Sin City (9 page)

Carole said Las Vegas is five thousand miles away. I feel shaky when I think of it. Five thousand miles from Beechgrove and my bed. Carole says it's night-time back in England, which means that even if I did get off the plane, they wouldn't let me in. They lock the gates at ten.

I don't understand about the time, or why England is ahead of us. I think time must go more slowly on a plane. I asked if we'd catch up, but Carole said not till we returned, when we'd lose the time again. You can't lose time, or only if you have an operation. (When I had my op, I lost a day as well as just my womb.) I don't like things to change. Even Christmas Day upset me because everything was different.

I'd like to be in bed now. I don't feel well at all. My feet and legs have swollen, and there's another sort of seat belt clamped tight around my skull. I'm strapped in twice, and the seat in front is like a padded wall. Always walls, everywhere I've been. I've never minded much before, never felt this trapped. I think they've locked us in again because I stole the soap. It wasn't really stealing. I was scared of germs, that's all. Sister says there are germs on everything: food, and people's faces, and especially toilet-chains.

Twenty years ago, they always locked the wards, not just the violent ones, but all of them, even children's wards. And they used to count the knives and forks after every single meal. We had to sit there, quiet, in rows, and if just one small piece of cutlery was missing, they wouldn't let us move until they'd found it. A patient could kill them with a missing knife.

There's blood now on the screen, three men lying dead.

I'd better put the soap back. And the nuts as well. The nuts were mine. The soldier pushed them into my hand, but Sister won't believe that. I can't get out, though. Perhaps I'll just leave them on my tray, or give them to the lady when she passes by again. I wish she'd stop and say hello, ask me how my jigsaw's getting on.

Suddenly there's silence. Well, the roaring in my ears stops, though not the louder roar. People start shifting in their seats, rustling things or stretching.

“Great!” says Carole. “Wasn't it? I never guessed the nurse, did you?”

“No.”

“I thought it was the brother. Gosh, they're serving tea already. That's quick.”

There are letters on the screen still, but they've put the blinds up now and are passing trays around. Carole's watch says ten past ten which seems late for tea, especially scones and jam and cheese which is what it is. Sister says cheese is bad for you at night, gives you dreams. I had a dream last night about a hospital. They blew it up with a bomb and there was nothing left at all except one tiny golden heart like the one on Carole's bracelet, lying at the bottom of a big black hole.

Carole saws her scone in half, digs her plastic knife into her tiny pot of jam, tiny like my tiny bar of soap, which I'm still clutching in my hand. I lay it on my saucer, put the nuts on top. They're small as well, just doll-size. Everything is tiny when you're flying.

Carole is talking through her jam. “We'll be landing in two hours,” she says.

Two hours.

Hours and bloody hours have passed. Norah's taken her pills and gone to sleep. Lucky Toomey. I can't sleep at all. I feel more alone now she's got her eyes shut, as if I'm the only person still alive in this whole vast country, all forty-nine great States of it (or is it fifty?) stretching up to snows and down to sand, with mountains on both sides. There
are
people on this plane, but not that many – nothing like the first one – and they're all sitting further forward. We're stuck at the back in Smoking. I smoke Players No.6 because … I don't, in fact. I changed from Rothmans to Marlboros at LA.

Los Angeles, City of the Angels. Norah liked the name. It's better than the place – though maybe that's unfair since we only saw the airport which was drabber than Heathrow with longer queues. Lots of people were complaining about lost luggage. The airline quite surpassed itself, lost six separate cases and a bag of brand new golf clubs. The golfer chap was going spare.

Norah was upset as well, though quietly. Hers was one of the cases that was missing. Mine was merely crippled, came circling round the baggage carousel with a bruised and dented side and a great scar across its face. We waited hours for Norah's, but it never came. It was a hospital case, cheap and cardboardy, so maybe it had burst apart
en route
. We wasted more time filling in reports and things (there was a queue for that as well) and trying to remember what the damned case looked like, since you had to tick the one it most resembled on the form. They all looked much the same to me, and Norah's not like any. Hers probably dated from 1888, like the hospital itself. The whole palaver took such ages I was scared we'd miss our second flight, but it was delayed, in fact, due to rain (torrential).

