To enter The Wishbone Inn, you had to walk under a giant, fiberglass wishbone wrapped in shamrocks and horseshoes. Once through, you found yourself confronted by the hostess stand and a card table holding a crucified Christ. There was something very wrong about this Christ, though. It took a moment for me to see exactly how wrong it was. For one, he was reclining on what was probably a sheet cake. For another, Christ’s loin cloth was a perky aqua blue, his skin tangerine, and his hair banana yellow. Upon close inspection, I could see that it had something to do with his being made from Fruit Loops. Christ, the green cross and the purple bunnies at his feet were all crafted from cereal. Someone was trying to make Easter as festive as Christmas.
It wasn’t working.
“Golly,” Leon said. “I never knew there were rabbits in Jerusalem. Go figure.”
A hostess came up to the stand, saw us, and said, “Good morning, are you here for breakfast?” She looked well past retirement and I was tempted to apologize for whatever predicament had led to her seating people at an early morning breakfast buffet.
“There are six of us,” I said.
“I think your friends are already here.”
She grabbed a couple of enormous menus and led us into the dining room. Marc, Louis, Tina and Aunt Katie sat at a large table just a few feet from the buffet. As we took our seats, the hostess put the menus in front of us, saying, “You can order off the menu or choose the buffet. Most people choose the buffet. It was voted best buffet under five dollars in 1989.” Her tone suggested how dubious that distinction really was.
She walked away. I took a quick glance at the menu. I didn’t want the buffet. My appetite had faded again and, in general, I was eating very little. It seemed a waste to get unlimited helpings. But then, running down the price column on the menu, I quickly saw that almost everything else cost more than the buffet. I decided to have the buffet.
Our waitress was a woman named Fernie, who was in her early fifties and wore a Farrah Fawcett wig. She poured us coffee and said we could go over to the buffet any time we wanted—she didn’t bother to ask if we’d like to order from the menu. She must have looked at the prices, too.
Tina was telling Aunt Katie more about her job, while Aunt Katie kept saying, “That’s sounds like so much fun.” I wasn’t sure where she was getting that idea, Tina had always described the job as very stressful. She and her co-workers were always rushing to take credit for any successes, while spending even more time attempting to avoid blame for their frequent failures. I found it a wonder anyone in this country got entertained.
Before any of us made a move toward the buffet, Marc took the camcorder off the seat next to him and said, “We should all record congratulations to the bride and groom.”
“Oh my God, no!” It slipped out before I really thought about it. Was it better to just do it and get it over with? Or should I continue resisting, hoping it would just go away eventually?
“Maybe we should do it later on,” Louis said. “After we’ve all had a little rest.”
“But…” Marc said. He obviously was excited to get started, but as he looked at us sitting around the table he might have realized we were looking the worse for wear.
“Let’s hit the buffet,” Louis suggested.
I followed my friends over to the buffet and helped myself to a couple slices of bacon, a waffle, a spoonful of scrambled eggs (they had eggs Benedict, but the Hollandaise looked like Play-Doh). A sullen looking chef at one end stood ready to make you an omelet. An omelet seemed like a lot of food—plus the chef’s fingers were tattooed. Something about that made them seem unclean. Illogical, I know, but I had a stomach that turned at the most random things.
I picked up a cinnamon bun, put it on my plate, and then nearly gagged staring at a metal tub of sausage gravy. I decided I had enough food. Honestly, more than I could eat.
When I sat back down at the table, I noticed everyone else had managed to get twice as much food as I had and filled their plates twice as fast.
“So,” Louis asked, “what’s our itinerary?”
“Sleep,” Marc said. Which made sense since Louis wouldn’t let him film any of us until we got some rest.
“Sleep from seven to twelve-thirty,” Louis clarified. “Angie and Cotton are arriving at one o’clock.”
“Does anyone know when Cotton’s daughters get here?” Tina asked. I think she was looking forward to some female company around her own age.
“I think at least one of them is already here,” Aunt Katie said. “They’re at the other end of the hallway. I heard some activity down there last night.”
