by Rosa Foxxe
Tyra couldn't help but laugh. Soon Gizmo was laughing with her.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” Gizmo said, sounding like an old man. “I know that my temper, it gets away from me sometimes. But seriously. This place, Iowa, it isn't for me! That much I know for sure now. For a little while I was thinking of moving here. It isn't that bad here, I will admit. But I like to eat out past eight o'clock sometimes. And I don't like people staring at me because I speak with an accent from the motherland.”
Gizmo glanced over at her.
“I'm sure you feel the same way! How sick do you get of all the white people looking at you funny because you are part black? Eh? It wears on you; I know it does. It wears on me and I don't have it half as bad as you!”
Tyra smiled. Despite being rough around the edges, Gizmo reminded her of an old man she used to know as a child when she'd been growing up in the ‘hood. The man had been old an Italian like Gizmo. He was nice to all the boys and girls in the neighborhood, no matter their race, creed, or color.
But he had a son who wouldn't listen to reason. One day the whole neighborhood heard them yelling. Then they were outside in their lawn. The old Italian man told his son, who was nearly eighteen, that since he thought he was the man of the house, now they were going to box and find out.
The young Italian man looked confident, and Tyra remembered thinking that the boy had probably been practicing in secret. Well, the fight ended as soon as it started. The boy reared his fist back to strike his father, but not before his father's fist knocked him out cold. The entire neighborhood had looked on in wonder as the old man had left his son to sleep it off in their front yard. It was something that Tyra never forgot.
This Gizmo character was servile in nature, and aimed to please. But there was something about him that let Tyra know that in a pinch he'd knock a young man out and leave him sleeping on the pavement. She was glad that Gizmo was on her side.
“If I need help in Vegas,” Tyra said. “Can I call you?”
“Listen lady,” Gizmo said. “Or Tyra, isn't it? You aren't going to need anything in Vegas. You're going to be so well taken care of you won't know what to do with yourself. Believe me when I say that. I know it sounds a little far-fetched but things are going to work out just fine. And don't worry so much about the romance, that's going to happen no matter what.”
“Why do you say that?” Tyra asked.
They were nearing Des Moines’ small airport. Tyra checked to make sure she still had everything on her person.
“I say it because I know it,” Gizmo said. “The both of youse together, it's going to be fireworks and dynamite. This guy, and I'm not just saying this, but this guy is the real deal. Ain't nothing about this guy phony. You're going to wonder how he's even real! And he'll take a liking to you. But don't think you'll be able to skate by on just your good looks, and don't blow it by coming onto him like he's some kind of frat boy. This guy, you've got to seduce his mind. You understand me? You've got to get him between the ears first.”
“He sounds a lot like me,” Tyra said as Gizmo pulled up to the airport's entrance. He unloaded her things and walked her to her terminal after checking her bags for her. She felt bad having an old man do all the heavy lifting, but Gizmo didn't even break a sweat or breathe heavy.
“Just relax, all right, kid?” Gizmo said as he bid her farewell. “And try to soak it all in! Vegas is a hell of a place!”
With that, Tyra boarded her plane. Her seat was in first class, and the two seats on either side of her had been purchased so no one would sit by her. She reclined her seat and drifted off to sleep.
*
Tyra had fallen asleep on the plane and now woke during the landing. She hated falling asleep on planes. There was something about waking up in them that she found completely unsettling. First of all, she was completely surrounded by strangers and that wasn't something she found appealing. When Tyra woke up she was always sluggish and a little dimwitted. She felt like she was at a huge disadvantage to people who had stayed awake on the flight.
Not that there was any real way to use the advantage, but she didn't like being at a disadvantage, nonetheless. Secondly, falling asleep on a plane meant having a bunch of weird dreams about all kinds of crazy stuff. Before she'd woken this time she'd been dreaming about trying to save her parents from a sinking ship. Now she had to wake up and smile politely at flight attendants while the terror of not being able to save her parents was still fresh in her mind.
“Please everyone prepare for some chop,” a pilot's voice said over the intercom. “We are going to experience some unusual turbulence.”
The intercom clicked off without any further explanation.
Great, Tyra thought, I've got to be on the plane that flies through some kind of freak storm.
It wasn't a storm, though. The pilots weren't sure what was going on with the weather patterns but some kind of massive updraft was coming up from the desert floor, they could see it by the way it moved clouds around. When the plane hit the wall of rising air it shook violently, but not badly enough that any of the staff was worried—when you work on planes for a living you get pretty used to turbulence. Tyra wasn't used to turbulence, though, and she was freaked the fuck out. She grabbed onto the armrests of her first class seat and tried to pretend she was somewhere else.
