batch of dead homeless men turned up at the city dump. I would ask you to come out, but it's just the same as all the other times.

Identical to two years ago, Sunil asked.

Sunil remembered the bodies. No particular order. No particular ritual. Just tipped out in an untidy pile. He hadn't been bothered by the fact of the bodies, by the putrefying smell of it all, everything turning to decay so quickly in the Vegas heat. What had bothered him was deliberately misleading Salazar. He was there when Salazar found the girl, and for the briefest moment he felt bad. But he had lost so much himself that the deception was easy to live with.

Identical, Salazar said. I'll fetch you closer to ten or eleven. I'll bring road-trip food.

Sure, why not. If you're chewing, you can't be talking, Sunil said.

Charming, see you soon.

Sunil hung up.

Asia, watching intently over the brim of her teacup, was smiling.

What is it, he asked.

I was just thinking, she said.

Listen, I've got to go get ready. Stay as long as you like.

Do you have a photo album, she asked.

He paused at the door, surprised.

What?

A photo album, she repeated.

No, he said.

So you have no photos of your family?

Where is this coming from, he asked. I thought we weren't allowed to discuss family, your rules.

My family, she said, not yours. And a lady always reserves the right to change her mind.
Lady,
she repeated as he opened his mouth to say something.

No, he said. I don't have any photos of my family. I'm not really the family type.

Let's change that, she said.

What's gotten into you, he asked.

Come here, she said.

He came over and she hugged him. She lifted her phone and took a picture of them.

See?

It was cute, cheesy almost, like something a teenager would do. It surprised him to find that he liked it.

You're in a silly mood, he said, and walked to the bathroom.

The shower was already hot and the room steamy when she joined him.

I don't have a condom, he said.

Shh, she said.

Later as the water drummed over them, she said: Let's change the past. Let's do that.

Yes, he wanted to say, with something akin to abandon. Instead he soaped her back.