Still Life Las Vegas

by James Sie

  He opens his eyes and stares at the elongated, fun-house head in the chrome side of the toaster.

  “It’s perfect,” he says.

  * * *

  I lurch awake. I’m sitting on the couch. It’s dark. The television glow is the one light on. Some guy in a pink polo shirt is selling a new pill that’s going to add vigor and excitement to your married life. He’s in a daisy field, for some reason.

  The TV clock flashes red: it’s past midnight. Beside me, my father sleeps. He’s back in his robe, but at least it’s clean now. His head tilts back against the couch; his hands are clasped in front of him. He looks 200 percent better with his hair cut, even though his beard still needs a trim. Time enough for that tomorrow.

  The apartment is quiet. The room seems settled now, at peace. Back to its old self. On the screen, a white-haired couple sits on their couch, talking to me and my snoring father. They’re holding hands. It’s the best time of their lives, they say. They’ve never been so satisfied, or so in love. They walk along the beach, and a phone number flashes on the bottom of the screen.

  It’s time to nudge my dad awake and help him to bed, but I can’t move. Can inertia be inherited? I’m transfixed by the letters pulsating on the screen: GET THE MAGIC BACK! it says.

  When I first hear the buzz, I think it’s accompanying the flashing words. I’ve forgotten what the sound is, again. Finally I see the glow coming from my open bag. Even then, I’m slow. I drag the backpack over and fish it out. The tiny screen tells me there’s a new text message. It’s Chrysto’s number. Chrysto called. The blood rushes into my head and I fumble for the right button. Words come up, glowing orange in the dark:

  << i found her >>

  WALTER & CHRYSTO

  VENICE VENICE

  We’re outside on a covered bridge overlooking the street, shadowed by the jutting red clock tower. The lampposts below have just switched on; in this last hour of the day it’s just a glow, a faint promise of excitement to come. On the other side of the bridge, past the escalators and the wax museum, is a gold-and-marble mecca of luxury known as Venice Venice. It’s the only place in Las Vegas I’ve ever been specifically prohibited from entering.

  It’s the one place Chrysto wants to go.

  “She has been here all along! Can you believe it?”

  He gives no explanation of where he’s been, no apology for unanswered calls. There isn’t time for that; Chrysto’s a body in motion. Bouncing, rocking, doing mini push-ups off the railing, he’s shot past his usual stillness straight to hyper. He’s got words, and breath, only for his big discovery.

  Mara’s in Venice Venice. Some friend of his spotted a statue of a woman in one of those exclusive high-roller rooms. Chrysto couldn’t have seen it, since hotel employees aren’t permitted on site during off hours. Lucky for him, this friend isn’t an employee of the casino. This friend called the statue “extraordinary.” This friend thought it could be her.

  And who, exactly, was this friend? I get no answer.

  “I know it will be her, Walter. Believe me.”

  I do believe him. That’s the problem. He’s found his precious Mara, and it wasn’t even on my watch. Our mission’s done. Over.

  Chrysto taps my arm. “Come on.”

  But I can be a statue, too. “I can’t go in there, remember? And you’re not supposed to, either.”

  Chrysto shrugs and takes my arm, but I’m not moving anywhere.

  “Why doesn’t your friend go with you?” I ask. I try to toss that off as a light remark, helpful even, but as soon as it leaves my lips I know it’s hardened into something sulky and cheap. I’m afraid he’ll take me at my word, turn around and walk away, but he doesn’t.

  “Walter.” Chrysto grabs me gently by the back of the neck and brings my head close to his. He looks directly in my eyes. “I don’t want to go with this friend. I want to go with you. I need you there.”

  Damn. I want to stand my ground, I want to be the voice of reason, but there’s no withstanding the full wattage of Chrysto’s eyes. They can melt marble. He adds a smile to it, and against direct orders my face reflects it back. The mutiny’s complete. My disobedient heart leaps out of my chest and begs to play fetch.

  Chrysto practically sprints across the bridge, hand firmly clapped on my shoulder. We go through the revolving doors together. I wait for the alarms to go off and the SWAT teams to bust through. Nothing. I guess no one recognizes Chrysto out of makeup, and I’ve been camouflaged by the flock of Chinese tourists scurrying before us. We’re in.

