I grew up in an America that shared certain narratives. It is not the same now. Everyone had seen Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show; everyone had seen the photographs in the pages of Life magazine—photographs of Tupelo, Mississippi, where he grew up, an only child; of the haircut, when he was inducted into the army; of the sleeping private through the train window; of his parents, Vernon and Gladys—of Gladys, his mother, with such dark eyes; of his leave to visit his mother’s bedside; of his mother’s grave.
The platter spun at 45 rpm. The aural helix opened like a can of white-meat Apollo: an engorged voice; a slurred diction; a humpy, syrupy croon. Elvis wasn’t black. He wasn’t white. He wasn’t masculine. He wasn’t feminine. He wasn’t inimitable. He was a liberator.
The theme of Elvis’s show that night was the theme of Las Vegas (the gambler’s prayer)—resurrection. During an interlude, between sets, the voice of a woman called through the dark in a calm voice: “Elvis, I am your mother.” Immediately, several security men were weaving among the tables. Elvis did not look in the direction of the voice. He raised a bottle of Gatorade to his lips as all eyes watched the security men escort a woman in a two-piece suit through a door in the wall that closed silently behind them.
After the Elvis show, Marilyn and I went to another hotel, to a lounge that seated no more than fifty people, to watch the “Ike and Tina Turner Revue.” Tina Turner whipped the Ikettes through an aggressive choreography of stiletto heels, swinging wigs; wheels of sweat spraying from the stage. The Turners were already reprising their hits from the fifties; to that extent they were furiously treading fame, sinking. (Las Vegas lounge acts are a sink.) This was two years before every Top Forty radio station in America was pumping “Proud Mary.”
Elvis Presley’s final performance at the Hilton Hotel was in December of 1976. He was scheduled to return the following winter. He died at Graceland, his home in Memphis, in August of 1977 at the age of forty-two. He is buried at Graceland.
• • •
Peter has gone home to change clothes. The nurse has given Luther two shots. Luther alternates between sleep (a boiling gurgle in his chest) and high-pitched, teakettle trills (bird-like, hymn-like), or he perseverates, with every exhalation, Mama Mama Mama Mama.
Peter returns. Luther is aware of Peter’s presence; he begins to coo plaintively. I know, says Peter, I know I know I know I know. Peter massages Luther’s chest. It seems to me Peter is massaging too hard, as if he would press every last drop of noxious humor from Luther’s body. Luther visibly relaxes. Peter’s voice, Peter’s hands are the only comforts on earth.
• • •
Nomadic people of the desert have, for centuries, woven carpets that are floral meadows or geometric pleasances. Desert carpets refresh those for whom the desert is transient, repetitive. The desert is the day between the nights, the dry between the wetness of the stars. Carpets are portable gardens of repose.
At twilight, Las Vegas signs, visible from miles away, are like carpets flung up into the sky. Pulses of light chase one another about a grid of lapidary. Las Vegas signs are not so much calling the traveler to rest as calling the dead to life. Calling the loser to luck. To change. To chance.
Late in the evening we return to the hotel coffee shop and once again we pass through the Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. Mr. McGregor’s Good Earth is no longer lit from the skylight but by saturated theatrical lighting. Now I can see all the gigantic miniatures—pots and shards and all—are painted with phosphorescent colors: an installation reminiscent of Claes Oldenburg. All is hushed and holy in some trashy way, and disarmingly innocent.
All the hotels around here cast spells of one kind or another to lure you in—gondolas, snow leopards. One feels flattered. In every other city of the world, the impulse of a luxury hotel is to exclude, isolate, intimidate. Elsewhere in the world, or even a mile out of town, a looming desert or an empty sky is bent on reminding you of your insignificance—lessons of mortality, lessons of austerity, lessons of depletion. The lesson of Las Vegas is Hey, no problemo.
Which does not mean that Las Vegas cannot be unsettled. There was the fire of 1980 that killed eighty-five people at the MGM Grand Hotel. There was the night in October of 2003 at the theater of the Mirage Hotel: During the Siegfried and Roy show, a 380-pound tiger became distracted by someone or something in the audience. The tiger slowly turned its attention toward the auditorium and began to move downstage, unfettered. Roy Horn interposed himself between the tiger and the audience. The tiger took Horn’s neck in its mouth and dragged him offstage. Some in the audience applauded.