“I want to see the Liberace Museum,” Leon said. “It’s in a strip mall.”
“That sounds awful,” I said.
“I know, right?”
“We can do that tomorrow morning,” Louis said. “Your mother and Cotton are probably going to need lunch when they get here.”
“Won’t they have had lunch on the plane?” Aunt Katie asked. “It’s two hours earlier back East.”
“Three,” Leon corrected. “Three hours later.”
“Really? I always get that confused. So, dinner?” Aunt Katie asked. “They’ll have had dinner on the plane?”
“No, they’re arriving at four, Eastern time. Too early for dinner. If anything, they had lunch.”
“I need to call home and check on Thurgood,” Tina said. Thurgood was her black cat who had always seemed completely and totally self-sufficient. Then she asked, “Will your mother be crushed if I don’t come to the airport?”
“Actually,” Louis said, “I don’t think you can. The car only seats five and I have to go since I’m driving. Noah should go since she’s his mother, and then Angie and Cotton will take up two seats. There’s only room for one more person.”
“Oh, I’d like to go,” Aunt Katie said.
“Sold. That means the rest of you are on your own this afternoon.”
“But wait, shouldn’t I be there with the camera to film them getting off the plane?” Marc asked.
“Too late. It’s decided.”
“Fine. I’ll show you how to use the camcorder. You can film them getting off the plane.”
“I should call Robert,” Tina said. “Do we know where we’re having dinner? I could tell him to join us.”
“I imagine that’s up to the happy couple.”
“What night are we going to see Wilma Wanderly’s show?” Tina asked.
“Tomorrow night, after the rehearsal dinner,” Leon said.
What appetite I had disappeared. My mother getting married to a mob lawyer, and Wilma Wanderly—this trip was a nightmare.
“Have you been able to get your mother to say where they’re honeymooning?” Aunt Katie asked me.
“No.”
“We offered to take them back to the airport, but she won’t even tell us when the flight is, or what airline,” Louis said. “It’s all very cloak and dagger.”
And then people began talking about all the things they wanted to do while we were here. Louis wanted to go down to The Four Queens—just us boys—for a photo under the entrance sign or possibly a short video. Leon wanted to go to the car museum at Imperial Palace, they had Al Capone’s car and a little coupe that Hitler’s girlfriend used to drive. Tina wanted to lay out by the pool since it was supposed to be in the eighties.
Aunt Katie just wanted to spend time with my mother—and me. Which made me feel strange. I’d barely heard her mentioned in the last twenty years. I felt like she was overplaying the ‘old friend’ card. I was beginning to think her being there was not a good omen.
Actually, I was beginning to think there weren’t many good omens at all. If any.
3
I slept. Sort of. The flu I’d had was over, but I still had a bad cough. I was tired of sleeping flat on my back with my head raised on two pillows, so that morning I tried curling up into a ball, but that just led to a long coughing jag. I went back to the tried and true, waking up with a stiff
neck about an hour before I was supposed to meet Louis and Aunt Katie in the lobby. I got out of bed and took a quick shower, careful not to get my hair wet. I’d decided to leave washing it for another day—shampoo only made it more unmanageable.
After I dried off, I dug around in the drawer and found a pair of Calvins, a black T-Shirt with the Batman logo emblazoned on the front, and a pair of neatly hemmed knee length faded jean shorts. I put a Minty baseball cap over my hair and stepped into a pair of worn gray Vans. I was ready.
Leon was not in the suite. He’d decided to stay downstairs, saying, “I’m not going to be able to get any sleep at all. It’s the extra oxygen. They pump it in through the air conditioning.”
“Seriously?” I’d asked, a bit appalled. “Louis already explained that would cost millions of dollars every year. They don’t do that.”
“Oh, what does he know.”
“He works at a hospital.”
“In computers.”
I was too tired to continue the argument, so I’d come upstairs and attempted to sleep—with the already mentioned disappointing results.