  We walk down the Great Hall, past the columns and the bright frescoes. I keep my head down, trying not to look for security cameras. The familiar floral scent brings me back to my weekly visits with the deities on high, back when they were frozen and unattainable and a whole lot less trouble.

  “How are we going to get into that room?” I whisper.

  “It is a room, we enter it,” Chrysto says. Spoken like a true god.

  We reach the casino floor, cut through the Pachinko machines, pass the roulette tables, go around the Wheel. Of. Fortune! slots. We ignore the raised green felt altars inviting worshippers to their particular denomination: Caribbean; Pai Gow; Let It Ride. There’s a frenzy of activity. The casino’s never sounded so loud, but it doesn’t matter because Chrysto’s not saying anything. He strides through, loose but intent, a jungle cat on the prowl through the underbrush.

  Finally, we reach the Race and Sports booking lounge. Next to it, up two steps, is a room without doors, obscured by large, frosted-glass panels—it’s open and forbidding at the same time. This is not an entry for the casual-minded.

  Chrysto gives me a look. “Ready?”

  “For what?” I ask. “For what?” That old feeling of dread spreads out like a rash behind my neck and prickles down my arms.

  Chrysto answers with only a smile. One that shows his teeth. The next moment he’s gone, sliding into silhouette behind the translucent wall.

  * * *

  The first thing you notice when you enter the room is how utterly quiet it is. No piped-in music, no bells, no chatter. Every molecule of distraction has been sucked away. Four men hunch over a curved table, their hands in silent, terse communion with the dealer standing on the other side, whose own hands are in constant motion, soundlessly dispensing cards and revealing them and sweeping them away, as flowing and effortless as a bird in flight. There’s a bar at the far end, small but well-stocked, with a bartender, equally small, who fades into the rows of liquor bottles. A cocktail waitress glides a few steps toward us. Behind the dealer stands a rectangular man in a drab olive suit, a man whose stillness is an activity in itself. A small black cord curls out from under his collar and whispers in his ear.

  I look to Chrysto, but his eyes are fixed on the far corner of the room, where two leather armchairs sit unoccupied next to a round marble table, behind which stands—

  Her.

  It has to be.

  She’s beautiful, even from here.

  The statue’s white and glowing, like a full moon. A naked figure made of marble, delicate and whisper-fragile, Mara’s graceful arms stretch toward the sky, her gaze pierces the heavens, like she’s inviting, or entreating, some reckless god above. The smoothness of her torso gradually twists into the trunk of a laurel tree that she’s trying to burst from, that she’s slowly becoming. Her hair twines and spreads downward to her shoulder like a forest canopy.

  I’m expecting tears—for Chrysto to throw himself on the ground, weeping for his newfound love, but he’s not even looking at her. His eyes sweep the rest of the room casually. He nods his approval, a pleasant smile fixed on his face.

  “Hey, Walter,” he murmurs, turning toward me. His face stays pleasant, but his words are fast and low. “Do this favor for me, okay? I need for you to get Acacia. Now, please. Go now.”

  Chrysto gives me two friendly pats on the chest and turns away without waiting for an answer. He’s back in motion, nodding at the man in the olive
suit, dancing right up to the cocktail waitress, exchanging words with her while switching sides without so much as a break in movement. It’s like he’s at his Greek tavern, high-fiving all the patrons, but this time his walk seems looser, his legs more wobbly and less in control. He heads straight for the bar, staggering slightly, and I could swear he’s drunk, but all the time he’s getting closer and closer to the statue. Without seeming to mean to he suddenly stands in front of it and looks up as if he’s just run into a close friend.

  “Here you are,” he says, a little too loudly. His fingers stroke the side of her smooth face, which is turned away, yearning for escape. The cocktail waitress hovers uncertainly nearby. The man in the olive suit hasn’t made a move, but mouths something into the air. The gamblers couldn’t give a damn, continue with their finger dance.

  Chrysto gives me a flash of his eyes, warning me of some storm about to break, but I can’t leave, not just yet. Next to the frosted glass, I watch him clasp his hand firmly around Mara’s neck.

  “Hey!” he yells to the gamblers. His voice is thick, giddy. “How is the luck in this room? Bad, yes?”

