333 Miles (18 page)

Gary: “Well, I watched every Saturday and I
didn’t turn out to be a commie.”

Alex: “I guess so. But I still don’t trust
those Russians.”

Roger: “I bet Smurfette took it in every
hole. She probably tied that blonde hair up into a pony tail, got
down on her knees and took one little blue Smurf cock in her mouth
while another one gave it to her from behind. Meanwhile, Papa Smurf
was sitting in the corner with his red pants around his ankles
punching clown and videotaping the whole thing.”

Alex: “I think you are right, Rodge. The
thing that bothers me the most is we will probably never know for
sure.”

Roger: “That dirty little slut!”

Alex continued to ponder the sexual habits of
the Smurfs as he maneuvered the car through a slight curve to the
left. A few miles to the south of the peak of Clark Mountain,
Highway 15 northbound reached its own summit, revealing a view of
an expansive valley of darkness and dirt below. Two straight, thin
lines of red and white car lights divided the nothingness. They
acted as feeder streams, emptying into a larger body of
illumination at the border where the first Nevada casinos
beckoned.

“Vegas, Baby! Vegas!” Roger exclaimed
excitedly from the back seat.

Alex: “Keep your pants on. This whole thing
seems way too much like Swingers already for my comfort level.”

Gary: “Anyway, it isn’t even Vegas, it’s just
Whiskey Pete’s.”

Roger: “Ah, quit being such pube-lice. Once
in a while you all should quit worrying about the minutia and enjoy
the moment. Vegas, Baby!”

Interlude Twelve

Alex (26)

In the fall of 2001, Alex made it a point to
be in the office before the New York Stock Exchange opened at 6:30
a.m., West Coast time. On this particular Tuesday morning, he was
running a few minutes late. During dinner at Elephant Bar the
previous night, after a few gin and tonics, Roger had talked him
into going to Viejas where he found a 4-8 Texas Hold ’em poker
table with some very loose and stupid players. The result was he
only got four hours of sleep, but he felt fresh anyway, invigorated
by the crisp, clean morning and the extra $625 in his wallet.

Anyways, he was already on Interstate 5 and
just a few minutes away from the turnoff for La Jolla, so he would
be just ten minutes late at worst. One of Alex’s pet peeves in life
was the fact that no radio stations played much music in the
morning. Instead, they preferred to let a bunch of dorks who tried
to appeal to soccer moms and imitate Howard Stern at the same time
babble on about whatever came to mind. The San Diego market seemed
among the worst to him. Even so, for some reason Alex was too cheap
to buy XM or Sirius so he usually spent his commute flipping
endlessly between the preset channels of his silver BMW.

At 5:49 a.m., one of these channels finished
playing
White Wedding
by Billy Idol, a song Alex always
enjoyed. Naturally, the disk jockeys began talking in that same
peppy tone that suggested hunger, poverty and disease had somehow
been cured overnight.

“Well Maria, get a load of this,” one of them
began, “there are reports that a small plane has crashed into the
World Trade Center in New York.”

“Sounds like someone needed a second cup of
coffee before starting their commute,” Maria replied cheerfully.
She continued, “Speaking of coffee and work, we are going to go to
work for you. That’s right, its morning commute collection time!
Just be the seventh caller right now and we will put you to work,
giving you $101 for each of the last seven songs we have played
that you can correctly name!”

“Whoooohoo, Maria! That sounds like the start
of a great day!” her co-host added lamely. Alex was about to change
the channel when, remarkably, they played another song. This time
it was
Every Rose Has It’s Thorn
by Poison. Alex had never
been a big Poison fan, but he figured this was his best bet and
left the tuner untouched. The radio version was less than three
minutes long and ended with the male co-host returning to the air.
“Well Maria, it looks like everyone in New York could use a cup of
coffee! Now we are hearing a second plane has crashed into the
other tower.”

Maria concurred, “There must be something in
the air today with those crazy New Yorkers,” she said, laughing.
“And I thought the traffic was bad on the 5/805 merge,” she added.
At this her co-host let out a peppier-than-usual howl. “Whooo-ha,
you’re right about that, Maria!”

