The Chapel Wars (9 page)

Plus he was
old
and this was
weird
.

“I should go back,” I said. “To the booth.” To my mom. Sam.

“I’ll walk with you,” Dax said.

I tore my gaze away from my dad and that woman, who looked like she might unhinge her jaw and devour him at any moment. “No. If my family sees me talking to you it could be World War Three. Well, Four. I think World War Three went down when our families had that little chat at the funeral.”

“I have bruises from that chat,” Dax said. “Your sister can kick.”

“She went back to school, so you’re safe there.”

“I get it.” Dax jerked his chin toward my booth. “You don’t want to be seen with me. I should probably be careful too. We don’t do a booth, but Poppy sends us to network. Minerva is walking around somewhere …” He breathed out. I don’t know why, but I felt more centered when he breathed, like he was taking in oxygen for us both. “Or, if your best friend and/or fake boyfriend wouldn’t mind, we could get out of here.”

“Here?”

“And go somewhere.”

I stared down at my hands and smiled. Why was eye contact so hard? Those moments when it happened with Dax, it felt like he was seeing the things I didn’t say.

I glanced back at my dad. He had his phone out now, and I had the sinking feeling he was getting the girl’s number. It’s not like I could work now with Mom and pretend that I hadn’t just seen Dad score a girl’s digits. And work-wise, it didn’t matter who was manning the booth. It was the same five questions again and again. Camille could cover for me, even if it meant Sam
had to miss his truck time. “Yeah, I can sneak away for a bit. You want to go walk around?”

“I love walking.”

I sent Sam a text, telling him I wouldn’t be back for a while. I’d pay double. I didn’t respond to the tirade he wrote back.

It’s not like I lost all ability to think logically. I knew what I was doing. I might not know
why
I was doing it, but I knew going somewhere—anywhere—with Dax was a stupid move for more reasons than even I could count. No matter how much I rationalized that Dax and I were just talking, we were doing more. Now we were
walking
… somewhere … and with each step I took, I was moving in a direction I shouldn’t go.

Maybe that’s why I went. The scandal of it all. Maybe it was some sort of rebellion after seeing my dad in a new light.

Mostly, I think I just needed to see where “somewhere” would take us.

Dax and I left without a sighting, hiking up the hill to the parking lot, discussing everything from bridezillas to the kind of shoes Dax was wearing today—navy blue boat shoes. He had on the same dress shirt from the funeral, tucked into khakis. Made me wonder what clothes he wore when he didn’t have to dress up like an accountant, or if always dressing up was some Southern boy thing.

The conversation jumped around more than I was used to with boys, but I liked Dax’s randomness. When we made it to the street, we looked right and left. This was the cultural side of Las Vegas Boulevard, not a place you walked around, like the Strip four miles south.

“I’ve never really hung out down here,” Dax said. “My dad used to take me to baseball games at Cashman, but otherwise … wow, there’s a library across the street?”

“You’re kidding.” I pointed to the Lied Discovery Children’s Museum, a red-and-gray building with a cylindrical concrete tower. “You never went there on a field trip? Or to the Natural History Museum?”

Dax gave an apologetic shrug. “I’m not much of a native. I was born here, but my parents moved to Birmingham when I was two.”

“That’s where the accent comes from,” I said.

“It sure don’t come from living in Nevada,” Dax said, pouring on the drawl. “My mom and I just moved back here last summer.”

Just Dax and his mom? I tilted my head. We had more in common than I thought. “Yeah, my parents are divorced too.”

Dax stared across the street. “No. My dad died. Poppy felt bad for my mom, said he’d take care of us until we got our life back together.” He circled his foot on the sidewalk. “It’s been almost a year. She’s doing a lot better now. Poppy treats her like she’s his daughter. He’s not so bad.”

“Wow. I’m so sorry.”

“I appreciate that.”

At least I didn’t ask how his dad died. That was something I’d learned since Grandpa Frank passed. When you discuss a death with someone who didn’t know the deceased, the second question was often, “How did he die?” The more I was asked that, the sadder I got, because that’s the one snippet of information you share about the deceased—their demise. No one questions how they lived.

And I didn’t know the answer; no one knows the answer.
How did he die? Did he fall asleep when they put him under for the surgery or did he wake up first? Did he feel his breath slipping away or was it one big breath and then a fade out?

