Leaving Las Vegas (24 page)

Wrapping up her goodbye kiss, she says, “See you later,” and opens the door.

“Maybe I should follow you and ask one of your tricks what it’s like to sleep with you,” he says in good humor.

“They wouldn’t know. Maybe you should just ask me sometime. I’d be happy to show you.” She shoots him a lusty little glance, and, in a sequin’s flash, is gone.

“Fuck!” he says aloud to himself, “there sure is a lot of biology in that girl.” He finds this line so amusing that he laughs aloud, alone in the kitchen, until a fit of coughing takes over, and he vomits in the sink.

But later, after he has cleaned up, dressed, and drunk to replace the liquor that he lost to the plumbing, he starts laughing again. He continues to laugh, under the dark sky, as he staggers down the street, falls, gets up and staggers on.

At this late date The Grand Canyon really doesn’t hold their interest, barely even qualifies as a part of the scenery, has even less relevance than an antique, having not been wrought by intelligent hands. Lake Mead, however, sloshing around in the bottom of that big hole, is a human doodle in the dust, a by-product of boredom and dissatisfaction. Ben and Sera run, splashing into the water, and though the bottom—once desert and still refusing to accept
its new role—is rocky, the cool water is as right as anything could be, righter than water should be: this is where you live, because this is what you built.

Ninety meters behind them, the red rental car bakes in the sun. Thirty miles beyond that lies Las Vegas, where fourteen hours ago, Sera wrapped up the last trick of her first night’s work since Ben moved in. She had come home tired, but both she and Ben were in good spirits, as if a slight readjustment had finally been made to a machine that everyone thought was running just fine, causing in it a pleasant but unexpected improvement. A chunk of ground was regained, a die was cast; nothing almost didn’t happen, and then didn’t happen anyway. Sera had a good night on her own terms and felt like blowing some money. Ben readily agreed.

“Let’s go out of town,” he said. “We’ll rent a car and drive to the dam, or wherever. Not far. Be back before you know it. A cheap tourist motel with a pool. One night out of town. What do you say?” Inexplicably overly enthused, he beamed at her nod and bounced to the kitchen for a beer.

Now he swims up to her, secretly out of breath, in search of a more accommodating depth, and says, “So we’ll stay in Boulder City tonight?”

“There’s no gambling there, no casinos,” she says. “I don’t think that they stay awake all night and drink there.”

“I know. We could go to a movie, then go to a bar, one that actually closes, and not listen to slot machines.”

“This doesn’t sound like you,” she says, laughing. “Okay, let’s go. I want to get there and get a room before it’s too late to swim. I feel like swimming in a real pool.”

“This is a real pool,” he says, splashing her.

In Boulder City they find a nice little motel and pool. Mostly
occupied by the not-quite-so-transient, the place offers kitchenettes and weekly rates, neither of which are elected by Sera and Ben. They end up in a converted storeroom behind the office, choosing it not so much for the reduced rate as for the unique layout of the floor and walls. It is the sort of space that can be found in oddly designed buildings, a little leftover part of the world that ends up enclosed between the more intentional designs that are built around it. Sera quickly puts on her bathing suit and runs out to the pool to catch the late afternoon sun. Ben, still wearing the new drugstore shorts that he wore in Lake Mead, unpacks the liquor that was purchased at the same store. Carefully he sets up his bar on the nightstand: two fifths of bourbon, one each vodka and tequila. He fills the ice bucket:
For Our Guests,
pours a Lake Mead souvenir glass full of tequila and orange juice for Sera, and, carrying a bottle of Wild Turkey for himself, goes out to join her.

“I’ve missed the best sun,” she says, pouting. “Why did you have to pawn your watch?”

“Because I didn’t know that I would be taking you swimming in Boulder City, of course. Sera, you must be joking. You’re telling me that you need a watch to tell you the position of the sun? We’ve been driving in the desert all day. You only had to look up to see how much sun was left.” He hands her the drink and drops into a basket chair next to her, all more quickly than he had planned, having, at the last moment, lost his balance.

“That doesn’t do me any good. I need to know what time it is so I can tell when the best sun is out.”

“No, actually, you need to know where the sun is in order to know what time it is.”

She frowns at the cement, then, seeing what he is getting at, laughs and says, “Wake up, drunk man! If the sun burned out
tomorrow, and we could somehow stay warm, the clocks wouldn’t stop. Check-out time would still be 11:00 a.m..”

“Don’t fuck with me,” he says, and pours some bourbon into his mouth. He enjoys this familiar banter that they have been slipping into lately, enjoys topics that exist outside of themselves.

“Let me taste that,” she says, indicating with her outstretched arm the bottle of Wild Turkey.

He hands it to her and watches in admiration as she easily swallows a mouthful. She returns the bottle to him and walks to the weather-beaten diving board. Unaccustomed to being mounted by a full grown woman, the board creaks and pops in protest as she bounces to the end and feels for the reluctant spring. She is determined to follow through with or without the springboard’s help, and snapping her hiked up suit out from between her legs, as women will, she plunges into the water with the unstudied grace of the natural athlete she is. When she emerges, Ben toasts her by holding high, then drinking deeply from the bourbon bottle. She walks back to him and, dripping cold water on his chest, bends to kiss him.