“What the fuck is with these people?” Alex
asked himself in the car a bit louder than he intended. His
annoyance at this point was with their dorkyness rather than their
stupidity, as he also had not yet grasped the situation. However,
two planes crashing in New York sounded strange enough to him to
switch the radio to one of the AM news channels.

He listened in silence for the next sixty
seconds before again speaking aloud in the otherwise empty car,
this time in a much more solemn and controlled voice. “Jesus
Christ.”

It took Alex another fourteen minutes to get
to his parking space, where he remained in his car with the radio
on for another twelve minutes. During this time, there were reports
of another plane crashing into the Pentagon, light weapons fire
inside the Pentagon, explosions at the Capitol building in
Washington DC, explosions in Chicago, and reports of several
additional missing planes.

Alex scanned the skies above La Jolla. Seeing
nothing unusual, he opened the door and ran to his office,
something he never did, even when it was raining. When he arrived,
the usual buzz in the building was dead. Everyone stood completely
still, eyes glued to one of the many TV sets. Usually they would
have been tuned to Bloomberg TV or CNBC, but all eyes were now on
CNN. On the screens, two iconic towers stood, giants peering down
at a city of dreams. They emitted plumes of dark grey smoke into
the pale blue sky of an otherwise still world. “Jesus Christ,” Alex
muttered for the second of many times that day.

Alex walked with purpose to his office
(really more of a cubicle at that time), put down his briefcase and
went to find a Bloomberg news terminal. Surprisingly, as he was
leaving the cube, the phone rang. Alex wondered which of his
clients would be the one to call him first in such a situation.
When he looked at the caller ID, however, he realized it was not a
client at all. It was Taylor, a friend of his who was a bond trader
at Cantor Fitzgerald. “Holy shit,” Alex thought, realizing that the
Cantor offices were at the top of towers.

The trader, trapped above the flames, was
professional, but there was clearly fear and terror in his voice.
He was unable to reach anyone in New York and was checking to see
if Alex had any information on the emergency response to the
towers. Alex told him that he was unable to filter out any truth
from rumor and couldn’t offer any help. He said goodbye and thought
back to the fun times he and Taylor had in Manhattan and also
remembered that Taylor had once helped him reverse a bad trade
where Alex had accidentally entered an extra zero, saving Alex from
personally having to cover a meaningful loss. He had always
respected Taylor, professionally and personally, and would never
forget that phone call. In the future, he would refer to it to
remind himself not to be lazy, and to take pride in anything he put
his name on. But at the moment, he had the same zombie look as
everyone else in the office and wasn’t thinking about much that
made sense. He quickly walked to a Bloomberg terminal.

News updates were arriving every few seconds,
though it was tough to know what to believe. There were reports of
explosions at the White House, another plane crashed into the
ground in Indiana, and Russian intelligence, which apparently
tracked these things, counted eleven planes unaccounted for. Major
buildings throughout the US were being evacuated. A consensus began
to develop that Islamic fundamentalists were to blame.

At around 6:45 a.m., the news flow on the
Bloomberg terminal abruptly cut off. This was no doubt an order
from the government. Alex returned to watching CNN with everyone
else. The first tower fell fourteen minutes later.

Alex stayed at work until after six in the
evening that day, despite the fact that not one client called him.
He left work and drove home under the still-bright San Diego sky
wondering what would happen next. Only when he was home alone in
his kitchen, drinking a beer, again watching CNN, still largely in
shock, did he realize how mad he was. For most of that night he was
pretty sure he was going to quit his job and join the military,
which of course never really came close to happening.

Like many Americans that day, Alex lost a
sense of innocence but gained a greater feeling of love and pride
in his country, the greatest ever known in the brief history of our
small planet. A battle was lost, but a war that was really already
underway was a long way from decided. Alex knew with certainty that
eventually it would be won. Alex had never believed there was any
particular meaning to his life. Nevertheless, from that day on he
felt a patriotic duty to engage in all pursuits in life more
aggressively.