Early in 1951, the federal government began testing atomic weapons at a site in the desert, sixty miles north of Las Vegas. At the first detonation, the roulette wheel maintained its orbit; dealers’ hands did not pause. Chips rattled. Ice rattled. Customers rattled. Las Vegas resorted to its renowned humor. A bartender at one of the Strip hotels came up with an Atomic Cocktail; a beauty shop downtown advertised the Atomic Bouffant.
In 1993 Steve Wynn, at once the sultan of Las Vegas and its Tiresias (Mr. Wynn is afflicted with retinitis pigmentosa), envisioned a thirty-story luxury hotel—the world will never have seen its like—rising from the ashes of the once-fabulous Dunes.
On a calm October evening, therefore, two hundred thousand spectators lined Las Vegas Boulevard South. Heralded by cannonade from the pirate ship harbored in the lagoon of the Treasure Island Hotel (another of Wynn’s visions), the south wing of the Dunes Hotel—not yet forty years old—was dynamite-imploded. The crowds cheered.
Back in the sixties, when the “old” Dunes was running at full-tilt, a thirty-five-foot fiberglass sculpture of a raffish sultan stood over the entrance to the hotel, as upon a parapet, to welcome travelers to his desert kingdom. Tastes change. The kitsch idol was eventually removed to the hotel’s golf course as a relict of the age of personified brands. One day an electrical short in some chamber of the sultan’s heart caused him to melt to the ground. The city of antique lands was amused by the tragic kismet.
• • •
Luther and Peter moved to Las Vegas because their apartment building in Berkeley was converting to condominiums. For what it would cost to buy their two-bedroom apartment, they could get a new house in Las Vegas. Peter was enthusiastic; Luther was iffy, but if that was what Peter wanted.
Initially, we heard excitement about their house. Luther’s medications, though, were not controlling his condition as effectively as they once had. He was tired all the time; there was nowhere to walk; you had to get in the car and drive to a mall if you wanted to take a walk. Luther couldn’t drive because he couldn’t see; he had various cancers—of the eye, of the jaw. Whenever Jimmy called, Luther was just watching TV, watching Miss Oprah.
But then Luther found a new doctor, someone efficacious. New meds! Turns out, the drugs should have been changed years ago. Luther began to feel well and he began to feel better about Las Vegas. He liked the extremes of it—the heat, the cold, the flats, the mountains. He liked being a house owner in the desert—the strangeness of it! He said he felt like a pioneer. He talked about special window treatments, solar screens—unknown in Northern California. Barack Obama ran for president and Luther’s HIV was undetectable.
Now that Luther lies dying three miles away, we finally visit his house. I am in the backyard with Peter. Peter has observed that some neighbors persist in planting grass. The summer burns it all away. Come September, the lawns need to be reseeded. When Peter and Luther wanted to plant some trees, they had to call out a contractor with machines of the sort that are used in mines. Look, Peter says, attempting to dig with his heel in the backyard dirt. The desert refuses his heel.
I ask Peter if he and Luther ever go down to the Strip to see the shows. Only when friends come to town, he says. People in town rarely go. Though there are special rates for townies. The musicians that interest Luther—singles and groups from th
e sixties—often play the lounges at smaller hotels, and they sometimes go to those.
The Moulin Rouge hotel and casino opened on the west side of town in 1955 and catered to a black clientele. Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey, and many other stars performed there. The Original Sin of Sin City had nothing to do with the sexual gaming Las Vegas now advertises. Las Vegas—the western town, the Mormon town, the mobster town, the stardust town—was a Jim Crow town well into the 1960s. Las Vegas granted dispensations to excess only within limits—white limits.
Black entertainers could perform at the Strip casinos, but they could not eat or drink or gamble or take rooms in them. This story may be as apocryphal as the rest of Las Vegas: One evening, exiting the stage door of a famous hotel and crossing the pool area, Dorothy Dandridge slipped off one of her pumps to cool her foot in the pool. Someone observed Miss Dandridge—an employee or a guest. The management of the hotel had the pool drained and scoured.
