“Thanks,” Howard said, shoving his hands into his pockets.
Glory stepped up to them, lowering her arms, and then she suddenly hugged them both at the same time, much to their astonishment and embarrassment. “Good-bye,” she said. “Say hello to your friend Smith for me when you get to California and tell him that I loved ‘The Litany of the Seven Kisses.’ I think it’s the best poem he ever wrote.”
Lovecraft pretended to straighten his already too-wrinkled suit. “Ah-I will gladly pass along your compliments to our dear friend, although I believe ‘The Hashish Eater’ to be his finest achievement myself.”
Glory smiled at Lovecraft’s maddening habit of always having to have the last word. As she walked away from the two men she turned. “Never thought I’d say this, but I’m thinking I might actually miss you, HP.” She gave a tiny wave and went on her way.
Lovecraft was puzzled but secretly flattered; he turned to Howard to say something, clearly unable to hide the pleasure on his face.
“Now what the hell does that mean?” said Howard. “‘I think I might actually miss you, HP.’” He did a coy imitation of Glory’s voice. “There somethin’ you ain’t tellin’ me?”
“Not a thing,” Lovecraft replied. “Not a thing.”
IN THE SHADOWED corner booth across the large game room, two dark figures sat watching. It appeared that they were playing five-card draw, but it was either a laughable imitation or some perverse variation of their own making. The men held their five-card hands splayed out, faces directed at the other player. They did not draw from the pile in front of them, and they did not discard. At first glance they seemed merely to be showing each other their hands, holding the cards still as if the other had difficulty reading them; but on closer examination one would have seen subtle changes-the red ink on the two of hearts bleeding into a six of diamonds, the face of a one-eyed jack contorting into that of a suicide king. To fix your gaze on a single card would have been like trying to hold down a bead of quicksilver under a finger only to have it scatter and re-form elsewhere. What the shadow men played at was a test of wills, each holding his hand while trying to change his opponent’s into something inferior, and when they were done they scattered the rectangular cuts of paper across the tabletop, entirely blank.
THE CHEVY CLANKED and clattered especially loudly as if it were on its proverbial last legs, and Howard could have sworn he felt potholes in the immaculately paved Vegas street. At the garage he ordered the cracked windshield and suspension to be repaired, slipping the elderly mechanic an extra five to have it done by nightfall instead of having to wait overnight.
“I can give you a deal on some new paint,” the mechanic said, running his fingers over a patch that had been sandblasted in the storm.
“I ain’t concerned about the looks of her,” said Howard. “She can look like a nag as long as she runs like a mustang.”
“There’s fine-looking mustangs and there’s ugly ones, if you know what I mean.”
“Look, I don’t need no paint, old-timer.” Howard walked back to the car and told Lovecraft they should split up while he took care of some business.
“What business would you have in Las Vegas?” Lovecraft asked, rather puzzled.
“Man like me’s got business in lotsa places, HP. Why don’t ya take in the scenery and we can meet later at that restaurant down the street. You remember what it was called?”
“The Grand Gallery? It hardly seems auspicious to dine at a place named for a tomb.”
“What?”
“A certain interior feature of the Great Pyramid is called ‘The Grand Gallery’.”
“Well, what do I care? It ain’t like we’re gonna get beaned by some fallin’ bricks, right?”
“I suppose not. Very well, I shall meet you there, although I find this business of yours highly unlikely.”
“You go on and think whatever ya like. Two hours. Just don’t be late, hear?”
“I understand.” Lovecraft stood for a moment and looked around, scanning north to south and east to west as if getting his bearings. He really had no place in mind, but the thought of wandering through this just-established town had a certain appeal. He gave Howard a nod and headed up the street toward what seemed to e the denser part of town.
Lovecraft found himself oddly out of sorts as he walked along the streets. He didn’t understand what it was at first-he enjoyed wandering through towns and cities without any real destination—but then he realized that it was a sense of unrealness he felt. The buildings were all new, so freshly constructed that they seemed almost to have sharp edges, and the streets were all too wide and too orderly, the paved streets too neat and clean. Under the big sky with nothing on the near horizon, the buildings seemed two-dimensional. He wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that they were mere facades like those Hollywood towns propped up on wood braces with nothing more than empty lots behind them.
On one of the side streets he found a low stucco building that announced itself as the public library. Inside, he found it impossibly dim until his eyes adjusted, and then he was disappointed to see how pitifully inadequate it was. He had seen reading rooms better stocked. For a moment he entertained the notion of staying and browsing through their selection of magazines, but when he saw their pathetic selection he approached the librarian’s counter. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but might you have a title called Weird Tales among your periodicals?”
The librarian was in the back room, and when she emerged, Lovecraft immediately knew the answer. She had her spectacles dangling from a chain around her neck, and if it weren’t for the heat, she would surely have worn a cardigan sweater with index cards protruding from the pockets. “Weird Tales?” she said. “I can assure you we carry only wholesome periodicals, sir. You’ll have to check the tobacco shop for that.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Lovecraft. “But if you would bother to look beyond the covers of that journal, you would find some fine examples of popular writing.”
“I beg your pardon,” replied the woman.
“And are these all your books? Or perhaps I’ve stumbled unwittingly across the Las Vegas branch library?”
The woman gave a wry smile at this. “This is Las Vegas, sir. Strangers don’t usually come here searching for reading material. Unless maybe they’ve lost all their money and are waiting for their companions to do the same.”
Lovecraft left with a terse “good day” and walked out again into the red glare of the early-evening sun. A steady wind blew from the east it would have been cold blowing so hard if not for the desert heat it carried. All along the eastward horizon, from one end to the other, a vast pall of ominous clouds hung so low the sky underneath was no more than a ribbon. Jags of lightning flashed in the distance, and yet no sound carried in the quiet roar of the wind. Lovecraft turned west to put his back to the wind; he wandered, meandering through the still-forming idea of a town until the first neon signs lit up the semidarkness, and then he walked back to the Grand Gallery. By then the wind was strong enough to carry an abrasive cloud of Nevada sand, and as Lovecraft squinted to keep it from his eyes and hunched his shoulders to keep it from his neck, he remembered how, years ago, he had dreamed of visiting the great Giza pyramids across the Nile from the ancient city of Cairo.
At the restaurant, the waitress placed Lovecraft by a window away from the other tables. He sat there, fiddling with his pen, trying to get ink out of its recalcitrant tip. He shook it vigorously, and tapped it, and nearly dug through three layers of paper with its clogged point, but all he got was a few blackish clots. “Confounded pen!” he exclaimed before he suddenly realized that the clots were dried animal blood from their siege in the desert. He had just given up on the idea of writing when Howard appeared over him, laughing at his misfortune much to his annoyance.