Country

by Danielle Steel

  “He always thinks he has a brain tumor when he’s hungover,” Jean said under her breath, as he dove into the pool. He had seen two pretty young women in bikinis swimming, and Jean knew exactly why he had decided to swim, and didn’t care. She saw him chatting with one of them a few minutes later. He never changed, and never hesitated to pursue other women right in front of her. He had been doing it for years. It made Stephanie sad for Jean. She was a good woman and deserved better than that. And spending his money lavishly as revenge was small compensation for what she didn’t have.

  Alyson and Brad were in good spirits, and kissed lovingly as he put sunscreen on her back. Watching them made Stephanie nostalgic, thinking of the tenderness she and Bill had lost long ago. She saw Jean turn away from watching them too.

  They had lunch sitting by the pool, and spent the afternoon relaxing and swimming, and they were all in good spirits when they went back to their rooms at the end of the day to change. They had dinner at a fancy restaurant that night, and Fred had too much to drink again, and flirted with a woman at the next table whose breasts were nearly falling out of her dress. He sent her a bottle of champagne, and no one commented, although it was embarrassing for them. He was fun to be with when he wasn’t chasing women, or falling asleep at the table once he was drunk. It was easy to see why Jean got annoyed at him, and thought Stephanie was better off without a man. He went to bed before the others, and Alyson and Brad went to their room early that night, while Jean and Stephanie went to the bar and sat talking for hours. Neither of them wanted to go upstairs. And when they finally did, Stephanie ordered another movie, and this time popcorn to go with it, which she spilled in her bed, and then wound up laughing all by herself. Bill would have killed her for that. She gathered it up and ate it while she watched the movie, which was even better than the one the night before. She almost invited Jean to come and watch it with her, but she was afraid to wake Fred, if she called her, so she didn’t.

  On the whole, it was an easy, relaxing weekend, and she had a good time with them, even alone. She was in good spirits after talking to her children, when she headed back to San Francisco on Monday afternoon. She swam for a last time, said goodbye to the others, and drove onto the freeway, thinking about the weekend, only to realize half an hour later that she had taken the wrong on-ramp and was heading south, to L.A. and Palm Springs, instead of north to San Francisco. She took another turnoff, still distracted, and found herself facing a sign indicating the road to Las Vegas, and almost laughed out loud. Now that would be a very different experience than going home. She was trying to get back on the road heading north, and didn’t make the turn in time. She had no sense of direction, hated maps, got confused by road signs, and didn’t know how to work her GPS. And the next thing she knew, she was on the road to Las Vegas, trying to figure out how to get back in the right direction.

  And as she tried, she realized how much she didn’t want to go home. There was nothing waiting for her there, except loneliness and silence and an empty house. A crazy question popped into her head: What if she went to Las Vegas instead? Who would even know? She wasn’t a gambler, but doing something that different might be fun. It was a little bit unnerving thinking that no one would have any idea where she was. But what could happen to her? Would it be so terrible to do something outrageous for a change?

  She felt guilty even thinking about it, and then with a sudden surge of rebellion and independence, she intentionally ignored the turnoff heading north, which finally appeared. And instead of turning on to it, she kept going straight ahead with a big smile on her face. Even if she only stayed for a night, what harm could it do? Who would ever know? She pressed her foot down on the gas, feeling wild and liberated and free. The coin had finally flipped, and she was discovering the other side of being so alone. She really could do whatever she wanted now. There was no one to stop her, or even know. She lowered her side window, and let the wind fly through her hair. She was on her way to Vegas. She was alone, and lonely, but she was also free. It was a feeling she had never had before.

  Chapter 5

  The drive to Las Vegas took Stephanie just under five hours. She turned on the radio and was singing to herself. She had a strange sense of exhilaration and freedom just knowing that no one knew what she had done or where she was. A simple wrong turn on the freeway had turned into an adventure. In her life until now, she would have corrected her mistake, turned around, and gone home. But this time she had done something different. She had no idea what she was going to do in Las Vegas, maybe nothing, just walk around and watch the people, or play a few slot machines. Or maybe she’d go to a show. The possibilities were endless.