• • •
Holy Saturday afternoon. Luther seemed more heavily sedated than on Friday. The bed was level; the air-conditioner was off.
A young man’s head appeared from around the door. Glasses. Balding. Do you know . . . ? His entire body slid into the room, leaving the door as it was. Does Mister . . . Do you know if Mr. Thomas has any religious affiliation?
Baptist, said Jimmy, standing up. Raised Baptist; he went to several churches along the way, but.
I’m not a Baptist minister, said the young man. In fact, I’m not a minister; I’m studying to become a chaplain. Don Jensen. Hi. Do you think Mr. Thomas would object to a prayer?
No, I’m sure not, said Jimmy. (Later, when recounting the chaplain’s visit to Peter, Jimmy learned that Luther had been confirmed as a Lutheran in Berkeley.)
Mr. Jensen had sweat rings under his arms. Jimmy indicated Mr. Jensen should take the chair near the bed. Mr. Jensen leaned forward to speak directly into Luther’s ear. Mr. Jensen did not raise his voice. Luther did not stir.
Honestly, you never know who will attend your last hours. When my friend Marty’s mother was dying, they called the rectory for a priest. There was no priest available. Really? No priest? Not a one, said a woman at the answering service. The hospice had a rabbi on call. How about a rabbi? In the end, Marty’s mother liked the rabbi so well she canceled her order for a priest.
You are a lucky man, Mr. Thomas. Mr. Jensen spoke calmly into Luther’s ear. It is a great blessing to die on Easter Sunday. Our Lord rose from the dead and tore off his shroud and tossed it in a corner like so much dirty laundry. Then he walked out into the first light of sunrise and the gates of his kingdom were opened forevermore. You will enter into that kingdom this very day. Jimmy looked to the palm tree in the parking lot, then back to the face of the man speaking calmly into Luther’s ear. If there is anything that is holding you back, any misgiving, let us resolve it now in the love of God. Believe God loves you, Mr. Thomas. I am going to say the words our Savior taught us. You follow along as best you can: Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Mr. Jensen stood; he traced a cross upon Luther’s forehead with his thumb; he nodded to Jimmy; he left the room.
If he couldn’t make it home for Easter, Luther would always send his mother a check so she could buy herself a new Easter outfit, a dress and a hat—a great big old Pizarro hat, as he called the wide brims and short crowns she favored.
One day, when Luther was four or five, he looked up and saw a tiny silver plane crossing the sky. Look, Mama, he said. His mother was pinning clothes on the line. When I grow up I am going to ride through the sky like that. His mother looked up where he pointed, then bent once more to her basket. Mama, you’re sad because you think I never will, but I will.
“Class,” Bugsy Siegel remarked, “that’s the only thing that counts in life. Class. Without class and style a man’s a bum; he might as well be dead.”
• • •
Holy Saturday. It is the last hour of Sabbath for the Jews—the setting of the sun. Cher’s face, bedizened with jewels, floats over the Strip like a Byzantine icon. A large crowd of pedestrians makes an aimless paseo among the hotels.
I am making my way up Las Vegas Boulevard to the Easter Vigil Mass at Guardian Angel Cathedral, just beyond the Wynn. At intersections, escalators transport pedestrians to crossways over the streets. Along both sides of the overpass corridor are Mexican families selling bottled water from ice chests. The prices are better than in the hotel shops and people do buy. There are long lines of touts—young Mexican men who snap advertisement cards together, as one might oppose two playing cards to make a clicking sound like the stops on a wheel of fortune. I accept a few cards to see what they are. One is for a bar called the Library. The others entitle the bearer to a dollar off a drink or a ten percent discount or some similar enticement to seek out one among the hundreds of lounges and casinos in the hotels along the Strip and downtown.
To get to the overpass, the pedestrian must thread his way through a cul-de-sac of shops—like Paris, I hear one tourist say; like Jerusalem, I think to myself. There is no other way to cross the street. The crowd is aimless, the crowd is distracted, the crowd is expectant, the crowd feels lucky. The Strip is actually rigidly controlled. Taxis cannot pick up or leave off passengers on the street, but only at hotels. There are entertainments that are free—the dancing waters, the pirate ship, the Roman gods with animated eyes—but these are hotel inducements. I don’t notice any buskers on the streets; they would interfere with the flow; the flow is everything; a great deal of money depends on the flow.
