by Jarret Keene
After finishing the bottle of bourbon we went down to the garage. Melinda’s vintage Jag, a black 1967 XKE, was still in perfect shape, just as I, by now, expected everything to be. The car had also fit me. I slid into the driver’s seat and palmed the bulb of the stick shift. Melinda’s perfume blended with the smell of leather and night air. We squealed down the driveway and onto the moneyed side street. The ragtop was down and the wind blew Melinda’s hair all around. I flew through a red light. We vanished into the night.
We headed for the Strip, battling traffic. I didn’t mind. I basked in the stares this beautiful woman and car garnered beneath the streetlights and neon.
“Let’s go to the Barbary Coast,” I said.
“The Barbary Coast? You’ve got to be kidding,” said Me-linda. “Why?”
“Dunno,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “The $3.99 prime rib dinner?”
Melinda laughed, throwing her head back. “Oh, Tim-mers,” she said. “I’d forgotten how you make me laugh.”
We parked off the Strip and starting walking hand in hand through the crowd. The Tik pulsed inside me and mixed with the bourbon. Melinda was on my arm. I was ten feet tall.
Overweight Midwesterners stared at the two of us, wishing they could be us. We were the Las Vegas they came to see. A middle-aged man in Bermuda shorts eyed Melinda’s long legs.
“Loosest slots on the Strip,” I said to him with a conspiratorial nod as we passed. Completely stunned, he looked up at me, his mouth agape. Melinda and I folded with laughter, then broke into a run.
After a few minutes, Melinda stopped, breathless, and turned to me. She squeezed my hand. Her nails broke the skin.
“It feels so good to have you back, Tim,” she said.
I pushed her against the cold brick wall and put my mouth on hers while pressing my thigh between her legs.
“I love you,” I whispered. My hand was sticky with blood.
She returned my kiss, our tongues rolling together until Melinda pulled back.
“Why then,” she said, “are you going to make me go in there?” She nodded toward the billowing entrance of the Coast.
“Come on,” I said. “I feel so good. I feel like slumming. And if we don’t find any action in there”—I indicated the space in front of me with a grandiose sweep of my arm—“the entire Strip awaits us.” We stepped through the forced air plenum and into the clanging miasma of the casino.
A semi-attractive blonde with a very large chest caught my attention. She was sitting alone at a blackjack table.
“I’m going to the girls’ room,” Melinda shouted over the cacophony of bells and chimes that rang from the slot carousels. “I’ll catch up to you in a couple of minutes.”
I nodded and watched her meander off, as did most of the people she passed. The fishnet stockings had that effect.
I sat down next to the blonde and threw a hundred dollars on the table. The dealer set a short stack of chips in front of me as a cocktail waitress in a bad pirate costume appeared at my elbow.
“A double bullshot,” I said, placing a chip on her tray.
“What’s that?” said the blonde as she slurped at a frothy blender drink.
“It’s beef bouillon and vodka,” I said, peering at my cards.
She wrinkled her nose into a grimace. “Ewww! Why are you drinking that?” The end of her straw was coated in waxy orange lipstick.
“I’m hungry,” I said. After all, I was. I nodded yes to a hit from the dealer.
“That’s so gross,” she said.
“Fuck you,” I said. Maybe semi-attractive was too generous a description for her, stacked or not. The bad casino lighting wasn’t shoring up her odds either. “Now shut up and finish your snow cone.”
“Okay, I will,” she said. “And then you can.”
“I can what?” I said, rolling my eyes. The waitress set down my drink with exactly the speed a pre-tip buys. I placed another chip on her tray and turned back to the blonde.
“You can fuck me,” she said as the dealer flipped over his jack and ace.
“Who the fuck are you?” With characteristically perfect timing and an equally perfect brunette, led by the hand, Me-linda intervened. The blonde sized up the two women and picked up her drink. “I’m more than you could handle anyway,” she said, then collected her remaining chips and walked away, flipping us off.
“Tim, this is Teena,” said Melinda, not even looking after the blonde. “She’s new in town. Just got a job as a waitress over at the Peppermill.”
