by Carrie Asai
Mieko kept laughing. The big car in the driveway pulled back, then drove away. Hiro was inside.
Someone poked me. “Miss,” said a sharp voice. “Miss.”
I opened my eyes. What had I been dreaming about? I jumped. Where was my bag? I felt for it. It was at my feet. A woman in a hotel uniform glared at me. What day was it? Why wasn’t I in my bed at Cheryl’s house? Then I remembered. Cheryl’s house was a pile of ashes by now. I was in…
Las Vegas.
My eyes sprang open even wider.
The woman tapped her foot. “I’ve let you sleep here long enough. You’re going to have to go back to your room.”
I looked at her, confused. Then I realized that she thought I was a guest. I looked at my watch. I’d slept for nearly two hours.
“Sorry,” I said. The woman rolled her eyes and turned angrily back to the desk.
I got out of there. The open air felt great. The Strip was still kinda seedy, but it seemed a little more crowded now.
I walked to Caesars. It looked pretty swanky. I wondered if Katie was inside. I stopped, confused about to where to go. The pulsating lights seemed to hold me hostage; all of a sudden I couldn’t move. People flooded around me. I held my bag tight to my chest.
“You looking for someone?” a voice asked.
I wheeled around and saw a woman in the tiniest sparkly bikini top. I wondered how she wasn’t falling out of it. She looked like something out of Moulin Rouge with all the makeup she was wearing.
“Yes,” I said.
The woman shifted her weight to one hip. Her stiletto heels sparkled. Her whole face sparkled, too—she’d put a ton of glittery blush on. I was certain she was wearing false eyelashes.
“Yes,” I said again. “Katie…Katie Riley? She works here…somewhere….” I knew I sounded like a major idiot. It was like those people who said to you, “You’re Japanese? I knew a Japanese guy named Kujo or Yoji or Masashi a couple of years ago. You know him?”
The woman looked back and forth and gestured to a side street. I could see more casinos glowing in the distance. “They’ve got a Katie in the Rio,” she said, winking. “She works the tables. Ya wanna see the show? It’s my break, and I’m bored.”
Could I really have gotten it right on the first try? Come on. I wasn’t that naive. But before I could answer, the woman grabbed me by the arm and started dragging me down the street. Ahead I could see a splashy casino called the Rio.
“You’ll love the show,” the woman chattered on. I don’t know how she could walk in those heels, but she was managing fine. She looked me up and down. “You just get into town?”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
“What’s with your eye? Did someone hit you?”
Marcus had socked me last night. I touched my eye and quickly shut it. “Not exactly,” I said.
“I got some makeup for that…,” she said. I shook my head. “Where’s the rest of your luggage?”
“Well…,” I started. I’d forgotten about my lack of clothes. “Um…I’m traveling light.”
“Yeah? You working here?” She winked at me.
“Working? No.” Her makeup was blinding me.
“You should think about it,” she said. “You could make a lot of money. You sort of have the look for it, you know. And I’m an expert.”
Before I could ask what she was talking about, we arrived at the Rio’s main entrance. The woman, still clutching my wrist, dragged me down a corridor. We went down some stairs into a dark room that looked like a lounge. People were perched at little cocktail tables.
A huge, beefy man sat at the door, smoking a cigar. At first I cringed—he reminded me of the kind of guy that had attacked both Hiro and me. The kind of guy that I’d had to contend with when Karen was kidnapped. But then I relaxed. He wasn’t scoping me out; he barely even looked at me. “Twenty-five,” he barked.
I stood there like an idiot. My new stiletto-heeled friend elbowed me. “Pay the guy,” she said.
“Oh,” I answered. I didn’t really want to go to a show unless Katie was working there. I gazed down at the guy. “Does a Katie Riley work here?”
“I don’t know,” he said gruffly, staring at my black eye. “A lot of girls work here.”
“Come on! Pay him!” my friend said to my back. She nudged me. “You’re guaranteed to love this show. And your Katie’s inside. I promise.”
I handed over the twenty-five dollars begrudgingly and walked inside. Just as I found a spot along the wall to lean against (it was way too crowded to find a table), a woman glided onstage and announced that the “second act” was starting.
