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By chris Date: 2005 Jun 15 Comment on this Work [[2005.06.15.17.58.15822]] |
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Amigo - I don't advise it, for one thing. Being alone in Vegas is like being alone at Christmas. It's always Christmas here. "Happy New Year!" It's always New Year's Eve, too. If you are to come here as you tell me, I have this to say to you: You must first check into one of those big places - MGM Grand, say - and take one of those resplendent Emerald Tower rooms that are cold as a refrigerator and antiseptic as an operating table. You must kick back in one of those plush, overstuffed chairs, put your feet up on the table, maybe pour yourself a shot of Hennessy, and look out the window... Drink in all that neon, contemplate all that activity, silent, see, through those thick and unopenable (and probably bulletproof) windows. Shortly you will realize that it would be less lonely standing by yourself in the middle of the desert. True fact, amigo. But check this: the very moment you bite that sour brown wrapper off the end of your maduro robusto and strike that match you are holding, a young woman is driving on the highway between here and Los Angeles. (You didn't know that, did you?) She is alone and making very good time. So it is over, she thinks. And not one thing, just then realizing it for herself, but several: the marriage, the drinking, the chain of mistakes that culminated in her waking up one morning and asking herself what had happened to the last three and one-half years of her life. Where were they? What was there to show for them? Gone, dissipated, evaporated, disappeared - into that black unknown where, eventually, we all end up. How much of that is true? She wonders. Heather - that's her name, amigo - hates it when she starts thinking like this, a habit she attributes to too much time spent reading obscure tomes of western philosophy (she'd almost earned her B.A. but dropped out to get married). But that was always the way it went; positivity became morbidity as a matter of course. The melancholic's curse. "Melancholia?" She could hear her therapist sister saying. "Bullshit. You're depressed." Heather laughs to herself. She loves her sister but they never did speak the same language. She thinks her sister would be proud of what she is doing now. (Her husband, of course, will be devastated. But he will survive and maybe even thrive and - this much I can be certain of - respect her one day for her decision more than she will ever know.) Is any of this strictly factual? No, but it's still real. Really real - not fiction-based-on-reality or whatever the pointyheads call it these days. The truth, amigo. People are most everywhere now, and some are alone; some will always be alone. The woman in five years? She's married again to an auto mechanic in Henderson, not entirely happily. But who is? She asks herself every once in a while. They're in Henderson because they've had enough of Vegas, left too much of themselves on blue felt tables in rooms with no clocks and air that is hardly fit to breathe. But they watch the city as it moves out in all directions over the desert, toward them, toward places where towns never existed and never would have. Move to Boulder City, Pahrump? No matter; it will, they know, one day come to them. Probably in about six months, she thinks and laughs - when she does laugh. She remembers the day in the car but doesn't really know what it means to her now. Her second husband gets drunk almost every night and she sits, alone in the dark by the light of a computer screen. She's looking for something, amigo. But I digress terribly. Why do you put up with this? I know why; we understand each other. I can see you laughing at me now across the distance. And it is because we understand each other that I know you will listen to me. I have a story for you. Remember when I said a while back that I had to go over to Mohave County for some business? Well, everything went wrong. I was supposed to meet this guy somewhere down there - exactly where doesn't matter - at this place we had agreed to about two miles from the highway. What highway? Don't ask. But I'll give you a hint: it was where one of those dry washes that eventually run into Lake Mead meet up with the road. And it was up that dry wash where he was supposed to be. (But not before me, of course...) So I get there and turn off the car, which is really creepy because out there when you do that there is suddenly no sound of any kind. There isn't even a breeze on this day. Here's the thing that gets me, though: When I look around I see I'm right in the middle of what looks like a cattle graveyard. Really, amigo. Not the kind of thing you see in the desert, but piles of the stuff all over the place - like someone piled the shit up intentionally. Femurs, tibias, skulls (lots of skulls)... I don't know, seeing why I'm there it weirded me out, that's all. That's my story. No point to it? Probably. All I did after that was wait into evening, watch the mountains across the way change color a bit, and get the hell out of there. He never did show. Lucky guy - and he'll probably never know it, amigo. Funny how those things go, isn't it? One last point: You know how you say that something is right when you feel like everything in your life has been to prepare you for it? That's how I feel about this city, this place. There are possibilities here, I tell you. But hear this: only if you do not come looking for any of the things I think you may be looking for. You will not find them here (can you still find them anywhere?). Yes there's a woman too - not more than a girl, really, but she loves me. Or she says she does, anyway. Don't even tell me about the ex. Her and I are over like the Beatles - with no reunion tour planned anytime soon. I truly believe she's finally gone loco. But that's cool; this world needs a little bit of loco here and there, no? But every morning now I wake up firmly in the land of the sane. And I think I like it. Anyway, we have known each other forever, so consider the source of all this advice carefully. Do at least that much for me. |