“After I finish the training course,” said Teena. “Of course,” she added, giggling at her own quip.
“Right,” said Melinda. “After you finish the training course.” She wrapped an arm around Teena’s waist and turned to me. “She’s coming home with us for a nightcap.” One look at Teena and I could see that Melinda had bribed her with the coke she always kept in her purse.
“Hi, Tim. I saw you walk in and thought you were really cute. I’m really glad to meet you,” said Teena. She seemed like a willing little lamb, naïve and very sexy. Exactly what I’d had in mind.
“With that perky attitude,” I said, “my bet is you’ll sail right through that training course.” Teena gave me a prom queen smile. Perfect, just like everything else so far.
“So what do you say, Tim?” asked Melinda, though she already knew the answer. “Nightcaps at our place?”
Our place. “That sounds just fine,” I said. “First let’s have a drink for the road.” I pushed a chip toward the dealer and steered the girls around to the bar. “Will you be riding with us, Teena, or do you have your own car?”
“Teena will follow us out to the house,” said Melinda, lifting an eyebrow down the bar.
I smiled at Teena.
“What can I get for you?” said the bartender, one eye eclipsed by a fake black eye patch.
Melinda looked at me. “Make a wish,” she said.
I motioned Teena to park next to the Jag in the garage. Melinda took Teena inside to show her around while I looked over Teena’s Honda and then locked up the garage. I went in the back door of the house and found Melinda and Teena necking in the kitchen. I didn’t seem to disturb them.
“Save some for me, Mel,” I said. “Anyone want a drink?”
“Tequila,” said Melinda.
“Got any champagne?” asked Teena.
I headed for the sideboard to crack open a new bottle of bourbon.
“Join us upstairs when you’re ready, Timmers,” Melinda shouted down the hall. She was anxious despite her cool veneer. It had been a long time for her too. I was eager to do a number on Teena, but something vague seemed to be holding me back. Fuck that, I thought, and took the longest drink of bourbon in my life.
By the time I got up to the bedroom, Melinda’s face was buried between Teena’s legs. Teena seemed a little dazed but was holding up her end quite well, no doubt aided by the small mountain of coke next to her on the nightstand. Melinda saw me and bolted upright. She was covered with sweat.
“Fuck her, Tim,” she said. “Fuck her proper.”
Teena rolled over and did another line, then she lay back on the bed. “Yeah, fuck me,” she said.
I did. I was rough but she took it. When I got off her, bruises started to form on the insides of her thighs. I reached for the bourbon and watched her and Melinda work on each other. I felt strange. The Tik still moved through me, though now at an even keel. I drank more bourbon.
I drank for a long time.
Melinda screamed and dug her nails into Teena’s skin. Teena threw her head back on the pillow. Melinda rolled over and beckoned me. My head was spinning. I placed my hands on Teena’s knees and opened her as Melinda reached for the nightstand. I centered all my consciousness on Teena. I focused my whole body on my mouth, and my mouth on her. Melinda moved on the bed. I heard a whisper of rushing air. Teena stiffened and bucked under me. A hot spray rained across my back. Something clinked against the wall. I squeezed Teena’s wa
ist with all my strength. Tears came to my eyes. Teena’s body went limp.
I lay hugging her, my breath so fast. The room was quiet. After a time I looked up at Melinda. She smiled and wiped the blood from her eyes. She got off the bed and picked up the straight razor, which she had thrown against the wall. She dropped it in the nightstand drawer.
“You okay, Timmers?” she asked. “I know it’s been awhile.” She paused, then reached back into the drawer. “Maybe it’s time for another shot.”
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
I picked up the bourbon and had a sip. Melinda closed the drawer and turned toward the bathroom.
“Suit yourself, but we shouldn’t wait too long,” she said. “I’m going to clean up. Will you take care of that?” She nodded at the blood-soaked bed and the still body, naked and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.
“Of course I will,” I said. “Don’t I always?”
