Leaving Las Vegas (10 page)

Last year he got stopped on the 405, the San Diego Freeway. It was four a.m. and the road was almost empty, so he was going ninety-five down the hill. That type of overt violation was unusual
for him, but he had snorted a lot of cocaine that night—even more unusual. He didn’t like drugs and was anxious to get home to his nth drink to help cut the coke; he really didn’t like drugs. He happened to look out the open window to his left, only to find a CHP motorcycle cop pacing him—no lights, just pacing him. The cop waved and he waved and smiled. The cop indicated with his hand that Ben should pull over, so he did. Ben got out of the car and stood by the driver’s door waiting for the cuffs.

“Going pretty fast,” said the helmet clad cop.

“Yeah, I guess so. I’m pretty late getting home. Is there any lipstick on my face?” said Ben, stretching out his neck for inspection, and surprised that he had said this before thinking it over.

“Where’s home?” asked the cop.

“Venice,” said Ben. Without being asked he extracted his license from his wallet and handed it to the cop, who ignored it.

“Slow down,” said the cop as he mounted his motorcycle. “Go home. It’s okay.”

So Ben got in his car and pulled away. Driving home carefully, he turned the thing over again and again in his mind. He didn’t feel the slightest bit cocky or smart, just intrigued. He never understood that little piece of good fortune.

Apart from speeding on the 405, the only other really silly thing that he did while driving drunk was to break his own car window. He had just finished a bottle of beer and dropped it on the car floor. This was a habit he had, preferring to dump his empties in a trash can rather than litter the streets with them. This little bit of environmental consideration worked fine, but on a few occasions the likelihood of an official presence—say, a toll booth, or an impending U-turn—compelled him to purge the vehicle of what might become evidence, that is, empty beer bottles. This happened in Laurel Canyon one night. Not going especially fast, he
nevertheless thought he saw a cop pull out of a speed trap behind him. Just then the thickly foliaged road went around a sharp bend, so to be on the safe side, he picked the empty beer bottle up off of the floor and chucked it out what he thought was the open passenger window. Next came a tremendous
pop,
as safety glass showered the car’s interior. The cop turned out to be a false alarm and Ben couldn’t stop laughing about the window, which he purposefully never had replaced. The next day he even found the bottle, unbroken on the back seat.

As he crosses into Beverly Hills he is extra cautious, wary of that city’s super-saturated police coverage. He parks on Crescent Drive, in a semi-residential section, far enough from the bars to not be seen walking directly from car to bar and back to car, one of many extra precautions that must be taken when drinking hard in Beverly Hills.

The lights are already up at what was to be his first stop, and though they know him well there and would serve him after last call, he passes by. He needs to use his plastic whenever possible now and save his cash for the days ahead. Beverly Hills is much better suited to alcoholism on credit than Venice is. But to go into a place that does the courtesy of serving you after last call, only to have you pay with a credit card, well that’s just bad etiquette. There are other options, it’s only midnight.

Miles from, but heading towards the water, he strolls down Dayton Way. The
way
streets run perpendicular to the
drive
streets, but that’s about where the right angles end. If Wilshire is considered as the
x
-axis, then there aren’t too many verticals and horizontals to be found in Beverly Hills. If Santa Monica is
x,
then you don’t know your north from your south. The streets are nice, but not that nice. This city has an exaggerated reputation. There’s plenty of money here, but that’s true of a lot of places. The daytime population couldn’t be anymore average, at least not in
southern California, and at night the restaurants are filled with tourists and valley people, rechecking their check totals and calculating tips. Beverly Hills is just a nice part of LA, without the meaning, even though it isn’t really part of Los Angeles at all.