  She’d only been there once, for a bachelorette weekend, years before. Bill hadn’t been a gambler, and neither was she. But suddenly going to Las Vegas sounded like fun to her. She felt invulnerable and very brave, driving there on her own. She wondered what her two friends would say if she told them, but she didn’t want to tell anyone right now. That was part of what made it special and unusual, just disappearing for a day or a few hours, doing something totally unexpected. She would drive back to San Francisco the next day, but for now, she was on her way to Las Vegas, on a crazy adventure that was completely atypical of her, which made it even more exciting.

  She had stayed at the Bellagio the last time she went, and had read about the Wynn having been built since then, and being the best hotel there now. She was mildly tempted to stay at something more exotic, like the one that looked like an Egyptian pyramid, or the one that pretended to be in Paris, or another one in Venice, but she decided she’d feel more comfortable at a more traditional hotel. As she reached the outskirts of Las Vegas, it suddenly dawned on her that in her entire adult life she had never taken a trip alone. She’d been married to Bill since college, and ever since she’d gone everywhere with him, and more often than not with their kids. Bill had never been a very adventuresome or spontaneous person, he was a creature of habit, as she was to a great extent. He hadn’t taken her away on romantic weekends, and preferred family vacations they planned far in advance, usually to places they liked and had been before, or their weekends with their friends, like their Presidents’ Day annual ski trip, or the Memorial Day weekend in Santa Barbara she’d just been on. She smiled to herself thinking that if Bill had known what she was doing, going to Las Vegas by herself on a whim, just because she’d taken the wrong exit getting on the freeway, he would have been amazed. And so was she.

  Driving into Las Vegas, she was dazzled by the lights and neon signs. It was after six o’clock by then, and there were swarms of people on the street, going in and out of casinos, as the hotels towered over them. Even on a Monday evening, there was an instant party atmosphere that reminded her of New Year’s Eve. The drive through the desert to get there had been peaceful, but now everything had come alive, with thousands of people visible everywhere. And they weren’t just gamblers, they were families with kids as well. Traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard was heavy, as she glanced around her with a broad grin. This was clearly the strangest thing she had ever done, but she was in a festive mood as she drove up to the Wynn, with its gold-domed awnings. It was a surprisingly beautiful curved complex of two hotels with two towers in bronze glass, with gardens, waterfalls, pools, and an eighteen-hole golf course behind, and an artificial mountain at the entrance to the hotel. It had separate entrances for the hotel and the casino, which was unusual in Las Vegas. And it towered forty-five stories above her, as she told the doorman she was checking in. He gave her a ticket stub for her car, and she said she’d come back for her luggage if she got a room. She began to wonder if they’d have one, when she saw the lobby, filled with light and flowers, with parasols suspended from the ceiling dancing to music. There was a multitude of shops, with everything from Rolex and Cartier to Vuitton and Dior. There were a thousand distractions to entice her as she walked up to the front desk, stood on line for a few minutes, and then asked if they had an available room. It was the en
d of the holiday weekend, and she hoped that people had checked out. The clerk looked at his computer for a minute, and returned to her with a welcoming smile. She had asked for a standard room.

  “Have you stayed with us before?”

  “No, I haven’t.” She almost wanted to tell him that this kind of aberration was a first for her.

  “Then we’d like to give you one of our Wynn Tower suites, at a reduced rate, of course.” They did everything to make people feel special and want to come again—and possibly stay for even longer than planned if they had a good time and were lucky in the casinos. “How long will you be staying with us?”

  “Just one night.” She couldn’t think of an excuse or a reason to stay for more than a night, and she was sure that would be long enough. The exciting thing was that she had been bold enough to do it at all. The victory was there.

