by Blake Crouch
She could feel her adrenaline begin to spike as she approached. She drew within range of Richter and the bimbo. The woman stood on legs that looked too insubstantial to support her top half.
Richter was staring at her with a glazed look that Letty hoped was boredom.
She inched closer.
Overheard the bimbo shouting: "Yah, I've been out here about a year and a half. It's pretty fun, you know. Lots to do. Sometimes, I wake up and it's like, I live in Vegas, right? Like, oh-my-God!"
Letty looked up at Richter.
Eye contact.
He said, "And what's this? Another fly come to suck off our bottle service?"
He turned away from both women, called out, "Gentlemen, let's roll."
Letty shoved down the flush of rage.
Do not let him leave.
But she couldn't think of a single play to stop this from happening.
Bimbo said, "Asshole," and stormed off.
Richter and the rest of his crew headed out, with Isaiah bringing up the rear.
He didn't even look at her.
8
Letty's feet were killing her. She eased down into one of the chairs at the empty table.
Steaming.
In shock.
She'd choked.
Her first job since last Christmas, and she'd blown it.
A promoter materialized—cute brunette with chopped hair. Amazing dress. Nametag read Jessica.
She smiled at Letty and knelt down so she didn't have to shout.
"Hi, what's your name?"
Letty said, "Gidget."
"Well, Gidget, this is actually a reserved table. I have a group I need to put here."
Screams from the next table over drew Letty's attention. Looked like a bachelorette party unfolding. Pure, smashed joy.
Letty slid back into her pumps, struggled onto her feet.
"All yours."
# # #
Letty headed back toward the dance floor. Just wanting to get out of the noise, out of the movement.
Inside, it was impossibly more crowded than before.
A wall of bodies.
The music ear-rupturing.
The bass heart-stopping.
She moved along the perimeter.
A group of three guys at a table called out to her with Boston accents. They were working their way through a 1.75L bottle of Jack and they reeked of desperation. Any other night, she'd have had a drink and grabbed their wallets.
It took her five minutes to push through the crowd and past the entrance into the front lounge.
The barrage of self-destructive thoughts firing away.
You've lost it.
You're washed-up.
Then she was passing a line of nightclub hopefuls that snaked through the lobby of the Wynn.
Then she was outside, sucking down gulps of exhaust-tinged desert air.
She kicked off her shoes and carried them.
Her head swirling.
She felt her phone vibrate. Opened her purse.
A text from Isaiah: wtf was that?
Good question.
She hit him back: location?
He answered: stand down see u tomorrow
# # #
She went up to her room, but she couldn't calm down. Couldn't stand the thought of lying in bed playing her epic fail over and over again.
She needed to score.
Challenge the thought.
I need to get high.
Challenge the thought. Think about your son. Think about—
I need to get high.
# # #
She wound up at the Zebra Lounge, a bar in her hotel with tons of seating upholstered in zebra print. Onstage, dueling pianists played something fast and obnoxious.
She sat at the bar. Hadn't had a drink since starting rehab in Charleston, and she wanted to fall off the wagon with something big and noisy.
While the bartender made her Long Island Iced Tea, she studied him, trying to get a read on whether he would further her ultimate ambitions for the evening.
He was twenty-three or twenty-four. Smooth-shaven. Cropped hair. Lifted weights for sure. No tats that she could see, although he wore a long-sleeved black button down which didn't reveal much.
He set her drink in front of her, said, "Seventeen dollars. Start a tab?"
"Sure, put it on my room." She gave him the number. "What's your name, by the way?"
"Darren."
"Darren, if I wanted to get my hands on something a little stronger than booze, would you be able to point me in the right direction?"
She could see in his eyes that he got asked this all the time.
"Talk to Jay at Japonais in the Mirage. He's working tonight."
"Appreciate that."
He left her to her drink.
It was strong and very good.
Yes, the night had blown up to this moment, but she was about to turn it around.
Letty leaned over her drink and sucked the rest of it down.
The liquor hit her gut in a burst of beautiful heat.
9
Letty crossed the boulevard.
The Strip at midnight sleepless and blinking and radiating a nervous energy that filled her junkie soul with the closest thing to joy she could ever hope to know.
Even at this hour, too much traffic creeping between the median of palm trees.
Almost everyone she passed was lit up.
Hell, she was too.
It felt good to be outside again, walking and buzzed and the Mojave air skirting over her shoulders, between her knees.
Surreal to be in the midst of all this stimulation and to know that twenty miles in any direction would put you in abject emptiness.
Between Treasure Island and the Mirage, a small black man wailed on a harmonica. Playing for tips, but no one was tipping. Letty dropped a twenty into the Panama Jack hat lying upturned on the sidewalk beside him.
He looked up.
"Bless you. Bless you."
Huge, milky cataracts covered his eyes, but he stared right at her. His smile both penetrating and disarming.