  Still holding her neck, Chrysto pulls and rocks the statue forward, base and all. He catches her by the throat with the other hand and pushes backward, his own body swaying in counterbalance like they’re about to step together and twirl across the room.

  “Your luck can never be good, not with this one!” Chrysto yells over his shoulder. “She never forgives, she only brings curses!” He spits out something in Greek and then he’s got both hands on the back of her head and is pitching her forward, fast, and down Mara crashes, her head hitting the marble table, decapitating her at once. The left arm breaks at the elbow, the other is still reaching out, not up but toward me, begging for help. “Bitch,” Chrysto says. He grabs Mara’s head by one of her tresses, still attached, and she stares up, wide-eyed, a lovely Medusa slain by mad, mad Perseus.

  Already security has entered the room, four huge men in blue blazers who pass me to form a wall blocking Chrysto from sight. The man in the olive suit has taken three steps forward to protect his gamblers, but they’ve already turned back to their game: they’ve seen this kind of thing before; they know how it turns out.

  Chrysto’s holding Mara’s head high in the air, about to smash it down. One guard grabs Chrysto’s wrist—“Let it go, sir”—before yanking down the arm in one swift motion. The action is accompanied by a sharp cracking sound, and one of them must be holding Chrysto’s mouth shut because I can only hear a distant, muffled cry. And immediately afterward the blue wall of blazers is crashing over Chrysto, the men put their collective weight onto him, slowly but implacably forcing him onto the ground, with only the smallest of grunts coming from an invisible Chrysto, and then there’s a sudden crackle of electricity and a few muted thumps on the soft carpet and the last thing I hear before I run out of the room is one gambler cackling to the other: “Hey, twenty-one. The kid did something right.”

  * * *

  I sprint to the apartment, trying to convince myself that I’m running for help and not running away. I’m feeling failure even as my finger presses on Chrysto’s apartment number. Sure enough, no one answers. Acacia’s gone. I have no idea what to do. I shouldn’t have left Chrysto, I think, I should have stayed with him. I was afraid.

  << A not home >>

  I punch out the text, even though I’m sure he’s in no position to read it.

  << r u all right? >>

  I tear out a page from my sketchbook and quickly write a note to Acacia, leaving her my cell number, and wedge it in a corner of the intercom box. I start back, though I’m sure I can’t even get near Venice Venice again. German shepherds are probably sniffing me out at this very moment. I look at my reflection in the tinted-glass window of the 7th Heaven Quik Mart on the corner. That’s the face of a Wanted Man. Cowardly accomplice to the destruction of a priceless artifact.

  Acacia’s in the store.

  I think it’s her. She’s in the liquor aisle, staring at a bottle of vodka, so that’s like her, but under the fluorescent lights, she could be Acacia’s mother, she looks so much older. The bottle in her hand weighs her whole body down—she hunches. Her eyes are hidden behind sunglasses, but the rest of her face looks puckered, worn down, six days shy of a good rest. It’s like she’s not quite fully inflated. Acacia the Elder grabs the bottle by the neck and walks away, out of sight.

  I run into the store and scan the aisles: one, two, three. But she’s already at the front, waiting in line at the checkout counter. Acacia’s steel-rod posture is back, her unlined face lifted and cocked to the side as she gives the clerk that little cat’s purr of a smile. She’s completely revived. The dark silk scarf around her shoulders has stopped looking crone-like and become fashionable again.

  Acacia’s eyes narrow, then pop open wide when she sees me. She drags me out of the store. “What? What has happened?” she asks.

  I garble out some words, and for a moment, her face looks like it’s going to collapse again, but instantly she snaps her head back, looking up at the sky. “Idiot!” she fumes, followed by a roiling stream of Greek. Acacia fumbles in her bag for her cigarettes and lights one. Her hand is trembling.

  “Bitch,” she mutters, echoing Chrysto.

  “I thought he loved her.”

  Acacia lets out a blast of smoke, halfway between a grunt and a laugh. “That whore? He doomed her. She could not keep her hands off him.” She takes a thoughtful drag on her cigarette. “I should never have told him about the statue,” she says, almost to herself.

  “Why did he break it?” I ask.