And then all of a sudden about ten guys in tight T-shirts and tight boxer shorts strode out onto the stage. The place went into an uproar. The guys writhed around for a while, grinning. A lot of the women dashed down to the foot of the stage, opening their purses, looking for their wallets.
A woman next to me (not my stiletto friend, who was now missing—maybe she’d gone to find Katie for me) went into something like an apoplectic fit. “Yeah!” she screamed, wriggling and making her minidress fly up and expose her underwear. “Oh my God, I have to get closer,” she said, looking at me. She looked absolutely insane. She dashed to the front.
By this time the guys on the stage were simultaneously grinning these thousand-watt smiles and slowly stripping off their clothes.
They were all wearing thongs.
Leopard-print thongs.
My stiletto friend sidled up next to me. “Enjoying yourself?” she asked. “You looked like you needed it, standing there on the street all alone without a man! These Chippendales shows are the best, aren’t they?”
Chippendales! Of course! I mean, I’d sort of figured it was something like that. I hoped they weren’t going to do the full monty. I nodded shakily. “Yeah,” I said. One of the guys on the stage stared right at me. He looked just like Colin Farrell. “Whoa,” I breathed. Then I turned back to the girl. “He’s really hot. So did you find Katie?”
She looked at me blankly. “Who?”
“Take it off!” one of the women screamed.
“Katie Riley,” I said over the noise. “The girl I’m looking for.”
“Ohhh. Right. You know what? I think I had this place mixed up with another place up the Strip. Sorry.” I slumped.
“Shake it!” a woman next to me shouted.
“I come here on my hour off,” the woman said, although I hadn’t asked. “It’s nice to look at good-looking men, as opposed to most of the guys I deal with on a daily basis.”
She pulled out a mirror and adjusted her lipstick. She had the most amazing lipstick color I’d ever seen—it seemed to glow. I was suspicious of her, no doubt, but the truth was, I needed her.
“Hey, listen,” the woman said. “What’s your name?”
“Heaven,” I answered.
“Rockin’ name. Is it real?”
I nodded.
“Mine’s Daphne. Like the cute one on Scooby-Doo, y’know? What’s her name…Tara Reid? Anyway, I know of a big party at the Hard Rock pool tonight. You wanna go?”
“Really?” I asked. “But…but I don’t have a suit.” I didn’t even have clean underwear.
Daphne looked down at me and smiled. “You don’t need a bathing suit, silly. It’s not a swimming party.”
“Oh,” I said awkwardly. Where was that sassy, snappy Heaven of Vibe? I had to get her back.
But Daphne didn’t seem to notice. “So, you in?” she asked. I shrugged but then decided, What the hell?
Daphne said she had to “get back to work,” but that I should meet her in front of the Hard Rock casino at 8 P.M. “You won’t be disappointed,” she said. “You think you can find it okay?”
I nodded.
She winked at me. “Be on time so we can get a good cabana!” She sauntered out of the room.
I gazed up at the writhing men once more. I’d never seen so many guys’ butts spinning at once. The women were now starting to clim
b on the stage and dance with the guys. I decided to watch another set. After all, it was a great way to get my mind off Hiro.
3
It was nearing prime Vegas time when I met Daphne for the party. The old lady was right—things were much better when the sun wasn’t so blinding. Dusk began to fall, and the neon started to twinkle and blink.
As I walked slowly down the strip in what I believed to be the direction of Hard Rock, I did a double take. Was that Madonna who’d just walked by? But then I realized—it was Madonna circa Like a Virgin. An imposter. Just as I was getting over that shock, three Elvises, arms linked, barreled past. This place was something.
“You find your friend yet?” Daphne asked as I approached. I shook my head. “Don’t worry,” she said. “She’ll turn up. This is a small town, really. Everyone’s connected.”
We walked inside through a maze of halls. Finally we came to an open area. Daphne took me by the hand and led me through a set of lavish glass doors. “Check it out,” she said, gesturing.