I finished the bourbon as Melinda closed the bathroom door behind her. Out the window, dawn announced itself quietly with a barely perceptible change of color in the east. A car started off in the distance and I reflexively glanced at the garage door. It was still locked. I really didn’t worry. Melinda and I had always led a charmed existence. I sighed and put on my pants.
“Wash my back, Tim,” Melinda called from the shower when she heard me enter the bathroom. I opened the curtain and soaped up my hands. I massaged her back as I washed it.
“Ahhh, that feels good,” she said. “Get in here. I’m ready for a good fucking.”
She put her cheek against the wall and closed her eyes. I pulled her razor from my back pocket. With one motion I grabbed her hair and drew the blade across her throat. For an instant she stretched her neck out, exposing it even more, and then she slumped quietly to the bottom of the tub. I turned off the water and went into the bedroom, dropped the razor into her nightstand.
I cleaned up and finished dressing in the clothes that I had arrived in the day before. I kissed Teena’s forehead. I kissed Melinda’s hand and held it to my mouth for a long time.
Downstairs I lit a small fire on the love seat in the living room, then went to the kitchen and turned on all the gas jets. On my way out to the garage I stopped and, as an afterthought, picked up my leather jacket.
I backed the Jag out of the drive and looked for but did not see the German shepherd. It suddenly occurred to me how very old he must have been. As I put the Jag into gear, my eyes paused at the mailbox, an unlikely witness. I pulled away and, driving down the road, watched it disappear in the rearview mirror. I thought about how badly I needed to sleep.
PRETTY LITTLE PARASITE
BY DAVID CORBETT
Fremont
One hand on her hip, the other lofting her cocktail tray, Sam Pitney scanned the gaming floor from the Roundup’s mezzanine, dressed in her bright red cowgirl outfit and fresh from a bracing toot in the ladies’. Stream-of-nothingness mode, mid-shift, slow night, only the blow keeping her vertical—and she had this odd craving for some stir-fry—she stared out at the flagging crowd and manically finger-brushed the outcrop of blond bangs showing beneath her tipped-back hat.
Maybe it was seeing her own reflection fragmented in dozens of angled mirrors to the left and right and even overhead, or the sight of the usual trudge of losers wandering the noisy mazelike neon, clutching change buckets, chip trays, chain smoking (still legal, this was the ’80s), hoping for one good score to recoup a little dignity—whatever the reason, she found herself revisiting a TV program from a few nights back, about Auschwitz, Dachau, one of those places. Men and women and children and even poor helpless babies cradled by their mothers, stripped naked then marched into giant shower rooms, only to notice too late—doors slamming, bolts thrown, gas soon hissing from the showerheads: a smell like almonds, the voice on the program said.
Sam found herself wondering—no particular reason—what it would be like if the doors to the casino suddenly rumbled shut, trapping everybody inside.
For a moment or two, she supposed, no one would even notice, gamblers being what they are. But soon enough word would ripple through the crowd, especially when the fire sprinklers in the ceiling started to mist. Even then, people would be puzzled and vaguely put out but not frightened, not until somebody nearby started gagging, buckled over, a barking cough, the scalding phlegm, a slime of blood in the palm.
Then panic, the rush for the doors. Animal screams. Blind terror.
Sam wondered where she’d get found when they finally reopened the doors to deal with the dead. Would she be one of those with bloody nails or, worse, fingers worn down to raw gory bone, having tried to claw her way past so many others to sniff at an air vent, a door crack, ready to kill for just one more breath? Or would she be one of the others, one of those they found alone, having caught on quick and then surrendered, figuring she was screwed, knowing it in the pit of her soul, curled up on the floor, waiting for God or Mommy or Satan or who-the-fuck-ever to put an end to the tedious phony bullshit, the nerves and the worry and the always being tired, the lonely winner-takes-all, the grand American nothing …
“Could I possibly have another whiskey and ginger, luv?”
