Leaving Las Vegas

by John O'Brien

  She looks at him tentatively. “You’ve been listening in, Officer?” she says, though she knows he’s not a cop.

  “Officer my ass,” he says. “Look, baby. You’re not talking to some farm boy. I’m not that loser that just left. I know why you’re here and I’m interested. What’s the fare anyhow? Do I get a discount for looking at your punching bag face?” He laughs cruelly. “Just kidding. After all, it’s not your face I want to use.” He falls silent, as if to convey some special meaning, and looks deeply at her, as if there is anything he could possibly know. “Al sent me over—Arab guy—said you were a good sport. So how much?”

  She must be very cold, for the hand on her back feels unnaturally hot. To her ears comes the fat man’s voice: Here he is now., punctuated by the annoying clink of glass from a passing busboy’s cart. Now just a single finger draws an imaginary line along her spine, and as she turns to see who is behind her, she shivers.

  Then she meets his eyes, and seven years vanish in an odious, bloodshot wink.

  “Answer the man, Sera. He wants to spend some time with you,” says Gamal Fathi. Up close now, he may be surprised at the condition of her face, but this has never mattered in the past, and his own remains as it is: very hard, quite pleased with the moment.

  Sera looks away, out into the casino with its anthill of activity, a zillion people serving one common cause. Throughout her life she has never had, never even wanted to taste, a single moment of belonging to anything this big. She can’t remember what hotel this is, though she finds that fact not disturbing in the least. She says, “Al,” and she feels a longing for something that isn’t here right now. She doesn’t know what it could be.

  The fat man moves his face close, right in front of hers. His cologne surrounds her, rudely attacking her eyes and nostrils. “C’mon, baby. What are you waiting for? I’m the man from Glad! How’s five bills for an hour upstairs grab ya’?” he says.

  “Okay,” she says to him.

  He turns and walks away, motioning for her to follow.

  Al swiftly moves his hand to her wrist. “Give me the keys to your apartment, Sera. I’ll wait for you there.” He rummages through her purse, extracting her keys and some money. “Better hurry and finish your drink. You have a trick waiting that we can’t afford to lose,” he says. Then he is gone.

  She feels sick as she tries to down her drink. Leaving it unfinished, she catches up to her trick at the elevator.

  “What did happen to your face?” he asks. “If you don’t mind telling me that is.”

  “Just some kids the other night,” she says. “They got scared.”

  He nods, laughing.

  They ride up to his room in silence. She feels apart now, strangely relieved, yet apprehensive. She is an observer again. He opens the door to the room.

  “You girls always want to use the bathroom, right? So go ahead. There it is,” he says. He goes on to the bed.

  Sera closes the bathroom door and runs the water. She splashes her face, then urinates. Her hands are icy, her mouth dry. After catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she turns out the bathroom light and walks out in front of him. He’s lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, looking very relaxed.

  “Where’s my money?” she says.

  He gestures to the dresser. She picks up the money and tucks it in her purse, then undresses. She stands naked before him.

  “What do you want?” she says.

  He swings himself off the bed and removes his clothes. He is covered with hair and is more obese than she had realized. Hands now on his hips, he proudly displays a large erection to her.

  “Lie down,” he commands. “I’m on top.”

  She lies on the bed and spreads her legs. He mounts her. His quick insertion is shameless and painful. She winces as his wide hips spread too far her thighs, but she does not speak. He pounds at her recklessly, torturing her in a hundred different places, a thousand different ways. The wounds in her anus open, and she feels a warm trickle of blood blend with the sweat that is flowing into the sheets. She bites her tongue to keep from crying out, and he withdraws.

  “You’re holding up pretty well,” he laughs. “Your friend Al wasn’t kidding. How about some head.”

  She obediently starts to rise but he pushes her down.

  “No, you stay there,” he says.

  He straddles her face and pushes his penis into her mouth, pinning her head into the pillow. Throwing his upper body against the headboard, he resumes the violent thrusting of his hips. She gags and chokes her way around attempts to participate. But he is only interested in fucking her face. His penis repeatedly hits the back of her throat. The intensity of his push snaps her neck back, and he grabs her hair to hold her head in place. Suddenly he pulls away and looks at her. He holds her head with one hand and, still above her, strokes himself with the other.

