While Drowning in the Desert (2 page)

“Natty Silver,” I repeated.

“I’ll call up, let him know you’re coming,” the guard said.

Natty Silver, I thought. This might be kind of fun.

Uh-huh.

I rang the doorbell to room 5812.

“Who is it?” a voice asked from behind the door.

“Mr. Silverstein, it’s me. Neal Carey.”

“Am I expecting you?”

“Yes, you are.”

My head throbbed.

“Where are you from, Neal Carey?”

“Originally, New York.”

A long pause.

“City or state?” the voice asked.

Throb, throb, throb.

“City,” I answered.

Pause.

“East or West Side?”

“West.”

Another long pause, during which the throbbing turned to pounding.

“Mr. Silverstein?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?”

A trick question.

“Grant and
Mrs.
Grant,” I said. You have to get up pretty early in the afternoon to put one over on Neal Carey.

“What’s on the corner of Fifty-eighth and Amsterdam?” he asked.

“There
is
no corner of Fifty-eighth and Amsterdam.”

Who did he think he was playing with, a child? I thought with some annoyance. Of course, if I hadn’t been so annoyed, I might have asked myself the question: Why is Nathan Silverstein being so careful and what is he afraid of? But I was too concerned with my own state of mind to think of that. This is what happens when you tend to be as self-absorbed as I am.

The door opened a sliver. I saw a tiny face with big blue eyes peek out.

Great, I thought. My fiancée wants an insta-child and I end up babysitting Yoda.

“Hi,” I said.

Okay, okay. I never claimed to be a great wit.

“Hello yourself.”

“May I come in?”

“Why not?”

Nathan Silverstein was a small man with wispy white hair, a small beak of a nose, and skin as crinkled and tan as an old paper bag. He was wearing a white terrycloth robe with
Mirage
stenciled on it and a pair of cloth slippers.

“Say, didn’t I meet you in Cleveland once?” he asked me.

“I’ve never been to Cleveland.”

“Neither have I,” Silverstein said. “Must have been two other guys.”

Yeah, that’s me: straight man to the universe.

“You wouldn’t have any aspirin, would you?” I asked.

Chapter 2

“… So the guy says ‘I don’t know. I never lit it!’”

Nat Silver gave the old punch line and looked at me expectantly.

I laughed politely and said, “Mr. Silverstein, I’m here to escort you home.”

“You’re an escort service?” Silver asked. “The last time I called an escort service I got a young honey with big bazookas. I mean, you’re a good-looking kid, but…”

“How did you get here, Mr. Silverstein?”

“Everybody’s got to be someplace,” Silverstein shrugged. Then he added, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

“Yeah, but to Vegas …”

“Here’s your aspirin.”

“Thanks.”

“You want to go see the tigers?” Silverstein asked. “They got tigers here.”

“No thanks.”

“
White
tigers.”

I don’t care if they’re
plaid,
I thought. We need to get to the airport.

“We have a four-o’clock flight to Palm Springs,” I said.

Nathan frowned and shuffled over to a chair in the corner of the room. He let himself down slowly and stared at the floor.

He looked pathetic.

Nathan Silverstein was in his mid-eighties, at least. He was frail, of course, with his few strands of wispy white hair and the translucent skin of the elderly, but he had the eyes of an eight-year-old in a candy store.

Now the eyes were staring at the floor trying hard to look … pathetic.

“Are you okay, Mr. Silverstein?” I asked.

“I’m old,” Nathan answered.

What could I say?

“You’re only as old as you feel,” I said.

It was the best I could think of. Give me a break.

“I
feel
old,” Nathan said. He took a pack of Winstons from the side table, slipped a cigarette into his mouth, and shook the lighter toward his lips.

“This is a non-smoking room,” I observed.

“The room isn’t smoking,” Nate snapped. “
I’m
smoking. If the room was smoking, I’d leave the room. I may be old, I’m not an idiot.”

“Okay.”

Nate inhaled, then coughed for about ten seconds. Inhaled, coughed. Inhaled, coughed. Then he said, “Let’s go get a drink. I’m thirsty.”

“Our flight doesn’t leave for three hours,” I said.

“Good,” Nate said. “I’m horny, too.”