Sam snapped to, turning toward the voice—the accent crisply British once, now blurred by years among the Vegas gypsies. It came from a face of singular unlucky pallor: high brow with a sickly froth of chestnut hair, flat bloodless lips, no chin to speak of. The Roundup sat just east of Las Vegas Boulevard on Fremont, closer to the LVMPD tower than the tonier downtown houses—the Four Queens, the Golden Nugget—catering to whoever showed up first and stayed longest, cheap tourists mostly, dopes who’d just stumbled out of the drunk tank and felt lucky (figure that one out), or, most inexplicably, locals, the transplant kind especially, the ones who went on and on about old Las Vegas, which meant goofs like this bird. What was his name? Harvey, Harold, something with an H. He taught at UNLV if she remembered right, came here three nights a week at least, often more, said it was for the nostalgia.
“You are on the clock, my dear, am I right?”
She gazed into his soupy green eyes. Centuries of inbreeding. Hail, Brittania.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
Come midnight she began looking for Mike and found him off by himself in the dollar slots, an odd little nook where there were fewer mirrors and the eye in the sky had a less than perfect angle (he thought of these things). He wore white linen slacks, a pastel tee, the sleeves of his sport jacket rolled up. All Sonny Crockett, the dick.
“Hey,” she said, coming up.
He shot her a vaguely proprietary smile. His eyes looked wrecked but his hair was flawless. He said, “The usual?”
“No, weekend coming up. Make it two.”
The smile thawed, till it seemed almost friendly. “Double your pleasure.”
She clipped off to the bar, ordered a Stoli-rocks-twist, discreetly assembling the twelve twenties on her tray in a tight thin stack. The casino’s monotonous racket jangled all around, same at midnight as happy hour—the eternal now, she thought, Vegas time. Returning to where he was sitting, she bowed at the waist, so he could reach the tray. He carefully set a five down, under which he’d tucked two wax-paper bindles. Then he collected the twelve twenties off her tray, as though they were his change, and she remembered the last time they were together, in her bed, the faraway look he got afterwards, not wanting to be touched, the kind of thing guys did when they’d had enough of you.
“Whoever you get this from,” she said, “I want to meet him.”
From the look on his face, you would’ve thought she’d asked for the money back. “Come again?”
“You heard me.”
He cocked his head. The hair didn’t budge. “I’m not sure I like your attitude.”
She broke the news. In the span of only a second or so, his expression went from stunned to deflated to distinctly pissed, then: “You saying it’s mine?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. An angel cam
e to me.”
“Don’t get smart.”
“Oh, smart’s exactly what I’m going for, believe me.”
“Okay then, take care of it.”
With those few words, she got a picture of his ideal woman—a collie in heat, basically, but with fewer scruples. Lay out a few lines, bend her over the sofa, splay her ass—then a few weeks later, tell her to take care of it.
“Sorry,” she said. “Not gonna happen.”
He chuckled acidly. “Since when are you maternal?”
“Don’t think you know me. We fucked, that’s it.”
“You’re shaking me down.”
“I’m filling you in. But yeah, I could make this a problem. Instead, I’m trying to do the right thing. For everybody. But I’m not gonna be able to work here much longer, understand? This ain’t about you, it’s about money. Introduce me to your guy.”
He thought about it, and as he did his lips curled into a grin. The eyes were still scared though. “Who says it’s a guy?”
A twinge lit up her lower back. Get used to it, she thought. “Don’t push me, Mike. I’m a woman scorned, with a muffin in the oven.” She did a quick pivot and headed off. Over her shoulder, she added, “I’m off at 2. Set it up.”
It didn’t happen that night, as it turned out, and that didn’t surprise her. What did surprise her was that it happened only two nights later, and she didn’t have to hound him half as bad as she’d expected—more surprising still, he hadn’t been jiving: It really wasn’t a guy.
Her name was Claudia, a Cuban, maybe fifty, could pass for forty, calm dark eyes that waxed and waned between cordial welcome and cold appraisal—a tiny woman, raven-black hair coiled tight into a long braid, body as sleek as a razor, sheathed in a simple black dress. She lived in one of the newer condos at the other end of Fremont, near Sahara, where it turned into Boulder Highway.
