by Joy Preble
Money. So much money!
“Max!” He’s gawking at the machine, but when I say his name, he grabs my hand and squeezes, then lets go and jumps up and down like he’s on one of those game shows. I try to look happy for him and fail.
The machine keeps dinging. The dollars keep rolling.
“Yes!” Max shouts over the clanging, pumping his fist in the air. “I can’t believe this!”
A tired-looking cocktail waitress saunters over. She looks Max up and down, studying him for a few long beats. “Show me your ID,” she says, not in a French accent.
“I’m not ordering a drink,” Max tells her. The Double Diamond machine continues to clang like an out-of-control fire engine. Max stands up straighter, but she’s wearing four-inch heels, so they’re still eye to eye.
“ID,” Cocktail Waitress says again, louder this time.
Max digs his wallet from his pocket. Fishes out his ID. Double Diamond clangs and bangs.
I stare at the flashing numbers on the top of the slot machine. Fifteen hundred dollars.
Fifteen hundred dollars! Not as much as I have saved in my secret closet hiding spot, but still. Not bad.
In the perfect world, the tired-looking cocktail waitress would look at Max’s fake ID and accept without further argument that he was indeed twenty-something Max from Bozeman, Montana. She would hand Max the payout ticket. Paris would appear in the lobby, having tired of secretly riding the monorail back and forth to the MGM, and we would all laugh at the funny evening we’d been having. And Max would cut me in for half since he wouldn’t have been there had it not been for me.
Instead, security appears.
“You’re underage, sir,” says the tallest of the beefy security guards, the one with an unattractive comb-over. “You need to leave. If you don’t leave, we will call the cops.”
“Aw, c’mon,” Max says.
“Get the hell out, sir.” Comb-Over Guy’s eyes go squinty, like he’s only just realized I’m standing there, clearly even more underage than the boy with the fake ID—which he promptly confiscates.
“We’re looking for my sister,” I tell him primly.
Comb-Over peers down his nose at me. “By playing slots?”
He has a point.
We are escorted through Le Lobby, past Le Reception, out to Le Exit, and instructed that if we choose to pull this again, we will be permanently banned for life from Paris.
“The hotel?” I ask, not under my breath.
And then we’re out on the street, and we’re both laughing because there is something perfect about being banned for life from Paris, which at this moment is absolutely fine with me.
Max shoves a hand through his already messy dark hair. “Sorry,” he says, but his eyes are still bright from the jackpot.
I know I should thank him for at least trying. For taking me here and at least pretending to care. But it all seems a waste now and I bite back the annoyance that’s rising.
I don’t always take my mother’s advice these days, but one thing she says cannot be denied: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Cute boys do not drop from the sky into the Heartbreak Hotel Diner precisely when you need them to solve the mystery of your crazy sister.
“We have to go back inside,” I say, knowing we can’t, and suddenly it’s not funny anymore. “Shit.”
“Leo,” Max says gently. “She’s not in there. It’s okay. You’ll figure it out.”
But he says “you” and not “we” and somehow this disappoints me even though, what did I expect?
I turn to go back to the truck, but Max’s warm hand rests on my shoulder. “Slow down, Leo,” he says, using my name that way for the second time tonight. “Don’t worry.” Hand still on my shoulder—which I’m not sure I like but don’t brush away—he nudges me to the left. “Over here,” he says. “I just want to stop and savor the moment, okay? You don’t win a jackpot you can’t keep every night, you know.”
I want to keep moving, but he sounds so sincere that I follow him to the outside leg of the fake Eiffel Tower—right past the entrance to Eiffel Tower Wine and Spirits. He leans against the low cement wall and so do I, feeling suddenly like I might cry, which I am not doing.
When a minute passes and then another and Max is still basking in his non-win, I slide down and flop to the sidewalk. Might as well sit until he realizes that this is a lost cause.
I’m surprised when he folds his long legs to sit next to me. He looks oddly relaxed, casual even, like we do this all the time.
It’s almost morning.
Paris is still missing.