We sat out on the tarmac in this tinny little crate (which is very long and narrow like a passage), with rain streaming down the windows and stewards bringing paper cups of coffee, in the hope that we'd be too grateful to complain. I drank four cups to wake me up. It hasn't. I still feel absolutely frazzled, yet I'm afraid to close my eyes. I've got this feeling that if I shut them, even for a second, I'll simply disappear and maybe the whole of America will slide away as well. I suppose it is America. It's so dark outside it could be anywhere. Odd how we accept things. I've no proof whatsoever. Okay, so the stewards speak with a Californian twang, but they could be flying us to China or Siberia or Sumatra or … I check my watch again, do the usual subtractions in my head.

I tried to explain to Norah about the time difference, and she said “You mean, we have the time twice over?” She was right. We had a free gift of eight hours, to live again. If that had been on offer the day that I was nicked, I could have lived it differently, slept all day, or hung around the Job Centre, instead of pocketing swiss rolls. Or if I'd flown the other way, I'd have simply lost the time. No police, no court, no Beechgrove. Strange how ten minutes can make you Someone Else. When I walked into that supermarket, I was university material, a bright girl with a future – a future black-patched by a death, in fact, but still no means a case. Now I'm “depressive, hyperactive and unstable”. I saw it on my notes. My headmistress called me co-operative, responsible and a joy to teach. My father went still further: the best girl in all the world.

It's weird – it's my mother I'm missing at the moment, not my father. I can even see her, bits of her, her long white bony feet with their nail varnish chipped off; the flash of black lace bra-strap which always seems to be showing as though to prove she's still got breasts and sexy ones. Sexy Mum. Odd to call her Mum. It never fitted. Even when I was tiny, it sounded wrong. My father called her Kitty, which was worse. He used to call me sweetheart.

“Hey, sweetheart …”

I jump. My heart is racing, palms clammy-wet. Maybe I only dreamt the flight and I'm waking now in my bed at Portishead and I'll see my father standing there in his baggy Fair-Isle cardigan with my early morning tea. (Mornings had stopped happening for my mother.) I rub my eyes, hardly dare look up. No. A younger man, a steward. If disappointment had the power to kill, he'd be flat out in the aisle, cold and stiff already, instead of leaning over me; with that silly flirty smile.

“If you wanna see Las Vegas, honey, just look down.”

I wipe the window with the paper serviette which came with coffee number four and has “Good Morning” printed on it, though it's almost ten to midnight, Pacific time. I gasp. Not all the paints in all the Art Rooms in every school and hospital in England or the forty-nine (fifty?) United States could ever make a show like that. Not just glittery gold, but glittery pink, scarlet, purple, turquoise, lime – neon colours, wild and throbbing-hot. It's a fairground, not a city, blazing out of darkness, welcoming us with a ticker-tape of lights.

I read in Norah's guide book that it's really quite a small town, just a few main streets. They're wrong. Those lights go on for miles, strings and strings of them, shimmering and twinkling like Christmas decorations. Christmas was a con this year, a non-event. But now I realise we haven't had it yet. That's Christmas down below – three-dimensional Christmas, tinselled and ballooned, a town in fancy dress. They're as wrong about the meadows as they were about the angels. Nothing so dull and green and squelchy as a meadow, which is a place for cows and weeds. This is a city made for parties, a razzle-dazzle city built of lights instead of concrete, and with fireworks for its stars. It's changing as I look at it, like a huge kaleidoscope which someone has just shaken so that all the colours have shifted and re-formed – cyclamen, and peacock, a new electric green.

I'm so dazzled, so excited, I can hardly stagger off the plane. Norah's still a zombie, muttering about lodgings and Hastings promenade, slurring half her words. The airport's really wild. The first thing that you see (and hear) are rows and rows of slot machines, all tinkling out these catchy little tunes. There's a crowd of people playing them, even two in wheelchairs. We lurch along the carpet to the rattle of their coins – a red carpet, naturally, to welcome VIP's. We're all important people, judging by the decor, which leaves most airports standing. There's this amazing silver ceiling which snakes up and down in curves and looks really swish and space-age, and huge gold palm trees towering over tubs of jungly plants. It's nothing like Heathrow with its plastic glare and roar. Here, the lights are dim, and there's soft romantic music playing, and stylish fashion-shops full of alligator boots and slinky sequinned numbers trimmed with ostrich.