Since I had the time, I decided to go down and stroll around the hotel just to get a sense of where everything was. The elevator dropped me off on the first floor. There were no guest rooms on that floor, just a long hallway lined with boutiques, including Lady Luck and The Talisman, giftshops and coffeeshops that eventually led you into the casino. The registration desk was near the front entrance. It, too, fed people into the casino. I was beginning to sense a theme. Or a strategy. Or a plot.
The casino itself was madness. Row upon row of slot machines, two dozen blackjack tables, a couple of bars—each with video poker screens sunk into them in front of each stool. I imagined if you sat there it would feel rude not to play.
About halfway through the casino, a small flight of stairs led to a set of double doors. That was the Kismet Room. To one side of the stairs sat an easel, holding two large photos side by side. One photo—very airbrushed—was a fey looking guy in his late forties; the other photo—equally airbrushed—was the same guy in a wig and sequins. Well, I assumed it was the same guy. The second photo looked enough like a woman—a scantily clad woman—to make you wonder. When I’d seen the sign outside, it hadn’t occurred to me that Les Femmes was a drag show. Or, more accurately, a female impersonator show. I mean, Gary Glenn was that good.
Suddenly, I felt a warm hand on my arm. I spun around and found myself looking into a pair of bloodshot blue eyes. They belonged to a woman around my mother’s age. Her hair was maraschino cherry red, and her skin pale and crapy. She wore a dingy cardigan that was gray now but hadn’t started out that color.
“Don’t let it happen,” she said, her breath was ninety proof.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t let it happen.”
“Don’t let what happen? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do. You know.”
And then she scurried away. I let her. I mean, she was obviously some homeless, disturbed person wandering around the casino. That shouldn’t be at all surprising, I thought. She was attracted by the bright lights and the captive audience. I shouldn’t give it another thought. And for a while, I didn’t. I continued wandering around.
On the other side of the casino, there was a place called The Horseshoe Grill, which looked like a steak and potato joint. And then, at the far end of the casino, was Fortune Forum. Three sets of double doors decorated with life-sized photos of Wilma Wanderly—actually, larger than life-sized, as she was a small woman—at various stages during her career. Tucked in a corner was a counter where customized Wilma Wanderly merchandise was sold: souvenir booklets, baseball caps, lapel pins, T-shirts, pens, signed photographs, backpacks like the ones we’d been given. The cut Wilma got on these items probably made the whole thing worthwhile.
On either side of the doors were plexiglass cases filled with costumes from Wilma’s films, including the stunning blue dresses—one much smaller than the other—that she and Dorothy Caine wore in The Girl From Albany.
In person, the display seemed so much smaller and shabbier than I’d imagined when I first heard Wilma wanted the shimmering blue dresses for the lobby outside her Las Vegas comeback.
Just then, someone came up behind me and said, “There you are.”
I jumped.
“Jesus, what are you so afraid of?”
I turned around to find Leon standing there. He was disheveled; his bleached blond hair askew, his eyes red-rimmed, his dress shirt wrinkled and hanging out of his jeans.
“I’m not afraid,” I lied.
“Yeah, whatever.”
To change the subject, I nodded at the dresses. “Three people died so those dresses could be here. Isn’t that sad?”
“Oh, yes. Sad. Very. Can I have your chips?”
“What? My chips? No.”
In the end, Wilma had bought the dress from me and I still had a lot of the money. But it was sitting in a money market so I could afford health insurance. Not what you’d call liquid. I had every intention of cashing in my chips and banking the money to make up for the extra expenses I’d incurred having the flu for a month.
“Why not?” Leon asked. “You said they weren’t really money.”
“But you said they were.”
“I’ve changed my mind. The chips aren’t real money. Can I have yours?”
“No. Did you lose yours already?”
“I’m down six hundred at roulette. I figure I’ll get it back on the slots.”
Why he thought that made sense I had no idea.
“Okay, but you only got five hundred in chips. So you’re losing your own money now?”
“That’s why I want your chips.”
“You need to stop.”
“But we’re going to be here four more days.”