  “I’m gonna come on your face, baby,” he says. “I’m gonna come on your sweet black and blue punching bag bitch face.”

  His semen shoots onto her cheek. Dropping her head, he covers her face with his free hand and rubs his semen over her features and into her hair until, having extracted all that he can, his other hand slows to a stop. He rolls off of her and collapses onto the bed.

  “Get lost,” he says, giving her a kick in the side.

  She gets into her clothes and only pauses for a moment in the bathroom, where she wipes off her face before leaving the room.

  The wait for a down elevator seems endless, but finally one arrives.

  (Tough trick, but at least it was a trick. Al found a trick for me.)

  She goes into the casino and plays blackjack for about an hour.

  (Everything is fine now; things are back on track.)

  Betting modestly and only losing one hundred dollars, she shrugs off the loss and goes out to get a cab.

  (There ought to be a stronger connection somewhere. There should be another level.)

  She tells the driver where she wants to go and closes the cab door.

  (Her father loved her in the super-sexual way that is far too sublime for incest)

  The driver says excusememiss.

  ( )

  The driver says excusememiss.

  ( )( )( )

  “Excuse me, miss,” says the driver, turning around, “but I can’t seem to get my meter to run. It must be broken. If you want to, you can get another cab, or I can charge you a flat ten bucks for the ride. That’s about what the fare would be anyway.”

  “Sounds fair,” she says, first expressionless, then smiling too broadly at the potential pun.

  As the cab pulls into traffic she looks in her purse for a ten and a five. She finds her compact first and opens it up for a quick look in the little mirror. She spots some dried semen in her hair. Damn, she thinks, looks like I’m going to have to stay up and wash my hair tonight.

  “So what happened to your face?” says the driver, looking in the rearview mirror.

  She looks up, a little surprised at the question.

  “Nothing,” she says.

  bars

  “BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER!” The bartender spins triumphantly and slaps the bar with a wet, soiled lag, but the sight of his audience reminds him that he is already the acknowledged master of the morning lineup and must maintain decorum. “Breaking the sound barrier,” he says quietly, authoritatively.

  “Breaking the sound barrier?” guesses a contestant, three inches tall in an upper corner of the room. In saying it she changes the usual pronunciation of the phrase, placing the emphasis on the word the rather than the word sound. Those at the bar who are paying attention cock their heads and move their lips silently.

  “BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER,” this the confirmation from the master of ceremonies, the host.

  “You should go on that show.” Any of several hoarse voices from the far end of the bar tend to assert this several times each morning.

  The bartender nods in solemn assent.

  Ben lo
oks longingly at the television. It’s ten o’clock and the game shows are at their daily peak. There’s no longer any need to call in to work—he won’t be in today, or tomorrow, or next Nsday—and the threatening-three first drinks of the morning, tall vodkas-cranberry, have been downed and kept down. He’s ready to sit for a while and watch game show models display game show prizes, beautiful girls fuck expensive stuff.

  His vision drifts past even the pseudo reality of the cathode-ray tube to a deeper level of fantasy. He is looking at a Hollywood grown American sweetheart, but he sees a dangerous looking woman clad in short leather and sheer lace. Black and disheveled, her hair hides part of her face. She gives the impression that she’s probably just been fucked, or more accurately, that she’s probably just fucked someone. Now she’s looking at him, talking to him, ready for him.

  Just look at this fucking studio, Ben, she says, filled with glamourous merchandise, fabulous and exciting bonus prizes, including an extra special prize chosen just for you!: a big bad black BMW motorcycle, complete with saddle bags containing hundreds of thousands of dollars in United States Currency! So let’s find a bar, get drunk, and go for a ride. Then we can get a suite somewhere, have room service send up a few cases of bourbon, vodka, anything you want, while we fuck ourselves silly. Then champagne for breakfast, and off on a wild fucking ride to some more bars. This is it, just for you, Ben, because you’ve been so patient, and because I want to fuck you, take care of you, and because there’s nothing else in the world worth doing.

