by H. T. Night
I knew I should go to bed, and I imagined that I had about six hours of sleep in the last 24 hours, just by passing out at different places. I knew if I went to bed, all I would think about was Maya and I would find my way to that fetal position that I hated so much. The position that, by its metaphor, was all about defeat.
I showered, then put on the dirty clothes I had from the night before. I took out the ticket and laid it on top of the dresser. I wasn’t even sure I was going to waste any time seeing if the bet had an outrageous hit. Platypuses? Really?
I was planning on buying an outfit as soon as I could and get out of this yuppie outfit which I was certain wasn’t mine. It stank rather badly. I needed to find clothes that fit me. And fast.
I went out of my hotel room into the downtown feel of the Rivera. This hotel had been decorated to look like the 1970s. In fact, I thought it was the same carpet.
Right across the street was a discount clothing store. I ran across the street and bought myself three Tshirts that didn’t say Las Vegas on them. I thought I’d found the only three shirts that didn’t have the city name sprayed across the chest. I found some basketball shorts to wear. I knew it wasn’t the greatest outfit, but at least I wasn’t wearing clothes that were sweaty, stinking, and had God knows what else on them.
I decided to just toss the clothes in the store’s bathroom trash can. All right. I’d taken my shower. I had on clean clothes. It was around noon and I needed to decide on what I wanted to do on my last day and night in Vegas.
Gamble or drink?
Or maybe both? It was a combination I had found to be extremely profitable a couple days back.
I wasn’t in the mood to sit at a table for hours on end. It was almost noon now. I decided to walk to an area where there seemed to be better and more lively bars.
My stomach growled. Loudly. Damn, when had I last eaten? I couldn’t remember.
I was walking by a coffee shop to get to a bar when I recognized a woman sitting alone outside the coffee shop. “Hey,” I said. “Don’t I know you?”
She looked at me, puzzled, and said, “I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. Then I remembered who she was. She was the brunette from a couple of nights ago who had been sitting at the table with two other girls. I had been pretty drunk, but I remembered her vibing me.
It didn’t matter if she didn’t remember, because she was vibing me now.
“I’m sure I’d remember you,” she said.
“Really?” I said. “That’s kind of sad. I would think I would have made a better impression.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself. I’ve been drunk for four nights in a row. Don’t tell anyone that. I’m at a work conference for my company. And I get a per diem.”
“Nice. What do you do?” I asked.
“I’m in sales for a copier company.”
“I would hate to do sales. I’m not the greatest with people.”
She didn’t seem to want to talk about work. “Okay, if we met,” she said flirting with me, “do you remember my name?”
I thought about it and laughed. “No, I don’t remember. I don’t think you ever gave it to me.”
“I certainly did… Tommy.” Then she gave me a giant smile, indicating that she knew who I was and that she certainly did remember me.
“You do remember me?” I said.
“Yes, I remember you. So, what is my name?”
I thought seriously hard. All I remembered doing was messing with some platinum blond.
I think her name started with an ‘A’… Alice? I didn’t want to say it out loud. What if I was wrong? I didn’t want to be wrong with a name like Alice.
As I kept trying to think what her name was, she kept talking. “So, you discovered I have a weakness for coffee in the morning when nursing a mild hangover.”
“Does coffee even help?” I asked.
“It does a tiny bit if you have a mild hangover. If you have a major one, you’re out of luck with coffee. You need to ride it out with aspirin and a quiet room with a tall glass of ice water.”
“I never craved coffee when nursing a hangover.” If anything, the taste of coffee would probably make me nauseated. I was still standing in the road, facing my brunette friend. “May I join you?” People on the street were having to walk around me and I was causing a human traffic jam.
“You can, but only if you can remember my name,” she answered.
“Are you serious?”
“I’m serious. You were just complaining that you hoped you would have made a better impression. Well, that’s how I feel now. Tell me my name.”
What the hell is her name?
Aggie? I looked her in the eye and I had the urge to sing, “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.” Then it came to me. “Annie!” I yelled it way louder than I intended. I was still a little off from this morning.
“Very good. You’ve earned your seat,” Annie said. “I’m not sure how much longer I can stay. I need to get back to the conference and do my work thing. But I am impressed and now a tad flattered that you remembered… and that you remembered with such enthusiasm.” She paused. “How did you remember?”
I laughed. “I use mnemonics to remember people’s names. I attached a song to yours.”
“Oh, God. Not the ‘Tomorrow’ song from the stage play, Annie. My whole life, people have been doing that to me.”
“Well, my name is Tommy and I grew up with the moniker, ‘Pinball Wizard’ from the rock opera, Tommy. School bullies screaming at me, ‘Tommy, can you hear me?’ and so on. Of course, I kicked their asses for their trouble and so I grew to love my name.”
“At least we have something in common to commiserate about,” Annie said, blushing and laughing in this genuine way. “Getting teased about our names.”
“Annie’s a nice name,” I said. “It’s innocent and sweet. Almost like you’re the quintessential girl next door.” I was a little embarrassed, and she’d caught me in a moment of vulnerability as I realized that I was attracted by the safety of her girl-next-door appeal and had let her know it.
