Kemp freshened his drink and spoke out loud in a rich tenor to the colossal empty living room: “Victor, you will never make a buck trusting people.”
Mark slowly drove his Corvette down the Strip in stop-and-go traffic. It was three hours till midnight and the town was getting busy as people were settling on the evening’s entertainment. He was heading south, the Constellation in his rearview mirror, but he had no particular destination. He tried not to think about what had just happened. He was cast out. Banished. The Constellation was his home away from home and he could never return. What had he done?
He didn’t want to be alone in his house, he wanted to be in a casino bar, with giddy action and loopy slot-machine jingles to distract him. Thank God Flores hadn’t put the word out and blasted his photo to every casino in the state. He had caught a break. So, the question he mulled as he jerked down the Strip was: where should he go? He could drink anywhere. He could play blackjack anywhere. What he needed was a place with the right atmosphere to suit his peculiar temperament-a place like the Constellation, which had an intellectual component, albeit a token one.
He passed Caesars then the Venetian, but they were too fakey and Disneylike. Harrahs and the Flamingo left him cold. The Bellagio was too flash. New York New York, another theme park. He was running out of Strip. The MGM Grand was a possibility. He didn’t love it but he didn’t hate it either. At the corner of Tropicana he almost made a left to swing into the MGM parking lot. But then he saw it and knew it was going to be his new place.
Of course, he had seen it before, thousands of times, since after all it was a Las Vegas landmark. Thirty stories of black glass, the Luxor pyramid rose 350 feet into the desert sky. An obelisk and the Great Sphinx of Giza marked the entrance, but the true marker was at the apex, a spotlight pointing straight upward, piercing the darkness, the brightest beacon on the planet, putting out an insane forty-one gigacandela of luminosity, more than enough to blind an unsuspecting pilot making an approach into McCarran. He drove toward the glass edifice and drank in the mathematical perfection of the triangular faces. His mind filled with the geometrical equations of pyramids and triangles, and then a name tenderly slipped from his lips.
“Pythagoras.”
Before Mark settled into the sedate bar at the casino-level steakhouse, he gave the property a once-over as if he were a prospective house buyer. It wasn’t the Constellation but it punched a lot of tickets. He liked the bold hieroglyph designs on the gold, red, and lapis carpets, the towering lobby re-creation of the temple statues of Luxor, and the museum quality mock-up of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Yes, it was kitschy but this was Vegas, for heaven’s sake, not the Louvre.
He drank his second Heineken and pondered his next move. He had located the high-limit rooms behind frosted glass partitions to the rear of the casino floor. He had money in his pocket and knew that even if he refused to acknowledge the count in his head he could still spend a few diverting hours at the tables. Tomorrow was Friday, a workday, and his alarm would sound at five-thirty. But tonight there was something titillating about being in a new casino; it was like a first date, and he was feeling shy and stimulated.
The bar was nearing capacity, clumps of diners awaiting tables, couples and groups spouting animated conversation and throaty laughter. He had chosen the empty middle stool in a row of three and as the alcohol took effect wondered why the stools on either side of him remained unoccupied. Was he radioactive, tainted? Did these people know he was a failed writer? Had they heard he was a card cheat? Even the bartender had treated him coolly, hardly making the effort for a decent tip. His mood darkened again. He drank the last of his beer fast and tapped the bar for another.
As the alcohol soaked into his brain he had a paranoid notion: what if they also knew his real secret? No, they were clueless, he decided contemptuously. You people have no idea, he thought angrily, no fucking idea. I know things you’ll never know in your whole fucking insignificant lives.
To his right a busty woman in her forties leaning hard on the bar shrieked like a girl when the fat guy standing next to her touched the back of her neck with an ice cube. Mark swiveled to take in the little drama, and when he swiveled back a man was occupying the stool to his left.
“If someone did that to me I would split their lip,” the man said.
Mark looked at him, startled. “I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” he asked.
“I was just saying, if a stranger did that to me, it would be all over, you know what I mean?”
The fat man and the lady with a cold neck were pawing each other, having a jolly time.
“I don’t think they’re strangers,” Mark said.
“Maybe not. I’m just saying what I would have done.”
The man was thin but extremely muscular, clean-shaven and black-haired, with soft fleshy lips and oily skin the color of hazelnuts. He was Puerto Rican with a strong island accent, casually dressed in black slacks and loose-fitting tropical shirt open to the breastbone. He had long manicured fingers, a square gold ring on each hand, and shiny gold chains around his neck. At most he was thirty-five. He extended a hand, and Mark had to grab it out of politeness. The ring seemed to weigh as much as the appendage. “Luis Camacho,” the man said. “How you doin’?”
“Peter Benedict,” Mark replied. “I’m doing okay.”
Luis pointed emphatically at the floor. “When I’m in town, this is my favorite place. I love the Luxor, man.”
Mark sipped his beer. There was never a good time for small talk, especially tonight. A blender whirred loudly.
Undeterred, Luis continued, “I like the way the rooms have sloping walls, you know on account of the pyramid. I think that’s pretty cool, you know?” Luis waited for a reply, and Mark knew he had to fill the void or perhaps risk getting a split lip.
“I’ve never stayed here,” he said.
“No? Which hotel you stayin’ at?”
“I live in Vegas.”
“No shit! A local! I love that! I’m here like twice a week and I almost never meet locals outside of the people who work here, you know?”
The bartender poured something thick from the blender into Luis’s glass. “It’s a frozen margarita,” Luis declared proudly. “You want one?”
“No thanks. I’ve got a beer.”
“Heineken,” Luis observed. “Nice beer.”
“Yep, nice beer,” Mark replied stiffly. Unfortunately the beer was too fresh to excuse himself gracefully.
“So what kind of work do you do, Peter?”
Mark glanced sideways and saw that a comical frothy moustache had appeared on Luis’s lip. So who would he be tonight? Writer? Gambler? Computer analyst? Like a slot machine, the possibilities rolled around until the wheels stopped. “I’m a writer,” he answered.
“No shit! Like novels?”
“Films. I write screenplays.”
“Wow! Have I seen any of your movies?”
Mark fidgeted on his stool. “They haven’t been produced yet but I’m looking at a studio deal later this year.”
“That’s great, man! Like thrillers? Or funny comedies?”
“Thrillers mostly. Big budget stuff.”
Luis took large slushy pulls on his drink. “So where do you get your ideas from?”
Mark gestured broadly. “All around. This is Vegas. If you can’t get ideas in Vegas, you can’t get them anywhere.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean. Maybe I could read something you wrote. That would be cool.”
The only way Mark could think to change the conversation was to ask a question himself. “So what do you do, Luis?”