I breathed in. The pool was awesome. It was as big as Hokkaido. It stretched for what seemed like miles. The bluish water lapped calmly in the moonlight. A few people were swimming, but more people were hanging out under little tents—cabanas, I guess—with drinks, talking, laughing. I even saw gambling tables set up right on the water. It was like paradise. And the place was packed.
“Come on,” Daphne said. “Our cabana party’s this way.”
We strode to the party area. The people at the pool weren’t like people in L.A. in the least—they didn’t look you up and down and then walk away. These people were my immediate best friends, although they didn’t ask my name or ask to see an ID. They basically didn’t care.
Daphne and I walked into the “cabana,” which was a big, glowing tent with funky drum-’n’-bass music pulsing from the inside. A girl in nothing but a bikini and sandals greeted us, a huge grin on her face.
“I’m so glad you could come!” she said directly to me. I smiled. I felt a little overdressed: I had on my club gear from working, but everyone else was wearing next to nothing, including the guys.
It was hard to believe that I’d been in L.A., in a club, just hours earlier, pouring shots for people. It was hard to believe that my house and all of my stuff had burned to the ground. Was Cheryl alive? What was Marcus doing now? The thoughts swirled quickly to the forefront of my brain. But I shoved them to the back again.
Someone handed me a tall, pink, frothy drink in a beautiful fluted glass.
“It’s called a hummingbird,” the girl whispered to me. “It’ll make your wings flap really fast.” I smiled and took it. I didn’t remember any drink at Vibe called a hummingbird.
I had vowed not to drink. I’d just made the promise to myself yesterday. I frowned. This is an extraordinary circumstance, I thought. So I took a taste. It was like sucking on a giant peach sprinkled in sugar. Delicious. I took another sip.
Daphne sidled up to me. “Don’t drink those too fast,” she said, a smile creeping onto her lips. “I don’t want you to miss finding your friend. Those things can reduce big strong men to puddles.”
I stared at the drink again, wondering what was in it. I decided Daphne probably knew what she was talking about, so I put my drink down and watched the dancers. There were tons of girls who might be Katie—beautiful, long-limbed, blond American girls, girls in good shape, girls with great highlights in their hair, like Katie had. There was even a girl who had the same shoes I’d seen Katie once wear—but I looked at her face and it clearly wasn’t her. This girl’s face was longer. Katie had a rounder face—sort of heart shaped. I swayed my hips to the beat.
“That’s right,” a guy wearing an electric yellow Speedo said. He had a high-pitched voice. He grabbed my hand and started dancing. “I won fifty Gs this morning,” he whispered. “I haven’t told anyone yet except for you.”
I stopped in the middle of the dance floor and had to remember what a G was (it was totally Teddy lingo). Then I remembered: $50,000.
“Wow,” I said. “Nice going. What, were you playing the slots or something?” I tried to remember cooler Vegas games (what was the one with the wheel called?) but came up blank.
The guy looked at me. There was something altogether, I don’t know…cartoonish about him. He had on these black-framed glasses, for instance, that were way too big for his face. And he had no muscle tone whatsoever, and he was shorter than me. But somehow dancing, wearing his ridiculous bathing suit, wearing that strange knit hat with the earflaps on his head, he seemed, well, fabulous. “This is Vegas, sweetie,” he said. “This is where dreams come true. Tomorrow I’m gonna see if I can get on Fear Factor.”
“Do you know Katie Riley?” I blurted.
The guy continued to sway. He didn’t answer. I took that as a no. He seemed to be in his own world. I broke off from him, muttering, “Congratulations,” and went back to find my drink.
A couple of girls were gathered around the spot where I’d set my drink down.
“Do you really think it’s all fake?” said one girl, who had thick brown hair arranged into dreadlocks, a really cool-looking neon green bikini, and about a hundred bracelets snaking up her arm.
Her friend—a Britney Spears look-alike if I’d ever seen one—answered. “I’m positive,” she said. “She had, like, an exposé on MTV about it!”
I couldn’t even fathom what they were talking about and pressed through to find my pink cocktail. The brown-haired girl grabbed me.