I'm not here, Tyra thought, I'm somewhere far, far away. I'm on a beach in Florida. I'm on the beach and I've just ordered my fourth drink. I'm getting drunk, and I know I should stop drinking, but all the hard bodied boys make me want to forget about how I'm supposed to act. I pick the drink off of the cracked wood of the bar, an old bar that looked like it had existed on the beach for decades.
The plane jolted, then shuddered. A few of the children on board started to cry.
I grab my drink and turn back to the beach. God, does it look good. All the sound out there, stretching from horizon to horizon. The ocean is just right, not too still so that there aren't white caps, but not so choppy that there aren't surfers. I walk down the gangplank toward the little cabana where all my stuff is and set my drink on the nearby table. Everything is completely and totally serene.
The plane seemed to bank sharply to the left for a moment, then twist back to the right as the pilot corrected. Some of the overhead luggage that hadn't been secured properly tumbled down into the center aisle of the plane, breaking open to spill their contents everywhere: underwear, books, photos, condoms, and other stuff bloomed out from their cases like strange flowers.
The air is cool and smells of salt. I recline in my seat and look around the beach for a man who might catch my eye. I see one down the shore a little ways, playing in the water with his children. Children are kind of a deal breaker most of the time, but maybe I'm not looking to marry this guy. Or maybe I am, but just for one night. I don't want to start a life with him or anything like that, hell, I don't know if I even want to start a conversation with him. But maybe he's a really smart guy, one of those cerebral types that always has something smart on his mind. That would be nice, but even if he doesn't, he looks so good that I'd be just fine with someone that doesn't know what to say most of the time.
“M’am?”
A voice broke into Tyra's imaginary universe.
“M’am, are you all right?”
Tyra opened her eyes to find no one else on the plane. The voice belonged to the flight attendant leaning over her, gently shaking her awake. How embarrassing. Tyra's face burned as she collected her things and headed to the front of the plane to exit. She'd never been the last one off the plane before. As she left, the captain and crew nodded to her and smiled, their eyes gliding over her curves appreciatively. Tyra nodded and smiled back sleepily. Normally she bristled when guys checked her out as openly as what was happening, but after her dream about the beach she was still hot and bothered.
Walking out of the airport with her bags, she looked around the street. She had no idea who was going to pick her up, or what they were going to be
driving. That was something, she was starting to realize, that she really should have worked out before she left Des Moines. Now she was in Vegas, where she knew no one, looking for a man who she couldn't recognize because she didn't know what he looked like, to spend a weekend together that may or may not end up being romantic.
“Hello,” a voice from behind her said. “I . . . I think you're the woman I've been looking for. Is your name Tyra?”
Tyra turned around to find one of the most handsome men she'd ever seen. He was a dark skinned Italian, the kind that looked like they'd just come in from long weeks of tending to the grape vines of their vineyard. His teeth were as bright as flashing mirrors, his eyebrows and facial hair all neatly trimmed. His hair was black and thick, billowing back from his forehead. He was on the taller side of medium height, with a broad shoulders and muscles. The designer Italian suit he wore fit him perfectly, accented nicely by cuff links and wingtip shoes.
“And you are?” Tyra asked.
“My name is Vincent Ambrosiano,” he said, taking her hand and kissing the back of it. “Please follow me to my car.”
Vincent scooped up her things and led her to a very expensive looking foreign car that she didn't know the name of. As they drove away from the airport, Tyra realized that she had no idea where they were headed.
What if this wasn't the guy? What if this was some weirdo who figured he'd try his luck when it came to picking up lost looking women at the airport? But surely that was too far-fetched to be true at all. There weren't really people that waited at the airport to pick people and then act out nefarious plots and schemes on them, were there? Tyra tried to calm herself. It was hard, though.
“So, Vincent,” Tyra said. “Tell me a little bit about yourself.”
“Call me Vinnie,” he said. “Everyone that is close to me calls me that. It's a sign of endearment.”
He looked over at her and smiled as he pulled out onto the freeway and the car's engine purred as they raced in and out of lanes of traffic.
“And I own and operate one of the casinos that is being called by many to be the new flavor of the moment. But what's really happening is that there is a burgeoning Italian community here. I mean, everyone knows that the mob made this place. There is absolutely no denying that. Look at it.”
Vinnie motioned out the window to his left.
“Look at the strip. That's all there is here. And how the fuck does a place like this just rise up out of the sand? It doesn't. People paid off a bunch of politicians to change the laws so that rich people could come here and go on vacation—fuck whores and gamble—while hundreds of natives that live here year round have to take refuge in the gutters under the city at night.”
Tyra was taken aback. She had not expected such gritty speech from someone who looked so clean cut and dressed so nicely.
“And I don't mean to sound bitter, or anything,” Vinnie continued. “Believe me, I'm making a fucking fortune here. But I'm just telling it like it is, and that's something that the people that run this town don't like to hear. You see, the people here, they are a lot like the old Italians back home. They like things a certain way, they like a little respect just because they are old and have been doing things a certain way for a really long time; and just like the people back home they are becoming upset that things aren't as they should be.”
