And the people who built this place (not the first time, not the old days, but now), they knew, too. They built everything huge and so obviously fake because of it. No one talked about it (that was part of it, the shared secret) but they didn’t want you to forget it. They knew the rush was better because of the desert. They knew the illusion only worked because of the truth.
And the truth was, if he didn’t come home with $400,000 for Bennie, Taylor was a dead man.
Bennie had people here. Or Bennie’s people had people, someone had people and they’d be watching him. They already were. On the plane, maybe the bored guy with the crossword puzzle book, maybe the middle-aged lady who actually ate the lunch. Maybe the eight-year-old who kicked his seatback all the way across the country. That would be like Bennie, to send someone to kick his ass. Make sure he didn’t turn and run. Slip out as soon as he checked in, fly off to L.A., Honolulu, Sulawesi, Pago Pago. He didn’t really care because he wasn’t going anywhere. No. He’d taken every cent he had with him and he was going to play it all. Dead man playing. Maybe they’d make a movie.
Did it matter where he played? He couldn’t decide. That was funny. Couldn’t decide whether to flip a coin, or to decide. Time was, Taylor my man, when you were decisive. A man with a plan. He heard himself say that as he cruised the rented car (this time a tan Cavalier, and what more was there to say?) down the new strip that wasn’t the Strip. He heard himself say it but had he said it out loud? He couldn’t decide.
Time was. A plan, a wife, a split-level ranch. A job, a future, and a gambling habit. Now, stripped down, cleaned away, trimmed and cut back. Nothing left but the habit. That was the wrong word but Taylor let it slide. Did other men have eating habits? Breathing habits? But okay. Why argue? Time was (that same time, and overall it was a good time, he’d never say it wasn’t) when he’d argued with Lily. At first sometimes, later often, by the end always. Even arguing, he loved her. But she didn’t love him. She loved some other man, some man who was Taylor but didn’t care how the dice rolled, or the cards fell, orwhat horse crossed the line. Finally she’d left to go find him. That man.
After that the job seemed extraneous (it was boring anyway, cross-eyed boring, long dull days and no rush at all). The house was a millstone and the future was a deck of cards. Nothing wrong with any of it. Taylor had enjoyed it, yes, that was the truth. And he’d been into Bennie before, made the strike, gotten out. Hell, Bennie wouldn’t have let him get in this deep this time, if he hadn’t been over his head lots of other times.
“Fuck you, Taylor,” he’d heard Bennie say, more than once, as Taylor paid off a loan in full, the vig, everything. “I was looking forward to breaking your legs.”
Well, since Bennie got his rush from that (Bennie never gambled, except on people like Taylor, and his odds were always good because he was the one who set them, take it or leave it and everyone took it), he was probably bubbling over right now. Quivering at the thought of his people, his people out here, sauntering up to Taylor. Late tonight, early tomorrow, whenever it was he played his last few bucks. One standing in front, one standing behind. The short drive to the airport, the long flight home. Or would Bennie come out here, while the people waited with Taylor in some too-cold hotel room? Would they all play cards while they waited? That was funny. No, it wasn’t. Yes. It was.
The Trop, Taylor suddenly decided, cutting the wheel, sliding left through the intersection in a screaming of horns. Oh, come on, he said (out loud, this time he was sure), aren’t your hearts beating faster? You stomped on the brakes, got that charge up your spine, come on, it was good. You know it was.
He flipped his keys to the valet parking kid, lifted his overnight bag out of the trunk. Like he was going to sleep. Like he’d even take a room. But they don’t let you on planes anymore without luggage. Not like the old days when you could come out here with nothing but your wallet. He had, once or twice: come out and played all weekend. (Yes, he hated it here. But when your luck was bad, say at Atlantic City, you had to change something.) Coke to keep him up and sharp, scotch to keep him steady, played all weekend and flew home on the Sunday redeye, off the plane, do another line and straight to the office. That was when he still had the job. When he still thought itwas his fault he and Vegas didn’t get along, thought he should keep trying. Yes, the Tropicana: makeover after makeover, but still the old Vegas. Like an old girl getting her cheeks tightened, her lips plumped, her wrinkles Botoxed until she looked like a horror movie version of her same old self. Taylor had a soft spot for girls like that, and one for the Trop.
Inside. Instantly, lights blinking, bells ringing, turquoise and neon, and goddamn, goddamn if his heart wasn’t racing. His cheeks were flushed, he could feel it, the backs of his hands tingled. Like high school, like walking the endless but too-short corridor to where the clump of giggling girls pretended to ignore your approach, all of them wondering what you were wondering: Did you have the balls to ask Amy Gold if she wanted to go to the dance on Saturday night? Nobody knowing whether you’d do it until you stopped in front of her, gave her that hey-by-the-way-and-I-really-don’t-give-a-shit smile and out came the words and everyone heard them.
Yeah, okay, so he didn’t like Vegas but it made his heart race. Amy Gold turned out to be not such a prize, either. Nothing like Lily, nothing like her slow smile that could slow his heart to match it, make him feel like he’d suddenly dropped anchor in a cove on a fog-bound coast. Like everything else was gone, everything, only silence to hear and gray velvet to see and a soft long rocking the only thing to feel. Like it was all decided, no outcomes, decisions, scores, high hands, rolls of the dice or spins of the wheel left, nothing to choose, hope, hedge, yell, cheer, pray to Jesus or curse the devil for. Lily the only thing ever able to make him hate the rush, because it burned off the fog, shattered the silence and churned up the sea.
And Lily was gone and he was in Vegas and Bennie was back in New York, with people out here, counting the hours.
He found the cashier’s cage, took the whole $50,000, everything he had, and changed it all. Saved two twenties in case he wanted a sandwich, a steak. Drinks were still free, and he wasn’t going to be here long enough to want anything else.
Quarter slots by the door, fifty cents and five dollars as you went deeper. He went deeper. Past all that. Found the craps tables. It’s what he’d decided.
He’d thought about poker. There had to be a high-stakes game; he could find it. But hell. What were you saying whenyou did that? That you could control it. Not the desire, the need, the adrenaline jones: no one thought that. (Well, yes they did, if they still knew how to lie to themselves. But not Taylor.) But control the outcome. If you were smart and cagey, concentrated and focused, you could win Bennie’s money back; if you did, it was because you were good, if you didn’t you’d screwed up. But you know? That was bull.
Or maybe it wasn’t bull. But it wasn’t the point. Not now.
Control.
Oh, sure.
Taylor had been out of control since junior high, when he started taking the other kids’ action on the football team, on the girls’ track team, on whether Mr. Grady would wear the pink tie the third day running. He didn’t remember what it was like to be in control. He knew what it was like to think you were, but he was past that now.
But maybe not quite. Really past that, ready to throw it all in the laps of the gods, you played roulette. Roulette had no odds. On an honest wheel (the Trop’s was straight) any number, either color was as likely to come up. People played this and they hedged that but really, it was silly.