Sin City (10 page)

I force my eyes away, turn back to the palace. Its architect has ransacked every country in the world – barley-sugar columns, twisty-twisting up to bulging domes; minarets outflanking soaring spires. Reflections of reflections drown in glass and water, flash on gold and brass. I can see real flowers and palm trees behind pretend ones made of lights. Or
are
they real? My skin is glowing now red, now blue, now silver, in the never-ending light show. I can feel myself dissolving into brightly coloured petals, glistening drops of water. The only solid thing is Norah still slumped against my side.

I take her arm, steer her towards the towering golden arch in the centre of the building. We go from brilliance into gloom. There are chandeliers now, a whole ceiling made of crystal, but everything's so hushed and sort of grand, it's like we've entered some cathedral. There is even real stained glass. Not in the windows – there aren't any windows – but in panels round the walls, depicting holy naked women trailing feather fans. In place of shrines and altars are green-baize tables, spinning roulette wheels, more rows of gleaming slot machines, like those we've seen already at the airport. At every table stands a priest or priestess, dressed identically in white frilled shirts with brocaded gold and scarlet lurex waistcoats and black satin ribbons at the neck.

My own crumpled skirt and blouse look suddenly blasphemous, like wearing shorts in church. I'd taken off my raincoat in the limousine. A chain-store mac with a snap-on fake-fur lining seemed unsuited to a cocktail lounge on wheels. I stare at a woman dressed in peacock-blue sequins with a tiny feathered hat. Nothing fake about her wrap – blue mink and yards of it; a matching iced blue cocktail in a knicker-bocker-glory glass. She's all alone, seems sad, despite the towering pile of gambling chips in front of her.

Casino is merging into hotel foyer; high stools at gambling tables giving place to sofas and banquettes. I park Norah on a sofa, join Cindy at the desk. The two men and six girls behind it are all dressed in the same gold pantsuits, with GOLD RUSH on their hats. In a daze, I fill in forms, pass them back, and receive in return a huge golden key and scarlet padded book. A Bible, I suppose. My father told me once that some bods called the Gideons provide Bibles in every hotel room in the world.

“Welcome to the Gold Rush”, I read on the first page. “This is your passport to every pleasure you can dream of – and some beyond your dreams. Just pick up your room-phone and a genie will appear. Make your wish. His duty is to grant it if he can.”

They must be taking the mick. No. I turn a few more pages, gag on the statistics: three thousand hotel rooms standing on a site worth a hundred million dollars, over seven thousand hotel staff, sixty thousand square feet of casino space, fifteen hundred slot machines, two Olympic-sized swimming pools, each containing two hundred thousand gallons of coloured perfumed water which laps around the shores of half a dozen palm-clad tropical islets. The islets come complete with gaming tables, so that even sunbathers and swimmers won't miss the chance of winning. If you prefer to gorge, there are seven separate restaurants, one with thunder and lightning while you dine, one with the longest wine list in the world; also six exotic cocktail lounges with two hundred different cocktails and …

I look up from the Bacardis and the Gin Slings. My case has disappeared. A young lad (genie?) dressed like Cindy except his suit has flies, motions us to follow, leads us to a lift. He presses a button and we ascend towards the stars. (A trillion trillion stars in half a billion separate galaxies.) We emerge into a passage lit by chandeliers, gold velvet on the walls, thick pile underfoot. I wonder about tipping. He looks so tiny and pink-cheeked, I feel I ought to press bubble gum or Smarties into his hand, instead of dollar bills. In the end, I give him English money, in the hope he'll think it's more. He doesn't even look at it. It simply disappears, as if by some process of osmosis.

He must have disappeared himself. I didn't notice, actually. I'm staring at our room. No, not a room, a suite, though even that is far too tame a word. It's white, bridal white, with one huge heart-shaped bed. The carpet is like snow, warm snow, the sort your feet sink into. The walls are ivory silk, etched with tiny silver hearts. Pictures everywhere – naughty pictures of naked gods and goddesses getting down to it: Jupiter and Danae, Bacchus and his groupies, Venus with a Cupid looking younger than the bellboy. Their names are underneath, picked out in silver.