Dax probably got that, the replaying, but to a bigger degree, because his dad had to be young, and so his death was probably something instant and sudden, like a car accident. Maybe every time Dax got in a car, he wondered what the sound must have been like and how long it took the pain to register, if it registered.

Or maybe he’s not a grotesquely morbid person like I am.

“No, but seriously. I am sorry. About your dad.”

He exhaled. “There needs to be a bigger word than ‘sorry’ for death, you know that? I use the word ‘sorry’ when I spill water on someone’s floor.”

“What were you thinking?”

The blue in his eyes deepened, swelled. “It’d be a mash-up of swear words.”

“But soft too,” I said. “To express regret.”

We hadn’t established where we were going, if we were going anywhere. We stood there on the street corner next to a sunburned man in a 49ers sweatshirt and oily jeans. Swears, euphemisms, and cheesy Hallmark words like “condolence” popped in and out of my head. Finally, I blurted, “Suckafugsadagus.”

“Suckafugsadagus.” His face split into a grin. “That’s … terrible. Really, that’s the best we can come up with?”

“I came up with it. I don’t hear any ideas from you.”

“Okay. Fine. Suckafug … what’s the rest?”

“Suckafugsadagus. I think.”

“Forget weddings, I’m going into the funeral business. Ditching eulogies and just printing banners with
SUCKAFUGSADAGUS
, and everyone will understand our word.”

We had a word. It was a word to balloon sorrow, but it was ours together.

The crosswalk light turned to walk. I shielded my eyes from the sun. “So … are we actually going somewhere then? I don’t know how much time I have.”

“I thought we could be spontaneous. Do you ever do that?”

Sure. Like … today. So, that would be … once. “Where do you want to go? Most of the stuff is to the right. There’s this cool ice cream factory, or we could go to the Old Mormon Fort. I’ve never been there. I don’t know what it is.”

Dax glanced behind him. “What’s that Neon museum?”

I hit him on the shoulder, harder than I’d meant. “Shut up, you’ve never been to the Neon Boneyard?” I grabbed his hand and started dragging him down the street. “I can’t believe you haven’t been here. This is the coolest thing in Vegas.”

Dax tripped after me. “I told you, I don’t come down here.”

“Our wedding chapels are only two miles away.”

“Two miles in Vegas is ten hours of distractions. What is it, just some old signs?”

I stopped dead in front of the entrance to the museum, a white shell-shaped concrete building, and pointed aggressively at the facade. “Yeah, just some old signs. And Vegas is just a
couple of slot machines. Dax, this building? It’s the old La Concha Motel reception area from the sixties, isn’t that amazing?”

He shrugged. “I guess. So it’s a dead motel? What’s it doing on this side of the boulevard?”

“It wasn’t always here. They took it apart, moved it with huge trucks, and restored the whole thing. Only in Vegas would they do that. The sign and desk inside the lobby are original too. And!” I pointed to the neon glass slipper on the median across the street. “They restored popular signs, lit them up. History, it’s our … Las Vegas history.”

“I take it you want to go inside?” Dax asked, opening the door. A whoosh of heat welcomed us in. The shell served as a gift shop with just a few hipster-style T-shirts, coffee mugs, and books about Vegas. There was actually a picture of Rose of Sharon in one of those books, but I didn’t want to bring up work with Dax. The subject felt taboo, even if that chapel, or at least Grandpa, was what brought us together.

Dax took out his wallet, a flimsy Velcro thing that had molded into the curve of his butt. “Can we get two tickets?” he asked.

I whispered. “I’ll pay for myself.”

“My mother raised me better than that.”

“Come on.”

“If you pay, then I can’t call this a date.”

Date date date date … DATE? We couldn’t call this a date. Fifteen minutes ago I wasn’t even sure if I should walk a hundred feet across a convention hall with this guy.

But I said nothing. I didn’t try to pay. Because the idea of this being a date … it wasn’t the worst idea ever.

The girl pointed to a clipboard on the blond wood desk. “It’s one-hour tours. We start every half hour—we have openings in the next one if you want to jump in.”

Dax checked his watch. “I’ll have to make up an excuse to Minerva for not going back to the convention. Do we have an hour?”