Letty moved on.
"You don't have to give up!" he called after her. "I hope you know that!"
She quickened her pace.
The giant marquee on the Mirage blazed down like a midnight sun.
The volcano in front of the casino erupted.
A crowd snapped photos with their phones.
Letty cruised through the tropical landscaping into the hotel.
An adult fantasy world.
The atrium filled with vegetation.
A massive aquarium behind the front desk.
It took her five minutes to find the bar, another ten once she was seated before the rail of a man with long, curly hair finally came over.
She said to him, "Are you Jay?"
"Yeah, why?"
"I'd like a Floating Orchid and some advice."
"Who sent you?"
"Darren from the Zebra Bar."
She watched him make something out of vodka, Cointreau, and the juice of a pear and a lemon.
He set it in front of her, and she gave him a fifty dollar bill, said, "Keep it."
Jay looked like Joey Ramone circa the Carter administration. He put his elbows on the bar, leaned toward her, said, "What are you looking for?"
"Crystal."
He gave her a corner in North Las Vegas, a first name, and a description of the dealer.
She never touched her drink.
# # #
Heading down the sidewalk, on the lookout for a cab, the trigger sweats kicked in. Like beads of anticipation rolling down the inside of her legs. That wasted woman Letty pictured as her need now screaming in her ear, wild-eyed, ebullient for the coming fix.
Challenge the thought—
I have. The thought kicked my ass.
Somewhere between the Mirage and Caesar's Palace, the sound of high voices pulled her attention away from the taxi search.
Letty didn't know the words, but she recognized the tune.
Sublime Gracia.
Amazing Grace.
It stopped her in her tracks. Something about the contrast—these little voices surrounded by all this decadence.
Before she knew it, she was lost in the spectacle.
They finished the song and moved on.
Behind them stood a small church—utterly out of place on the Strip.
There were lights on inside, and she could hear a man's voice pushing over the din of boulevard traffic.
She climbed the stone steps toward the double doors.
Shrine of the Most Holy Redeemer.
Some mysterious gravity drawing her out of the commotion of late-night Vegas.
She slunk in, took a seat in the back pew.
The sanctuary was brightly-lit. It smelled of coffee.
There was a simple crucifix behind the altar. A statue of the Madonna. A statue of Christ holding a child.
At the podium, the harmonica man spoke to the group of twenty or thirty people.
"I’m here to tell you that sobriety ain’t easy. But it is simple. If someone told a cancer patient all you had to do was follow these simple steps. Go to meetings. Help others. That you’d get well. You’d do whatever you needed to do to save your lily-white behinds.
"I lost my wife Irene last winter. My boy, Lazlo, he dyin' of Hepatitis in prison. These are not easy things."
The man cut loose a big, beaming smile.
"But I suit up and show up. See, I have true freedom. Freedom of self. Freedom of self-will. It starts with asking for help. Then you realize you aren’t terminally unique. You’re one of us. And you never have to be alone again."
Maybe she'd been primed by Sublime Gracia, by the sheer serendipity of finding this church on the Strip of all places, in a moment of weakness, but Letty felt something like a tiny crack opening in the hardened core of her being. Before she could second guess or talk herself out of it, she woke her iPhone and deleted the details of her tweak hookup.
The harmonica player said, "Anybody else got something to say? Something to share? You ain't gotta be eloquent. Ain't gotta talk for long. You just gotta be real."
Letty got up.
Her heart beating out of her chest.
She walked down the aisle toward harmonica man.
Then he was sitting and she was standing.
It had happened so fast.
What are you doing?
She put her hands on the podium.
The fluorescent lights humming above her.
The muted noise of traffic bleeding through the walls.
She looked out at all the faces.
Young.
Old.
Rich.
Poor.
Black.
White.
Cholo.
Card dealers just off shift.
Cocktail waitresses.
Doormen.
Drivers.
Tourists.
Addiction.
The great equalizer.
"I'm Letisha," she said.
The room responded, "Hello, Letisha."
"I've never been to one of these before. Only seen it on TV and in the movies. I'm sorry if I do it wrong. I'm an addict," she said. "Alcoholic. Junkie. I was on my way to score when I passed this church. Something pulled me in. I don't know what. I've hurt a lot of people in my life." She felt a storm of grief gathering, but she fought her way through it. "My ex-husband. Myself. My... ... ...my son.
"I never wanted to come to a meeting like this. I don't know what I thought. If it was pride. Or fear. But I'm looking out at all of you, and I feel like for the first time I understand. I'm not bigger than crystal and booze. They own my soul forever. But I think maybe we all are. Maybe I see that now. I hope I do. I think I can gain strength from you. I hope one day that you can gain strength from me. That's all I have to say."
# # #
Outside on the stone steps, she sat down and wept like she hadn't in years. Not since a court had terminated her parental rights.