She saw my little twitch or the slight eye glance that tipped my hand that I liked her. I hated when I did that. Let a girl I barely knew discover that I felt something personal about her. Even just a way to remember her name. I tried not to fall into my dick bravado, but struggled to remain genuine and down to earth in front of a nice girl. And she did seem nice.
“Tommy is a good name, too. That’s cool that you fought for people not to make fun of it.”
I guess now that she had seen it, my vulnerability, and my real self, this was a test to see what kind of person she was.
“I have an idea,” she said. “Why don’t I meet you tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, unless you’re going home from your own business trip.”
I laughed. Going home. That was funny. Business trip. That was even funnier. I liked her more by the moment. Scary, but true. “I plan on staying one more night.”
“Perfect. Why don’t we meet around seven somewhere? My conference will be completely over and I could celebrate. In fact, I want to celebrate.”
“Sure,” I said. “Why don’t we meet right here?” I looked around. It seemed to be at the epicenter of all the action.
“Sounds good to me,” she said with a gleam in her eye. “Maybe you can find some other clothes to wear,” she joked.
“You don’t like this look?” I asked. “This is my weekend warrior look.”
“Come as you are then. I just want to have fun.” Annie gave me a big sexy smile.
Uh-oh.
I struggled to say, “I’ll see what I can scavenge up to wear.”
“Okay, it’s a date then,” Annie said.
Oh, shit! No, it’s not!
The second she said it, I realized she wasn’t someone who wanted to party with me and drink and hang out. She was someone who was looking at this as a date. I didn’t know what to say to her. I d
idn’t want to sleep with her. I mean she was pretty, but I couldn’t even contemplate that with the kind of emotional pain I was feeling. I couldn’t help it. I was still loyal to Maya. Even though I liked Annie, the All-American girl with the dark hair.
“No, it’s not a date,” I said carefully. I tried to say it in a way that it didn’t come across as aggressive.
“Okay,” she said. She seemed embarrassed by my statement. “It’s not a date?”
“Look,” I said. “My fiancée recently passed away. So, I would like to go out for drinks, but that’s about it. I hope you can respect that.” I paused. “I am not looking for a rebound lady to heal me. Just taking in a bit of companionship at its face value, and I do value it.”
Wow, I laid that out there plain and simple.
“If you’re telling the truth about what you said, I completely respect that. And I am glad you told me, otherwise I would be wondering why you didn’t… kiss me.”
“I wouldn’t lie about something like that. That would be a little sick and twisted. I think I came here to just let Las Vegas gut-punch me, or I would gut-punch it right back. Somewhere in Sin City, there was you, a perfectly congenial girl who made me smile and who I want to sit next to in a nice cool bar and have some company for an evening. In the face of all this tragedy that is my loss of love and my uncertain future, you are an oasis of normalcy.”
Holy crap, I was spewing. But maybe this was what death did to a man. Made you ooze out the burden to the first friendly face.
She looked at me and her face turned to sadness. “I believe you. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Don’t be. You didn’t kill her.”
“That’s an awful thing to say.” Annie seemed put off now.
I smiled at her and said, “Okay, I sort of suck on how to talk about it, but I’m working on how to deal with this on a daily basis. That one true love is gone. Evaporated into the night. You’re one of the first people I’ve talked to about this. I’m still processing it all. Forgive me for stumbling on my words?”
There you go. Nice and honest.
“You’re just being human,” she said. “It must be hard. I can’t imagine dealing with something like that. If you don’t mind me asking, how did she pass?”
“She and her parents were all killed in a car accident,” I said plainly. “I was in the vehicle right behind them.” If she was going to ask such a direct question, I was going to give her a direct answer.
“Oh my God, that is horrible.”
“Look, maybe we shouldn’t do this. It’s all too soon and all too weird.”
I didn’t know what else to say.
“Nonsense. You need a night out to just… you know… forget. I would love to hang out with you tonight. You seem like a cool guy and pretty straightforward. I like that because I’m the same way.”
“I know you are,” I said. “That’s why I asked you. Meet me back here at seven.”
Chapter Six
Okay, I guess I had a drinking buddy tonight. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t start without her. I went into a bar on the other side of the road. It was clean and the place had some class.
That made me laugh. I was the epitome of classiness since I’d been to Sin City.
I sat down on the stool, and got the bartender’s attention. He caught my eye and eagerly rushed over to me as if he didn’t get a lot of orders during the day or this early.
“What would you like, sir?” He laid a napkin in front of me.
Very classy. Who was I? The queen of England?
“I’ll have a double tequila.”
“All right,” the bartender gave me the once-over and nodded his head. I must have had a five-o’clock shadow. My face did feel a little itchy from not shaving.
“Do you have pretzels or something?” I asked.
“I’ll see what I can find in the back.”
My stomach had only had alcohol in it for days. A double tequila was usually my first drink of choice. It didn’t waste any time to say, “Hello, Mr. Buzz Man.”
The bartender gave me the double shot and started to do the whole lime-salt thing but I told him not to bother. I was just going to pound it like fruit punch. I told him, “Just keep them coming.”
