There's just something about these old novels that we've tucked away in the trunk. It's like being with an old friend again. THE LONELY HEARTS CLUB got such a nice response that I decided to post Chapter Two here, and now I'm doing the same thing with LOVE, LOSS AND BAIL ON THE VEGAS STRIP. If you haven't read Chapter One, it's right here.
So, without further ado, here's Chapter Two!
LOVE, LOSS AND BAIL ON THE
VEGAS STRIP
By Brenda Janowitz
“Those
guys this morning were hot,” Heavenly says as the frat boys file out of the
shop.
“I
suppose they were if you like trust fund babies who live of their father’s
money and have no regard for human life,” I say, finishing the paperwork on
their bond.
Heavenly
shrugs her shoulders as if to say, ‘What’s wrong with that?’
“So,”
Heavenly says, pouring a cup of coffee for me and bringing it over, “I met
these guys last night….”
“No,”
I say, taking a sip of the coffee and setting it down to get back to my work.
“You
don’t even know what I was going to ask you!” Heavenly says, “Destiny and I met
these awesome guys last night at ghostbar.”
“Double
no,” I say, “definitely no.” Even Donny
gives a tiny laugh in acknowledgment. I
know that these “awesome” guys going to be a pair of old guys trying to score
with younger women. Because that’s
generally the type one meets at ghostbar.
Especially, if like Heavenly, you usually go out at night with your
stripper friends. “Why can’t Destiny go
with you tonight, then?”
“She
has to work,” Heavenly says, “You know what slavedrivers they are at
Olympic Gardens. Every girl in town
wants to work there, and they know that and they totally hold it over
the girls’ heads.”
I
for, one, do not know what slavedrivers they are at Olympic Gardens, being that
I’ve never been a stripper before.
Heavenly, on the other hand, knows exactly what she’s talking about.
“Get
one of the other girls to go with you,” I say.
“Chastity
and Mercedes are doing a bachelor party, Dusty, Angel and Cinnamon are working
a private party for some Tokyo businessmen, and Lola and Sugar are on the same
schedule as Destiny at OG’s!”
“Don’t
you have any friends who aren’t strippers?” I ask.
“Don’t
you have any friends who aren’t me?” she says.
Donny looks up from his paper and regards me. He instinctively knows when I’m about to get
angry, when I’m about to need him. He
once called me from the Federal Pen in Nevada after I’d been in an argument
with my study group in Boston. It’s
uncanny.
“I
don’t need friends,” I say. “I’ve got
you two. Now, everybody back to
work.” Donny puts his head back down
into his newspaper and Heavenly gets back to her paperwork, making a big show
of lifting her pen and flipping her papers.
I sit at the front desk watching the door and waiting for the phone to
ring.
*
Three
hours later, Heavenly’s still at it.
“I’ll
wash your bike for the next three months,” she pleads as she does the paperwork
on a three hundred dollar bond for a drunken bar fight. That’s the only other action we’ve gotten for
the whole day, so I’m feeling bored and antsy.
I could use a drink. Especially a
free one, with the way business has been going.
“I’ll
come along,” I tell Heavenly, “but I’m just not going to the Bellagio.”
“We’re not
going to the Bellagio, baby,” Heavenly assures me as she touches up her makeup
in the mirror she hung up in my office.
“I will go
anywhere in the city—no, in the entire state of Nevada—but I just will not step
foot in the Bellagio.”
“Not a
problem. No Bellagio. You’re going to go home and change first,
though, right?” she says, looking me up and down.
“Jeans are
very trendy nowadays,” I tell her. “As
are wifebeaters,” I say, checking my pits for sweat marks.
“You’re
wearing combat boots,” she says.
“Not
everyone can wear four inch stilettos and a skirt as large as a grosgrain
ribbon to work, Heav.”
“That’s
it!” Heavenly squeals running over to the front desk of our office, “You can
wear these!” She pulls out a pair of
five inch heels with Lucite soles—a holdover from her own stripper days of old.
“I can not
wear those. How can anyone wear those?”
“Why are
you always so difficult?” she asks, pulling out another pair of shoes. This time, it’s a pair of blood red three
inch strappy heels. I had a feeling that
they looked like stripper shoes on her, but I could see from the label they
were Manolo Blahniks, so I figured that they were classy. “Got them at the Neiman’s sale last
spring. Don’t ruin them!”
