I Heart Vegas

by Lindsey Kelk

  I gave him a level look over the top of my rapidly emptying glass.

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘I know you do,’ he nodded happily, his curls bouncing around his perfect face. ‘Here are your options. You can tell Uncle James all about it and we can get hammered, or you can pretend none of it ever happened and we can get hammered. Your choice.’

  This was going to take some serious thinking.

  ‘My friend has been secretly shagging her ex and they just got married, even though he’s engaged to someone else and was supposed to be here on his bachelor party. And I asked Alex to marry me so I could get my visa and he said yes, but then he went a bit mental and walked off and I have no idea what’s going on.’

  ‘You’ve been busy, then?’

  I nodded. ‘Quite busy.’

  We sat drinking in amicable silence until both our drinks were dry. James slammed his empty glass first, I followed suit. And smashed the stem of the martini glass.

  ‘Shit. Sorry,’ I winced at the bartender.

  ‘Happens all the time.’ He swept the glass over to his side of the bar and smiled. What a pro.

  ‘Does it really?’

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Another?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ James answered for me. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ I really didn’t. ‘About any of it.’

  ‘Well, there’s sod all you can do about your friend, really.’ He started ticking off my problems on his fingers. ‘Obviously you’re worried about her and you want to be there for her, but if she’s being a dickhead, she’s being a dickhead. You’ve already talked to her about all of this, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she did it anyway?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you can’t do anything else but wait for her to come round. She will,’ he promised. ‘And she’ll need you then. Until she sorts herself out, you need to worry about your problems first. Starting with this visa nonsense. How come you suddenly need to get married? I thought you had a visa.’

  He was ever so good. Taking a tiny sip of my second martini, I made a mental note to try harder to stay in touch this time. Clearly I was in need of gay wisdom on a regular basis. ‘I did.’ I put the martini down, determined not to inhale this one. ‘But I lost my job at The Lookand so I’m out on my arse.’

  ‘And you’ve looked into all of the others?’ James was clearly not trying to pace himself. He chugged back half his whiskey cocktail in one gulp. ‘I’m a total expert in US visas. I think I’ve had them all.’

  I filled him in on the current situation, Lawrence the Lawyer’s less than optimistic feedback and the general lack of options.

  ‘So I’ve got, like, a fortnight to get a job, become extraordinary or get married. I really couldn’t tell you which is realistic at this point.’ I pushed my hair back out of my face, almost all of it having escaped the pins by now. I don’t know how, but cocktails always make your hair slippery; there has to be a scientific reason. Pantene should look into it.

  ‘Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I know so many people who have got married for visas in LA, and it hardly ever works out,’ James said. ‘And it’s a tough time in the job market, I know. Are you sure you can’t apply for the O-1? That’s what I’ve got.’

  ‘Last time I checked, I haven’t been in any films. And getting papped snogging you in the back of a taxi didn’t seem to be enough for my lawyer. He said I could apply, but he also said I wouldn’t get it.’

  ‘He sounds like a right ray of sunshine.’ He grabbed an olive from my drink and popped it in his mouth. My stomach rumbled loudly, reminding me I hadn’t had dinner. Gin-soaked olives weren’t meant to be my only sustenance. ‘Was he at least hot?’

  I nodded, scarfing the remaining two olives before he snatched them.

  ‘Well, that’s something, at least,’ James mused. ‘Let me talk to my lawyers. They might be able to see another way around it. They’re good at getting people visas.’

  ‘That would be amazing.’ The rush of gratitude I felt was so strong that if I could have given him the olives back I would have. And I hated parting with food. ‘Honestly, James, that would be incredible.’

  ‘They might say the same thing,’ he warned me, but raised his glass to mine at the same time. ‘But it’s worth asking. Now, what’s going on with Alex?’

  Pacing myself be damned. I swigged my drink and shook my head. ‘I think I really messed up.’ I closed my eyes and let the gin settle. ‘And by think, I mean know.’

  ‘I’m assuming it wasn’t Alex’s idea to get married for the visa?’ he guessed.

  I shook my head.