“Hey,” she said. “Be a part of our poll. Do you think the girl in that Molecule video has been, like, completely liposuctioned?”
I looked at them blankly, having no idea who Molecule was. Or maybe she hadn’t said Molecule at all.
“Um…,” I said. “I don’t know. Maybe…”
The Britney girl threw her hands up. “You see! Even she thinks so!” She looked over at me and smiled.
“Hey—I’m looking for someone,” I said. The girls fixed their eyes on me. “Who says she’s in Vegas. You guys live around here?”
“I work at the Bellagio,” said the dreadlocked girl.
“I work at the Double Down Saloon,” said Britney. “What’s up?”
“Her name’s Katie Riley,” I explained. “Does that name sound familiar? She’s blond…. She’s about five-ten….”
Britney looked up and held one finger in the air. “I think there’s a Katie who works over at the Palms. The place totally got cool after The Real World was here. I think I met a girl named Katie who worked there.”
“No, Natasha,” said the other girl. “You’re thinking of Katrina. She works at Palms. I don’t know anyone named Katie who works there. But…” She got excited. “There is a Katie who works as a showgirl at Caesars. Oh my God, that’s got to be the hardest job, I swear, but I’ve met her a bunch of times. Blond, tall. Definitely. She’s really cool. Gorgeous, too.”
“Oh…okay,” I said. I couldn’t imagine Katie being a showgirl. We used to make up dance routines when we were both a little younger, and I was always the stronger dancer. Katie had no sense of rhythm. Plus I just couldn’t picture her with a plume atop her head. So I decided I’d stick with the Palms idea.
I found Daphne cuddled up next to my friend in the Speedo. “Hey,” I said. “Listen, I have to go look for my friend some more. But…thanks for the invite! This was awesome!”
Daphne smiled. “It’s too bad you can’t stay longer, Heaven.” She perked up. “Hey…Heaven! Your name is just like the song!”
“What song?” the Speedo guy asked. “Are you in a song?”
I froze. Could she mean…?
“I dunno, it’s called…‘Heaven’s Run Off’? ‘Heaven’s Gone’?” Daphne said, trying to think.
“Omigod! ‘Heaven’s Gone’! I love that song!” Speedo guy exclaimed.
Please tell me I’ve fallen into the twilight zone. “Heaven’s Gone”? People were listening to it here, in Vegas? A.J. back at Vibe had burned me
a CD of this hot new group from Japan called Funkitout. I’d tried to untangle the mystery of why they’d written a song that was completely about my life but hadn’t succeeded. Luckily the words were in Japanese, but…
My heart beat fast. “I haven’t heard it,” I murmured.
“I only heard it once at a club a couple of days ago,” Daphne said. “But it’s gonna be hot. So is it you?”
I felt sweat creep onto the back of my neck. “Why would anyone write a song about me?”
The Speedo guy twirled around. “Don’t underestimate yourself, girl!” he squealed.
“Yeah,” I said shakily. “Well, it’s just a weird coincidence, I guess. Anyway, hope to run into you soon.”
“Take my card,” Daphne said, reaching into her spangly bag and pulling out a card. “Call me if you ever want to party again.” She wiggled her fingers in a good-bye. I exited the cabana and strode quickly alongside the pool. People were still gambling strong at the floating tables.
When I got out of the hotel, I looked down at the card Daphne had given me. It said simply:
DAPHNE LARUE
ESCORT SERVICE
WHATEVER YOU’RE INTO!
I stared at it. Whatever you’re into.
So Daphne was…a hooker?
Oh God. And she was wondering if…I wanted to be one, too!
At least she didn’t know who I really was.
I went into the Monte Carlo, which had a gigantic green fountain in front of it and a bunch of steps to climb. The lobby was immaculate—shiny floors, beautiful woodwork, comfortable furniture.
I walked up to the desk. But before I could approach the woman behind the counter, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I flinched, turned around, and was inches away from roundhouse kicking a scrawny guy with oversized glasses and thinning hair.
“Whoa!” he said, jumping back. “Don’t hurt me! I was going to ask you to marry me!”
I stared at him. “What?”