“These will
go great with my red leather jacket,” I say, slipping the shoes on. They fit like a glove.
“You are
not wearing that ratty old thing,” she informs me, “throw this wrap sweater on
over your wife beater.”
“What I’m
wearing is fine,” I say, checking the shoes out in the mirror.
“I’m not
letting you wear that jacket,” she says, “so unless you want to freeze your ass
off at dinner, I suggest you put on the sweater.”
It was a
nude colored cashmere wrap sweater with lace lining its edges. It still smelled faintly of Heavenly’s
perfume.
“I’m not
wearing this,” I say. “I’m sorry. But I’ll take the shoes.” Heavenly rolls her eyes at me and goes to the
front window to keep watch for our dates.
*
“Here they
come!” Heavenly says a half hour later as the car pulls up to the shop. The guys have gone all out tonight and rented
a fancy black limo which is equipped with lights that change colors every three
seconds and a fully loaded mini-bar.
Heavenly
introduces me to our dates for the evening—two old dudes (as suspected) who are
both named Dave.
“I knew a
guy named Dave once,” I tell Dave #2, as I grab my red leather jacket and get
into the limo, “He tried to get onto a plane to Columbia at McCarren with a
gram of coke stuck up his—“
“Cat!” Heavenly interrupts, “We see where you’re
going with this one.” She laughs her
coquettish laugh and the Daves laugh along with her. Dave #1 takes the opportunity to put his hand
squarely on the inside of Heavenly’s thigh.
She doesn’t even flinch.
I continue,
“Anyway, he was a good looking guy. Real
popular in prison.”
Heavenly smiles an embarrassed smile to the guys and says to me under her breath, “Can’t you at least try to be a lady?” I tell her that I have big breasts—I don’t have to be a lady.
You may be
disgusted with me right about now, thinking that I use my sexuality (read:
large breasts) to get what I want, but don’t be. The way I see it, if society is going to put
us in these fucked up gender roles, we may as well use precisely what is being
used against us to help us out wherever we can.
“Use what you’ve got.” My daddy
taught me that. “As long as it’s
legal.” That was his caveat.
The
limo turns onto Las Vegas Boulevard—The Strip—and I turn to Heavenly. Even though I just met these guys,
already, I know them.
“I’m not
going to the Bellagio,” I say to her.
The lights
on the strip are blinding. So much so,
that as the limo makes its way down the Strip, I want to yell and scream and
tell this guy that I want to get out. I
don’t belong here. But, I don’t want to
make a scene. I figure, if I promised
Heavenly that I’d go on a double date with her, it’s probably not appropriate
to have a nervous breakdown the second the guy tries to take you to a nice
place. I just wish we could’ve stayed
downtown.
“You’re
going to love Picasso,” Dave #1 says to me as he leans into Heavenly. Heavenly looks at me with an apologetic
smile. Picasso is the gourmet dining
room at the Bellagio and I know it’s the sort of place that Heavenly would give
her first born child to go to.
“Who
doesn’t love the Bellagio?” Dave #2 asks me, trying to do the same lean-in
trick. I scoot back into my seat and
regard him. “The Bellagio is classic
Vegas.”
The limo
clumsily drives up the massive driveway leading to the Bellagio. Hoards of fat Americans are walking in and
out of the front walkway and bunches of strippers, escorted by old men who are
even older than our old men, are waiting at the taxi stand.
“This isn’t
Vegas,” I say as a look of horror crosses Heavenly’s face. She begins canoodling with her old man to
distract him. “Vegas is where we work. Downtown.
Old school Vegas. Where Sinatra
and his friends used to play games and break hearts.”
“The
Bellagio isn’t Vegas?” Dave #1 asks me, gently removing Heavenly’s face from
his, “What is it, then?”
“Disney for
adults,” I say. Both Daves are staring
me down and I don’t back down one bit.
When you’ve gone bounty hunting in Brazil with a three hundred pound
former resident of the Nevada State Pen, very little scares you anymore.
“We’re
here!” Heavenly cries out, amping up her Southern accent for effect, as the
Bellagio doorman opens the limo door.
Dave
#2 tries to get me to take his arm as we waltz into the Bellagio, but I’m
having none of it. My skin starts to
crawl the moment I see the Chihuly blown glass in the lobby and the orange and
yellow striped awnings of the casino.
