The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro (34 page)

On one of his working weeks, Ramon didn't show up. Rita said he was sick with a backache, that he had seen a doctor and was taking medicine. The next week Rita said she had seen Ramon's sister at Foodland; Ramon was dead, the muscle relaxer he had been prescribed had shut down his liver.

At the end of a twisting road in the middle of the island Wevill found the chapel and Ramon's grieving relatives. A clergyman read from the Bible, delivered a homily, quoted Kahlil Gibran. Wevill sat at the back, a stranger, wondering if Ramon's family had a lawyer for this personal-injury suit, and where were Rita and Nina? They must have gone to Las Vegas. When the time came for Wevill to pay his respects, he stood before the closed casket and a color photograph of Ramon in an aloha shirt, smiling broadly, youthful, the picture of health, confident and vital.

The moment Wevill arrived in Las Vegas and tasted bitterness in the hot dust of the air, he felt he was in a corrupted desert city built on sand, one he imagined he might find described in the Bible, the damned rejoicing, worshiping a gilded animal while a godly prophet lamented somewhere on the perimeter. Wevill was out of his depth—humbled was no exaggeration. Since he had never been to Las Vegas, he could not think of it familiarly as “Vegas.” It bewildered him as much as any Third World capital. He was dismayed to be among people who were delighted to be there, so many of them from Hawaii. He learned late what everyone already knew: because Hawaii was heavily taxed, and gambling illegal, tax-free Nevada was full of people from the islands, many settled there, many visiting, he recognized the faces. Two he looked for but did not see.

He did not mind feeling helpless. It was a more accurate reflection of his condition, the big brooding man enthroned in his mansion, for he was now lost in his house.

To understand the women's lives better, he had asked for the one-week package that included the airfare, the room, and coupons. But: “Been sold out for months!” Was the clerk rubbing it in? The first-class ticket he bought was absurdly more expensive than the package, but at least he had his anonymity. He had no plan other than to be away from his house and near these women, to be here, in this place. But the place was more bizarre than the bizarrest pictures of it.

In his desperation he realized that he seemed more like a stalker than a mere admirer. He excused his obsession by reminding himself that he was helpless, he had time and money, he could have anything he wanted. Where were they?

I just want to look at Las Vegas, he told himself, have a drink, see what all the fuss is about. A place I have never visited. It was a plus that he happened to be near Rita and Nina. What next he did not know. Being close to them would clear his mind and make him happier. But he knew he was kidding himself.

As a lawyer he was able to hold two different, opposite ideas in his head at the same time, the prosecution's argument and the defense. Happiness was his defense, but he was well aware that he was driven by physical desire, a sort of hunger he had known very few times in his life, most of them as a boy, for he was captive to the feeling and unsatisfied, and what in his life had he craved that he had not enjoyed? He always knew the answers to the questions he asked.

He felt the insecurity and frustration of his early youth, for he had no idea what would happen next. His needing to be near them, not thinking of them as his cleaning women, yearning to satisfy himself, made his mouth dry. The desert heat of this big blighted place didn't help. In Las Vegas, where money was everything, he could have anything he wanted, because he had money. But his first day showed him the falseness of that proposition, for he was still alone.

He chose not to stay at the California Hotel, because they were there and he had no clear plan. His only pleasure in his room at the MGM Grand lay in his remembering how he had desired the two women in Hawaii—washing his car, mopping the floor, disheveled nymphs. Las Vegas itself he found appalling for its lights and its carnival atmosphere, the mindlessness of its advertised pleasures. The frenzy, built on sand.

With a stranger in the elevator, tapping the poster for the casino, he found himself saying that it was silly to think that anyone actually believed you could get rich by gambling.

“Then what are you doing here?” the stranger said.

The stranger, a white-haired blotchy-faced man, was wearing a cheap shirt and sneakers, but Wevill found it an intimidating question, for his coming here to see the women was a greater gamble than throwing down money.