  The usually minimalistic Acacia erupts, all slashing hands and thrusting chin. “He has traveled halfway around the world for this fucking statue! He thinks it is her curse to him, for what he did to her. I tell him, stop making this dream for yourself! She is most definitely dead, I tell him, this bad luck, you have baked it yourself; stuff it in your mouth and be done with it.”

  Her words sound angry but she’s slipping a hand underneath her sunglasses and wiping her eyes. “Idiot,” she repeats.

  She takes one fierce drag on her cigarette and throws it to the ground. “I must go to him,” she says abruptly. She strides away, then quickly returns, thrusting the paper bag with the vodka at my chest. “Why don’t you listen to me?” she asks, shaking her head. “Stay away.”

  She sounds almost sorrowful. “Go home.”

  WALTER & CHRYSTO

  The cages have all been sprung at Chrysto and Acacia’s building—every unit is wide open. As I approach the doorways I hear the muted sounds of life within: television, radio, a murmur of French conversation, and, from every apartment, the constant hum of portable fans working overtime. Everyone’s on display. There’s the gymnast Chrysto pointed out earlier, eating breakfast; a woman on a couch fanning herself with a magazine; a muscled acrobat sweating over his ironing. I pass the doorway of the four Thai girls, who are sprawled on the carpet in front of the television, watching cartoons. Their chins are propped up by their hands, their legs are curved behind, and their tiny feet tap on their heads in unison.

  Acacia’s standing in the doorway in a simple white sundress. Her short hair is wet against her neck. When she sees me, she doesn’t move; her face doesn’t change expression, either. Then her eyes latch onto the bottle of vodka I’m returning. Apparently that’s the key to entry because a small smile curls on her mouth. Her hand crinkles the brown bag as she takes the bottle.

  “It should never be so hot,” she tells me.

  Chrysto calls out from inside, “’Kash, we live in the desert, remember?”

  Acacia shrugs, unimpressed with the information.

  “The central air, phtt, broken,” Chrysto yells out.

  “Yes, more of your good luck,” she shouts behind her, and precedes me into the room. “Look, your boyfriend has brought you flowers.”

  It’s hot in the apartment. The ceiling fan rattles above at top speed, fast but i
neffective. A rusted box fan spins the hot air around the room. The shades are all drawn, so Chrysto’s in shadow on the couch. “Acacia is becoming too soft,” he says as I approach. “She forgets summers we lived on rocks of Taygetos, so close to sun.”

  “There was an ocean at our feet, idiot,” she mutters, disappearing into the kitchen.

  Chrysto reaches for the lamp by the couch, clicks it on.

  “Christ, Chrysto.”

  He’s in boxer shorts, hair tied up on top of his head. His good hand waves away my stare. “Two places they broke it: here, and here,” Chrysto says cheerfully, pointing to general areas on his right arm, which is in a cast, shoulder to wrist, supported by a sling. On his face, a dark cloud of purple blotches over his left eyebrow; it has an angry red center with a distinct crescent shape; I can imagine the tip of a shoe easily carving out that space. A large pad of white gauze follows the bottom curve of his rib cage and disappears into the waistband of his shorts; it’s stained by antiseptic, or leakage, or both.

  “It is nothing, Walter, do not cry.” My friend leans forward and with the barest of winces takes my wilting daisies. Under his breath, he tells me, “Already I am making my body to heal. Very soon, all better.” He falls back against the cushions, calling out, “’Kash, bring something for the flowers.”

  Acacia is already by the couch with a green vase, sloshing water as she swings it over to the coffee table. She lazily snatches the bouquet away from Chrysto and plunks it, plastic and all, into the vase, all the while continuing a conversation they haven’t been having. “Yes, good luck they smash your arm to pieces. Or else now you would be on plane to Greece.”

  She addresses me, turning her back to Chrysto. “When I see him, I scream loud. Ohhh!” Acacia holds her hands up in front of her face and shakes them in mock horror. “I say, this boy work for you, he is not so good in the head, and you treat him like this? I yell, is American brutality! Is oppression!” She lowers her arms and smiles slyly, clearly enjoying this retelling. “I frighten them. ‘No charges, take him home.’” She reaches up and grabs my chin in her hand. I feel the points of her nails press into my skin. “Not to worry. Poor Walter.”