He slips into a place that stays open a little later. The bar is half full, and most of the patrons look as though they’ve been there awhile. He likes bars at this hour. People who are still drinking at midnight tend to like drinking, enough, if not as much as he. It’s the next best thing to a bar at six a.m.. That’s the best, no pretense. People drinking at six a.m. are people drinking all the time. It’s out on the table:
Good morning… Mornin’… Good morning… Hi… What can I get you?… How are you this morning?… Scotch and milk… Good Morning… I’ll have a whiskey and water, please… Say, have you ever tried seven and seven?… Oh please! I can’t take all that sugar first thing in the morning… Good morning.
Ben orders and receives a double shot of one hundred and one proof Wild Turkey and a bottle of German beer. He sits and drinks, orders more and hands over his American Express card as collateral. He sees a girl sitting alone at the bar. Actually, he was aware of her the moment he walked in. Now he looks at her. She smiles and looks back at her drink. He walks over to her.

“Good Evening,” he says.

She pulls away and wrinkles her nose. “Been drinking all day?” she says.

“But of course. I’m Benjamin—Ben,” he says. He hates that. For the life of him he can’t understand how everyone can smell him a mile away. It’s very frustrating. No matter how much he bathes or gargles or perfumes, he still smells like booze. It must be such an integral part of him now that it has become his natural odor. That would explain why he can never smell it, neither on himself nor on anybody else, not even other drunks.

“I’m Teri,” she says. Ben extends his hand, and pretending not to notice it, she cups her glass with both hands and drains it through the straw. She lets it gurgle for an extra beat to make sure that he gets the point.

“I’ll get you another one,” he says, downing his own double bourbon, “and me too. Mind if I join you?”

She forces a smile, but she also wears the expression of a dog getting a bath with a cold hose. Seeing that he is very drunk, she is disappointed. When he walked into the bar she had imagined a different situation.

“Why don’t we have our drinks and go to my apartment at the beach. We can watch a movie and I’ll mix you up a gooey blender drink,” he says. Inside he winces. Part of him realizes how stupid this is. It’s his little defense mechanism that kicks in and trashes his credibility whenever someone is threatening to show an interest in him. It dawns on him that he has crossed over the line that runs between maintaining alcoholic and sloppy, stupid, obnoxious drunk. But at least he is cognizant of it this time; he’ll try to ease off.

“Oh, thank you, but I don’t think so. I’ll just finish my drink and go. I have to get up pretty early tomorrow,” she says.

They get their drinks and both take long swallows. By now Ben is obscured from himself. He can no longer monitor his actions. He can’t edit himself. Later he will know, but right now he doesn’t, that this is not him.

“I really wish that you’d come home with me,” he says, slurring and breaking his words. “Yourso cute, and I’m really good in bed… believe me… yousmell good too.” He stops and frowns. “No, okay,” he mutters into his glass. He swivels on his stool and his arms find the bar for support.

She starts to speak and then doesn’t. Looking at him, she gets a look of great sadness in her eyes, sadness so intense that it goes
beyond what her face has made you believe she could feel. Ben does not see it, but it is not wasted. It serves more purpose to her than it possibly could to him right now; she did not consciously author it, and she is surprised.

“Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much,” she says. “I have to go. Thanks for the drink.” She gets up and walks quickly to the door.

Her understatement seems to give him a spark. “Maybe I shouldn’t breathe so much, Teri!” he calls after her. “Ha! ha!” But she is gone. The bartender shakes his head and puts down the glass that he is washing.

“Time to go, bud,” he says. “We’re closing up.”

He puts Ben’s credit card on the bar and waits for the signature. Ben fills out the tip and total and signs the slip, then removes his receipt and adds it to the growing collection in his wallet. He must remember to throw those things out.

The always depressing experience of leaving a bar creates a sense of loss in him that gives his mind a little jolt. He should immediately proceed with the evening; it is getting late. His watch is accelerating as it nears two, and why not? he thinks. It always takes a long rest from two to six. There is time for only one stop at a bar near his home, but first he will stock up at the store. He has just enough cash left. The trip to the ATM, cleaning up the broken glass at home, that sort of stuff can wait for the wee hours, when he has nothing better to do.

