The main floor in the Palace is quiet and cold and Chase moves through it unnoticed by the bored croupiers lounging at the empty tables. A group of young Asians in Prada suits are laughing and bet in quick little bursts as the roulette wheel spins. As he walks out of the hotel, Chase forms a plan: shower, sleep, read The New York Times, get dressed, Starbucks, call Centennial and try to work something out, paint, meet Julia at McCarran and talk about Palo Alto and San Francisco and the summer and the rest of their life together. By the time Chase is pushing open the heavy gold doors and the warm wind hits his face he’s not even thinking about Michele in the suite last night with Bailey and his friend. (Bailey and Ted both split for an after-hours club, leaving Chase alone in the suite with Michele.) Waiting for the valet to bring the Mustang, Chase realizes that last night is inconsequential next to two facts: Julia’s flight gets in at three, and Chase is leaving Vegas.
Chase doesn’t mind the Strip this early because it’s peaceful: the gray morning sky softens the glare of the marquees and there’s no traffic and the wide boulevards are empty except for the occasional street sweeper with its spinning orange lights and swirling brushes inching past maids waiting at bus stops. A pickup truck pulls up beside the Mustang at a red light. The driver is white and wears a baseball cap. In back, construction workers of various ages with brown skin stare at nothing in particular. They sit perfectly still and no one speaks to anyone else. The driver looks straight ahead and Tim McGraw singing “Live Like You Were Dying” soars from the radio. The wind blows one of the worker’s hats off his head and a few of the men turn and watch it tumble to the asphalt. The one who lost the hat stares at it and worriedly looks back at the driver and then at the hat again. The light is still red. Someone next to the man urges him to jump out and grab the hat but the man decides it’s not worth it. They have houses to build.
When their father was in town for business ten years ago he drove Carly and Chase up to Black Mountain Drive in the hills. Their father had wanted an ice-cream cone and so he took them to Baskin-Robbins. Looking down at the valley, sucking on a frozen gumball, their father pointed out the patches of light that he had a hand in creating: a strip mall in Summerlin, a housing development called Sunrise Manor, another strip mall off Boulder Highway. It was easy money and their existence didn’t seem to bring him any real satisfaction. It was matter-of-fact, business as usual. An idiot could make money here. Take it and run. That’s what he did. Carly and Chase stood there and listened as he told them about the limitless possibilities for growth and how Carly and Chase would prosper here if they stayed. He said this without asking them if that’s what they wanted.
Carly pointed out how the border kept changing. She pointed out how the amoebae now expanded in every direction. Carly pointed out how the entire desert was being enveloped with lights. She said it looked like someone spilled a gigantic glass of sparkling lemonade on the desert and no one was willing to mop it up.
“It’s a toxic spill,” Chase said.
“Liquid gold is more like it,” their father laughed.
“It only looks this way at night,” Carly said. “Tomorrow the sky will be brown and the lights won’t shine and all you’ll see are pink roofs and black asphalt.”
Chase felt a quiet satisfaction in the way his older sister saw through the bullshit and the way she challenged their father. His pulse quickened at moments when Carly punched through the façade of a pleasant family outing with the dad who had run away. Sometimes Chase would team up with her in moments like this and he’d add something not quite as biting, without the same edge, but he’d feel emboldened knowing she was next to him.
“It’s pretty ugly during the day,” Chase said.
“It’s called growth.” Their father laughed a little less as he said this. “And it’s paying for the pool you swim in every night and your sister’s Mustang.”
Before he left the next day for the new house and the girlfriend in Malibu, their father gave them each three crisp hundred-dollar bills in his suite at the MGM Grand after the bellhop took his bags to the lobby.
That night Carly and Chase went to a party feeling flush. Carly offered to share the crystal meth she had bought from a dealer she met upstairs—a dealer Bailey introduced her to—but only if Chase would take her to another, better party that Bailey mentioned. Chase refused the meth but took Carly anyway. Bailey had left Carly behind. The one-month anniversary seemed like it happened in a distant era. Chase didn’t know what was happening between the two of them. They were breaking up. They were getting back together. Chase couldn’t keep track. Bailey had started doing things, like leaving Carly behind at parties, with a frequency that suggested the idea of that one-month anniversary had vaporized. But really, no, it was just to fuck with her, he explained to Chase. And it always worked: after a week of complaints Carly would follow Bailey anywhere. Now Carly was drunk but not enough to cut through the meth and her paranoia intensified as Chase drove, positive that he didn’t know the way, that she wouldn’t make it in time. “In time for what?” Chase asked. “For that asshole?” Carly was seriously wired and couldn’t say anything because she didn’t know. She snorted two more bumps from a small plastic Baggie and then asked Chase to stop the car so she could throw up. The sky was purple and Chase couldn’t see the stars and when he heard the car door slam he realized Carly was ready so they kept going.
