What Happens in Vegas

by Halliday, Gemma

  He looked back. “Yeah, King?”

  “What’s with the stupid blue sunglasses?”

  He looked at me some more. I suspected he had once been a bouncer back in the day, before rising up to nightclub manager. “It’s a good thing that you can sing lights out.”

  “Yeah, good thing.”

  He left and joined the others, and I walked slowly off the stage. Floating really. At the bar, the good-looking kid stepped around the counter, and slapped me heartily on the shoulder. I nearly fell over.

  “You killed out there!” he said. I think he wanted to hug me but somehow refrained. Hell, I could have used a hug.

  “Everyone gets lucky,” I said.

  “Then you must be the luckiest person on earth!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been told that.”

  “Want a drink?”

  “More than you know.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  It was late, and the street was dark. I was sitting in my Cadillac with the engine off. Two houses down was a small house that wasn’t so dark. In fact, the lights were on in just about every room. With my windows rolled down, I could just make some music issuing from the house.

  It was 1:22 a.m.

  I was flying high on Vicodin. I should have felt euphoric. Instead, as I watched the cheerfully-lit house in front of me, I felt numb and melancholy. In the big curtained front window, two figures would appear sometimes, dancing slowly, arm in arm, sometimes cheek to cheek.

  Between my legs was a warm Sam Adams. I took a sip of it now and felt my melancholy deepen and take on a life of its own. A living, dark thing that dwelled inside me, like a parasite of the soul.

  I had been following her for the past two weeks. Yes, she would hate me if she knew I had been following her. Well, what did you expect? I followed people for a living? What made her different?

  You’re supposed to trust her.

  They usually ended up here, at this small house, followed by a lot of talking. And laughter. Then the music and dancing, their silhouetted faces sometimes pressed against each other in an intimate embrace.

  I drank more warm beer. I wished I had brought more Vicodin. The pain in my heart was intense. Almost too intense.

  Vicodin doesn’t help heartache.

  After being separated for nearly six months, Kelly and I had only recently gotten back together. I knew she had been dating while we were off-again, and I suspected this guy was a holdover from that. Perhaps she didn’t have the heart to let him go. Maybe she loved us both. Maybe she didn’t give a fuck about my feelings. Or his feelings.

  Fuck his feelings.

  Kelly had said we had trust issues.

  No kidding.

  Now I watched as the man I both loathed and was curious about dipped Kelly romantically in front of the big window. I had, of course, looked into his background. I knew he lived modestly here in this small, suburban, three-bedroom home. No kids, never married. Twenty years my junior.

  There was the rub.

  Twenty years my junior.

  You’re an old man, King.

  They stopped dancing and stood silhouetted in the window and kissed deeply. I took another swig from my warm beer.

  Get a room.

  Still kissing, still holding each other close, they fumbled away from the window and the living room lights went out. A few seconds later, a muted half-glow flickered from somewhere near the back of the house. Candlelight. The music was still playing, drifting across the quiet street.

  I started my car and left, tossing the empty beer bottle onto my girlfriend’s boyfriend’s front lawn.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  I was in Dr. Vivian’s office on an overcast morning. The window behind her was gray. The office, despite being cheerfully lit, felt gray. Perhaps my mood was gray, too.

  “Is your twin single?” I asked.

  “That’s not an appropriate question, Mr. King.”

  “I shouldn’t even be alive, so what the hell do I care about appropriateness?”

  “Because you’re not a buffoon.”

  “Is that a clinical term?”

  Dr. Vivian smiled and shook her head. “Fine. She’s happily married with four kids.”

  “And you?” I asked.

  “That’s a very inappropriate question, Mr. King.”

  “Just expressing my inner buffoonery.”

  She shook her head; she might have sighed, too. “No, Mr. King, I’m not married.”

  “Are you dating anyone?”

  I noticed Dr. Vivian’s cheekbones caught some of the desk lamp light. Her hair glowed softly. All of it framed against the gray, curtained window behind her. She pursed her lips, looking at me somewhat sternly.

  “I know, I know,” I said, “highly inappropriate.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Well?”

  She suddenly laughed, and the unexpected, high-pitched sound of it surprised the hell out of me. “Any other patient,” she said, “and I would have put an end to this line of questioning long ago.”

  “But I’m not any other patient?”

  “No,” she said. “You’re not.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because you’re Elvis-fucking-Presley.”

  “I haven’t been him for thirty years.”

  “Fine,” she said. “You were Elvis-fucking-Presley. That weighs heavily on my mind.”

  “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have his influence over other people.”

  “It’s powerful,” she said.

  “Too powerful for you to resist?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m doing things with you that I swore I would never do with patients. You’re affecting my judgment.”

  “I don’t want your judgment affected,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I meant it.

  She was silent for a long moment. “I’m not sure that’s possible now.”

