Leaving Las Vegas (19 page)

“You know, I saw you last week,” she says, taking another exploratory step. “I saw you fall down on the sidewalk.”

“No kidding? Which time? Last week I fell down two times—two that I know about. Hang around with me and you’ll get to see it a lot,” he says.

Choosing not yet to address the pros and cons of falling down habitually, she says, “It was not far from where you’re staying, but on the other side of the street, and late at night, early in the week. I shouted to you, but I don’t think you heard me. You fell down and didn’t move, and I was afraid that you might attract the cops—you know, lying there looking like a corpse.” This last is meant to be humorous, but she instantly regrets it, realizing for the first time that he does, in some ways, look a little too sick.

“I didn’t think I was down that long. Didn’t I just get right up and walk away?”

“Well, I don’t know. I guess. You say you’re used to it, but seeing you fall like that had me worried.” Her pronunciation of
worried
is accompanied by a raised eyebrow and a look that cuts right to him. This hint of affection stymies the prattle, and fearing that she may have gone too far, she backs off. “I worry about everybody,” she says.

“I know that you do,” he says. The cab pulls to the curb in front of her apartment building. They are at her home.

With Sera in the shower and Ben a first time visitor, the
apartment itself becomes a passive participant in their evening. Conspicuous in its silence, much like a sequestered house cat, it watches Ben with a dubious eye. He sits patiently waiting at the kitchen table where Sera left him. Then rising with polite curiosity, he shuffles around the room, one hand holding a glass and the other pausing here and there to pick up and inspect various objects, first in the kitchen, and then boldly into her living room.

Her possessions are indeed few and far between, and what there is has been arranged with a great sense of order. He sees his past self in her neatness, and this revelation comforts him. There is in the kitchen a collection of fifteen or twenty souvenir toothpick holders. Most bearing enameled legends of this city:
I was PICKED KLEEN in LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
, they are each filled with an appropriate quantity of toothpicks, their respective capacities observed to the pick. Gifts to herself, intentionally tacky, he guesses, the product of a slow night on the Strip. His hands pass over them in reverence, for they are no doubt important to her. Taped to the refrigerator is a greeting card photograph of a kitten and a ball of yarn. Upon flipping it open to read the signature inside, he finds the card blank and dismisses its presence here on the fridge as part of a feminine affinity for this type of image. The furniture, neither expensive nor creative, is tasteful at best. The girl clearly has no aspirations in the field of interior design. In fact, he notices, this apartment sports a general paucity of art in any conventional form. Like a Shaker home, this place platonically denies all but function, and for that reason aspires to a higher level of art: a deliberate art of basic reality. The television is black and white and looks to be rarely used. There is a simple radio on a bookshelf, which also contains a respectable collection of English and American literature, all in paperback. The carpet is gray indoor/outdoor, the sofa linen; there are no shags or velours, no pinks or lime-greens. The apartment reflects no
preoccupation with high-end consumer electronics, no fascination with media, no periodicals, no posters, no paintings. Yet it has none of the make-do atmosphere of poverty. Nor does it show evidence of the haphazardry, the random guesses at quality, so often found in the dwellings of the unimaginative. Ben spins on his heel, watches the room blur, and stops too quickly at the sound of the shower being turned off, sloshing part of his drink on to the floor. This place offers no definitions of its occupant. This, he decides, is the home of an angel.

“You okay out there?” Sera calls from the bathroom.

“Of course. Why, shouldn’t I be? Take your time, I’m fine.” He goes back into the kitchen and pours himself another drink.

Her muffled voice continues, “I won’t be long. Make yourself another drink.”

He sits waiting, drinking at the table. A few minutes later, upon entering the room, Sera finds him staring at the floor, motionless.

“You okay?” she says.

He seems not to hear and then responds, smiling at the repetition, “Of course. You look beautiful.”

“Thank you.” But a concerned look visits her face, and she finds herself even more aware of just how not-okay he is. “It must be late,” she says. “What time have you got.”

“Sorry. My watch went the way of my car. I’m not only too drunk to drive anymore, but I’m also too drunk to participate in the world of timekeeping—even as an observer.” He holds up his empty wrist, his drink with the other hand. “Two hairs past a freckle. See, in LA I kept running out of liquor after it was too late to go out and buy some. For some reason the clear-cut solution was to move someplace where it is never too late. And, of course, now that I’m here I seem to have solved my stocking problem—you saw my room. But that sort of backward up-sweeping comes
as no surprise. Anyway, I was getting tired of being looked at funny when I would walk into a bar at six a.m.. Even the bartenders in my neighborhood started preaching to me. Here people drink at all hours. No one cares. There may be legitimate reasons, vacations and whatnot, but it just doesn’t matter because they’re not from here. They’re not overtly fucking up.” He pauses, afraid that too much is being said too soon. “I’m rambling. I really like you. You make me want to talk. I don’t know what time it is.”

“I like hearing you talk,” she says, and means it. “If you feel up to a short walk we can go to a place just up on the corner. All the food in Las Vegas is terrible anyhow, and this way we won’t have to wait for a cab. How does that sound to you?”

“Drinks?” asks Ben, but he really doesn’t care. He can carry his own if necessary. They go off on their way down the street, walking. That sounded just fine to him.

Talking effortlessly at the restaurant, they continue to pursue the tangential conversations that go with new acquaintance. This acquaintance, however, is maturing faster than most. Both of them feel an unspoken urgency to their friendship. Beyond the more obvious time factor that Ben feels, this impatience is due to an even more immediate need that they share. A vacuum, long unaddressed in Sera and always fundamental in Ben, is being looked at and considered. They are recognizing an opportunity to prevent an emotional tragedy. They are struggling with the bewilderment of finding that a long-held assumption may not be so. They are, at once, seeing for the first time decisions that they may have made and unexpected options that they may now have.