His left eyebrow went up a bit and he nodded slightly.
I downed the tequila. “Maybe a beer chaser?” I said.
“Got it. What beer would you like?”
“Whatever, I don’t care.”
The bartender drafted me a beer from the tap and said, “All right. Here is a ‘whatever, I don’t care’ glass of beer.”
I liked this guy. He was funny.
I leaned back on the bar stool. Which wasn’t too smart. I was still a little shaky. I caught my balance and decided there would be no leaning again.
A soccer game on the big-screen TV was garnering a lot of interest in it from people in the bar. It surprised me because everybody cared about this game. You would think they were staring at an ‘end of the world’ news break.
I decided to ask the bartender what was the deal with the soccer game.
“Hey, buddy,” I said. “What soccer game is this?”
“Hell if I know. They all placed bets on it and asked me to put it on. They are probably not even fans. It’s a slow sports day. Not much to bet on.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. I didn’t bet too much on sports. I didn’t like to do it because I bet with my heart and not with my sense. “I’m more of a poker guy.”
“Really?” the bartender said. “The real money is betting on sports. It’s fast and it’s reliable. There’s always another game to bet on.”
“Spoken like a true gambler,” I said.
“There is a reason why I live in Vegas.” The bartender laughed and went into the back. He came back with a bag of pretzels and handed me the whole bag. “Knock yourself out,” he said.
“How about another double shot?” I said. “This time, I’ll take the trimmings.”
“Huh?” The bartender didn’t catch on what I was saying.
“I’ll take the salt and lime.”
This routine went on for about an hour.
I drank a lot of tequila. I looked around the bar. I saw a clock on the wall. 1:15 in the afternoon.
Damn, it’s too early to be this drunk.
I didn’t want to be too drunk when I met up with Annie later. Because I can be a jerk when I have had too much.
I decided to go outside and smoke a cigarette. I needed some air. I was about to do something I knew I was going to regret later. I was going to drunk-dial Josiah. He was the only person I could talk to at the moment. I took out my cell and found Josiah in my contacts. I pressed Call.
The phone rang seven times and then the dope let the call go to voicemail. I wasn’t a voicemail person. I hated talking on the damn things. But I was drunk, and I had a lot of burden on my heart. The second the beep sounded, I was off and running with the most pitiful voicemail I would ever leave.
“Hey, Josiah. It’s me, Tommy. I was trying to talk to you right now but you didn’t pick up. Dumbass. Hey, I miss your family, man. I miss your parents. I miss Maya so much, man. I can’t imagine living this life without her. You can take that any way you like. But she was my everything. She was my light. Now, all there is… is darkness.”
Tears were dripping from my eyes as I stood outside the bar, smoking and talking. I quit talking and pressed End on the phone.
Holy shit, I was sloppy drunk now. I was wobbly. I got my balance and sat on a bench and just felt the sun come down on me. I tried to let the sun soothe me. To take care of me. I needed someone to take care of me. I’d never had parents. I’d never had anything until I had Maya. She had even come fully equipped with parents and a great brother, who was closer than any blood kin, not that I had any but my grandma. Now, I was back to having nothing. No one.
I couldn’t control my pain and I did something that was frowned upon in the Carni community. You don’t howl in a public place
where there are mostly humans. It sort of freaks them out. But I didn’t know what else to do. I howled out loud. I howled long. Loud. And throaty.
I howled until I passed out.
“Hey, you alive?”
I looked up and it was a police officer. “Yeah, I’m alive.”
“Well, you can’t sleep out here. We can get you a cab to take you back to your hotel. You need to pay for it, but we can get you one.”
“No… I’m good.”
“Well, you can’t sleep out here.”
“I got you. Sorry, Officer. I do have a room at the Riviera.” I never knew how to talk to the police. If you sound too familiar, they will usually put you in your place. I also wasn’t going to kiss anybody’s ass, but I respected their job.
“I’m getting up and will go right to my hotel,” I said to him. “Is that okay?”
“All right.”
I stood up and looked around and something caught my eye. There was a motorcycle lot right out in the open on Las Vegas Boulevard.
“If it’s cool with you, I’m going to check out that motorcycle shop.”
“Fine. But if I see you sleeping outdoors again, I’m going to cite you. You have a hotel room. Use it.”
“Got it. Have a good evening,” I said, trying not to slur my words.
The policeman finally walked away.
I looked back at the motorcycle shop.
Is this destiny?
I’d had a bike when I was 17, but had totaled it while dirt biking. Mainly, it had been because I had a motorcycle and not a dirt bike. And I treated it as such, pulling an Evel Knievel type of stunt off a small cliff. I’d ended up limping home. It had been a while since that near-death experience in my youth.
I took the crosswalk over to the bike shop. I went into the shop and looked around. All the bikes I liked were like 15 grand and that was way too much.
I left disappointed and still extremely drunk.
I looked at my phone. I was supposed to meet that girl in a couple of hours. I realized I didn’t even have her phone number or know her last name. I should get some threads. If not for her, for myself. This was Las Vegas and I wanted to look my best. I might end up too hammered to remember anything, but I wanted to at least look good doing it. Whatever “it” was.