They were nowhere in that crowd, or any crowd he searched on his second day of being in Las Vegas. He was embarrassed to seem so serious and sad as he walked among the shouting, laughing people on the sidewalks and in hotel lobbies. He looked everywhere, the hunt made him sadder. His only satisfaction was that he saw no one who even remotely resembled them in the whole riotous city. The trouble was, by lingering as he did, and looking uncertain, he was pestered by hookers, who seemed to understand that here was a lonely man with a hole in his life.
Am in town for some meetings — just thought I’d stop by, he practiced to himself, trying to strike the most casual tone in the note he eventually wrote and left at the front desk of the California Hotel. Then he went and hid in his room.
Rita called that night.
In the lobby of the California he was approached by a dark woman in a green dress. Her tight pulled-back hair gave her foreign face a gleaming largeness and a fierce beetling confidence. She said, “How’s it?” and he stepped back. Even after he sized her up he did not recognize her. Then another, smaller woman appeared, with the same hair, the same peering face, and tapped the first one on the shoulder. Now both women were smiling, so Wevill smiled uncertainly back at them — he did not have a clue — and his anxious suspicion was that they were both hookers, not soliciting sex but working a scam whereby one bimbo would hold his attention while the other picked his pocket.
“So how long you been here?”
The first woman was still smiling in the familiar way of a con artist.
“He don’t get it,” the other said.
And he almost objected — Excuse me, I’m here to meet some people — when he realized it was them.
They were much taller in their stiletto heels, and they were darker but in the same towering and stylish way — almost as tall as him. Their new dresses gave them bosoms and cleavage. Their legs were long and in flesh-toned tights seemed bare. He had never seen their legs, for they had always worn sweatpants and slippers. No baggy clothes here, not disheveled at all. Their hair was perfect, they wore makeup, mascara, red lips, nail polish. He was still stepping backward when he saw who they were.
“Sorry!”
He was dreadfully embarrassed and off balance, with an odd toppling sense of being in the wrong.
The Hawaiian housecleaners looked poised and prosperous in the lobby of their Las Vegas hotel. They looked prettier and better dressed than the other women there, more self-possessed.
“For a minute there, I didn’t…”
Didn’t know what to say, for though he now knew they were Rita and Nina, now that the two women were the same height, he was not sure which was which.
He was still backing up, gabbling, trying to cover his embarrassment. He said, “I made a dinner reservation at my hotel.”
“You’re staying which place?”
“MGM Grand. It's very nice. Excellent kitchen.”
One of the women laughed and the other said, “She wants ribs.”
He was lost again. Hadn’t she heard “I made a dinner reservation”? It was the height of bad manners, he was thinking, and then realized how glad he was to see them. But he was thrown by the awkwardness of the meeting, and put off by the way they were dressed — intimidated as much by their stylishness as their sense of being so at home here.
“There’s this place — Tony Roma’s. Famous for ribs.”
He had no idea; but this woman’s voice was Rita’s. He glanced at the other woman and recognized Nina by her eyes and her smile.
“Three for dinner,” Rita was saying into her cell phone. “Ten, fifteen minutes. Under ‘Nelson.’”
This Filipino-Chinese haole’s name was Nelson?
The restaurant was a block away. Wevill felt small and conspicuous as they walked, some passersby staring at them, seeing the gray-haired man with the two young dressed-up women. But in the restaurant he felt like King Farouk — other diners glanced as they made their way among the tables, following the waiter.
“Mom’s bummed ’cause I’m wearing her dress.”
They wore each other’s clothes. That he found sexy, as though they were sisters and equals, not mother and daughter.
“You look like sisters.”
“Now Rita’s bummed, you saying that.”
“Nina is so bummed!”
But their calling each other by first names also proved what he meant. Wevill was holding the menu. He said, speaking carefully, “Is it baby-back ribs or baby back-ribs?”
They stared at him and Nina seemed to mouth the word “whatever” as the waiter appeared.
“Offer you cocktails before dinner?”
Rita said, “Vodka tonic. Straight up. You got Absolut?”
“Bailey’s Irish Cream,” Nina said.
Wevill was startled by their promptness. He said, “Beer for me.”
Stumped for something to say, Wevill studied his menu until the drinks came.
“We’re ready to order,” Nina said to the waiter.
“The ribs here, like, melt in your mouth,” Rita said to Wevill, as though hurrying him. He took the hint and ordered ribs, as the women did.
The food was brought within minutes. Everything happened quickly here, speed was a feature of the place, even the way people gambled seemed speedy, jamming coins into the machines, plopping chips on the grid of the roulette felt, dealing and snapping cards, the whole loud overbright town like the lurid midway of a carnival.
The women were chewing the meat — Wevill took pleasure in the way they gnawed the bones; but he could not eat, he was too nervous, he felt like a child, a sick patient with two inattentive nurses. He was in their hands. He was astonished at their confidence.
“Like Ma says, they melt in your mouth,” Nina said.
“I don’t know why I just thought of this,” Wevill said, “but back in the days when I was seeing a shrink — my wife suggested it, first wife — I saw him four times a week. One day I was at a movie. It was The Godfather. I saw my shrink at the counter buying popcorn. It was very awkward. I mean, seeing my doctor at this movie. He pretended not to recognize me — and he looked different, too. He just walked past me.”
“Al Pacino looked like a little kid in that movie,” Rita said.
“I always put mochi crunch in my popcorn,” Nina said.
“It just came to me, that thought,” Wevill said. His mouth was dry with throat strain from a sorrow that ached like unslaked thirst. “Not important.”
Meat flecks on their glistening lips, chew marks on the animal ribs in their hands, the two women ate, smiling as they swallowed, their breasts brushing their plates of meat and bones.
“So how’s the gambling?” Wevill asked.
“It ain’t real gambling,” Rita said. “It’s just gaming, like a game, mostly just slots. Just feed the slots.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Wevill loved the juicy way she said the word “slots,” then he muttered the word himself and was slightly disgusted by it.
“You win, though?”
“My machines are junk. Not coming across,” Rita said.
Nina said, “One wahine from Waipahu won big in slots.”
She seemed to imply that this woman’s win made their chances slimmer.
“You got special machines?”
Nina had finished her ribs and picked up the small dessert menu on the table. “They got this pie with Oreo cookie cruss that is so ono.”
Meanwhile, Rita was answering Wevill’s question, explaining to him, as perhaps she had once explained to her daughter, that you first played a lot of machines, then narrowed your choice to the luckier ones that paid out, and played those, feeding quarters, two machines at a time.