To Ben these feelings are apart from what he is doing to himself. The short term that he has assigned to his own life is having its effect on his mentality beyond his day to day conduct change. He believes that dying, dying soon, is an unalterable fact
of his life, and as it becomes more deeply rooted in his reality, he thinks of it no more than anyone else thinks of their own natural death; he is aware of it, but not obsessed with it. Subtly, though, his actions have taken on added significance to him. The governors have all been removed and he now looks for the direct and deliberate, embracing the aggressive and shunning the abusive. With the specter of the finite looming very near, Ben can almost envisage this time as a microcosm of his whole life, a narrow but tall area, to be played very intensely. So a girl is a girlfriend, and a girlfriend is everything. It is the psychology of a fourteen year old, who is also disinterested in the not-so-foreseeable future. Ben adores Sera, would like her to be a part of his life. But changing his life, extending it, is no longer an option that would occur to him. She should accept that context in the same way that he has. Though it may be wishful, he sees in her the capacity to do this; it is what he considers to be her charm.

“So why are you a drunk?” asks Sera. She had been watching him pick over the small, undressed salad he ordered in lieu of dinner. He finally pushed it away and called for another drink.

“Is that what you want to ask me?” he says, measuring.

“Yes.” She knows that this is more than a question and is willing to stand her ground.

“Well,” he says, “then I guess this is our first date or our last. Until now, I wasn’t sure it was either.”

“Very clever. Fine. First. It’s the first.” She surrenders this. “I’m concerned. Why are you killing yourself?”

“Interesting choice of words,” he says. Then, after a pause, he says almost to himself and as if out of frustration, “I don’t remember. I just know that I want to.”

“Want to what? Kill yourself? Are you saying that you’re drinking as a way to kill yourself?” She leans over the table, close to him, listening intently.

“Or killing myself as a way to drink,” he says and laughs playfully. He has decided not to deal with this apparently inevitable discussion yet. Maybe he’ll die in the rest room and so avoid it. But in fact he is not sure just how silly his answer is. He is not at all sure about any of the how or why questions anymore. He no longer cares to address them.

Annoyed, she lets it go. But she too can see that this is unfinished business, though in a way it seems less than imperative, almost irrelevant, certainly not worth risking things right now. In all fairness she considers that she, herself, would not care tonight to expound the happy-go-lucky world of prostitution, and she is again impressed by his failure to bring that up. Sera tries not to look too deeply at things anymore, for fear that they may not hold up to scrutiny. Everything should roll along, and she should be able to just play her part. She likes being here, and it feels good to like something. So she can see no reason to fuck it all up by challenging this man, Ben, over his life plan.

Her own life plan these days is limited to just about that. Plan: stay alive. If she has to sell her soul to make that work, then fine. At least her blood doesn’t flow as freely as it once did, and he sleeps somewhere else. Now some guy wants to come up her ass—okay. Maybe Al wants to start sticking her with the knife again—no problem. She’s older now, more mature. Everything’s different than before, when she was a kid and used to fret over such things. She can turn off now, let it happen and still wake up in the morning. And if the cut runs too deep and she doesn’t wake up, well at least it won’t be by her own hand; she will have played out her part. After all, there’s really only one not-so-fine line. Everyone is so proud of their own insignificant little boundaries. Scrupulously they vow,
I would never do that!
And perhaps they wouldn’t. More likely, they’ll never have to. Anyway, that’s them,
that’s fine. Not all men want to do that to her. Some men like her. A lot of guys appreciate her. She helps them out. It feels good to help people. It’s a bonus to being alive. Icing on the cake. Everything’s working out just fine.

“Ben,” she says, watching him suck out of his glass, watching gin dribble down his puffy face. “Why don’t you stay at my apartment tonight? I mean…,” she falters, “Look, you’re so drunk—or you will be soon, at this rate—you could sleep on my couch. I trust you. I like you. Don’t make a big deal, but I hate to think of you at that cheesy motel. You seem so alone… I mean… Let’s face it: What the fuck are you doing in Las Vegas?” And with this blurted out, she sits back to enjoy her resolve. Despite the amused look on his face, she is secure in her deployment of that ultimate authority that all women ought to have over all men. All real men.

“That’s astonishing, Sera. Or maybe it isn’t.” He is profoundly moved by her offer, as he always is by any overt show of compassion. His initial surprise is mitigated as he realizes that this type of behavior is very much a part of her, that she is indeed good. “Don’t worry. I told you, I’m going to move to a hotel soon—tomorrow, if it will make you feel better. Thank you, but I’m fine. I’ll just pass out. Let’s talk about tomorrow: wanna do something?” He likes the youthful sound of this simple question crossing his lips, but it is followed by a cough, and a gasp for breath.

“Sure. Let’s do something tonight first. We have to take a cab to the Sahara so I can drop off something personal. Then please stay at my place. Do it for me. We can talk till late and sleep till late. As you know, I am my own boss.”

At this he starts laughing. Sera, though startled by the unintentional irony of her remark, laughs to join him. In the
mirth he assents. But his hesitation was genuine, for he is in love with her, and he must be careful—oh, so careful.

Not too early, not too late, the hour is about right for her to be here. She warned Ben, now waiting down at the main bar, that she might be a few minutes. Fortunately he is quite willing to be left at a bar and didn’t act at all concerned. Nor was he curious about her errand, though this, she supposes, is out of polite regard for her earlier use of the word
personal.
She knocks on the door with surprising insistence, considering whose door it is, and it seems to buckle under her fist.