“I have some sway with the boss.”

The Boneyard was behind the shell, a two-acre dirt lot with pathways of signs arranged in creative displays. We joined a group of about fifteen others, mostly senior citizens, some tourists, some locals. Our tour guide—gravelly voiced and with thinning hair—took us around the hundreds of rows of signs. Some were just pieces of an old facade, some were letters, some were words, and a few complete signs rose three stories high. Almost every sign had a story attached to it; you just had to point and ask, “What’s Sassy Sally’s?” and our guide could name the date the hotel went up and, usually, when the hotel went down. There was an area with old motel signs, relics from a time when Vegas was just a gas stop between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. Somewhere around midpoint, we fell behind the group and Dax whispered, “This place was here this whole time and I didn’t know it?”

“And you thought that bridal show was spectacular.”

“You’re really into it, aren’t you?” he asked.

“What, the graveyard? Who wouldn’t be? It’s magic.”

“No, Vegas.” He waved his arm like he was creating a big bubble. “Your chapel, the history. I hate living here. It’s the sort of place where one day you arrive and just never leave.”

“How can you hate living in Las Vegas? It’s sunny two
hundred ninety-two days a year here. You can eat at a buffet at four in the morning. Every band comes here for a show. And let’s not forget Bridal Spectacular.”

“Two hundred ninety-two? Is that an exact number?”

“It’s an accurate average.”

Dax kicked at a rock. “Okay, what about the heat?”

“It’s a—”

“Dry heat. Yeah, yeah. There is nothing dry when it’s one hundred fifteen degrees outside. And no one is from here. Like, for generations. There are no roots. In Alabama, I knew everyone on our block, and here … I’m pretty sure our next-door neighbor is running a meth lab.”

“Like Alabama doesn’t have meth labs.”

“Alabama sings ‘sweet home.’ Nothing here does, except maybe Poppy’s chapel.”

“Cupid’s Dream? What’s home about that?

“Familiarity? Family? Fun? Pick one. The rest of the town is just half-empty strip malls and cloned stucco houses.”

“This is Las Vegas you’re describing, right? The City of Blinding Lights?”

“I’ve never heard it called that. I think that’s New York.”

“ ‘City of Blinding Lights’ is my favorite U2 song. So I say it applies to Vegas—”

“That’s what sucks about Vegas, that it rips off other cities—”

“Fine. The entertainment capital of the world.”

“Arguable.”

“Dax!”

“You know I’m not talking about entertainment. I’m talking about … Say you move away, come back in twenty years. What are going to be the places you remember? Some hotel? That will probably be redone then anyway. There’s nothing
homegrown
.”

I squatted down next to a piece from the old Golden Nugget sign. A hotel, I should note, that might have grown and morphed but was still in business after seventy years. “My dad was at a photo shoot once for this local Vegas magazine, some high-fashion thing with a girl wearing a flowing gown in the desert. The lighting guy was sweating and swearing about how bright the sun was and kept saying that anyone who would choose to live here had to be as godforsaken as the town. Then the sun started to set, and you know how sunsets are here. Pink and infinite, like anything is possible and you’re part of something vast. And Dad said the guy sort of twirled around, taking in the sky, and said, ‘Okay, God. I stand corrected.’ ” I shrugged. “I think living here has taught me to keep my expectations low and to appreciate those moments when life proves you wrong. Or right.”

“So you’re impressed with everywhere else because this place sucks that bad?”

I stood. “You’re still new here. You have to get used to it. It’s not freaking Hawaii, it takes a little work. But I can show you. Show you all the places that make Las Vegas great.”

“Personally?” Dax crossed his arms, amused. “I’ll say I hate a lot more things if it means you’ll make it your crusade to prove me wrong.”

“I didn’t mean I would take you there myself …” But I did
mean that. I was already picturing us hiking Red Rock Canyon and peering over the side of Hoover Dam, like these were activities we could ever actually do together. Like we could ever actually
be
together.

The guide shuffled the group to the next row of signs. Dax and I stayed back, our voices dipped.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked.

“We should catch up to the group.”

“I almost called you the other day,” Dax said. “At the chapel. But I didn’t know if you were working. So I went out to the parking lot and tried to guess if any of those cars were yours.”