“Are we still celebrating tonight?” she asks Chase on his way out.
“What’s there to celebrate?” Chase asks.
“Don’t,” Michele warns. “Just don’t, Chase.”
Hunter’s ship lists to the left. Fires rage on deck. Tourists point their camcorders at the show. Flashbulbs pop from disposable cameras. Fanny packs sag from bloated waistlines. Children wriggle from their mothers’ grips next to restless babies in strollers. Everyone has their back to the traffic on the Strip. People gasp at a fiery explosion that may have made Chase gasp if he hadn’t known it was coming. Every show is the same and the explosions are Hunter’s cue. Hunter steps forward and scales a railing at the edge of the ship where he stands and spreads his arms. There’s a second explosion. Another pirate no one can see is kneeling behind Hunter, and the hidden pirate lights Hunter’s shirt on fire causing Hunter to leap from the stern, a trail of orange flame whooshing behind him. He hits the black water and disappears. Tourists cheer.
Hunter does his goofy dance when he sees Chase. He shakes his head of thick blond hair back and forth to the cheery steel-drum music piped throughout the lobby of the Treasure Island Hotel while people stare at him in his soaked red-and-white-striped pirate shirt. Hunter slides the bandana and eye patch from his head and asks, “Where’s the wife?” Before Chase can remind him that Julia doesn’t arrive for another two days, Hunter waves him off and says he has to take a shower.
“That water smells like piss,” Hunter says. “You think I need a haircut? I think I should get one for those parties your wife invited us to.”
As they approach a bank of elevators, Hunter stays in character and scowls convincingly—he’s had a few drinks already with the other pirates before the show—and then lunges at a group of Japanese girls. But without his bandana and eye patch he no longer resembles a pirate: just a tall unshaven dude who needs a haircut. The Japanese girls shriek and Hunter immediately tries to apologize as the elevator doors open. But the girls are frightened and confused. They speak Japanese quickly to one another and refuse to get in the elevator.
“I don’t know about the parties,” Chase says hesitantly when they’re alone in the elevator. “They’re not exactly open to the public.”
“Dude,” Hunter says, offended. “We’re not the public.”
At a red light half a block from the Palace, Chase signals. This sets Hunter off. He pounds the dashboard. “No more Michele!” he chants. “Adios, Michele!” Without looking at Chase he stops for a moment and asks, “Why are you such an idiot?” Without waiting for an answer Hunter continues beating the dashboard for a little while longer before turning to Chase and saying, “Make me a promise.”
“Whatever. Just stop all the noise.”
In that brief moment Hunter has already forgotten the promise and says instead that one of the best things about Chase leaving Vegas is that Hunter won’t have to see Michele anymore either. “Somehow we always end up with Michele and it’s a drag, dude.” Hunter pauses. “On both of us.”
There are things Chase wants to talk about with Hunter but doesn’t: the larger than usual amount of cocaine Chase found in Michele’s purse, the fact that Michele hasn’t gone to any of her classes at UNLV in over a month, that the party in the Lakes Michele had mentioned probably wasn’t a party at all but an appointment she wanted Chase to take her to but then Michele realized (too late) that Julia was going to be in town this weekend and so Michele lied and said it was just a party. Chase has also decided not to mention that he took the day off from Centennial High to move Michele into the suite and that Chase spent an hour in a closet watching a man go down on Michele while the man masturbated himself to a shrieking orgasm. But then he realizes that Hunter likely knows some or all of this. Their group is pretty small.
“I’m sick of talking about Michele,” Hunter says. “Thinking about her depresses me. Why is that? I guess because she talks a lot of shit and she’s a pain in the ass.”
“I find her quite … disarming,” Chase says, aiming for suave and failing.
“She’s a fraud, dude. I can just imagine the shit she’s going to talk around Julia in order to impress her. She’ll go on about the master’s degree she still doesn’t have and what she’s observed about the people here and how the women and girls have all this pressure on them to conform to certain standards and it’ll all be so lame and superficial. The only thing Julia will be impressed by is that Michele is actually trying to impress her.”