I leave Norah on a love-seat, peek into the bathroom. The bath is circular, pure white marble sunk into the floor, and big enough to hold a tribe. The swan's-neck taps look like solid gold, match the gleaming golden toilet seat and cistern. Beside it is a statue on a plinth – two white marble lovers embracing and entwined. I run the taps, surprised to see plain water gushing out and not hot and cold champagne. The soap is lily of the valley, gift-wrapped.

I close the door, sink into a white brocaded armchair in the bedroom. On the table, a huge bouquet of all-white flowers – carnations, iceberg roses and some exotic lily-things which smell whiffy like French cheese. My suitcase has arrived, its scuffed and shabby airforce blue disturbing that luxurious sea of white. I'd better hide it, hide away myself. I open a cupboard door, stop in shock as “Here Comes the Bride” tinkles out from some hidden music-box. “Shit,” I mutter, flop down on the bed. So this is the bridal suite. That explains the hearts, the wedding-white.

I glance at my bridegroom who is snoring on the love-seat, mouth open, thick lisle stockings bagging round her knees. She's spilt gravy on her suit, airline gravy, which has dried on brown and stiff. The suit itself is green, a sage-green Crimplene number which the WRVS picked out for her at the Beechgrove jumble sale. It even fits, though they were less fortunate with the shoes which are brown and boat-like, gaping at both sides. Her coat was a present from a Friend, a cast-off in balding astrakhan and older than Norah is herself. The Friends all rallied round to help, once they'd recovered from the shock of a patient going anywhere beyond the day-trip to the coast which they organise themselves.

I lie back on the pillows, eight separate pillows, each a heart itself; see a tired and messy girl in a wrinkled denim skirt. Myself. The entire ceiling is mirrored, intended to reflect back the gymnastics of the honeymoon. The Gold Rush has its own luxurious Wedding Chapel. You can be wedded here, then bedded, with only a lift-ride in between. I reach out for the phone.

A bored girl answers, not a genie.

“Look,” I say. “We're not the honeymooners.”

We must be. The computer can't be wrong. I point out we're both females, but it seems to make no difference. Las Vegas marries lesbians; it even marries dolls. There was a report in the (English)
Standard
which Jan had saved for me, about a clergyman from the American Fellowship Church joining two Cabbage Patch dolls in holy matrimony, in a Las Vegas Wedding Chapel. (“They were so in love,” he said.)

“Can you hold on a moment, Ma' am? I'll have to have a word with …”

“Oh, forget it,” I tell her. It's hardly worth the fuss. I wish I hadn't phoned. I've got this horrid frightening feeling that we're just a computer error; that we didn't win the prize at all; maybe don't exist. Another girl's come on now, asking if I'm Mrs Rita Holdsworth from Ohio.

“No,” I say. “I'm not Mrs anyone, but can we leave it till the morning? I'm really flaked. We've been travelling eighteen hours and …”

In the morning, she'll probably send us packing, tell us to go home. Except there isn't any home.

I sit down at the dressing table which has a string of miniature light bulbs round the mirror, like film-stars have in Hollywood, and real porcelain powder-bowls. To tell the truth, I feel a bit uneasy, let loose in all this luxury. I mean, some poor sods in Vauxhall are living seven to a room, with mould on the wall instead of goddesses, and a smelly outside loo. Jan's place isn't bad, but it's still smaller than the bathroom here.

I can see Norah in the mirror. She's slumped right over, falling off the seat. I suppose I ought to haul her into bed, have a kip myself. Yet it feels all wrong to arrive somewhere so exotic and way-out and just tamely go to sleep.

“Fancy a quick flutter at roulette, Norah? Or a few hundred topless dancing girls?”

No answer. I wouldn't mind a drink. There's no sign of our champagne, though. It was promised in the package – a magnum of Bollinger awaiting our arrival. I presume the computer got that wrong as well.

“Norah, champagne or Ovaltine?”

Ovaltine's the magic word, seems to wake her up. She peers in my direction, head weaving like a silkworm's, makes a little moaning noise. I think I must have overdone her pills. Sister Watkins gave me strict instructions, but poor Toomey seemed so anxious on the last part of the trip, refused to eat her scones, kept telling me she hadn't stolen them.

