One More Thing (22 page)

Cheated on Sarah
.

Four texts came in from Willie in rapid succession:

W

H

A

fucking T?

Yeah. I know
, I wrote back.
Can’t believe it. So wasted
.

What happened!?!?!?

Made out with some slut in the bar downstairs
, I wrote. “Slut” didn’t sound like me, I realized as I read it back. It was a word I used when I was trying to sound like someone else.

Why?? Explain?!
he wrote back.

As I held up the phone to show the others, it started ringing in my hand.

“Don’t pick up,” said Josh. “He’ll hear that we aren’t really partying.”

I sent it to voicemail and texted him:

Reception sucks
.

He texted back:

Emailing you—too long to text—hold on …

Five minutes later I got an email with no subject:

I showed it to the room. Everyone read it.

“He could have texted that,” said Dave.

An hour later Willie texted the group:

Flight’s canceled. SUCKS!!! They put me on the first flight tomorrow & I leave first thing in the morning. Arriving tomorrow noon. Have fun without me. HANG IN THERE GUYS!!!

The next morning we woke up early, arranged the room again, and then got another text from Willie: more delays, in combination with some mileage game he was playing, meant that he was now going to arrive on the same flight as he had originally planned, which would get him in at 8:10 p.m.
Still worth it!!!
he wrote to the group.
Trust me, one night is going to be PLENTY!!!!
Then he sent a separate text to me:
Hanging in there?
I answered that I was.

Now we had to figure out how to spend a whole day in Las Vegas. I texted Sarah—the real Sarah, the best thing in my life, an honorary member of this friend group, close to all of us, a person on whom I had not cheated and never would. Sarah was finishing up her senior year and would then most likely be moving to New York to live with me. She was objectively, by all accounts, in every relevant way, cooler than I was, and would know things like this.

Hmmm … Ali Fisher says her sister went to a place for her bachelorette party called Marquee that was actually kind of amazing in the daytime. Also just fun to hang out in the casinos? How is it? How’s the Willie stuff?
I started to write back when she started to write more.
Wait—is there something called the Beach Club in your hotel?
I said yes.
Ali Bell’s boyfriend Lorenzo says he can get you guys in today and that it’s AMAZING
.

I ran it by the group. It turned out that all of us had been secretly intrigued by the excessively but effectively seductive signage for the Beach Club but had assumed it was the kind
of place that wouldn’t let guys like us in, at least not without a hassle or long wait or being shoved in some miserable general population holding area for an interminable length of time first.

“Sure, if we’re really on the list,” said Dave.

We really were. And the Beach Club was, as Sarah’s friend Ali had promised, amazing. The DJ was great—one of those DJs that surprises you that there have been so many hit songs in your lifetime. There was a lot of bright skin in bright colors, the sun was intense and even, the mixed drinks were the perfect mixture of whatever ingredients had been mixed. I had the actual, literal thought that I was lucky to be alive. I even caught myself wondering whether we’d be on good enough terms with Willie the next day that we could come back here: if we all ordered non-alcoholic drinks, it might still be fun, maybe? The alcohol, it seemed to me, was actually the least important aspect of this experience, maybe? But then again, maybe that was just the alcohol talking?

How are you holding up?

Willie had texted me while I had zoned out. It took me a second to remember what he was referring to.

Okay
, I responded.
Thanks so much for caring. I’ll be okay
.

Have you decided what to do? How you feel? What you want?

No, trying not to think for now. Just zoning out. It’ll be okay
.

It will. See you guys in a few hours!!

At around ten past four, it occurred to all of us independently that the afternoon had peaked. “I might want to actually take a nap,” said Josh, and we all quickly and enthusiastically agreed. We headed back to the rooms to rest up and made plans to meet back at Party Central at eight and run through the plan once before Willie arrived.

I wasn’t used to drinking in the afternoons, and the drinks, probably like all great mixed drinks, turned out to have been much stronger than they felt at the time. I didn’t fall asleep until 7:15, and when my phone finally went off at 7:45, I had an unbearable, excruciating headache.

I splashed water on my face and arrived at the room a couple of minutes past eight. I found everyone else in the same state or worse—thudding headaches, eyelids sticking and stinging from leaving their contact lenses in, all from that sun and those drinks that were chased by those awful, worst-idea naps.

“Is there any Advil? Tylenol?”

There wasn’t. They had already looked.

Josh turned to me. “Hey. You gotta lead this. I can’t do it.”

I was in no state to lead this thing.

“You have to lead this,” he repeated. “You have to lead this.”

I had always heard about the “hair of the dog” cure but had never tried it—officially because it sounded irresponsible, but really because it sounded disgusting. Whenever I was hungover, I thought I never wanted to drink again, let alone right then. But now, with Willie’s life potentially at stake, I pulled a beer from the minibar and cracked it open with the hard plastic opener we all had on our key chains.

“What are you doing?”

“Hair of the dog.”

“You want Willie to smell alcohol on your breath while—”

“No, I’m going to down it fast, then have some gum.”

“You have gum?” said Dave. “Who has gum? I asked if anyone had gum. Who has gum?”

“I’ll brush my teeth then.”

I swigged the beer and immediately coughed it all up onto the rug, exactly like a baby would if you gave a baby a beer.

“The fuck! Now the place smells like alcohol!”

“We were pretending we partied last night. Remember?!”

“They would have cleaned the room. This is a high-end hotel, you fucking morons!”

Josh reached for two bottles of club soda from the minibar and started spilling them all over the floor on top of the beer with overdiligent evenness.