I had taken a walk earlier Saturday morning to locate the cathedral and to learn the hour of the Easter Vigil Mass. I passed the pirate ship on my way and I studied it for a time. The crow’s nest was shrouded in drab velvet—obviously the stage for some eventual derring-do. Riggings and ladders would be climbed; the mast would be descended. The pirate ship looked down at heel as, I suppose, a pirate ship ought. At that hour of a Saturday morning, the pirates were still in their beds, somewhere in the real Las Vegas.
But now I pass the ship in twilight. The velvet curtain is thrown open (and as red as one could wish it under theatrical lighting). The pirate captain brandishes his sword (white-hot as a laser) to signal the cannonade; the ship is enveloped in fogs of colored smoke. (Tolstoy’s description of the Battle of Borodino: colored smokes, fairyland.)
One’s purpose is buffeted by the confusion of entertainments and architectures. There are loudspeakers in every palisade, under every hedge, overhead in every arcade. Huge digital screens on the sides of hotels project David Copperfield Live! One’s thoughts are not one’s own. This is some other syndrome. The Happy Hour syndrome. The Happiest Place on Earth syndrome. This must be how non-Christians feel at Christmastime (the Jewish antiquaire, played by Erland Josephson, making his way through the darkening streets of Stockholm in Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander).
By the time I pass the Wynn, the crowds thin and the Strip recedes. I see a Thai restaurant and the cathedral behind it. The main doors of the church are locked. I am late. I enter through a side door. The place is packed; an usher directs me into the choir loft where there are some families with children but the majority are solitary latecomers like me. I take a pew behind a woman whose posture I read as burdened.
The Cathedral of the Guardian Angel belongs to the modest Las Vegas of the fifties and sixties—of low-rise hotels and casinos. Moe Dalitz, a reputed mobster in Cleveland and a revered philanthropist in Las Vegas, donated the land for the construction of the church and selected the architect, Paul R. Williams, an African American, who had designed Fran
k Sinatra’s house and other celebrity homes in Palm Springs. Two marble angels flank the altar—the sort of angels one might see in any nineteenth-century cemetery. Behind the altar is a large mosaic mural of the softest modernist declension—intersecting mandala (free form rather than cubist), and within the mandala are several emergent figures; foremost is Jesus. The figures free themselves of shroud-like encumbrances. It is Resurrection as the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo or the Ice Follies might conceive of Resurrection. The mural is poor religious art but it is profoundly in period—a period after World War II; a spirit of resurrection exemplified by Coventry Cathedral, the United Nations, the founding of Israel, the Salk vaccine, the Second Vatican Council. As its period coincides with the period of my poor soul’s formation, I am forgiving of the mural’s ecstatic silliness, its inchoate hope.
In the balcony of the cathedral, I find myself aligned with banks of loudspeakers suspended stage left of the nave.
The Epistle is performed theatrically. A man wearing a gray turtleneck rises from the congregation—he is miked; he is Saint Paul—to address us intimately, urgently, from the first century. In fact, I have always wanted to see this done, and it is done very well. But it does not please me for being so thoroughly done. There is no pleasing me tonight.
The bishop sits on his throne like Old King Cole, his head resting on his hand. The Mass proceeds as a series of divertissements, in the manner of the Royal Ballet—attempts to rouse the bishop from his unaccountable melancholy. The master of ceremonies tries everything—baptisms, confirmations, fiddlers three. Nothing seems to work.
• • •
Peter returned to the hospice with Andrew and John. Luther seemed to know his friends were there. He struggled to open his eyes and he finally succeeded, his eyes sliding beneath their sliced lids. Did he see? Yes, we thought he did.
Then the nurse came in and she said they were going to bathe Luther and make him more comfortable. She asked us to wait outside. While we waited in the corridor, three women—the nurse and two aides—filed past us with armfuls of folded sheets and towels.
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