I watched television while Nate dressed. Or I tried to, anyway, because Nate kept up a nonstop monologue from the bathroom.

“Eighty-six-year-old Mr. Birnbaum goes to confession,” Nate said. “Says, ‘Father, last night I had sex with a twenty-year-old girl.’ Priest says, ‘Mr. Birnbaum, you’re Jewish, why are you telling me?’ Birnbaum says, ‘Father, I’m telling
everybody.
’

“Birnbaum checks into a hotel with the girl. Desk clerk says, ‘Birnbaum, aren’t you afraid of a heart attack?’ Birnbaum says, ‘If she dies, she dies!’

“Mrs. Birnbaum comes home one day and finds him in bed with a girl. She throws him out the window. Cop comes and asks, ‘Why did you throw your husband out the window?’ She says, ‘I thought if he could
schtupp,
he could fly.’

“Crowd gathers on the street where Birnbaum fell. Another cop pushes through the crowd and asks Birnbaum what happened. Birnbaum says, ‘I don’t know, I just got here myself.’”

I knew just how Birnbaum felt. I was beginning to look for a window. Of course the windows in Vegas hotels don’t actually open, which is a pretty good idea when you think about it. You’d need a three-digit over/under on the daily number of competitors in the 100 Meter Concrete Diving Competition. And you’d still get some guy taking the million-to-one odds that this time, this
one
time, some poor suicidal loser is going to step out the window and fall
up.

You give big enough odds, you’ll find a dreamer in this town to take them. A thousand-to-one that tomorrow’s Washington
Post
will feature a picture of Elvis and Ronald Reagan secretly worshipping a bust of Leon Trotsky in the laundry room of The White House? Done. Two-million-to-one that Mother Teresa will spend the night in the slammer after a barroom brawl in Passaic, New Jersey? Done. Five-trillion-to-one that a Rhode Island transportation official will issue a highway construction contract without taking a kickback …

Well, okay, there are some things no one would bet on.

When Nate emerged from the bathroom he was wearing white shoes, plaid trousers, a canary yellow shirt and a white golf hat.

“Funeral?” I asked.

“Why do you think they call me Natty?” Nate asked. He picked up his cane and asked, “So are we going or what?”

“We’re going,” I said.

It took a while to get to the bar. Not because the elevator was slow or the floor was particularly crowded but because Nate took the time to ogle each cocktail waitress that crossed within a fifty-foot radius of his immediate gaze.

Actually, it wasn’t so much an ogle as much it was a long, leisurely evaluation that started at the targeted woman’s feet and slowly progressed to the top of her head. Nate’s gaze started with a concentrated frown and ended with an appreciative smile. Nor was Nate the least bit surreptitious about it—he stared at these women with the unself-conscious glare of a judge in the bathing-suit competition at a beauty contest. It was the kind of look that would get the average man a subpoena.

But the objects of Nate’s attention just looked at his cute little avian face and smiled. One of those “Isn’t he cute?” smiles. They didn’t realize that while the old man was undressing them with his eyes he was undressing himself at the same time.

I figured that Nate had gotten laid in his own mind at least fifty times by the time we finally made it to the lounge.

Nate insisted on sitting at the bar, so I helped him get up on a stool and sat in constant readiness to catch him.

“Mr. Silver,” the bartender said. “The usual?”

The
usual?

“And whatever my friend here is having,” Nate said.

“A gin and tonic, please.”

I reached for my wallet but Nate hastily said, “Put it on my tab.”

The bartender set the drinks down and looked expectantly at Nate. Nate took a sip of his vodka collins, leaned over the bar, and asked, “Have you seen Jayne Mansfield’s new shoes?”

The bartender grinned like someone left a twenty-dollar tip and said that he hadn’t.

“Neither has she,” Nate said.

The bartender guffawed, shook his head, and I thought,
Jayne Mansfield?
I was trying to remember how many decades it had been since Jayne Mansfield died when Nate looked at me and said sadly, “I was with the same woman for fifty years.”

“Wow,” I said. This was about to get pathetic.

“Then my wife found out.”

Nate turned on the stool to get a better view of the women playing the slot machines and damn near fell off trying to get a closer view of the wide albeit heart-shaped rear end of a peroxide blonde who was bending over to collect her quarters. She looked over her shoulder, saw him staring, and gave him a real hard look.