Max cuts his eyes to me. I look away. This has been a bad idea all around.
But right now it is still preferable to going home.
And then Max shouts, “Hey!” leaning across me, his face very close.
“Look,” he says, his warm breath tickling my skin. I smell lemons still. And cotton. And boy. He leans almost against my shoulder, pointing to the right.
Even though I tell it not to, my heart is pounding from his nearness.
“Get up,” Max says, pulling at my arm. His voice is kind, but I yelp, “Don’t,” and shove him away. He drops my arm like it’s on fire.
“I just . . . Sorry.” He blushes in a way that makes me think that maybe he is. He points over my shoulder again. “Look,” he repeats as I swivel, and he pats his hand on the cement under the Eiffel Tower leg.
My breath quickens.
Silver marker.
Silver marker!
“Does your sister have a thing for legs?” Max quips, but I ignore him, reading the tiny, precise silver Sharpie printing that can only be my sister’s.
My heart drums against my rib cage.
You made it, she’s written.
And a Hello Kitty Band-Aid—how did I not notice it?—taped over another intricately folded piece of paper.
I pull the note free and carefully unfold it, my pulse like rocket fuel in my veins.
You’re a Big Shot, little sister. You have to be if you’ve made it this far. Keep going, Leo. Find me. Hurry.
xoxoParis
My heart pounds so hard my ribs hurt. It’s Paris’s handwriting. I’m positive. She’s got to be close. Like somehow watching me, maybe.
I think I should be furious, but instead something loosens in my chest. It’s just a goofy joke then. She’s not actually in trouble.
I dash to the curb, Max following, his boots tapping hard on the pavement. At Las Vegas Boulevard, I squint in the hazy dawn light for our Mazda, half expecting Paris to drive by the Bellagio, waving at us and laughing.
But she doesn’t. When did she put this here? Wouldn’t someone else have seen it by now or bumped it or moved it or whatever? Everything inside me feels jittery and dislodged, like waves rolling. Is this still a game? If not, then what?
“Big Shot?” Max says now, snapping me back to him and the note and the ever-growing mystery that is my sister. “Does she call you Big Shot?”
“No,” I tell him.
“You gotta go on it,” says a woman’s voice from a few feet away.
Max and I turn, the note still in both our hands, tethering us together.
It’s the lady in the white capris and the Doberman T-shirt. She’s practically next to us, standing not far from the Most Romantic View of Las Vegas sign. Has she been out here the whole time? Is that possible? Where’s the guy she was yelling at?
“You’re talking about the ride, right?” she says, strolling over like we’re the best of friends. “The Big Shot. Shoots you up over Vegas. I’d do it again, but my Murray just bankrupted us at the craps table.”
“Big Shot?” I take the note from Max and feel better when it’s in my hands.
“Top of the Stratosphere,” says Doberman lady. “Scares the shit out of you. But in a good way, you know?”
“Leo,” Max says, eyes on me.
“I know,” I tell him, and this time I smile before he does.
“You’re a genius,” Max tells Doberman lady.
Then we’re sprinting toward the truck, Max and me. I look back, briefly, at the cement block with my sister’s writing on it. There is something unsettling in leaving it there—like a private part of us lying naked to the world.
The sky’s getting lighter and the neon lights are fading, and I’m so tired that I’m not tired anymore.
We pound the pavement to the parking lot.
“You still want to do this?” I ask, even though I realize with a rush so strong it feels like a desert windstorm that I don’t want him to say no.
“All in,” Max says.
We’re at the truck now. I look at him. He looks at me. Somewhere deep inside me, a small voice says I need to be careful.
But being careful doesn’t always work out, does it?
“It’s got to be where she is,” I say, climbing into the passenger seat. I say it like I’m certain.
“Agreed.” Max throws the truck in gear and we lurch into the dawn.
NINE
THE STRATOSPHERE HOTEL SITS ON THE NORTH END OF LAS VEGAS Boulevard, nearer to downtown, which my mother calls the dirty heart of Vegas. She says that it’s the glitter without the pretty, but if I ever wanted to win big on penny slots, that’s where I should go. My mother imparts advice like this, often deeper than she seems capable of.