Still, that first day he located the California Hotel and Casino, where they were both staying. He watched it from across the street but went no closer. He longed to see the mother and daughter, but just to gape, for he was not yet prepared to confront them. His sneaking satisfied him, gave him a way to pass the time—stalker time.

The frenzy evident everywhere in the city was something he could not share. His mood was opposite—the only watchful, cautious person in Las Vegas. He was passionate but he was particular, and there was only one way out. Apart from buying tasteless meals—there were no other kinds for him here—he hardly spent money. Steeling himself, he went into the California's casino and scanned the faces and saw islanders pushing money into slot machines, others plopping chips onto numbers on the roulette felt, turning over cards at the blackjack tables, always losing. It was a place for children, big old idiot children, a terrible place, and he began to feel the rage of the prophet at his first Las Vegas sighting.

He knew that he was in this defiled and pagan desert just as obsessively, but that his desire was pure.

Bumping into the women would be best—just let it happen. But his wandering in the casino turned to methodical pursuit as he stalked the rows of gaming tables and banks of slot machines, like an anxious father looking for his missing children.

They were nowhere in that crowd, or any crowd he searched on his second day of being in Las Vegas. He was embarrassed to seem so serious and sad as he walked among the shouting, laughing people on the sidewalks and in hotel lobbies. He looked everywhere, the hunt made him sadder. His only satisfaction was that he saw no one who even remotely resembled them in the whole riotous city. The trouble was, by lingering as he did, and looking uncertain, he was pestered by hookers, who seemed to understand that here was a lonely man with a hole in his life.

Am in town for some meetings—just thought I'd stop by,
he practiced to himself, trying to strike the most casual tone in the note he eventually wrote and left at the front desk of the California Hotel. Then he went and hid in his room.

Rita called that night.

 

In the lobby of the California he was approached by a dark woman in a green dress. Her tight pulled-back hair gave her foreign face a gleaming largeness and a fierce beetling confidence. She said, “How's it?” and he stepped back. Even after he sized her up he did not recognize her. Then another, smaller woman appeared, with the same hair, the same peering face, and tapped the first one on the shoulder. Now both women were smiling, so Wevill smiled uncertainly back at them—he did not have a clue—and his anxious suspicion was that they were both hookers, not soliciting sex but working a scam whereby one bimbo would hold his attention while the other picked his pocket.

“So how long you been here?”

The first woman was still smiling in the familiar way of a con artist.

“He don't get it,” the other said.

And he almost objected—Excuse me, I'm here to meet some people—when he realized it was them.

They were much taller in their stiletto heels, and they were darker but in the same towering and stylish way—almost as tall as him. Their new dresses gave them bosoms and cleavage. Their legs were long and in flesh-toned tights seemed bare. He had never seen their legs, for they had always worn sweatpants and slippers. No baggy clothes here, not disheveled at all. Their hair was perfect, they wore makeup, mascara, red lips, nail polish. He was still stepping backward when he saw who they were.

“Sorry!”

He was dreadfully embarrassed and off balance, with an odd toppling sense of being in the wrong.

The Hawaiian housecleaners looked poised and prosperous in the lobby of their Las Vegas hotel. They looked prettier and better dressed than the other women there, more self-possessed.

“For a minute there, I didn't...”

Didn't know what to say, for though he now knew they were Rita and Nina, now that the two women were the same height, he was not sure which was which.

He was still backing up, gabbling, trying to cover his embarrassment. He said, “I made a dinner reservation at my hotel.”

“You're staying which place?”

“MGM Grand. It's very nice. Excellent kitchen.”

One of the women laughed and the other said, “She wants ribs.”

He was lost again. Hadn't she heard “I made a dinner reservation”? It was the height of bad manners, he was thinking, and then realized how glad he was to see them. But he was thrown by the awkwardness of the meeting, and put off by the way they were dressed—intimidated as much by their stylishness as their sense of being so at home here.

“There's this place—Tony Roma's. Famous for ribs.”

He had no idea; but this woman's voice was Rita's. He glanced at the other woman and recognized Nina by her eyes and her smile.