Walking to his car he feels odd. Things could start crumbling fast now. He stands on the ledge, about to lose control of his handle on the world: alcohol. He’s ready for this, ready to sit back and watch. Time is now the biggest irritation in his life. Las Vegas looms in the back of his head. Free from closing hours, lots of liquor always everywhere, it is inevitable that he will end up there. All he has to do is remember not to gamble drunk, which means not to gamble at all, and he can make his money last long enough
to comfortably wrap things up and have fun doing it. Part of him is afraid to go, aware that this crystal-clear thinking is bound to elude him in Never Enough City. In any case he must go to the bank soon, during real hours, and withdraw most of his cash, leaving a token amount that he can pull out anytime from an ATM in Vegas, or wherever. He should have all his cash at hand; who knows what could happen? The bottom line is, now more than ever, always have access to a drink. Always have access to a drink.

At the store he can’t bring himself to buy a half-gallon of cheap generic vodka. Remembering that there is still some at home, he settles for a fifth of Polish Vodka instead. Why fuck up at this late date? Purity of execution will only add to the artistic aspects of the whole wretched mess. So with the finality of this resolution keeping his chin up, he waits impatiently in the twelve items or less line. It’s okay, he thinks, I have less than twelve items.

To him a daily benchmark is his final seat at the last bar of the night. It is his regular stop near his home. He doesn’t like the place much and wouldn’t normally go there, but the location is too good, too convenient. Suited well to the public safety, this place oozes its smoke laden atmosphere of tough fuck biker talk and dirty women out onto a sidewalk that travels less than two blocks to Ben’s front door. This allows him to drink lethal quantities with no worry of dropping off at the wheel, for there have been occasions when even he knew that he couldn’t possibly operate a motor vehicle with any degree of intelligence, much less safety. So if he should wake in the morning and find himself with neither his automobile nor the recollection of where it might be, he has only to stumble down the street and around a corner, and there it will stand, secure where he must have left it the previous evening, more or less in a parking space.

He sits at the filthy bar, amidst the leather vested fat guys, the
worn and weary pool tables, the smelly sluts who are much harder and drunker than he’ll ever be, the puke-piss-spit-blood encrusted carpeting, the brain-damaged human carcasses who have held their heads below their shoulders for longer than he’s been alive, the slimy sidewalk penny-loafers who wanna be his pal, and the rest of the supporting cast with heads vacuous and pant seats full. He sits with his glasses and bottles in front of him. He sits as the last remnants of today and all that came before it slip into the void of blackout. He sits at the filthy bar and silently witnesses the change of watch from his will to his independently operating motor skills. His heart provides the musical accompaniment as the drinks are finished and he walks his crooked line home, as he clutches his bag of vodka and makes the distance to his door, as he puts his parcel on the floor carefully—even his body knows how important it is—and stumbles to his bed, where he turns off. His heart is beating him to sleep; there is no more required of him for now.

It is a different day, and Ben sits in a different bar. It is early afternoon and he has successfully made the trip into Beverly Hills for lunch: a bullshot and six raw oysters, continuous vodka for dessert. Now properly fortified, he is ready for a second visit to his bank, also in Beverly Hills.

He tried earlier, and it didn’t go so well. He giggles over his kamikaze, under his breath, “My visit to the bank didn’t go so well this morning.” He had felt okay after his morning drinks and decided to take advantage of his consciousness and withdraw the rest of his cash from the bank. This sort of big business deal is not his favorite thing to do these days, and the bank is ripe for construction as enemy turf by his often paranoid, alcohol-en
riched imagination. In an attempt to get the nastiness over with—actually just the simple process of cashing a check since he did not intend to close the account—he decided to stop at the bank before starting his afternoon drinking in Beverly Hills. He had filled out and signed the check beforehand, four thousand and six hundred dollars—4.6K, his life expectancy—but forgotten that he would be asked to sign the back of the check in the teller’s presence. Upon hearing the words
Would you sign the back for me please, sir,
the small tremor in his wrist immediately doubled its seismic output. Just being partially sober in a bank was already enough to produce serious sweating, but to have to sign a check under the gaze of a teller was unthinkable.