I lead her to the bed, heave her up on one half of the heart, try to take her clothes off. She's heavy, unco-operative. I remove her shoes, struggle with her suit buttons. For the first time, I admire the Beechgrove nurses. In the end, I leave her suit-top on, and a thermal petticoat in flesh-pink flannel stuff. She hasn't got a nightdress, hasn't even got a change of clothes until her case shows up.

I turn the satin sheets back, tuck her in. She keeps licking her lips and swallowing, seems confused and feverish. I stare down at her pale and sweaty face, brush the limp hair from her forehead. Although she's lying down now, I can still feel her weight around my neck. All the Beechgrove staff tried to talk her out of going, even after my marathon with Matron whom I silenced in the end with my borrowed legal skills. My law-school friend even wrote a letter for me on paper stolen from a posh solicitor, pointing out Norah's legal rights. That may have done the trick, or maybe just the fact that with Beechgrove closing and everyone and everything disrupted, Matron had more vital things to fuss about. What if she was right, though, and Norah goes to pieces? I could even have poisoned her or something. Those drugs have side-effects.

She's quiet now, deathly quiet, not even swallowing.

“Norah!” I shout. She opens her eyes. They look glassy and unfocused, but at least she's still alive. I thank God automatically, wish I were more sure that He existed. I feel horribly alone – alone in a hotel with five thousand inmates. That only makes it worse. I'm just a tiny fraction of some huge great tourist-camp, issued with a number as if I was a prisoner. Our suite is number 2024. The door is shut and bolted. Cindy advised us to keep it on a chain in case of break-ins, and that despite her bragging that the Gold Rush employs twice as many security guards as the police force of an average town. There's no sound at all, no human voice or radio, no burst of music or passing car. The walls are sound-proofed, insulated. A five-star padded cell.

I unchain the door, look out. No one. Just that stretch of ritzy corridor, and spiky shadows from the bowls of hothouse flowers. Even a mugger would be company, another human face. I suppose I could explore, whizz down in that lift again, stroll through the casino, order a meal with thunder-while-I-eat. I've lost all track of time – their time, our time – but the Gold Rush glitters twenty-four hours a day. That was in their Bible. Yet restaurants and casinos seem somehow still more threatening. I've never gambled in my life and waiters in those tailcoat-things always make me nervous. Anyway, how can I leave Norah? She's not used to sleeping on her own, might wake in pain or panic.

I close the door, pace up and down the carpet. The pile's so deep it's lapping at my feet, muffling any noise. I feel it's trying to stifle me, suck me into it. I'd better watch TV, find some serial or soap-opera, something comforting and witless which will act as a sort of sedative, lull me off to sleep. I press a button on the set which is white (of course) and mounted on a fancy stand with side-wings. A man in a dinner jacket with a red bow-tie and matching cummerbund is standing by a green baize table explaining double odds. I try and switch channels, but the red bow-tie keeps smiling, talking very fast. “The same rule applies as if the shooter was making a first roll: if the next roll is seven, you win; if it's two, three or twelve, you …”

I feel confused, even slightly scared. They give us all those gambling chips, but what if I don't understand the games? Anyway, the whole prize thing is chancy now. No champagne, so maybe no chips either. Or free confetti instead. A computer could turn you into anyone – not just a bride, but a millionaire high-roller, or a bankrupt or cut-throat or a Sicilian Mafioso. It could even lose you altogether, simply wipe you off the files. Maybe that's why Norah's weak and gasping – the computer is unplugging her, doesn't want her here.

I press another button. The red bow-tie returns. He's on to blackjack now. “A tie is a standoff and nobody wins. If the dealer hits a …”

These must be the free gambling lessons offered in our rooms. I had imagined live ones, certainly didn't realise they would hog every TV channel on the set. Perhaps the thing's fouled up, or I'm pressing the wrong buttons. I try again. The same tuxedoed smile, but different spiel – a free plug for Las Vegas. “… Biggest adult playground in the globe; entertainment capital of the world.” His eyes seek mine, seem to bore right into them. “You owe it to yourself to try these games, try them all, make yourself a winner, change your life.”

That phrase again. Do I really want my life changed? I could win and still be lonely.

I turn him off, reach for the room-phone to ask how I get
Dallas
, and suddenly there's a hammering on the door, a really thunderous knock. I freeze. Full-frontal photographs of muggers, Mafiosi, millionaire high-rollers who have mistaken our suite for theirs, flash lurid through my mind.