“All the more reason to stop.”
“Fine. I’ll ask Tina to give me hers,” he said, and stormed off. I took a final look around at the tarnished images of Wilma Wanderly’s career, and then broke out in another coughing fit. I took a Ricola out of my jeans pocket and began to suck on it.
Louis and Aunt Katie were chatting in the lobby in front of the registration desk when I found them. They already looked like old friends.
“You’re late,” Aunt Katie said, as though she were my babysitter.
“Actually, I was early, so I took a look around.”
“What do you think?” Louis asked.
“It’s a little cheesy.” It was a lot cheesy. “This homeless woman said the weirdest—”
“If you think this is cheesy, you should go down to Freemont Street,” Aunt Katie said.
“I’m dying to go down there,” Louis said. “I want to see the really old casinos: The Golden Nugget, The Four Queens, The Horseshoe.”
“Those places are super cheesy,” Aunt Katie said.
“Yes, but I like my cheese served with a side of history.” Louis said, then raised an eyebrow. “Shall we?”
I almost brought up the homeless woman again, but for some reason the fact that I hadn’t taken my AZT popped into my head. I did that a lot—forgetting my pill—so I carried one around wrapped in a bit of paper towel and tucked into my wallet. Now I just needed to take it.
“I need to take a pill,” I said to Louis. “Do you see a water fountain?”
“There’s Evian in the car.”
“Still?” I was sure we’d drunk it all on the drive over.
“In the trunk,” he said. I couldn’t believe there’d been room for anything in the trunk other than our luggage.
“What pill?” Aunt Katie asked.
“Noah has a thing about vitamins.” Louis rolled his eyes to help sell the lie. I hadn’t originally wanted to tell him I was on AZT. Actually, I don’t think I ever did tell him I was on AZT, he just figured it out. And he never really said anything about it, though occasionally he’d ask if I’d taken my pill. That was it.
“Well, everyone should take care of their health,” Aunt Katie said. She was trying to sound maternal, but it didn’t come naturally.
As we walked out of the casino to wait for the valet to get Marc’s Infiniti, I asked, “Do you have any kids, Aunt Katie?”
“No. Faulty plumbing. Just as well though. I can’t stand the vicious little beasts.”
I wondered if she might have felt differently if her plumbing had worked. And then I wondered if that had something to do with her falling out with my mother.
“Married?” Louis asked.
“Twice. Husbands are worse than children.”
“When did you leave Grand Rapids?” I asked.
She didn’t answer though because the valet pulled the car up and we had a short tug of war over who would sit in the front—or rather in the back, since we were both trying to do the other a kindness. I lost, so Aunt Katie ended up in the backseat.
Louis got me a water from the trunk and tipped the valet—apparently, they didn’t know we were VIPs whose money they shouldn’t take. After he climbed in, he handed me the Evian and I took my pill.
Then, as we pulled out into traffic, Aunt Katie said, “I left Grand Rapids in the mid-sixties. With a man, of course; my first husband. We moved north, practically to the UP. Very remote. I got a bad case of cabin fever and nearly stabbed him, so I had to decide between divorce or prison—I knew I’d stab him someday if I stuck around. So, I divorced him.”
“That was probably wise,” Louis said.
“That put me back in Grand Rapids for a bit.” She seemed wistful and dreamy for a moment, then continued, “Anyway, I moved to a place called Lake Ann and had a brief sapphic period. The area was crawling with lesbians.” She shrugged and said, “When in Rome.”
Maybe this was around the time her pictures came down. Not that my parents were particularly homophobic, but it was the early seventies, so I decided to cut them some slack if they did indeed drop Aunt Katie due to her side trip to Lesbiana. It was all in the past, after all.
“After that I ran away to catch what I could of the Summer of Love in California—it had apparently been over for years, so by the late seventies I was a housewife in Orange County. That lasted for a bit until I ran away with my neighbor’s husband to the wilds of Montana. The less said about that the better. I’ve been single ever since.”
Cash Out Page 3