He was still tired even after doing a couple bumps, and then they had an argument when Carly insisted she knew people at the party who would drive her home—“Michele is here!” she whined, which almost made Chase stay—and so he gave up and left Carly and she blew him a kiss before disappearing inside the house. Chase got lost driving home—every street looked the same and they all seemed to turn back into one another. He finally made it to Starlight Way and as he lay awake in bed, his heart still pounding from the meth, the call came from Michele. At the second, better party, Bailey acted like “a total dick.” Carly caught Bailey making out with another girl in the kitchen. Carly pretended this didn’t bother her by getting completely “shitfaced.” And there were some college kids who thought that Carly and Michele were older and even though Carly was “a mess” the boys took them out drinking and then—
Chase couldn’t listen to the story anymore. He told Michele to get to the point.
“The point?” Michele paused. “I suppose the point is that we’re at the emergency room at UNLV.”
“Why?” Chase asked, gripping the phone.
Carly fell off a jungle gym.
Carly split her head open.
Her scalp was sewn together with thirty-three stitches.
Five days after Carly’s accident Chase called their father in Malibu.
“Carly’s a mess,” Chase said. “Her stitches come down to her forehead. She looks like a monster.”
“She’ll be okay. She’s tough.”
Chase heard a woman’s laughter in the background and then his father was laughing, too, and salsa music was turned up suddenly.
“She’s fucked, Dad.”
“Shit, Chase, then why didn’t you stay with her?” his father was yelling over the music. “She’s your sister.”
Thursday afternoon. Michele has spent ninety minutes inside a terra-cotta mansion in Green Valley Ranch for a one-hour appointment and won’t answer her cell. When she finally answers Chase has to remind her that he doesn’t want to be late meeting Julia’s flight from San Francisco, and was she pulling this shit on purpose? Julia’s flight gets in at three and it’s now 2:45. Finally, driving fast to the Palace, Chase tightens his grip on the steering wheel as Michele apologizes and thanks Chase in the same breath. Chase nods. He’s actually made a decision. He’s actually leaving. Michele has appointments the rest of the day in the suite. The terra-cotta mansion in Green Valley Ranch was five hundred dollars for an hour. “You’re more reliable than a cab,” she says sweetly, and then her expression changes and she touches the scratches along Chase’s neck for the fifth time
that day. “Oh, poor baby—how are you going to explain those?” When Chase doesn’t respond Michele starts scrolling through her BlackBerry and notes the appointment she just came from, with the date and duration next to the man’s name. Day two in the suite with the new Web site and they are already getting bookings. Traffic slows on Tropicana. It is now three o’clock and Michele is oblivious. She mentions a girl Bailey hired to help build the Palace business and then explains why they decided to fire her anorexic butt. Chase doesn’t hear the reason. The white sun beats down, bleeding the color from the sky. A bumper sticker on the pickup truck in front of him reads HELL WAS FULL: SO I CAME BACK. Chase checks the clock on his cell. “I am fucked!” he shouts over the wind and the chop of a low-flying Channel 3 News helicopter. He pulls onto the shoulder and accelerates.
“I’ll walk,” she says. “Stop the car. I’ll walk.”
4
Chase sits on a stool next to a bank of slot machines in McCarran, sweating through the expensive blue Prada button-down Julia bought him because she thought it brought out the color in his eyes. Julia called from the plane and the flight was late and it still hasn’t arrived. At a newsstand Chase picked up a copy of The Wall Street Journal, a Barron’s, and a Financial Times for her but decided buying all three was overdoing it. He put the Barron’s back and added a tin of Altoids and a bottle of Evian because his mouth was so dry. In Chase’s wallet is most of the cash from Vons—about $175. His last paycheck from the Clark County School District should be about $500. He’ll owe $820 for rent by June 5th. Utilities, Internet, cable, food, gas. Chase has no idea how he will pay for any of it. He could leave Vegas with Julia next week. If he did that he could even get back his rental deposit of $450. The idea is no longer just an idea: this summer he’ll live with Julia and look for work in San Francisco. He’ll be a waiter. He’ll paint.
When people start pouring into baggage claim Chase folds the papers together, wedging them under his left arm to avoid getting ink on his hands. His torn black Diesel jeans are too big (purposely) and he scuffed his Timberlands with sandpaper when he bought them. With the scented lotion on his freshly shaven face and the crisp blue shirt Chase feels okay about the way he looks and he imagines how Julia will see him when she gets off the plane. Then he remembers the scratches and loses the confidence he’d felt a moment before.
Julia doesn’t see him. He’s standing between two banks of slot machines, watching her as she glances around and lowers her Persols. She wears her hair in a ponytail. A tight white tank top stops above her pierced navel. A leather bag is slung over her shoulder. A suitcase on wheels rolls behind her. A tall young black man smiles and says something to Julia as she passes by. Julia is small but her full breasts, smooth brown skin, and perfectly symmetrical features always attract attention. Her forehead and almond-shaped eyes confuse Ethiopian women, who inevitably speak Amharic to her. Chase swallows, amazed that Julia is actually his girlfriend.