“Three for dinner,” Rita was saying into her cell phone. “Ten, fifteen minutes. Under ‘Nelson.'”

This Filipino-Chinese haole's name was Nelson?

The restaurant was a block away. Wevill felt small and conspicuous as they walked, some passersby staring at them, seeing the gray-haired man with the two young dressed-up women. But in the restaurant he felt like King Farouk—other diners glanced as they made their way among the tables, following the waiter.

“Mom's bummed 'cause I'm wearing her dress.”

They wore each other's clothes. That he found sexy, as though they were sisters and equals, not mother and daughter.

“You look like sisters.”

“Now Rita's bummed, you saying that.”

“Nina is so bummed!”

But their calling each other by first names also proved what he meant. Wevill was holding the menu. He said, speaking carefully, “Is it baby-back ribs or baby back-ribs?”

They stared at him and Nina seemed to mouth the word “whatever” as the waiter appeared.

“Offer you cocktails before dinner?”

Rita said, “Vodka tonic. Straight up. You got Absolut?”

“Bailey's Irish Cream,” Nina said.

Wevill was startled by their promptness. He said, “Beer for me.”

Stumped for something to say, Wevill studied his menu until the drinks came.

“We're ready to order,” Nina said to the waiter.

“The ribs here, like, melt in your mouth,” Rita said to Wevill, as though hurrying him. He took the hint and ordered ribs, as the women did.

The food was brought within minutes. Everything happened quickly here, speed was a feature of the place, even the way people gambled seemed speedy, jamming coins into the machines, plopping chips on the grid of the roulette felt, dealing and snapping cards, the whole loud overbright town like the lurid midway of a carnival.

The women were chewing the meat—Wevill took pleasure in the way they gnawed the bones; but he could not eat, he was too nervous, he felt like a child, a sick patient with two inattentive nurses. He was in their hands. He was astonished at their confidence.

“Like Ma says, they melt in your mouth,” Nina said.

“I don't know why I just thought of this,” Wevill said, “but back in the days when I was seeing a shrink—my wife suggested it, first wife—I saw him four times a week. One day I was at a movie. It was
The Godfather.
I saw my shrink at the counter buying popcorn. It was very awkward. I mean, seeing my doctor at this movie. He pretended not to recognize me—and he looked different, too. He just walked past me.”

“Al Pacino looked like a little kid in that movie,” Rita said.

“I always put mochi crunch in my popcorn,” Nina said.

“It just came to me, that thought,” Wevill said. His mouth was dry with throat strain from a sorrow that ached like unslaked thirst. “Not important.”

Meat flecks on their glistening lips, chew marks on the animal ribs in their hands, the two women ate, smiling as they swallowed, their breasts brushing their plates of meat and bones.

“So how's the gambling?” Wevill asked.

“It ain't real gambling,” Rita said. “It's just gaming, like a game, mostly just slots. Just feed the slots.”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Wevill loved the juicy way she said the word “slots,” then he muttered the word himself and was slightly disgusted by it.

“You win, though?”

“My machines are junk. Not coming across,” Rita said.

Nina said, “One wahine from Waipahu won big in slots.”

She seemed to imply that this woman's win made their chances slimmer.

“You got special machines?”

Nina had finished her ribs and picked up the small dessert menu on the table. “They got this pie with Oreo cookie cruss that is so
ono
.”

Meanwhile, Rita was answering Wevill's question, explaining to him, as perhaps she had once explained to her daughter, that you first played a lot of machines, then narrowed your choice to the luckier ones that paid out, and played those, feeding quarters, two machines at a time.

“To tell you the truth, I came here after I saw Ramon in his coffin. I was moved.”

The women half glanced at each other, then checked their glances, reacting like jurors, maintaining poker-faced court etiquette. But he knew he had made his point.

“How do you spend the day?”

Rita was at first evasive. Then she said, “Big breakfast buffet, then do some shopping on the Strip, play the slots, bite of lunch at the casino, then play the slots again. Free beer if you keep playing. At night we take in a show, or maybe get a few drinks and ribs, or play the slots.”