The smell of popcorn seems a bit incongruous, especially as it's really strong and sickly, wafting from a shop called Creative Candy Gifts. It makes me feel quite peckish, except I'm far too high to eat, dare not stop for anything in case Norah just keels over. I try and keep her upright on the escalator, following the signs to the “baggage reclaim area”. Even that is glamorous, with more gold palms and a great high ceiling, mirrored blue and silver, which reflects us upside-down.

I suddenly see two hundred kicking legs, two hundred naked breasts on top, a hundred scarlet smiles. I stop, watch open-mouthed, as a horde of topless showgirls dance a racy cancan. It's a commercial for Las Vegas, showing on a screen, a huge monster television, placed high above the baggage carousels. No,
two
screens – one each end: four hundred fishnet legs now, four hundred bouncing boobs; at least two hundred decibels of music. The music's so infectious, I want to jig myself, start shimmying my hips, tossing back my hair. I leave Norah on a seat, go back to watch the screens. A deep male voice is speaking now, husky and seductive.

“Enter a world where seeing's not believing, where reality and fantasy entwine …”

Two fairy-tale princes, dressed in turquoise satin with swirling purple cloaks, leap on stage – a snarl of snow-white tigers snapping round their thigh-high silver boots. I watch, enthralled. These must be snippets from the famous Vegas shows – wild animals, magicians, dancing girls and strippers. A dancer's sawn in half before my eyes; a lion shoots from a cannon, and now wild green flashing laser-beams start criss-crossing on the screens, seem to explode out of the set, pierce right through my flesh.

“We'll transport you to a wonder-world of magic,” breathes the voice. “On stage at the Gold Rush – New Year's Eve.”

The Gold Rush.
Our
hotel! This must be the Show Spectacular they promised in our package. Fancy all those marvels on one stage – our stage; two princes maybe staying in the room next door to ours, lions and tigers prowling in the grounds! I can hardly bear to tear myself away, keep craning my neck, watching over my shoulder, as I start the boring business of searching out my suitcase. I find it, still more dented, lug it back to Norah who's tipped sideways on her seat, seems unsure who I am.

“Hey, Norah, do wake up. It's so exciting here! Look at that kid in white fur dungarees. I'm sure they're mink or something, and he can't be more than three. And see that man in …”

Someone interrupts me. “Miss Toomey and Miss Joseph?”

I jump, swing round. A girl is smiling down at me, a tall and leggy glamour-girl who looks as if she's just stepped off those screens. She's wearing a gold catsuit and her mass of golden curls is haloed by a round cap saying GOLD RUSH – that magic name again. I stare at her, start counting her gold bangles – ten, eleven, twelve – the gold rings on each finger.

“Miss Toomey and Miss Joseph?” she repeats.

I mumble “Yes” for both of us, ashamed. We look plain and drab; unworthy, unbejewelled.

“Hi! Welcome to Las Vegas. I'm Cindy. Your limo's just outside.”

They had told us we'd be met, but I'd expected Nanny No One in a black and boring taxi, not this stunner in her hot-pink limousine. By the time I've recovered from Cindy herself (each three-inch nail is a different dazzling colour, and her hair's so blinding blonde, I need a pair of sun-glasses), I'm goggling at the longest car I've ever seen or dreamed of. I can hardly reply to all her friendly questions about England and the flight and was Norah sick or simply tired and had we travelled much before (etcetera), because I'm so knocked out by the way it seems to float along on water and by the velvet seats and phone. It's like a cocktail lounge inside, with a proper bar and lights with frilly shades. (Pink lampshades in a car!) In fact, I quite forget to look where we are going, and when Cindy says “We're here,” I feel as if the last half an hour has been running on fast-forward and I've missed it all except a whirring flash of colours.

Cindy helps us out. She needs to. Norah is still reeling from her pills and I'm so stunned by my surroundings, the ground feels none too solid. I haven't been abroad a lot. A week in Paris with our school, a long weekend in Guernsey with my parents – that's it – and a few cut-price Trust House Fortes back at home, coaching inns with ivy or new motels in raw red brick. This is a fairy palace, a serious fairy palace built to last; not gingerbread or sugar, but priceless marble, sparkling glass. The glass seems to ripple as it mirrors back the fountains. Yes, real cascading fountains thundering into pools with sculpted golden dolphins larking in the shallows. The pools and fountains are floodlit silver-blue, the grass is man-made and floodlit silver-green. There are palm trees made of lights and huge fluorescent flowers which keep opening up their petals, flashing through the spectrum from red to zingy violet, then closing down to green before they bloom again.