In college Chase used to play Tom Petty’s Greatest Hits in his dorm room while Julia studied—she didn’t mind. When “American Girl” would come on Chase always sang the opening lines to her and he even started calling her “my all-American girl” until she became irritated and asked him to stop. Chase now plays the song in the Mustang as he pulls out of McCarran but realizes right away that it’s too sentimental. Julia says “hey” like she remembers the song and then touches his hand. It’s too late—he’s already self-conscious and changes CDs, turning up the volume on Etta James, one of Julia’s favorites. Julia runs her hand over his shaved head. Chase had a short bleached-blond crew cut the last time she saw him.
“I liked your hair. What happened?”
“It’ll grow back.”
“You look tough,” she says. And then she comments on the scratches.
“It’s nothing.”
“Did you see a doctor?” she asks.
“They’re just scratches.”
“From what?”
“Basketball.”
“Did you get into a fight?”
“No. A guy just grabbed me. He was going for the ball. It happens all the time.”
She leans in for a closer look. “Shouldn’t you at least cover them up?”
“I’m supposed to let them air out.”
“You’re falling apart.”
“See what happens when you’re not around?”
The Hard Rock is where Julia and the other National Black MBA members are staying but the lobby is also crowded with porn stars when Chase and Julia walk in. Two tan women in cowboy hats and half-shirts stuffed with huge implants strut past them. And then Chase remembers that the Adult Video Awards are this weekend and a lot of the performers (the “nominees”) are staying at the hotel. There was a story on the news last night about an overdose in one of the rooms and when Julia gets her key Chase wonders if they’ll be on the same floor and before he can ask the guy at the front desk, Julia says, “Is your prostitute friend going to be here?”
Unlike the other casinos in town the interior of the Hard Rock is bright and accented with polished wood and has a circular bar at the center of the casino. Chase likes it because it’s not a difficult place to find your way out of. Julia looks around for someone she might know from Stanford but doesn’t see anyone.
Alone in the elevator Chase tells her he hopes she doesn’t feel like she made a monumental mistake coming to Vegas.
“I don’t make monumental mistakes, Chase,” she says.
“I know,” Chase says. “I know you don’t, gorgeous.”
“I like that we did it this way,” Julia says. “Being apart and living separate lives for a while. I think it was a good thing.”
“Yeah. Sure. For a while.”
“I just think we have to see it like everything else we do that matters. We know certain things, and if we value them like we say we do, then we should act, and I want to be with you.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course.”
“If you need more time—”
“What’s the point? There’s nothing else I need to learn about you that’s going to change the way I feel.”
There’s a purple Warhol print on the wall and the balcony overlooks the hotel’s fake beach. They stand outside and study the porn stars lying under the sun, glistening and motionless. Chase can’t shake off the anxiety even though he knows it’s just because they haven’t seen each other in a while and he badly wants to get beyond this moment and have sex. The water below them is green and still and palm fronds sway in the unsteady wind. “I love hotels,” Julia says and slides her hands around his waist until they meet at the small of his back. She undoes the top two buttons of the shirt she bought him and rests her head against his chest. Chase breathes in melon-scented shampoo. She asks him what’s wrong.
“Nothing.”
“Are you scared?”
“I just wish we could be there now.”
“Where?”
“In Palo Alto. In your apartment.”
“After your show?” she asks, and hearing her say it (his show) makes him feel like everything’s wrong. Julia doesn’t know that the White Trash Paradise show next month is not his alone. Julia doesn’t know that the show involves four other artists. Julia doesn’t know that the show will occur in a room smaller than the one they are in now.
“Yeah,” he says. “After my show.”
They stand there holding each other for a while until Julia kisses him and Chase relaxes.
“I’m this close to leaving with you,” he says.
“Just keep kissing me.”
After a shower Chase stands in front of the closet mirror getting dressed while Julia is in the bathroom filling the large sunken tub with water.
“Can I bring Hunter?” he asks.
“Where?”
“To the parties this weekend. He wants to come. He’s even getting a haircut.”
Julia pauses and then says, “Sure.”
“He really needs to meet so
meone.”
“Hunter really needs to meet someone?” Julia pauses again. “Hunter really needs to meet someone … at the National Black MBA Conference?”
“Exactly. This is a rare opportunity for Hunter.”
“Is he still … a pirate?”
“He just wants someone who has her shit together.”
“I asked you if he was still a pirate—not who he was looking to hook up with.”
“He fell off a ship the other night. He tripped over some ropes on deck.”
Julia laughs. “Will he be in costume?”
“He’s not so bad. He actually wants to teach.”
“Maybe he can take your job.”
For a moment Chase considers telling Julia the truth: about the fight with Rush and getting fired from Centennial. But right on cue Hunter calls Chase’s cell and says his last show at Treasure Island was canceled because one of the girls (the “wenches”) got her hair caught in some kind of machine on the deck of the Buccaneer, which managed to tear most of the scalp from her skull, so everything pretty much closed down for the night. “You can imagine. Come get me.”
“But there’s nothing tonight.”
“Oh, dude.” Hunter overdoes the disappointment.
“Tomorrow are the parties.”
The Delivery Man Page 6