This was trouble.

The woman straightened up and stepped over to the bar. She was about five-ten and wore a tight, white, sequined evening dress with a push-up bra that could only have been designed with Atlas in mind. Her high heels showed off long legs leading to generous hips. I figured her to be somewhere between forty-eight and sixty-eight under the makeup. She had a sweet, pretty face and deep cornflower blue eyes.

Which were staring right at Natty.

I was formulating apologies when the woman squealed, “
Natty?!
”

“Hope?” Natty asked. “I thought that was you, darling. Who else has a tush like that?”

I was waiting to see Nate’s head go flying off his skinny neck when Hope smiled and said, “You always knew how to sweet-talk a lady, Natty Silver.”

She threw her arms around him and Natty disappeared into a cloud of breasts and big hair. I was afraid Natty would suffocate but Natty emerged a few seconds later a bit red-faced but with a rake’s smile spread all over his little face.

“Hope,” he said, “meet my friend …”

He didn’t have a clue.

“Neal Carey,” I said.

“Nice to meet you, Neal.”

“A cocktail, Hope?” Nate asked.

“Let me go freshen my face first,” Hope said.

Nate watched her sashay across the floor, then fumbled in his pocket for his wallet. He took it out, found a twenty-dollar bill, handed it to me and said, “Go take in a movie, kid.”

“Huh?”

“Or play the slots or something.”

Nathan winked.

“Huh?” I asked again.

“What, I gotta draw you a picture?”

It took a moment for it to sink in and then I said, “You’re kidding, right?”

And I definitely didn’t want to see a picture.

Nate looked genuinely offended.

“What?” he asked. “You think that because there’s snow on the roof, there’s no fire in the oven?”

“Mr. Silverstein, we have a—”

“I’ll spell it out for you: Get lost.”

“—plane to catch, and—”

“Beat it.”

“—I have to get you back to Palm Desert.”

“I still have the
room
!” Nate whispered urgently, because Hope was hip-switching back to the bar.

“And don’t you look lovely,” Nate said as Hope slid onto the stool next to him.

“I have to make a quick phone call,” I said.

“Take your time,” said Nate.

“Nice to meet you,” said Hope. “A Bloody Mary, please.”

I found a phone from where I could still keep an eye on Nate and Hope and dialed home.

Karen’s probably over this baby thing by now, I thought. Probably just a bad case of hormones.

Karen answered on the third ring.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.”

Her voice was as warm as a January morning in Chicago.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Not pregnant.”

And hung up.

I stood pretending to be listening, then hung up and walked back to the bar to rescue Hope.

“Who did you call?” Natty muttered. “Time and temperature?”

Then he turned back to Hope.

“Well,” I said, “it’s probably about time to check out and head for the airport.”

They weren’t listening.

“Nice lounge,” Nate said.

“Very pleasant,” answered Hope.

“A little noisy, though,” Nate said.

Oh, God.

“Hard to conduct a conversation,” Hope agreed.

Nate said, “I wish there were a quiet place we could have a nice chat.”

“That would be lovely.”

I watched as Nate feigned deep thought, then said, “I have an idea!”

I’ll bet you do.

“We could go up to my room,” Nate suggested.

Surprise, surprise.

“By the time we check out,” I said, “park …”

“
Room
service,” Nate said.

“… get our boarding passes …”

“A little drink, a little chat …” Nate said. “Talk over old times. Nothing
you’d be
interested in, Neal.”

Hope looked over Natty’s shoulder and gave me a look. One of those significant looks. A “Help me” look.

“You just can’t get to the airport too early these days,” I said.

“Or you can always catch a later flight,” said Nate.

Hope slid off the stool and said, “Could I have a word with you, Neal? Alone?”

She took me by the elbow and guided me a few steps away.

I smiled and whispered, “Look, I know. Why don’t you make your excuse, I’ll get him on his plane and—”

She dug into her purse, doubtless searching for her car keys. “Neal, sweetie,” she said, pressing a twenty into my palm, “can I treat you to a movie or something?”

I slipped the bill back to her.

“Save your money.”

She looked at me with those big blue eyes.