To be more present.

Chapter Nineteen

Viva Las Vegas

9:15 p.m.

“
Take me down to the Paradise City, where
the grass is green and the girls are pretty.”

–
Paradise City
, Guns N’ Roses

Thirty-eight miles from the state line, the
Mandalay Bay Hotel, for all practical purposes, marks the beginning
of the Las Vegas strip. The black BMW approached stealthily, now
only four miles from the Mandalay.
The Ruler’s Back
by Jay-Z
was playing on the iPod, and Gary turned the volume up a few
notches. Due to the light from the strip, the sky was visibly
transitioning from black to whitish-grey, like some kind of alien
sunrise. Alex checked the clock on the dashboard of the car and was
pleased to see it was still well before ten o’clock despite the
In-N-Out stop, Mike’s poo problems, and the little business with
the police.

Alex never ceased to be amazed by Vegas. His
relationship with the city was that of a man who falls in love with
a prostitute. Vegas had given him some of his best memories. It had
also beaten the shit out of him a few times. But no matter what, he
always maintained passion and respect for the city. It made him
feel alive. He knew Vegas was far from monogamous, but in his heart
he felt the city reciprocated his amorous feelings.

The tidal wave of new construction and the
success of the city fascinated him. When he first started coming to
Vegas during freshman year in college, the strip looked nothing
like it did now. There was no Luxor, Mandalay Bay, New York New
York, Treasure Island, Venetian, Monte Carlo, Bellagio, and on and
on. Probably more important, the Hard Rock was still under
construction and Palms had not even been conceptualized.

Also, back in those days, restaurants were
entirely focused on quantity over quality and there was essentially
nothing to do except gamble, drink by the pool, or go to strip
clubs. The only nightclub he could recall from the college days was
The Beach and it was off the strip. It was decent enough, but
really just as well could have been in some shitty Mexican beach
resort rather than Vegas. Now the restaurants were among the best
in the world and the clubs were like cathedrals. At least in his
mind, they were better than what Los Angeles, New York or Miami had
to offer.

To Alex, Vegas demonstrated proof that the
human spirit could accomplish nearly anything if given the proper
incentive. It was also proof that civilization was getting better
despite all the negativity still thriving in the world. If in most
of the world progress happened slowly so you couldn’t feel it, here
the change occurred with a vengeance you couldn’t avoid. It not
only touched you but grabbed you and threw you like a pair of dice.
Alex maintained nostalgia for the old classics like the The
Freemont, The Sands and The Riviera, but the new stuff was
undoubtedly better, whatever the old-timers would tell you. Whether
you loved it or hated it, he felt the city truly was a wonder of
the world. Alex did not dwell much on the underside of Vegas, with
all its worms and maggots, and pimps, junkies and other assorted
lowlifes, because he never had to face it.

For those who see the positive in Vegas, one
of the highlights is arriving, whether by car or plane. Each of the
passengers in Alex’s car felt increasingly awake as the strip grew
larger through the front windshield. Roger seemed to have a
physical as well as mental reaction, and he subconsciously began to
rub his hands together like an excited little kid told he is
getting a new toy.

Mike expressed admiration for the city in his
own way. First he ripped a loud fart and then said, “Just think
about how many hot chicks in that city right now want to get
fucked.”

Gary: “Maybe if you can get control of your
bodily functions for ten minutes you might have a chance with one
of them.”

Alex: “Basically, I am just pumped to be here
with you guys, regardless of what chicks are here or not.”

Mike: “So what, you are not going to try to
hook up?”

Alex: “I am just saying that isn’t the first
priority.”

Roger: “My first priority is winning some
cash-money.”

Alex: “Just try not to lose all your football
winnings in the first hour.”

Roger: “Don’t worry, I will be under
control.”

Gary: “Sure, that would be consistent.”

Mike: “You guys make me laugh. Of course it
will be great to drink and gamble, but if Vegas was a dudes-only
down, we wouldn’t even be here right now.”