After a long time, she struggled onto her feet.
She wasn't even thinking about finding a cab to take her to North Las Vegas.
Across the boulevard, her hotel loomed.
She started walking.
10
Next morning, Letty cabbed out to an IHOP in the xeriscaped burbs, several miles west of the glitz of the Strip.
The emotion of the previous night still clung.
She felt different. Better. New.
Suit up and show up.
Isaiah was waiting for her.
Coffee and a newspaper.
He set the paper aside as she slid into the booth.
The waitress brought coffee.
When she was gone, he said, "There's no way you're this badass Jav told me about."
"I'm sorry."
"You're sorry? For what? Costing me seven or eight mil? Don't worry about it. Ain't nothing. S'all good."
"The club was a bad approach," she said. "You guys were getting mobbed by women. Richter was done with that scene before I ever showed up."
"So what? You let his mood effect your performance? You're amateur, you know that?"
"I had a bad night. It had been a long time since—"
"Oh, so you out of practice? That's the excuse?"
"You ever have a bad night, Ize?"
"No, that's not an option for professionals."
"I can still do this."
"You out your mind? Think I'm gonna let you take another crack at fucking this up? Last night was it, aiight? Anytime today, Richter gets the call. I could get a text from him right now. Then it's showtime. We done. Game over."
Letty leaned back in the booth. Held her hand to the coffee mug until her skin burned.
"What's he doing today?" she asked. "Richter."
"Just chillin'. Waiting for that magic call."
"And where exactly is he 'just chillin'?"
"Pool at the Wynn."
The waitress returned. "You folks ready to order?"
Letty was already scooting out.
Isaiah said, "Where you going?"
She smiled. "To buy a bikini."
# # #
The Wynn pool was wall-to-wall, even at 10:30 a.m., the crowd combating hangovers with mimosas, Bloody Marys, champagne cocktails.
She circled twice before spotting him.
Tucked away in a row of private cabanas.
Anonymous beyond the bikinis, board shorts, and occasional banana hammock.
Richter was oiled and soaking up the sun, a thin gold chain glittering in his chest hair, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Two other men she recognized from the nightclub sunbathed beside him.
She walked to the bar at the far end and ordered three champagne cocktails. The bartender didn't want to lend her a tray. A twenty-spot sealed the deal.
It was a hike back to Richter's cabana. Letty could feel the scorching heat of the white pavement coming through the soles of her bejeweled Escada flip flops. The bikini wasn't really her style—a skirt-bottomed black and white striped two piece. Nor was it an exact match for the pool cocktail waitress swimwear. But it was close.
She moved away from the main pool, up the walkway leading to the private cabanas. On full alert now. In all likelihood, there was a personal waiter assigned to each cabana.
She approached a man in white board shorts and an open shirt.
One of the waiters?
She smiled but he passed without acknowledgement.
Richter's cabana stood at the end.
Reggae music sweetened the air.
She veered toward it and slowed her pace, squinting through her Jimmy Choo shades to absorb every detail.
Three men. Chairs side-by-side in the sun. Too scaldingly bright to see into the cabana, but she couldn't imagine Richter's phone would be inside. He was
waiting on a critical call. The phone would be close. Within reach.
She stopped at the foot of the trio of beach chairs and smiled down at Richter and his men. Richter was in the middle. The one on the left was a hairy beast of a man with the fat-over-muscle build of someone who'd earned their conditioning from life experience, not a gym bike. Someone who possessed the brute core strength to physically break you. The man on the right was younger and leaner, but still carried plenty of brawn. It squared with Isaiah's story—these weren't techie savants hired to pull a sophisticated vault break. Richter was lining up big scary men to storm a hotel room and take down an army of casino thugs by force.
They all wore sunglasses, and she couldn't tell if they had noticed her yet.
Letty cleared her throat.
Richter tugged out his earbuds.
He's listening to music. Which means his phone is in his pocket, headphones plugged in. Extra challenge points.
He said, "We didn't order those."
"Gentlemen, these are compliments of the Wynn."
Letty took a step forward, letting the front of her left flip flop snag on a lip in the pavement.
She went down hard.
The tray dumped onto Richter's chair.
Two of the champagne flutes shattered against the concrete.
The third splashed across Richter's lap.
He jumped up and swore.
Letty struggled to sit up.
She'd nailed it. Bloody knee and everything. She clutched it and made a whimpering sound.
"Oh my God. Oh my God, I am so sorry."
She glanced up at Richter. He was staring down at her. Where she'd expected rage, she found concern.
"You all right?" he asked.
"I hurt my knee."
"Yeah, that looks nasty."
His phone. He was holding it now.
She reached up to him with both hands.
Put it down. Put it down.
He hesitated for a split second and then dropped his phone on the chair cushion.
"Let's get you up out of this glass."
"They're gonna fire me," Letty said as he pulled her onto her feet.