We crest the hill and see Virginia City below us, the little strip of Main Street restored to look like the Old West boomtown this once was, the sharp white spire of Saint Mary’s of the Mountains on one edge of town, the iron-gated cemetery creeping up the bald man-made hills of rock on the other. We’ve been here before, the three of us. But every time I see this view I’m struck by how the buildings huddle together on the hillside, how a small town’s like a big family.
We park on the street and stand around the back of the car with the trunk open while we each down a beer. Jules finishes hers first and belches. We toss the empties into the trunk. Jules takes three unopened silver cans from the twelve-pack and puts them in her purse. She puts the last three in mine. “I’m hungry,” she says.
We cross the street and walk for a while. Danny says he likes the hollow sound of our steps on the wood-plank walkway. He’s said this before.
Jules squeals and points and takes pictures of everything like a tourist: a man leading a fat brown horse down a gravel side street, two local women dressed as Old West whores in dyed ostrich-feather hats and corsets, the rotating stainless-steel arms of a machine pulling purple taffy in the window of a candy store. She stands for an absurd amount of time at the plaque about Mark Twain, running her fingers over his little bronze mustache. She pretends not to notice when Danny takes a picture of her there. It’s exhausting.
Danny points to the old-looking hanging sign for the Bucket of Blood Saloon, a sign we’ve seen half a dozen times though we’ve never gone inside. “How about that?” he says.
“That’s fucking awesome,” says Jules. Everything is fucking awesome. Inside, the place is painted all red and has red velvet drapes too big for their windows. Chandeliers dangle from the ceiling, and large oil paintings with ornate gold frames hang on the walls. As far as I can tell, we’re the only patrons not wearing cowboy hats. Jules nods to some old men at a nearby table. “Howdy,” she says. Fucking howdy.
Jules flirts with the bartender, an old guy with the silly striped apron of a nineteenth-century barkeep hanging from his neck. His name tag is handwritten and says Bernie. Jules asks him to fix her his favorite drink and he brings over a Bloody Mary, pungent with extra horseradish. He shrugs shyly and says, “That’s how I like ’em.”
“That’s how I like ’em, too,” she says.
Danny and I taste her Bloody Mary and order two for ourselves. We all order bacon cheeseburgers, which Jules says is lame of us but Danny says is actually super interesting because by having the same meal in the same place we’ll be closing the gaps between us and come closer to fully understanding each other’s experience. These bacon cheeseburgers, he says, have the opportunity to be transcendent.
Jules rocks forward on her stool. “It’s hard to picture your parents eloping.” It is. Danny’s mom, Lucy, is the head pediatric nurse at Saint Mary’s, and his dad, Dick, is a high school principal. They play Boggle and tennis together. Every Saturday morning Lucy organizes the recycling while Dick washes the car.
Our food comes, the meat slippery in the buns. “Tell us what happened,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Jules, her mouth full of burger.
“What do you want to know?” says Danny, chewing on the celery stalk from his drink, loving the attention. “When my mom was eighteen she was engaged to this guy Wally, who worked in a tire factory off Wells. He was a Jehovah’s Witness, like my mom’s whole family. Wally’s dad was an elder in their church and everyone wanted them to get married. And they were going to, too, but my mom met my dad at school and called it off.”
Jules says, “Fucking awesome,” and Danny’s happy to make her happy. I’ve seen her with so many men but none of them have ever looked at her the way Danny does.
He goes on. “But this guy Wally took it pretty bad. They found him butt naked in the Truckee. In March. And I guess he was saying some crazy shit. I don’t know. They should have checked him into a mental institution. I mean, he was eighteen. But his dad, the elder, decided that Wally’s breakdown was actually God talking through his son. At one point the whole congregation was at Wally’s bed, praying, talking about ‘the one hundred and forty-four thousand’ and ‘the Lord’s Evening Meal.’ All that shit.”
The bartender comes over and Danny orders another round of Bloody Marys and two fingers of bourbon for himself. Jules says, “Thanks a million, Bernie. You’re a doll.”
“Anyway, the elder went and talked to my grandma and grandpa about how God had revealed His Great Will and how my mom marrying my dad—a Catholic, of all things—was not, you know, in the divine plan. And the fucked-up part is that they believed him. They told my mom she couldn’t see my dad anymore. Then the three of them—my mom’s parents and Wally’s dad—sat my dad down and said he’d better stay away from my mom, or else. Fucking or else. They thought this kid Wally was some kind of prophet.”
“Which makes your dad what?” says Jules. “The Antichrist?” This is funny, Dick the Antichrist, soaping down the minivan in his too-tight running shorts and tennis shoes from Kmart.
“Dude, but check it,” says Danny, slapping the bar, eating it up. “My dad didn’t care, right? He wanted to get married anyway. But my mom believed that shit, I think. Even though she agreed to marry my dad, she wouldn’t do it in Reno. She said they had to come up here so no one would know. So it could stay secret.”
“Is that what she said?” I want to know. We’re done eating, just picking at Jules’s fries. Why hasn’t Danny told me this before?
He shakes his head. “My dad told me. My mom doesn’t talk about it.”
Our check comes. Bernie the barkeep says our drinks are on the house. Thanks a million, Bernie.
Outside, the boardwalk and the street are crowded. We’ve just missed a mock gunfight, and the smell of fired blanks still hangs in the air. People are milling around, dazed from the excitement of vigilante justice. Jules and Danny walk ahead of me, weaving through the crowd. We stop to watch two horses pull a covered wagon down Main Street, an old man holding the reins loosely, two sheepish-looking bandits in the back. The horses’ hooves make a satisfying clop-clop on the asphalt. I pull my thin jacket closed. It’s cold up here and it’s only September.
Outside the Silver Queen, a sign promises the actual Silver Queen. We’ve all seen her before, but Jules wants to go. Danny shrugs and says, “Since we’re here.” I’m just glad to get away from the crowd. We walk through the narrow, dim casino to a mural of a woman, at least fifteen feet tall. She’s sort of Frida Kahlo–looking, only white. Her gown is made out of hundreds of the shiniest pure silver dollars you’ll ever see. Rows of them ring her neck and wrists, and stack to make a crown nestled in her brown updo. Jules hands us beers from her purse and takes one for herself. The beer is warm, and something about that warmth feels good.
Jules reads the plaque and tells us the silver is from the first strike of the Comstock Lode, which we already know. The silver dollars glint like the scales of a fish. I want to touch them, but the whole thing’s been covered with Plexiglas to keep people from prying the coins from the wall with their fingers. Who would do something like that? We would.
Jules gives me her camera and poses in front of the mural with her hands on her hips, just like the queen herself. Danny joins her. I set my beer on a stool in front of a slot machine and watch them through the camera’s viewer. They grin, posing with their Silver Bullets in front of the Silver Queen, their arms around each other.
These are my friends. These are the funny, ironic things we do so we can be the kind of funny, ironic people who do them.