  ‘But it doesn’t sound like your dream come true, either.’ James was so wise. If ever there was an advert for coming out of the closet, it was him. I knew it would make him happier, but I had no idea it would drastically improve his intelligence. ‘Things like this are never a good idea, especially when you are actually in a relationship with someone. It only ever works when there are no emotions involved, and even then it doesn’t usually work for long.’

  ‘Where were you when I was listening to everyone else?’ I moaned. ‘This is all very good information that would have been useful yesterday.’

  ‘Why were you listening to anyone but yourself?’

  ‘Because I’m a moron?’

  He let that one settle for a moment. I looked down at my feet and wrinkled my toes. Between the Vegas sprint in too-tight shoes and wandering around barefoot, my pedicure was completely destroyed. It really added to the overall look. At least no one would be mistaking me for a hooker. At least, not a good one; there was no way I could charge a hundred dollars for a blow-job in this state. Happy memories.

  ‘I want to say it’s all going to be OK …’ James interrupted my reverie with a tap on the knee. ‘But only you know if that’s true. I don’t know him well enough. I do know he loves the arse off you, though.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I rested my elbows on the bar and slurped my drink, no hands. Sexy. ‘The more I think about it, the more I reckon asking him to marry me for a visa while repeatedly insisting that marriage means absolutely nothing to me might have been a bad idea, whether he loves the arse off me or not.’

  ‘Especially if he loves the arse off you!’ James knocked my elbows off the bar and whacked me on the arm. ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘Did I not already tell you I’m a moron?’ I asked, rubbing my arm. I was taking some serious abuse on this holiday, physical and emotional.

  ‘Angela, you twat,’ James groaned. ‘Can you even imagine how that would feel? If someone you loved, someone you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, asked you to piss away all your hopes and dreams for a bit of paper while ranting on about the fact that marriage didn’t mean anything, what would you say?’

  ‘Yes, thank you very much for the opportunity?’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Fuck off you heartless, callous, tactless bitch?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I replaced the elbows with my face. ‘Fuuuuuuuuuck.’

  ‘Yeah.’ James rubbed the back of my neck with a gentle hand. ‘It’s not a lost cause, don’t panic. I’m sure you’ll be able to talk this out.’

  I made a noise that implied agreement. It was the best I could do.

  ‘And by talk, I mean beg and plead,’ he carried on. ‘Probably going to have to be some bribery in there too. Have you got him a good Christmas present?’

  I shook my head, rattling my forehead against the bar. Why hadn’t that second martini numbed all pain yet? When you couldn’t rely on gin, you couldn’t rely on anything.

  ‘We’ll think of something,’ James promised, still massaging my neck. ‘Give him tonight to cool down, and tomorrow we’ll sort it out.’

  ‘But I really want to talk to him,’ I said. ‘I just want to explain. I just want him to talk to me.’

  ‘He’s a man,’ he explained. ‘He doesn’t want to talk and you can’t
push him. Give him his space.’

  I hated that he was right. Why couldn’t men just be reasonable like women?

  ‘And what am I supposed to do until then?’

  Raising my head, I saw a third full martini glass sliding across the bar to join the second, half-empty one. He was right. There really wasn’t another option.

  ‘Right then,’ I took a deep breath. ‘Let’s do this.’

  ‘You’re putting it in wrong,’ I whined at James some hours later.

  ‘There’s only one way to put it in,’ he replied, frustrated. ‘It’s not my fault, it’s your fault.’

  ‘How is it my fault?’ I dropped to the floor and leaned back against the door to my suite. ‘It’s a key. How hard can it be?’

  ‘Hard enough.’ He shoved the key card into the slot as hard as possible and yanked it out quickly.

  ‘That’s what she said,’ I cackled. ‘Honestly, ramming it in and out like that isn’t going to help.’

  ‘That’s not what your mother said last night.’ He kicked me in the hip. ‘I don’t usually have this much trouble.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before.’ I closed my eyes and tipped my head back. James was ever so tall. ‘Actually, I haven’t.’

  ‘Then you’re a very lucky girl.’ With grim determination, he slid the key card in one last time and whipped it out quickly. Unfortunately, the buzz and the click were not enough notice for me to pull myself together, and as the door opened, I fell backwards, my arms tangling themselves in James’s long legs and bringing him right down on top of me.