“I
don’t feel like gambling,” I tell Dave #2 and try to turn him away from the
casino.
“You
have to walk through the casino to get to Picasso,” Dave #1 reminds me as he
leads the group past the tables. He’s
walking fast and has almost approached Pit 7.
I do not want to be anywhere near Pit 7.
“Let’s
get a drink at Caramel first,” Heavenly says to Dave #1, diverting him from Pit
7. He obliges.
“I’m going
to hit the ladies room and meet you in there,” I tell Dave #2.
“I’ll keep
a seat warm for you,” he replies, and smacks me on the ass. I grab my ass in reflex and walk over to
Jimmy Andrews, the pit boss at Pit 6.
“Is he here
tonight?” I ask Andrews.
“No,” he
says, smiling at me. “Why?”
“No
reason,” I say, “Don’t tell him I asked for him.”
By
the time I make it to Caramel, the Daves are ready to move. We make our way into the casino, and I’m
grateful that Heavenly diverts them to the exact opposite side of the casino
from Pit 7. Better safe than sorry.
Dave
#2 turns to me and asks if I like Roulette.
I shake my head ‘no.’ Who in
their right mind likes Roulette? It’s a
sucker’s game.
You
can tell the type of man you’re dealing with by the game he choses to
play. If he like to play Roulette, he’s
a loser. He’s got no skills, no smarts,
so he needs to play a game that relies solely on chance. “Real men play poker.” That’s what my daddy used to say. But, if pressed, Craps is the only acceptable
game to play at a casino. Unless you’re
a numbers guy, in which case Blackjack would be okay.
Heavenly
suggests Blackjack, which is in the heart of Pit 6 and barely visible from Pit
7, and we settle down at a table.
Heavenly stands behind Dave #1 with her hands on his shoulders, but I
sit right down at the table next to Dave #2.
“I
find a girl who plays cards very sexy,” Dave #2 says, leaning over to me.
“You’re
not allowed to touch the cards,” I say, pushing him back, even though he was nowhere
near the cards. He leans back with a
chuckle.
“Hey,
sweetheart,” Dave #2 calls out to a passing cocktail waitress, “we’ll take two
Heinekens over here. Cat, would you like
a glass of white wine?”
“I’ll
have a white wine spritzer,” Heavenly says.
“May
I please have a Grey Goose, rocks?” I ask and throw a $5 chip onto her tray.
“Coming
right up,” she says with a smile.
“Oh,
Kitty Cat,” a voice from behind the dealer says to me, “you’d better not hit or
you’re going to bust.”
I
look up and it’s Dallas standing there with Andrews.
“I
thought you said he wasn’t here?” I say to Andrews.
“He’s
my friend, Cat,” Andrews says with a laugh and walks away to monitor the other
tables in his pit.
I should
have tipped him. I thought he was my
friend, but I should have tipped him.
The truth
is, everyone in Vegas is looking for a tip.
And I’ve got my red leather jacket on over Heavenly’s sweater, so I’ve
got no excuse. I put my singles in my
left jeans pocket (valets, bathroom attendants), fives in the right jeans
pocket (waiters, cocktail waitresses), tens in the left inside pocket of my red
leather jacket (maitre d’s and minor tipsters), and twenties in the right
inside pocket of my red leather jacket (major tipsters and informants). This would have taken a dip or two into the
right inside pocket of my jean jacket.
Rookie mistake. And now I’ve got
to face the one person I want to see least in the world—Dallas.
“Hit,” I
say to the dealer. I know this is a
mistake. I’ve got a fifteen, and the
dealer has got the same. As a general
rule, the easiest way to play Blackjack is to assume that the dealer’s got a
ten under his cards, just dying to come out.
With that in mind, conventional wisdom would tell me to stick, and not
take any more cards, since the odds are in the House’s favor that I will bust
on the next card I take. Furthermore,
the House has to take cards until it hits 17—rules of the game—so I should
just sit patiently until the House busts.
But I just can’t stand Dallas trying to tell me what to do.
The
dealer pulls out the next card in the shoe and it’s an eight.
“Bust,”
the dealer says as he whisks my chips away.
Dallas gives me a sly smile and I want to vault my body over the
Blackjack table and strangle him. But I
don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’s gotten to me.
This is why
I hate the Bellagio.
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