Still, she’s right: the closer to downtown you drive, the more low-rent Vegas becomes. Places that sell six-pound burritos and the World’s Largest Gift Shop and a bunch of squat, ugly little motels.
I don’t know how tall the Stratosphere is, but one way or another the rides all dangle over Vegas for some long terrifying seconds.
I should tell Max about my fear of heights.
But even as I’m working myself up to it, he announces, “I’ve got an idea,” and starts punching numbers into his phone. “You need to trust me, okay?”
My stomach knots at that last part but Max’s gaze fixes on mine in this way that makes me nod and tell him, “Okay.” His dark hair is spiking randomly and the tender skin under his eyes looks bruised. I find myself wondering if Max, like me, has stayed up all night a lot lately.
“It’s Max,” Max says to whoever he’s called.
He’s practically shouting because the Stratosphere, even at this hour, is crazy noisy—louder than the Paris. Slot machines everywhere. Blue neon-lettered signs at ceiling height directing you up this ramp or down that one or up an escalator or toward the elevators.
“No. Not tonight,” Max bellows into the cell. “Tomorrow, maybe. Out in Henderson. Yeah, that same place. But hey, I need a favor, okay? It’s gonna sound kind of strange.”
I have no idea who he’s talking to, but I listen as he says he’s with this girl and he really needs to take her up to the top of the Stratosphere and maybe get her on one of those rides, like the Big Shot, and if he could do it before the sun comes up well—and here he lowers his voice and gives an annoying chuckle—he’s pretty sure he can get her to put out before he has to buy her breakfast.
Something inside me freezes, and I step back into the crowd, but Max reaches for me with his free hand and wiggle-waggles his eyebrows in some kind of message that hopefully is saying, “This is just bullshit, Leo. Don’t run.”
“You know women,” Max says into the phone. “Get them scared and let them hold on to you and before you know it . . .” He chuckles again, and the tone of his voice makes me want to kick him where it counts even though his crazy eyebrow routine has mostly convinced me he’s making this up so whoever he’s talking to—someone connected to an elevator key?—will help us get to the Big Shot without having to wait five hours.
“You will? Awesome, dude. We’ll head right over there. I owe you. Yeah, I know. Yeah, sure. Absolutely, buddy.”
He presses end and shoves the phone into his pocket. Does a stompy happy dance. Including an awkward but somehow still cute twirl. “Damn,” he says. “I’m good.”
I narrow my eyes. “At what? Sounding like a jerk?”
Max grins apologetically. “Sorry about that. You have to know Nate. Not that I really do, but—I play poker with him. He waits tables at the Top of the World, but he’s dead broke right now after last week’s poker game, so I know he’s picking up some extra shifts at the twenty-four-hour diner.” He gestures in what I assume is the general direction of the diner.
A thought occurs. “You won the poker game.”
Max’s cheeks redden, two blotchy circles. “Yeah. I did.”
“He just asked you for money, didn’t he?” Before we lived with Tommy Davis, I might not have put this particular two and two together. But now it seems obvious.
“Not much,” he says, but he scratches the back of his head, clearly faking casual.
“Not much is still something. And it’s still your money. Not mine.”
We stare at each other as a small but steady stream of early-morning tourists shuffle around us.
“Nate’s meeting us by the gift shop,” Max says. He rattles off more information: Nate the poker-playing waiter is one of those guys who always knows how to bend the rules, find the key, whatever. He’s going to take us to the top.
“’Cause you’re paying him.”
“It’s no big deal, Leo. Just twenty bucks.”
“Only twenty? I’ll pay you back,” I insist. What’s another twenty dollars, right? I think of Tommy’s fifty, lost into the night. No way will I let Max pay some guy on my behalf.