“You’d fuck her though,” Chase says. He can’t help himself.
“Fuck yeah, I would,” Hunter replies. “But dude, other than being eternally fuckable what does she aspire to? I’ll tell you what she aspires to: the house that doesn’t even exist yet—that’s all she talks about. What does that tell us?” Hunter groans as the Palace comes into view. “She’s a fucking idiot.”
Michele’s spiritualist prescribed both “stability” and “bold decision making” to counteract the turbulence that will accompany her Saturn return—even though Saturn wasn’t going to return for another three years. Because of this advice Michele spent a thousand dollars on a two-day real estate seminar at Green Valley Ranch. She drove for hours around the valley looking for homes with limited direct exposure to Saturn. Buying a house was a “bold decision” and nothing provides greater “stability” than owning a home. There were six lots in Green Valley and Summerlin that Michele found acceptable. Three were available and only one hadn’t opened for bidding. Though the house was not yet built—was merely a plot of desert in The Hills of Summerlin owned by KB Homes—it would become a three-bedroom mission-style house with a pool for $422,000. Michele had a contact at KB Homes and she bribed him with $5,000 in cash and a $15,000 cashier’s check for a deposit so that she’d be in the system and at the top of the list when the bidding opened. What else Michele had bribed the contact at KB Homes with Chase does not want to think about.
“Forty days,” Chase says. “The house will be built in forty days and then it’s hers.”
“But you have to bid,” Hunter says.
“She’s got it taken care of.” Chase veers the Mustang slowly toward a valet. “She’s in the system. All they have to do is press a button. That’s what she says.”
“You’re both idiots,” Hunter shouts. “But Michele’s fucking Queen of the Idiots.” And then he calms down and seems to think things through, his brow furrowed. “But wait—if she’s the Queen of the Idiots maybe … that makes her almost smart?” He pauses. “I mean, if she’s the queen, then maybe—”
“She’s just stuck here.”
When Chase and Carly were kids they sometimes used to wait in the Circus Circus parking lot for their mother, who spent a summer next door at Westward Ho working as a croupier. She often stayed an hour or so past her shift to gamble and would emerge from the casino tired and distracted and clutching dinner in a white plastic take-out bag from one of the restaurants inside. During that summer when they were sometimes waiting for their mother, Michele was with them a lot and one afternoon they were going to go to the waterslide but it had closed that morning when a kid fell from the tower and died. So the three of them were drinking banana Slurpees and playing truth or dare in the Circus Circus parking lot when a clown approached them. Carly and Michele were wearing impossibly short denim cutoffs and thin orangey-yellow T-shirts and they flirted with the clown. They were twelve. They told the clown they were playing truth or dare. The clown dared them to get high with him and pointed to a brown van with white stripes in the rear of the parking lot. They got about ten feet from the van when Chase realized he was pissing from fear. He ran after them and grabbed Carly by the arm and lied and said he saw their mother coming out of the casino. They all looked. She wasn’t there. Carly pulled away from Chase and kept walking toward the clown’s van and so Michele took Chase by the hand until she saw that his pants were wet. Later, sitting by the pool that night with the warm wind washing over his mother’s backyard, Chase asked Car
ly and Michele what happened in the van during the hour they spent with the clown. Carly was short and thin and had huge brown eyes. Freckles that you could barely see fanned across her nose and cheekbones and she wore her hair—like Michele—in a ponytail. Chase asked this as Carly and Michele were taking Polaroids of each other in their bikinis by the lit pool. The girls wanted to share them with Bailey and some other boys and they were ignoring Chase. When he asked it again—this time with an edge in his voice that startled them—they stared at Chase, uncomprehending. And then they looked at each other in mock surprise. Chase got up from where he was sitting by the pool and walked away as they started giggling, rocking back and forth, covering their mouths with their hands.