“That smells worse!!”

“That smells like a gin and tonic!”

“Fuck!!!” said Josh. “This is tonic, not soda!”

“Fuck!!! Where’s the soda?”

I couldn’t take all this with my headache.

“Where the fuck are you going?”

“Gift shop,” I said. “I’m going to get Tylenol. For everyone!”

“Get Advil.”

“Get Tylenol.”

“Get Advil Extra Strength.”

“Get Tylenol Extra Strength!”

“I’ll get both.”

“Just get the Tylenol! Regular Tylenol!”

“Why the fuck would a person
not
get Extra Strength?!”

“Just hurry back!”

“I will. You make the room look like it’s been cleaned.”

“Too late for that! That ship has fucking sailed!”

“Our best chance is to make it look like we’ve been partying all day.” Josh started emptying vodka minibottles onto the floor.

“
What
the
fuck
!?” screamed Dave. “Do you realize how expensive that is?!”

“There is a
life
at
stake
here!” screamed Josh.

“How?! Whose?!” screamed Dave.

“Long term!” screamed Josh. “Look! We need a consistent message. And the message is that we got wasted last night!”

“Then what fucking leg do we have to stand on?”

“We’ll have to adjust the speeches,” said Josh. “Like we all have a problem, but he has the biggest.”

“
What?!
”

“Adjust the speeches!”

Dave popped a pill from a prescription bottle.

“The fuck is that?”

“Not Tylenol, don’t fucking worry!”

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “Right back!”

“Wait! What’s the opening statement? Who speaks first?”

“What did we decide?”

“We didn’t decide.”

“Decide!”

I ran out the door to the elevator and headed straight to the lobby, stopping only to accidentally get out of the elevator every time it opened for someone else, which was four times. In the lobby I tried to figure out which direction the gift shop would be in. Everything was a clinking, garish red maze, especially in the state I was in now. The casino looked like a straight person’s attempt to replicate what he thought a gay kid he bullied in high school would have designed. I hated Las Vegas. Why hadn’t I pushed harder to do this on Dave’s birthday? I picked a direction at random and started running as fast as I could, which was not fast at all, in this state. A hand blocked me by the shoulder and knocked me down.

“Where you going, asshole?”

It was Willie. He was dressed in a sharp blue suit, newly pressed, over a crisp white shirt, a garment bag over his shoulder. His shoes were white buckskin, or something along those lines—whatever it was, it looked polished and rare. I was in puffy yellow-and-gray New Balance sneakers that I had promised
Sarah I would only wear in the gym but somehow still found myself wearing all the time.

I was embarrassed to be in the same casino as a guy who looked as good as Willie did.

“Hey! Willie!”

He put his hands on my shoulders and took a moment to really take me in.

“You look like shit, my friend.”

“I’m okay.”

He draped his arm firmly across my shoulders. “Come with me. We need to catch up first. Just you and me.”

He walked me up to the bar in the center of the casino and ordered four tequila shots.

I said I was too hungover from earlier in the day.

“Don’t make me drink all four of these,” he said.

I did what seemed like the less irresponsible action and picked up the tequila shot.

“To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

“To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

I downed the shot and immediately felt better.

So that’s how that worked.

“If you ran for president,” said Willie, “and I knew you’d be a terrible president, and you were running against the best president ever—a pro-legalization, pro-gay-rights Reagan—I would vote for you. You know why? Because you support your people. You just do. That’s more important than having a good president—having a country where everyone is going to stand by their people, just because they do. Do you know what I mean?”

Two more tequila shots arrived. I dutifully took one and swallowed it. “I’m good for now,” said Willie to the bartender.

He turned back to me. “You made a mistake with Sarah. There are no two sides. There is no justification for something like that.” I know, I said. “And the fact that we all make mistakes—all of us—doesn’t make this one okay.” I know, I said. He pushed the other tequila shot in front of me. “Here,” he said. That’s okay, I’m good, I said.

“No, you really need to drink this,” he said. “I need you to drink this before I tell you this.”

Willie stared right at me.

I felt sick again. I stared at the drink in front of me.

“Hey. Look at me.”

I stared at Willie’s forehead.

“I can’t let you make a decision without knowing everything. I can’t have you thinking everyone’s perfect but you. Hey. Look at me.”

When I looked him in the eyes, he stared back for a while and either saw something he was looking for or didn’t.

“I love you guys. I really do,” he finally said. “It’s been a really hard first year out. I know it’s all going to be worth it, but it’s been hard. I know it seems like maybe I have it all together, like I’ve got it all perfectly figured out, and it’s just guys like Dave who are kind of a mess.”

We both laughed.

“But yeah, it’s hard for me, too. For all of us. The best thing ever is being here with everybody. We really have to do this more often.”

“To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

“To health, wealth, and the beauty of our children.”

He bumped his forehead into mine, hard. When his head hit my head, I noticed that my headache had gone away completely.

“Now where the fuck is everybody?!”

As soon as the room key beeped, Josh started shouting from inside the room.

“Did you get Advil or Tylenol?”

I opened the door. The room looked like an absolute mess, the most complicated possible version of pathetic. So did everyone, and everything, except for Willie.

“WHAT’S THE DINKY-DONK, MOTHERFUCKERS?!”

Willie lunged for Dave, torpedoing Dave’s stomach with his skull and forcing him onto the bed, coughing. Dave started instinctively defending himself with wrestling moves, which made Willie laugh and break out his own high school wrestling moves.

Josh looked at me, opening his arms, and mouthed,
So?