“What we going to do until then?” I teased.
Kyle flipped me so he was on top of me, and rained kisses down on my face and body. I closed my eyes and sighed – feeling like life couldn’t feel any better than this, like my heart couldn’t ever feel this full.
“Have you not met the bath, Amber? You must surely want to meet the bath?”
And I squealed as he hurled me over his shoulder, and carried me, yelling with faux protest, into the ginormous bathroom.
We lolled in big white towels afterwards, on one of the big beds and watched the hazy sunset. The city around us lit up like a pinball machine.
“When can we see the city then?” I shuffled through my things, wondering what to wear. I only had the one dress, the green one. It would have to do.
“Now, I guess. It will have cooled down some. What do you want to see?”
Umm, I tried to remember things I knew about Vegas. “Erm, those dancing water jet things I guess?”
“The Bellagio fountains?”
“What you said.”
“Okay.”
“And I’d like to see at least one real poker game. To try and work out who’s bluffing.”
Kyle stood up, took off his towel, and began to root around in his clothes too. His temporary toplessness rendered me all incapable.
“We’re too young technically to be in the casinos. If they think we’re underage, they’ll move us on. But we can try.”
“Bugger, we won’t be able to drink, will we?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
I thought of the night with Russ’s whiskey. “Probably just as well.”
I locked myself in the bathroom to get ready and stared at my reflection a while, turning this way and that, to see if I looked any different now. If the outside world would notice what had happened in the last two hours. I twirled all my hair up on top of my head, letting a few loose pieces hang down. And I half-heartedly dabbed mascara on and a bit of lipgloss. I felt clown-like though, after a summer of not bothering. So I wiped the lipgloss off and just kept the mascara on.
When I emerged, I stopped, and stared. At Kyle. A posh proper shirt had arrived on his body out of nowhere, and he looked so yum that I forgave him for putting clothes on at all.
He stopped and looked at me.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, at the same time as I said, “You look nice.”
We both laughed.
“God, we’re disgusting,” I said.
“Too cute for words. I hate us. You do though, look beautiful I mean. I like that dress.”
We kissed, collapsing on the bed.
“Am I going to see any of America on this road trip?” I asked, between kisses. “Or just see the inside of motel rooms?”
“All right, all right, we’ll go out.”
We untangled our limbs, got my little handbag sorted, and veered out into the corridor.
When we closed our hotel door, we didn’t see the red light on the phone flashing.
SITUATIONS THAT ARE DESTINED TO FAIL:
The Vegas
+
An academic understanding of “Raunch Culture”
Thirty-five
I, almost instantly, didn’t like Vegas very much.
“Why are my hands full of porn?” I asked, as we waited on the steaming pavement to cross the road. The moment we’d left the hotel, we’d entered a gauntlet of roadside hustlers, all with stacks of porn phonecards. They shoved them into your hands before you even had a chance to say no.
“Do you not want hot girlz direct to you?” Kyle said. “Because they are plentiful.”
We dropped the calling cards on the already-littered pavement.
The light turned green and we joined the throbbing crowd crossing the road. It was madder than London, the pavements were jammed. Fifty per cent of everyone was drunk, though it was only like eight o’clock. The other fifty per cent wielded massive cameras with lenses poking out almost into my eye.
We’d had a look in the shopping area of Caesar’s Palace, where I’d marvelled at the spiral escalators and rode up and down them twice.
“I take her all the way to Vegas, and she’s excited by some revolving stairs,” Kyle’d said. But now I wanted to see The Venetian, hoping that maybe it would have a bit more class. We’d asked for directions and they’d said it was only a few hotels over. But I hadn’t realized each hotel was the size of a continent. We’d been walking through the busy street and porn gauntlets for ages.
“Ahh, there it is.” I pointed to an Italian looking tower. It took longer to get to it than we’d thought. Like a desert mirage, the tower kept seeming to get further and further away. Eventually though, we crossed the fake Rialto bridge and got into the guts of the hotel.
“Holy moly,” I said, looking around. “It’s almost like being in Venice. Well, what I think Venice is like.”
There was a fake sky, painted to look just like a real one, like an Italian version of the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall in Harry Potter. There was an actual real-life canal, with actual real-life gondoliers punting people along.
“It’s so over-the-top,” Kyle said.
“Let’s at least pretend we’re in Italy.” I took his hand.
We walked along the canal, looking at the people who could afford a gondola ride and eat at the pricy hotel restaurants (we’d grabbed a McDonald’s on the way there). Kyle’s hand was warm in mine; the way our bodies linked, just with entwined fingers, made everything inside of me feel safe and nice. We stumbled into the casino and managed to loiter enough to catch a high roller poker game. It wasn’t fun though. No one was laughing. There was no joy in the room. It was hardcore gambling. The air felt cold. The lighting was all off. It was impossible to know what time it was.
“Why are those grannies plugged into the slot machines?” I pointed at a row of old biddies who were all strapped into some bleeping machines.
“To keep them upright, so they don’t fall asleep.”
“That is quite a commitment to gambling.”
“Yep.”
“How much do people win?”
Kyle shrugged. “Sometimes hundreds of thousands.”
“And how much do they lose?”
Another shrug. “The same.”
We left The Venetian and crossed over the strip to check out some pirate ship hotel that Kyle said he’d heard about. But it was just the same as the other casinos, though maybe the staff here wore even less clothing.
From what I could tell from my short time in Vegas, everything had to ooze sex. And not the classy kind of sex ooze – like a deep slit in a posh evening dress, expensive perfume and good linen. No, it was the other side of sex. The blatant, in your face, thrusty thrusty, raw, caveman, belts-as-skirts, look-at-me-rub-myself kind of sex.
From the outside, these hotels were grand over-the-top marvels of human imagination. But, on the inside, they were all the same. Bleeping machines. Zombie-like gamblers. Waitresses in essentially their underwear carrying trays of drinks to encourage y’all to stay longer. I couldn’t help but crinkle my nose a bit, but stayed quiet, in case Kyle thought I was un-fun.
We stepped back out into the beyond-balmy night.
“You want to see the volcano that erupts every hour?”
I couldn’t help but pull a face.
“You don’t like The Vegas,” he said. “Do you?”
We were arm in arm, dodging more porn gauntlets.
“It’s okay…” I said. “It’s just very in your face.”
Kyle burst out laughing. “That is one way to describe it, for sure.” He put his arm around me, saying “no” firmly to a guy shoving another call card in my hand. “Come on, let’s go to the Bellagio fountains, I think you’ll like those at least.”
My feet ached by the time we got to the enormous curvature of the Bellagio hotel. There was already a two-deep queue around the big swimming pool and fountain area.
“It goes off every fifteen minutes.” Kyle pushed me in front, so he could hold me around the waist from behind again. “A different song each time.”