  The desk clerk inquired about her luggage as he handed her the key card to the private gated entrance to the tower and her room, and she said her bag was still in her car. He told her that the key card would serve as her casino card too, and they would send her luggage up to her immediately, after a bellman showed her to her room.

  She was escorted to the private gateway of the tower suites, and to a suite on the fortieth floor. As Stephanie stepped inside the suite, she looked around in amazement. It was elegant and luxurious, with an enormous living room in soft beiges, with couches, a desk, a dining area, and a huge flat-screen TV, a large bedroom that she could see from the living room, and a spectacular view from floor-to-ceiling windows that looked down at the city, and out toward the desert and mountains beyond it. It was breathtaking as she looked around. Her room at the Biltmore in Santa Barbara had been lovely, but nothing like this. Another bellman brought her bag up a moment later, as Stephanie walked around and checked out the suite. The marble bathroom was bigger than her bedroom at home, with a glass shower and enormous bathtub, and every imaginable cream, perfume, and amenity on the marble sink. She wanted to clap her hands and grin, this was going to be fun, and just for a fraction of an instant, she wished she had someone to share it with, even her kids, who would have been stunned that she was there.

  She decided not to change her clothes. She didn’t want to waste time. No one she had seen on the street, or even in the lobby of the elegant hotel, was dressed in anything fancy, other than the few women already dressed for the evening in one of the better restaurants or on their way to a show or the casino. The others wore halter tops and shorts, or T-shirts and jeans. She was fine the way she was, in sandals, a white T-shirt, and jeans, which she had worn for the drive home. She picked up her bag and headed for the lobby and took another look around, and then headed for the Esplanade of Shoppes. There were jewelry shops like Graff’s for the high rollers, and gamblers who had done well. There was a Chanel that Jean would have loved, and Brioni, Oscar de la Renta, all of them with fairly flashy clothes in their windows, and expensive wares to tempt people wandering by with money to burn.

  She used her key card to wander into the casino, after seeing the high-limit gaming area just off the tower lobby, and then found herself among the slot machines all around her, in the main part of the casino, with blackjack, poker, and craps being played. There were eighteen hundred slot machines. People were gathered around the gaming tables, and she decided to wait until later to try her luck. She walked out of the casino, and on the doorman’s recommendation, she took a cab to Fremont Street to see what was happening there, and was instantly startled to see all the neon signs suddenly go dark as a huge canopy lit up overhead with a giant film display on a screen that was one thousand five hundred feet long and ninety feet high. Everything she saw was dazzling and impressive, and it was exciting being on the street among all the people. Everyone appeared to be in high spirits, and she looked into shops and wandered through two malls before she went back to her hotel at eight o’clock. There were several fancy restaurants, and she was hungry, but she didn’t want to eat alone at a proper restaurant, so she went to a more informal restaurant in the lobby, and ordered a sandwich, as she looked around.

  There were families in the restaurant too, and successful-looking older men wearing heavy gold watches, accompanied by flashy young women, some of whom seemed as if they’d been hired for the night, and were no older than her girls. There were groups of women who appeared to be having a great time, and men who were laughing and talking and eyeing the women who walked by. She saw one table of them check her out, and one of them smiled at her. For the first time in decades, she felt suddenly unprotected, and she realized she could no longer hide behind the shield of her married status or her husband there with her. She was a single woman now, and it felt strange. But no one was out of line, or tried to accost her. It was a city built for fun, with the lure of sex and easy money to entice anyone who came there. It was a playground for adults, with celebrity shows and famous musical acts to entertain those who didn’t want to gamble, or just needed a break. There was something for everyone, even kids, with small playgrounds with fun rides, and babysitting services for parents who wanted to park them for a while so they could go to the casinos and try their luck at the slot machines or tables.