  ‘Angela, you only had to ask,’ he said, face-first in my boobs.

  Laughing so hard I was worried I might do a little wee, I looked up to see someone I didn’t recognize, drink in hand, standing over us.

  ‘You guys OK?’ asked the stranger.

  ‘Why are you in my room?’ I asked, shoving James away while he mumbled something about never having this trouble with Blake.

  ‘It’s a party?’ The stranger looked back into the lounge, where I saw dozens of people standing on the sofas, drinking, dancing and generally misbehaving. Of course, they had already seen me. I had made an impressive entrance.

  ‘Angela!’ It was a familiar shriek and not one I was hoping to hear. Sadie danced over to me. It spoke volumes that every pair of eyes switched to her. And if I couldn’t hold a room with my legs akimbo, wrapped around a homosexual movie star, when could I?

  The thing with Sadie wasn’t so much that she was famous as that she was just painfully pretty. And it wasn’t as though I wasn’t used to hanging out with a good-looking girl. Jenny was that friend who makes every man on the street turn their head and every woman wish she’d spent five minutes more on her hair (not least me), but Sadie was something else. One look at her and you knew there was no point in trying. I couldn’t begin to imagine what men went through, seeing her in the flesh. And for a split second, I wondered how it must feel for her to think that drooling and letching was an automatic reaction from everything with a penis. I collected compliments and squirrelled them away for fat days, classifying my wardrobe by colour, season and ‘this is the dress that stranger on the train said was pretty’. I was still flattered by catcalling from a building site. I looked at her, still in her graffitied bridesmaid dress, and sighed. Imagine never, ever having a fat day.

  ‘We’re having a party – it’s a wedding reception.’ She held a hand out to help me up but let go as soon as she spotted James. ‘James!’

  ‘Have we met?’ he asked, a raised eyebrow for Sadie, a wink for me.

  ‘Uh, only about a thousand times.’ She curled her arm around his neck and sat down on his knee, despite the fact he clearly didn’t want to be sitting on the floor in the doorway.

  ‘Sadie, where’s Jenny?’ I shuffled myself into a kneeling position. ‘I need to talk to her.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her since the wedding.’ Sadie fluffed her massive honey-blonde hair in James’s face. He did not look impressed. ‘They didn’t come back here.’

  ‘I thought you said this was a wedding reception?’ I scanned the lounge for Jenny’s giant hair but found nothing.

  ‘It is. She’s just not here.’ She looked at me as though I was stupid. There were plenty of things I’d said in the last twenty-four hours or so that would have warranted that expression, but that question wasn’t one of them. ‘They’re probably screwing somewhere.’

  ‘You do realize Jeff isn’t Jenny’s boyfriend?’ I tried to be as clear as it was possible to be. ‘And that Jenny isn’t Jeff’s fiancée?’

  ‘You have no sense of adventure,’ she replied. ‘Where are your shoes?’

  ‘Fuck knows.’ I clambered up off the floor and pushed past her, heading towards my room. ‘And they were yours anyway.’

  Thankfully, the fifty or so strangers that had invaded our hotel suite hadn’t made it as far as my room, and I heard myself sigh out loud as I closed the door on the madness outside.

  ‘Sanctuary,’ I breathed, checking the room phone for messages. Nothing. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. Ignoring James’s advice, even though I knew full well he was right, I tapped in Alex’s number and waited for it to ring. But it didn’t. Straight to voicemail.

  ‘Hey, it’s me. I just wanted to call and say …’ Losing my mobile in the Bellagio fountains might have been a blessing. I couldn’t think of a single occasion when my picking up a phone without a completely written-out script had gone well. This was no exception. ‘I wanted to say goodnight. So, goodnight. Speak to you tomorrow.’

  I hung up and lay back on my bed, trying to put the entire day out of my mind. The soft mattress rose up to meet me, wrapping me in and whispering that it was all going to be OK. Our original plan was to go back to the room for me to change, find shoes and then go to a party at Caesar’s Palace where James was supposed to be showing his face. But now I was horizontal, I just couldn’t see it happening. I heard a knock at the door and assumed he had come to get me. Maybe I could convince him to get into bed. Since I clearly wasn’t trying to seduce the big gay, it might not be impossible. And it was a lovely bed.