Michele has stopped her twice-weekly therapist visits. But she still has weekly appointments with the woman who helped her make the decision about the Summerlin house, and who Michele insists is not an astrologer per se and who she strongly suggests Chase meet because—like Michele—his Saturn will be in return soon, too, and that may explain a lot. This is what Michele is telling Hunter and Chase after they’ve entered the suite at the Palace. From the bathroom, Michele’s voice thanks Chase again for all his help with the move this morning. Hunter grimaces at Chase and shakes his head and then tips back the rest of a Corona. “What about all my help?” Hunter calls out.
“All what help?” Michele calls back.
“Pointing out all the ways in which you’ve screwed yourself,” Hunter says. “And that includes moving in here for the summer.”
“Which reminds me,” Michele says, “tonight is special.”
Hunter glances at Chase, confused. “Why did what I just say remind her that tonight is special?”
“Why is tonight special, baby?” Chase plays along.
Michele’s voice in singsong comes from the bedroom. “Well, to begin with: everyone—with the exception of Hunter—is moving on to better and bigger things, and since it’s important to single out transitions and endings and beginnings—”
“Hey, I don’t want to hear what your real estate agent’s been telling you,” Hunter says.
They have been in the suite only ten minutes but both Chase and Hunter are downing second Coronas and then Hunter starts his third because Michele isn’t dressed yet. But then suddenly, forgetting why tonight was special, Michele squeals, “Let’s get this party started!” and finally comes out of the bedroom only half-dressed in her low tight jeans and black bra. She kisses Chase on the cheek—purposefully ignoring Hunter—and joins them on the massive cream-colored couch and talks about how much she misses her therapist. Michele pulls a thin pink tank top over her head. It is torn from the neck to the lacy edge of her bra. She smells sweet. Multiple bracelets and earrings dangle loudly. Her long black hair is curled tonight and Chase tells her it looks good even though it looks better straight. And then Michele is showing them another letter her mother wrote that came from El Salvador a month ago with a copy of the Lord’s Prayer and a wooden crucifix. In the letter her mother asks Michele to hang the crucifix over the front door of the new house that she thinks Michele recently bought. Michele wrote back to her mother and enclosed a photograph of Bailey’s house in Summerlin.
“She thinks I already have the house but there is no house.”
Michele ponders this lie but only briefly. “In forty days I’ll own a house but right now there is no house.” Michele lifts her hands, exasperated. “She called me on my cell tonight and was so drunk I almost told her that there wasn’t any house.”
“What did she want?” Chase asks. “Why would you tell her that?”
“I have no interest in babysitting my mother, Chase.” Michele sighs contemptuously. “Because I just found out during that phone call that this is what will happen when I actually buy a house. She wants to come to Vegas. She wants to live with me. In fact, she wants to come now, since I supposedly have my own home. Imagine: my mother in my house drinking all day and blaming me for everything. Fuck it. Not gonna happen.”
Hunter keeps looking at Michele’s jeans and it’s hard for Chase not to look, too, even though it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before: they ride so low that you can tell she’s not wearing panties.
“Is this the Michele-dumps-all-of-her-shit-on-us-for-an-hour segment of the celebration?” Hunter asks. “Is this the special part of the night?”
“I’m twenty-four years old,” Michele says. “I’ve got the rest of my life to worry about everyone else. Anyway, the next three months this place”—Michele indicates the massive suite with her arms—“is mine. And that’s what we’re celebrating.”
“You’re only … twenty-four?” Hunter asks suspiciously.
“Well, maybe twenty-five.” Michele shrugs.
“And then before you know it you’re kicking thirty.” Hunter lets out a low whistle. “And maybe you’re still”—he makes the same arm gesture as Michele, mocking her—“here!”
“Why is thirty considered the end of everything?” Michele groans. “I mean, Julia’s thirty and she’s fine.”