Vinnie reached over to the radio and put on music in the background—the lonely wailing of a guitar, so slow and repetitive it sobbed out of the speakers like a trance.
“So there is a lot of friction. Because it's been many moons here since someone like me, new money with a bad attitude, came to town and set up shop, started raking in the chips with no intention of sharing any of it. And why should I? Why should the old people here be rewarded simply because they've lived here and had money here? Why can't I come in and carve out my own living?”
Vinnie looked over at her, catching and holding her eyes for a moment.
“There are no answers, I know. These are the questions I face everyday when I'm not dealing with petty bullshit at the casino. People think I give a fuck if some hick from the sticks wins some jackpot at the craps table. Do you have any idea how insured casinos are? For everything? It would take more luck than the universe can muster to bankrupt any casino, but that's what most of the people at the top in this town worry about. They actually concern themselves with trivial amounts of money won by people that aren't a threat to them, like it somehow matters that some hillbilly that hasn't ever had two dollars to stick together just won 150,000 of them. That's nothing.”
Vinnie made a gesture of dismissal with his hand, one that carried the kind of finality that Tyra hoped was never directed at her.
“Let them have what little they can win from me. The real things in this town --this little paradise of neon lights, street walkers, pimps, dopers and degenerates -- the real threats aren't the kind of people that come into my place to gamble. They sit back and wait. And they aren't even concerned with getting me. That's what the other casinos just don't seem to understand. They're like the families back home that seem to want to shoot it out on every single street corner about every dollar and insult. Nothing is too much or too far.”
Then Vinnie fell silent. The city swept by them as he navigated the corridors of traffic that lead them north past the strip.
“Bad day at work?” Tyra asked, hoping to lighten the mood. “Or did you just feel like venting?”
Vinnie laughed.
“Sorry to unload on you,” he said. “It's been a long day of dealing with people who would rather be the boss of everyone than cooperate and insure that everyone keeps making money.”
Vinnie stepped on the gas and they shot past an accident, then up an on-ramp.
“We're headed to north Vegas,” he said. “My casino isn't the biggest by any means, but I think it has some obvious charm, whereas so many are little more than mindfucks in the desert, designed to trick people into staying longer than they intended so they spend all their money. I don't really rely on tricks like that. While my place stays open all the time, it isn't like we want to trick people into staying. That sounds like some CIA Guantanamo Bay shit that I'm not interested in.”
Tyra took in the scenery of the desert town as Vinnie spoke. It had been years since she'd been to Vegas but it didn't look like much had changed. Palm trees, fake grass, and expensive cars were everywhere, as were the poor.
“But the people I was dealing with today, no, they don't understand it,” Vinnie said. “To them it's all some kind of game, except the money is real. I guess what I mean to say is that they live like there is never going to be an end or a hard time. Like people aren't ever going to come here and challenge us. And how could they come to this conclusion when I came here and in a few years I'm building my own little empire?”
Tyra nodded to show she was listening, but didn't really know what to say. This Vinnie character was a lot to take in, but she was into it, that much was certain.
“Ah, here we are,” Vinnie said. “Home sweet home. Casino Ambrosia, often times called The Ambrosia, or Ambrosia; pretty clever play off my name, or maybe the obvious one. I don't know.”
Vinnie paused as he pulled into a drive that led a little ways away from the main road. The building in front of them was huge, and the architecture, sweeping.
“You see, everyone here seems to have forgotten any of the old stories. Or maybe they are too fucked in the head to care, who knows. But I know them and remember. And even though I don't lay it on real thick or anything, a lot of the old Greek tropes are present in my casino. I try to harness the old elegance in ways that I know how, with sculpture and theater and things like that. You see, my casino isn't just a casino, although that is the moneymaker and main attraction. I also have a horse racing track, a motorcycle racing track that we are trying to get the city to let us open, a theater for small plays, and sometimes even a circus of sorts. More of a dance group with tigers and elephants than a circus.”
<
br /> Tyra's eyes couldn't get any wider. The amount of money this guy had to have was insane. The casino in front of them looked like something out of an old history book, with a facade that was two wings that swept out and away from the entrance, as if one were looking at a swan from behind. There was a fountain in the middle of a lake, and further away from them was the horse track with the beasts making laps around it. There were also many other beautiful and strange structures that caught her eye.
“The other casinos, they aren't like this,” Vinnie said. “And not that they aren't big, or open all the time, or that they don't have flashy lights and women everywhere. It's in the way they exist, as strange as that sounds. The main strip is all about the spectacle. And while I understand synergy, this isn't a group activity. I'm not partnered with anyone except the family back in the old country. So I don't need to have a bunch of people help me sell things that sell themselves.