  Wait… whoa, yes: queasiness arrested. Perhaps a conversation is in order. No, not yeeeetttttt: stretching, shoulders back, a breath, a sigh. RoOoOoLlLlLiNg ThE nEcK, just like waking up. There, he thinks, that’s better. He’s ready to pick up his fourth drink. He’s waited long enough, and now: click, his day can begin. The nausea has gone back into hiding; he must act, must be attentive to the timing. The fourth drink, and subsequent others taken at intervals of diminishing precision, will maintain his illusion of physical health. It will keep the sickness at bay for the rest of the day. He can stay well on his journey through hell. La la la la la la.

  His eyes follow his hand as it reaches for the thin red straw. Failing to observe any shaking, any overt shaking, he plucks the straw from its intended purpose and drops it on the paper napkin under his glass. A small hemorrhage of cranberry juice forms a red blot on the cheek of a cartoon man with cartoon bubbles over his head: My hife tusson mummerstan me.

  Ben doesn’t need a straw now, at least not until tomorrow morning. He can pick up this glass as many times as he wants to, and never spill a drop. Click, click, click. He’s back on track. Things aren’t so bad. Feeling whimsically profound, he reflects on the parallel of his own ephemeral happiness—pursued, caught, sucked on—and that of the schoolteacher from Cleveland, who has just won thirty-two hundred dollars by solving the puzzle, THE SKY’S THE LIMIT. They both have their little prizes. They both started with their little clues. Hers was: a four word, fifteen letter phrase containing one apostrophe. His was: what you do every fucking morning.

  Ben has his usual vista view seat on the lower end of the circular part of this particularly keyhole-shaped bar. Also present this morning are the bartender: always reading the Los Angeles Times, a small quantity of regulars: always reviewing the previous evening’s drinking, and a well dressed—by comparison—business man who is downing the first of what will always be two glasses of tomato juice blended with beer. Alcohol leads to predictability. Ben knows none of these people. The only words he has ever spoken in this room are hi, vodka, cranberry, and thanks. In fact, what he likes most about this dirty little bar, one of several that he frequents, is that no one would ever look for or bother him here. He can be out and about, and still be alone with his liquor. But this is all painfully moot now; it has been a while since anyone has looked for or bothered him anywhere.

  The television, perhaps the brightest entity in attendance, is certainly the brightest light in the room. This is a good thing; he does not want to see the source of the odor that rises from beneath the barstools. The place is very unclean, due mostly to the quality of the clientele, and though he resents the filth, he knows that it’s an element in whatever draws him here. For his part he always makes it to the men’s room sink before losing a drink. The sink is the preferred location for a quick puke, the toilet being far too nauseating for that purpose. Cranberry juice flowing red on white porcelain is money down the drain, but at least the next one is guaranteed to stay put.

  Outlining the surface of the bar is a red vinyl cushion that is well perforated with rips and burns. It provides a soft place to rest his elbows as he cradles his chin in his hands and stares wide-eyed at the television. It outlines the bar in case he can’t find it. It’s a good outline for the bar, so he knows where it is. Outlining the surface of the bar is a red line for him to cross. Cross this line and you’re out. He can cross the red line as he sits and stares at the television. He can cross the line and never leave the comfort of his own barstool.

  This is his morning bar, his game show bar. But sometimes he happens to be here later in the day, during the hours that some lame sports spectacle is scribbled all over the television. He can’t stand to stare at sports, so at those times he drops his gaze a few degrees and is rewarded by rows and rows of liquor bottles. Half real, they each stand in front of their own little reflection, doubling the fantasy. He examines the backs, the fronts, the sides. He monitors the volume of liquid remaining, the length of time that a particularly obscure bottle has been undisturbed, the accumulation of dust on its cap. He stares at red and blue fluids in the improbably shaped containers, until he begins to feel nauseated and quickly looks away. He wonders, given the caliber of the management, just how many of the bottles actually contain what their labels indicate, and how many are diluted or filled with cheaper brands, younger blends, knock-offs, generic vodka: give us a dollar and we’ll make it work for you. He always has the same drink, his breakfast drink, but still it’s like Christmas morning every time he walks in and sits down. Or it’s like a candy store. It’s like all the wonderful being-a-kid memories that he can recall, the good, the bad, and the easy. Make a wish, and your army of harlot bottles will respond. It is an unrestricted arena of choices; it makes what he gets, what he always gets, that much more attractive.