  ‘I’m just lying down for a second,’ I shouted. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Angela, why do you hate me?’

  Brilliant. It wasn’t James. It was Sadie. And from the sound of it, a drunk, tired and emotional Sadie. Since I could more or less tick all three of those boxes myself, I really didn’t want to have to deal with her.

  ‘I don’t hate you.’ I rolled over until I was face down in the soft, soft cottony clouds of pillows that littered my bed. ‘Go back to the party, Sadie.’

  ‘You do hate me.’ Her voice came closer and closer until I felt the mattress give very, very slightly. ‘Jen’s always telling everyone how awesome you are, but you’re just such a bitch to me. It’s totally obvious.’

  Ahh. Lovely Jenny. I mean, Jen.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be a bitch.’ I realized my monotone response probably wasn’t my most convincing, but I was very tired. And I did hate her. It was probably all she wanted to hear anyway.

  ‘You don’t mean that.’ She jabbed me in the arm until I sat up. ‘Seriously, why don’t you like me?’

  ‘Because you won’t let me go to sleep?’

  ‘I’m not leaving until you talk to me,’ she said. ‘So you might as well get up.’

  With a huge sigh and an almost irrepressible desire to smother her with a pillow, I sat up and looked at Sadie. Sitting on the end of my bed, a hoodie covering her unbearably tight dress and her hair all pulled back in a ponytail, she didn’t look nearly as annoying as usual. In fact, she looked like a little girl. If you took away the eyelash extensions and the fake tan, she could pass for a common or garden obscenely hot college student. Which didn’t really make me like her any more when I thought about it.

  ‘You’re jealous, right?’ She shook the sleeves of the hoodie down over her hands. ‘That’s what it is?’

  ‘Bloody hell,�
� I blustered. You couldn’t say she was afraid to get to the point. ‘How many times have you asked that?’

  ‘Never.’ She looked completely nonplussed. ‘I’ve never had a roommate before.’

  I wrinkled my forehead. ‘What are you talking about?’

  We stared at each other for a moment, both trying to work out what the other was on about.

  ‘Ohhhh.’ Sadie broke first, laughing loudly. ‘You thought I meant jealous of me in general. No, I meant you’re jealous of me and Jenny. You’re pissed that you’re not her roommate any more.’

  ‘Ohhhh,’ I echoed. Clearly I hadn’t given her enough credit. ‘Right. Yeah. I probably am a bit.’ Or a lot. Or loads. Or so much, I could taste bile when I thought about it.

  ‘I know you guys are super-close,’ she said. ‘Jen misses you. You’re like, her best friend, you know, not just her old roommate.’

  Obviously living with my bestie was rubbing off on Sadie. Here she was, hanging out in my bedroom after midnight giving me a very Jenny pep talk. Her mentor would be proud.

  ‘And don’t feel bad about the whole jealousy thing – I’m totally used to it.’ She held her hand just above my ankle, as though I might snap her wrist off if she actually touched me. And for a second I thought about it. Just when I was starting to think she might not be entirely evil.

  ‘I am sorry if I’ve been a bit difficult,’ I offered. ‘Really. It’s just, I sort of felt like you didn’t like me that much, to be honest.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Sadie popped upright then bounced down beside me on the bed. So she was officially comfortable now? ‘I think you’re kind of awesome. I mean, Jen told me your story and everything. I’m just a huge bitch. You just have to kick my ass. Or ignore me. Everyone else does.’

  I couldn’t not laugh. She was so much more self-aware than I had realized.

  ‘Who ignores you? Seriously?’ I attempted to join in the gal pal extravaganza by awkwardly patting her shoulder.

  ‘Oh, everyone.’ She rolled over onto her back and waved a hand at me. She really was tiny, and now I couldn’t see her perfect boobs, I almost felt compelled to give her a hug. ‘That’s the thing with modelling – people only talk to you when they want you to do something.’