  “Then perhaps we should move on with today’s session,” I said, winking.

  “Hey,” she said, “that’s my line.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “So, you’re stumped,” said Kelly.

  We were walking along a semi-gravel trail through Griffith Park, which lies north of Los Feliz and Hollywood. The park is home to the L.A. Zoo and the Griffith Observatory, itself made infamous by one James Dean. I miss that little rebel.

  “You could say that,” I said.

  We were holding hands, our fingers loosely interlaced. Kelly was dressed in tight black fuzzy sweats, a tight sweater and sneakers with gold trim. I was in workout pants and a tee shirt. My sneakers, surprisingly, had no gold trim. The day was warm, but not inordinately so. We traveled mostly through shadows along the heavily vegetated trail, thick with oaks and spruces. Squirrels dashed madly across the trail, up trees and through the chainlink fence that led off to the Los Feliz Golf Course.

  “So you have a white van driven by an ugly guy with acne scars, as witnessed by a bum who was stalking the very same girl, the bum being witnessed by a box boy who was stalking the very same girl.”

  “Lots of stalking going on,” I said.

  “This girl, somehow, elicits this kind of behavior in men.”

  “She’s a beautiful young lady,” I asked.

  “And she may not understand, or comprehend, her full effect on men.”

  “Meaning?”

  “A simple glance, an innocent smile, an innocuous flip of her hair in the wrong direction at the wrong time could have the wrong guy panting and thinking very unclean thoughts.”

  “You make it seem like the males of our species have no control over themselves.”

  Kelly looked at me, raised her eyebrows. “Is that really a road you want to go down?”

  “Fine,” I said. “We have no control over ourselves.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is that most girls, especially pretty girls, learn at a young age to avoid eye contact, keep their face passive and non-expressive.”

  �
�Because to do otherwise—”

  “Is to invite trouble,” said Kelly.

  “I seem to recall you smiling rather brilliantly at me when we first made eye contact.”

  “It’s different when you think the guy is a cutie,” said Kelly.

  “You think I’m a cutie?”

  “No,” she said. “I think you’re beautiful. In fact, I’m hard pressed to find a more beautiful man anywhere.”

  “Even for an old guy?”

  “You’ve aged wonderfully, and you’ve always reminded me of someone, but I’ve never been able to put my finger on it.”

  “Brad Pitt?”

  She shook her head, squeezed my hand.

  “I don’t know. Someone,” she said.

  “So why are we having such a hard time getting along?”

  “Because beauty is only skin deep.”

  “We have other issues,” I said.

  “Attraction isn’t one of them.”

  We were quiet some more as our sneakers crunched over loose gravel. Before us the road widened and curved past the northern end of the golf course.

  “I do want to keep seeing you, Aaron,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “But I want to see other people, too.”

  I took in some air. A lot of air. We kept walking. Now the trees opened up and the sun beat down. I was dripping sweat.

  “I know,” I said.

  “You know what?”

  “You’ve been seeing someone for quite some time.”

  She released my hand. “How do you know that, Aaron?”

  “I’m a private investigator. Put it together.”

  “You were following me?”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Since the first week we tried doing this again. You sent him an email from the computer at my house. You left your email up.”

  “And you read my email.”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “Snooping on your girlfriend’s private email is not what you do. You follow cheating husbands and wives, you find runaways and missing teens, but you don’t have a right to read my email.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, aren’t you going to apologize?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t think you did anything wrong?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m just not going to apologize.”

  “Why not?”

  I said nothing.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “You’re not going to clam up on me now. Don’t pull that shit on me again.”

  “Hey, this was supposed to be a peaceful walk,” I said.

  “That’s out the window. Why won’t you apologize?”

  “Because you were cheating, Kelly. Look at the bigger picture. You’re doing what you do best and diverting the attention away from the bigger issue. We both know that I’m a private eye, we both know that I make a living snooping into other people’s lives—yes, even the lives of my girlfriends. You made a deliberate act to continue seeing another man, even while we were trying to mend our relationship.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I was waiting to see what would happen.”

  We rounded the final curve of the golf course and were now headed toward the Greek Theater. In silence, we moved past the theater and adjacent housing track filled with opulent homes.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him,” she said after a while.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I was waiting to see where things were going with us.”

  “So where are things going with us?” I asked.

  “I love you, you big lug, but you’re so closed, so secretive. It’s hard for me to get around that.”

  “I understand.”

  “But, dammit, I want to still see you,” she said. “But I also want to see other people, too.”

  “You mean you want to continue seeing other people,” I said.

  “Yes. To continue.”

  We walked in silence some more, then I said, “So we’ll have one of those fancy, high-tech, open relationships everyone talks about?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, something like that.”

  “And I can date other people, too?”

  “That’s how it works,” she said, although I could hear the hesitancy in her voice.