On her breath he can taste the bourbon that she drank. It tastes different, yet complements well the swallow that he, himself, has just taken. Planning to demonstrate his own diving skills, he stands, and immediately slips on the wet cement. Without the capacity for quick recovery, he has pretty much doomed any slip that he might experience to becoming a fall, and so it is with this one. It is a magnificent fall, partially into the chair, which, none-to-steady to begin with, crumbles irreparably under him, and partially onto a small table containing Sera’s glass. The glass as well as the bottle he was holding shatter dramatically, sending little bourbon and tequila-dipped missiles in all directions, mostly into the pool. Blood, thinned by the water
already on the cement, is spreading in all directions from under him. Seeing this, Sera gasps, grabs her towel, and kneels to him. He sits up, pieces of glass sticking to his chest and arm, and smiles doubtfully at her.

“I guess I better go in and nap,” he says. But, really, he is thinking about the replacement bottle of bourbon that sits next to the ice bucket on the night stand.

“You’re cut,” she says, by now having learned to bypass worry and go directly to cleanup.

“I’ll take care of it. Perhaps you could deal with this,” he says, indicating the mess. He walks steadily to the room, proud of his growing collection of cuts, bruises, and scars.

Carrying a broom and dustpan, the desk clerk approaches Sera. “Everybody okay?” he asks cheerfully.

“Yes, fine,” she says. “Don’t worry, we’ll pay for the chair, and I’ll clean all this up, the pool too.” She can’t help but notice his happy demeanor and the matter-of-fact way that, ignoring her offer, he bends to the work. “You seem prepared for accidents.”

He looks up at her, still smiling. “Yeah, we get a lot of fuckups around here. Now, you two keep your liquor and your loud talk in your room, and after you check out tomorrow morning I don’t ever want to see you here again. Let’s just leave it at that. I don’t need you paying for the chair, or cutting your pretty hands on this glass. See ya’ in the morning.” Nodding firmly, he returns to the mess, indicating that the conversation is over.

“They’re not real happy with us,” Sera says, entering the room. “We’re banished to our room.” She pours herself a drink and sits next to him on the bed. “Are you okay? Any major cuts?”

He swallows from a plastic cup. There are a dozen or so tiny pieces of tissue stuck to his chest with clotting blood. “I must be indestructible. I’m surprised this stuff still clots after all the
thinning. Anyway, I’m not taking any chances with my last bottle. I’m keeping it at least ten feet away from me and drinking out of these.” He holds up the plastic cup. “We’ll have to stop for more Turkey when we go out. I want to save the vodka for breakfast.” After taking another sip, he relaxes back on the pillow and looks her over.

She is still in her bathing suit, and he is struck with how very desirable she is, how comely her body is. He’s been telling himself over and over that they will make love soon; certainly she’s been hinting at it, and he need only make an advance. But he knows better. He knows that he can barely muster the energy to roll over in bed anymore. His mastery of motor functions has all but disappeared. These days, it takes a minimum of one fifth of vodka just to brace his nerves for the trauma of standing upright out of bed, and half the time, when he’s finally had enough to stand comfortably, he can no longer stand at all. He admires the resolution that she must have made to herself, how she fails to fuck with him about not fucking, indeed, how she fails to fuck with him about anything. Even as the test gets harder, and as she must be going places that she never thought she’d go, she still remains true. The implied terms have not escaped her, he thinks, the golden rule that even he no longer has the power to veto: there is nothing that will stop me from drinking.

But this insinuation of timidity cheapens her, cheapens the sublime act of selfish selflessness that she is prolonging; the basic loneliness of her humanity, and the knowing and accepting the conditions of that which has been shown to assuage it. Sera’s not living up to any agreement, she is simply living. Ben gave this back to her, and therein lies the agreement.

She is glad to see that he has fallen asleep, for she felt herself on the verge of asking after his health, and it is a topic about which
she would rather not be too well informed; as it is she can see far too much. When he awakens they will have a fun night together. He is consistent in his ability to deliver that much. She refills her cup and turns on the television. Lying next to him, she feels herself grow slightly intoxicated, and giggles quietly at a therefore entertaining sitcom.

A slight vibration in the earth, real or imagined, pulls the thread of Ben’s dream to Los Angeles, causing him to awaken with a start from his first long nap since they returned from Boulder City two days earlier. The nap, though, has been too long, and as he sits up in the bed, he realizes that he must act quickly if he is to prevent the imminent withdrawals from seizing control of his body. Already his hand shakes violently as he staggers to the kitchen for some vodka. Sera is standing over the stove.

“Hi,” she says, and kisses his sweaty cheek. Sensing his condition, she turns back to her cooking. This is a performance that she finds too disquieting to watch. “You probably don’t want to hear about it right now, but I bought some plain rice. I thought it might be something that you could eat. So if you get hungry later just let me know and I’ll whip some up.” She turns smiling, hand on her hip, in mock parody of her housewife role.

“Okay,” he mutters. “I’m gonna get in the shower.” And he staggers back out of the room, a fifth of vodka in each hand.

It is a rare, cloudy afternoon in Las Vegas, and the diffused sunlight is muddied even further by the translucence of the tiny bathroom window. The heavy sweat on his palms makes it difficult for him to keep a firm grip on the neck of the vodka bottle, but with two hands he is able to drink, then set it down without
incident. Hunched over the sink with his hands now grasping the cold porcelain, he immediately vomits, as he knew he would, and tries again. Not until he opens the second bottle is he able to keep any of it in his stomach. Five minutes later, standing upright a little more firmly, he manages a quick shower, punctuated by carefully timed drinks. Thirty minutes after entering the bathroom, he emerges, carrying the two empties, feeling well enough to grin, and as ready as he can be for his first drink of the day.