  Stephanie went back to the casino when she finished her sandwich, and stood watching the blackjack table for a while. People looked intent, as they placed their chips on the table, and a serious older woman had stacks of chips next to her and was doing well. Stephanie could hear Spanish, Italian, and French. There were two German men standing right behind her, and a cluster of Arab men were speaking Arabic. She went from blackjack to roulette, which seemed less interesting to her. The dealers bantered with the clients, and people came and went from the table, as some left to try their luck somewhere else. She watched the craps table for a while, which was harder to understand as people rolled the dice, and there were poker tables. She bought fifty dollars worth of chips and sat down at a slot machine just for fun. On the second turn, she won four hundred dollars as lights and bells went off, and she gave a little scream, as three older women grinned at her.

  “I’ve been working that machine all night,” one of the women said in a heavy southern drawl. “That’s my money you just won.” But she was good-natured about it. She said they came here every Monday. They were playing two machines each with a practiced hand. They looked like someone’s grandmothers. Stephanie stuck with the machine for a while, and then moved on to another one and lost half of what she’d won, but she was still ahead on her initial investment, and then she went back to watch one of the blackjack tables again. It seemed like the most interesting game to her, although she didn’t have the guts to play. She stopped here and there to watch the people and the games, fascinated by the intent expressions of the gamblers.

  She didn’t have an uncomfortable moment all night, and people chatted amiably as they stood and watched, and several of the players laughed and talked too, particularly if they were winning, and the dealers made occasional jokes. Stephanie noticed that the dealers changed frequently. There were no windows to the outside, which made it easy to lose track of time, with no way of knowing if it was day or night. The gambling and party atmosphere went on around the clock. And she was startled to realize that it was midnight when she glanced at her watch. She had ordered several Cokes, and there were frequent offers of free drinks. She noticed too that the winners at the tables gave the dealers hefty tips when they won. And there was an English player who was making thousand-dollar bets, with stacks of chips in every color in front of him. The dealers seemed to know him well. She’d been told that there were additional private rooms for the heavy gamblers, and she saw the roped-off area, where only the heavy-hitting gamblers went. Someone told her that they sent private planes to pick them up from wherever they were, and they were comped by the hotel. This was serious business to some, and although in many ways it appeared to be Sodom and Gomorrah, it had a playful atmosphere that appealed to her. Her detour on the road home had turned out well.

&n
bsp; She had thought about going to one of the shows, but was having too good a time in the casino to leave. She played a few hands of blackjack after midnight, lost a hundred dollars very quickly, and decided to call it a night and go upstairs. She’d had a fabulous time, and she had already decided to go home the next day. She had done what she came here to do, prove to herself that she could do something different, check out the unexpected, and seize an opportunity. But she had no reason to stay. She was going to do a little shopping before she left, because the stores were so good, and then she would drive home. She was in no rush to go back.

  She got in the elevator, using her room key for the fortieth floor, when five men walked in. They had had a lot to drink, and were all handsome, about her age, and they looked her over unashamedly. She wasn’t dressed to entice anyone, and realized she probably looked like their wives at home, with no makeup, in a T-shirt and jeans. She had noticed some sexy young women in the casino, with tight short dresses, lots of cleavage, heavy makeup, and stiletto heels. Just watching them made her smile. She couldn’t even imagine dressing like that. Stephanie had natural, wholesome good looks, and she appeared and felt like a wife and mom, not a babe, even though she didn’t look her age. The lack of makeup and elaborate clothes made her seem younger too, as did her youthful appearance. One of the men was smiling at her as they all got out on the fortieth floor.

  “How about a drink?” he offered, and for a moment she was surprised, and almost wanted to turn around to see if he was talking to someone else. No one had offered her a drink in years. She had never been in a circumstance where that could happen, and she had always been with Bill.

  “Uh…I…uh…no, thanks. My husband is waiting for me,” she said pleasantly, trying to sound calm, and hoping she didn’t blush. It was startling to realize that he was hitting on her.