  “And you’re not afraid of losing me?” I asked.

  “I’m terrified,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Euphoria. Pure, unadulterated euphoria.

  An hour earlier I had taken my ninth Vicodin followed by a beer chaser, and now I was feeling high as a kite and pain free and at peace with the world around me.

  Everyone should feel this good.

  Maybe they do. Maybe I’m the one who’s missing out.

  I was in my living room. It was early afternoon and the sun was shining straight through my blinds and into my apartment. Earlier, the bright light had given me a headache.

  But not anymore.

  Vicodin gets rid of headaches. Vicodin gets rid of all aches. And on top of that, it makes you feel so damn good that even the bright sunlight is no longer a problem. Hell, nothing is a problem.

  You’re now well beyond the recommended daily dosage, Mr. King. I think it’s official: you might just have a problem.

  Sure I did, but I didn’t care; at least not now.

  Taking Vicodin with a beer chaser was a big no-no, as alcohol did something that increased something, but I didn’t care. At least not now.

  Don’t try this at home, kids....

  I felt so damn good and my head felt so damn clear, but I knew I had a serious fucking problem and I knew this problem was threatening to get out of control.

  I’ll deal with it later.

  Always later, right King?

  For now, my knees were no longer sore and my head was no longer hurting; my lower back felt damn good and even my jaw had quit throbbing, a jaw that had been hurting since my re-constructive plastic surgery thirty years ago.

  Feeling good like I should.

  I lay back on my sofa, rested my head on a throw pillow, and closed my eyes. My body felt wonderful. My body felt healthy. My body felt strong.

  Everyone should feel this good....

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  It was later, and I was still feeling good as I read through Miranda’s police file for the umpteenth time, focusing my attention this time around on Miranda’s last boyfriends.

  Jason Anderson, her most recent ex-boyfriend who now lived in New York, didn’t have a clue what happened to Miranda. His story was fairly simple: Miranda had broken up with him a year or so ago after she had caught him cheating. He’d made several attempts to win her back but she wanted nothing more to do with him.

  Good for her.

  Police investigators had checked him out completely; he was clean. Besides, he had a rock-solid alibi at the time of her disappearance and the police had dropped him from the suspect list.

  My instincts told me there was nothing there. I dropped him, too, the cheating bastard.

  Generally, twenty-two-year-old girls didn’t run away. Hell, at that age, it was called moving. But Miranda had lived a very easy and sheltered life with her mother. Miranda’s mental and personal growth had no doubt been stunted by a few years.

  Just a beautiful girl with no clue just how beautiful she really is.

  The police had checked out all the hotels in Vegas but nothing had turned up under her name. They did the same for Reno and Laughlin and Tahoe. Nothing. They checked with current friends and old friends. Nothing. According to her friends, Miranda had had only one other significant boyfriend, a high school sweetheart named Flip Barowski, now six or seven years removed. The detectives, perhaps considering Flip was too far removed, never bothered contacting him.

  I got up from my chair. Oops, too fast. Instantly lightheaded, I guided myself over to my co
rner desk and sat down. I opened Miranda’s personal case file and flipped back a dozen or so pages until I found the letter I had removed from her bureau drawer. The love letter.

  I read it again.

  Flip apparently had it bad for Miranda. Very bad. And in his letter he was apologizing for something again and again, but, unfortunately, he didn’t say why he was apologizing. He ended the letter very succinctly: he threatened to end his own life if he could not have her.

  Now that’s love. Or infatuation.

  Either way, I grabbed my car keys and headed out the door. I was really too buzzed to drive, but that never stopped me before.

  Don’t try this at home, kids.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  I was on the road, buzzed and high, when Becky the pianist from the Pussycat called.

  “Hey, good-looking,” she said.

  “Hey, pretty mama.”

  Oops. Too Elvis.

  “Do you even know who this is?” she asked, giggling.

  I pulled out onto Morton Ave and headed down through the hills of Echo Park. The reception here was fuzzy at best.

  “No,” I said, “unless it’s Becky from the Pussycat.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’m good at voices.”

  “Well, I’m very impressed,” she said.

  I was driving by the shabbier homes of lower Echo Park. The day was sweltering. I turned right onto Glendale and picked up speed. My window was mostly up to hear better, my cell’s earpiece shoved deep into my ear canal.

  “So do you really think I’m good-looking?” I asked.

  “I think you’re beautiful,” she said. “Especially your voice.”

  Becky sounded as if she were on something. Join the club. I think we were both feeling flirty and lonely and high.

  “Even for an old geezer?” I asked.

  She giggled. “You’re only fifty-something, right?”

  Close, but not quite.

  “Old enough to be your father,” I said.

  “You can be my daddy anytime, sugar,” she said, giggling again, and then she got to the point, which was probably for the best. “We need to rehearse sometime this week.”