Chase plays along. “Julia’s not thirty, Michele. Ha ha.”
“Bitch, I’m warning you,” Hunter says. “If you’re still running around with the Baileys of this world when you’re thirty it’s time for you to get your ass back to that therapist.” This is Hunter bored and thinking about his fourth Corona.
“You know what, Hunt? You are so right,” Michele says. Then she leans in against Hunter and runs her fingers through his tangled blond hair. “If I find myself sinking like a stone I can always … just get married.” Michele turns to Chase and bats her eyes.
A palpable silence fills the space.
When her cell rings from the bedroom Michele stands and wiggles her jeans up. As she passes Chase he slaps the soft tan skin around her hips and Michele shrieks playfully. Hunter leans back on the couch sipping another beer, staring at her ass as she walks away.
“She’s on something,” Hunter says.
“You think?”
“Coke. A lot of coke.”
“Yeah. But not a lot.”
“More than a little, dude,” Hunter says. “Were you listening to that shit or were you off floating around on Planet Chase? Fucking Saturn and crucifixes? A nonexistent house in fucking Summerlin? Jesus, I feel like my brain just fell out of my head and it’s hiding in the minibar.”
“She says she doesn’t use it. She says everyone but her uses it.”
“Whatever, dude.” Then Hunter lights up and says in a whiny sarcastic tone, “But she’s getting her master’s!” Hunter finishes the Corona and keeps looking at Chase to make the point that he’s not convinced of anything. “You know you’re breaking her heart,” Hunter suddenly says, glancing at the bedroom.
Chase doesn’t know what to say because he knows it’s partially true.
“You can tell,” Hunter says. “Look at her when she brings Julia’s name up. Her body language, her tone of voice—it all changes. It’s like Michele knows how out of Julia’s league she is and you’re on your way out and it crushes her because, well, where does that leave her? It’s not even so much you as it is the absence of the possibility of you. That void is large, dude, and what’s left for her once you’re outta here?” Hunter just stares at Chase. “Do I need to say it?”
“I think you’re right about the coke,” Chase says quietly.
“I heard she called you the other night saying she was suicidal.”
“She was … upset.”
“You’ve got a month left here?” Hunter asks. “So you’re not going to watch this thing play itself out? Smart move.”
Chase shrugs.
“Maybe you can save her in a month, maybe you can’t,” Hunter says. “But God, she’s still so fucking hot.” He says this too loud because Michele hears.
“What’s that, Hunt?” Michele calls out.
“You’re looking fucking hot, bitch.”
“Thank you,” she says from the bedroom. “I think it’s these jeans.”
“How’s Bailey?” Hunter asks when Michele flops back on the couch. “I thought it was over-over this time and yet here we are in a very large suite that I’m assuming he must be paying for.” Hunter gestures around the suite. “So I guess it’s not over-over, huh?”
“Who was calling you?” Chase asks Michele.
“Bailey’s come a long way,” Michele says to no one in particular, ignoring Chase. “Jesus, his mother drops dead and his father’s a Nazi and—”
“—a rich Nazi,” Hunter interjects.
“—Bailey’s trying to do something constructive and positive with his life and considering what could have happened to him, I think he turned out okay.”
“I don’t see it.” Hunter shakes his head. “Where’s all this positivity?” he asks, an arm sweeping across the suite. “He’s paying for this and Michele’s providing a service. You guys have a plan. Dare to dream. Beautiful. Illegal, by the way, but beautiful.”
“Have you noticed I’m ignoring you?”
“Personally, I think that’s the definition of positive: putting Michele up here for the summer,” Hunter says. “Yet the mystery—the answer she won’t give—is … why?”
Michele smirks.
“Is he leasing the suite or …” Hunter cocks his head and says very quietly, staring at Michele, “… is he leasing you? I get confused sometimes.”
“In forty short days, Hunter, I will own a house.”
“Yes, but—sshhh!—don’t tell your mother.”
The Delivery Man Page 2