  “We’ll see you all again tomorrow. Bye Bye for now,” says the TV host right before being drowned out by the applause of the studio audience, which seems to magically louden, as if by command. This is then replaced by a momentarily black screen and the reassuring voice of the network, “The fun’s just begun and there’s plenty more to come. So stay tuned all morning for plenty of laughs and prizes, starting with.…”

  That would make it ten-thirty, he thinks. He has one hour to kill until the real bars open. One hour until he can sit and drink pretty in the restaurant bars of West LA and Beverly Hills. That’s when his day really begins. His stomach will be ready for bourbon and beer, or martinis, or whatever. He’ll sit and drink away the afternoon, smiling and laughing with movie people, or west coast stockbrokers, exiled from their natural time zone, or anyone else who doesn’t have to go back to work. One hour is just right. He’ll go home, have a quick glass of vodka and a shower, put on some nice clothes, and be in Beverly Hills between eleven-thirty and twelve. Make it closer to twelve, say eleven-fifty. That way it won’t seem like he’s been waiting for the bars to open.

  Time has become very important to him, much more important than it was when he had a job. Too many times he has awakened at three a.m., having passed out the previous evening, only to find nothing alcoholic in the house. He has felt the panic increase exponentially as the minutes click off the eternity between him and the legally wet world of six a.m.. His carefully laid stockpiles, meant to carry him over the tundra of two to six, were often consumed blindly from the abyss, after the line of careful laying had been crossed. Once he gave up and rushed to the all night convenience store, where
he was grateful for the privilege of overpaying for a family size bottle of Listerine. Eight minutes later, parked in front of his apartment, the bottle was half empty and he had begun to calm down. He shut off the car, stopped the internal combustion.

  So his life is punctuated by legislative break points and red flags of custom. At six a.m. the hardcore bars open and the stores can sell, though they sometimes choose to withhold, imposing their morality on some poor, sweating, shaking mess looking for his fix. Nine a.m. is considered a safe opening time for the bars that don’t like to admit that people drink that early but can’t let the business slip completely away; bartenders in these places tend to pause disapprovingly for an imperceptible moment before handing over a drink. The next milestone is eleven-thirty. At eleven-thirty everyone is willing to admit that the drinking day has begun and they proudly open their doors and pour their drinks. It’s smooth sailing until midnight, when, if they haven’t already, the more reputable bars bail out. Any place that stays open passed midnight is probably good until two—actually one-forty-five—the most important time of all. Never let two o’clock happen unless there is more liquor in the house than you could possibly drink in four hours—no small quantity.

  It takes about five hours to drive from Los Angeles to Nevada, land of anytime alcohol, and there are no commercial flights at that hour. Teasing, gnawing, when you’re out of liquor at two-thirty in the morning it looms, conceptually bad, in the back of your head. Ben has often thought it through, but it’s just not a solution; by the time he would get there the bars would be open in LA.

  It’s ten-thirty-one. Ben drains his glass and stands up. He mutters, “thank you,” and turns toward the door without waiting for an acknowledgement. Outside it’s still overcast—spring in Los Angeles. He walks straight and sure to his car. He feels okay, swinging up.

  On his way home, having stopped off at a liquor store for a can of beer to drive by, Ben feels elated. His day is in gear and he has everything to look forward to; he has a plan. Things will tick along fine now. He turns up the radio and thinks about what album to listen to while he gets dressed. Checking his pocket, though he already knows its contents, he confirms that he’ll need to stop at the automated teller machine.