I wait for him to tell me to calm down or to spout one of those phrases that mean nothing like, It’s cool, but he doesn’t. In my personal experience, people who tell you to calm down generally do so to divert your attention from the fact that they’ve done something shitty that’s causing you to be pissed off in the first place.
“Leo,” Max says. “I . . .” He looks confused about something. “Maybe I—” He shakes his head. He doesn’t finish his thought, says only, “Just so you know. Nate’s kind of a jackass.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” I say.
Nate meets us at Viva Vegas Gifts. He’s thin and rangy and pale, with washed-out blond hair and green eyes. He’s also a little high, at least in my opinion, and smells like a combination of Cool Ranch Doritos and stale coffee.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he whispers loudly, but anyone can see he’s the kind of guy that absolutely does things he’s not supposed to. “Anything for love, right?”
I make an annoyed throat-clearing sound, but he either doesn’t notice or he’s not one for subtlety, because he keeps on talking.
“You meet her at a game?” he asks, leering at Max like I’m not there.
“Can you take us up there?” A muscle in Max’s jaw flickers.
“You paying?”
Max hands him a twenty.
“We need to see the Big Shot,” I say, and I hate that my voice comes out high-pitched. “The ride,” I add idiotically. “Can we look at it?”
Nate smiles in that icky sly way that guys have when they think they’re getting away with something or about to look at porn. “You can touch it, too,” he says, and I feel a stab of nerves, like electrical wires coiling in my belly. Max shoots him a look.
There’s more that he says, but I stop listening. Concentrate on not looking like I’m hyperventilating as we approach the elevator that will zoom us to the 108th floor. I can do this. Piece of cake. Or pie.
“You okay?” Max squeezes my hand.
“Hmm,” I say, not committing.
Nate puffs out his skinny chest. “I can let you ride,” he says. “Made a copy of Ricky’s key.”
Ricky, I assume, is in charge of something up top.
Max harrumphs. “He give you a key to the security cameras, too? Wouldn’t want you to get in trouble, right?” His tone says that nothing would make him happier than getting Nate in trouble.
“Not a proble
m, man.” Nate’s skinny lips twitch and he looks left and right and finally at Max and me. He runs his fingers through his hair. “They do a few test runs early in the morning.”
Another restless, twisty jolt in my gut. I have no time for idiots like Nate. I don’t trust idiots like Nate. Does Max? That seems impossible, but what do I know? I think briefly of my short-lived relationship with cheap, bad-kisser Buddy Lathrop. My ability to assess guys is not exactly the stuff of legends.
“Let’s go,” I say, working to keep my voice even. “Unless you’re bullshitting.”
“She’s a feisty one,” Nate tells Max, winking. To me: “Nice shirt, by the way. Got that ninja and that zombie right out there, don’t you?”
Which is a not-so-veiled comment about the size of my boobs.
“Shut the fuck up.” I glare at Nate, who glares back, but with a look of resignation. Nate must get told to “shut the fuck up” a lot.
In the elevator, I look straight ahead, not raising my eyes to watch the floor numbers whiz by.
“Leo?” Max says, his voice a question.
“Afraid of heights,” I admit, not elaborating. My ears pop and I force a few dry-mouthed swallows to un-pop them. We bounce to a stop on 108 and the doors slide open.
Max’s phone buzzes and I jump because I left his number for Mom. But it’s a text, and he types something, then shoves the phone into his pocket.
“It’s an awesome view,” Max says, hand on my back in a surprisingly gentle way. He placed it there somewhere during my ear popping. “You’ll see.”
I suck a tight breath through my teeth and step out behind Nate, who’s leading the way. I decide to blame my fear and wooziness on Nate’s general existence in the world.
The sun is up, heating the sky in a way that feels too close. My heart races and skips and races some more, but I tell myself: get over it. Your sister has the attention span of a gnat. No way will she keep going with this thing. It’s almost morning. She wouldn’t just leave me—especially not way up here. She’s been running ahead of us, obviously, leaving clues. This is the kind of shit she loves. Life isn’t exciting enough? Create one that is. But Paris and I, we look out for each other. That’s what we do.
