Still Life Las Vegas

by James Sie

  I try not to panic. I fight the urge to take a taxi and race to his apartment. Go back home, I tell myself. Call Chrystostom’s phone from there, not to bother him, just to tell him that my phone’s not working. Maybe arrange for a get-together later on tonight. And, if I don’t get him, I could stay in and spend some time with my father.

  Or I could buy a new phone.

  * * *

  The 202 lumbers toward my destination. On each corner, a new adversary climbs aboard, intent on slowing down time itself: hordes of geriatrics; inept baby-stroller wranglers; bike wielders; gargantuan folk puffing up each step. They manage to snare our bus in every red light we come across.

  To avoid watching this parade of disabilities, I pull out my sketchbook. Poor, neglected sketchbook. Truth is, there’s not been much drawing lately. Our late-night sketch sessions in the unoccupied apartment (aka the Love Den) have produced more stimulation than art. Even now, when I open to a new white page, it’s difficult to draw him. I know him with my hands now, with my mouth, not my pen. His image has been magnified in my mind, too large to contain on paper.

  His eyes, though, I can still draw. The ones I watch watching me.

  He likes me naked.

  “Walter,” he said to me last night, lying on the floor of the Love Den. “Never be ashamed of this body. Your skin is so soft, so smooth.”

  I scoff. I tell him I’d rather be muscled, hard like a rock, like him.

  “But you have something everyone desires. You are young. Remember this, Walter. It is precious. It is power.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re young, too,” I said, running my hand down the impossibly taut line separating his stomach muscles.

  “Of course I am,” Chrysto says, revealing that wolfish smile from beneath his curling, luscious upper lip. “We are lucky, are we not?”

  * * *

  I’m at the Stop-N-Save by my house, picking up groceries. There are some staples we desperately need, like toilet paper instead of the Kleenex we’ve been using the past week. And since I’ll be home early, I’ll make my dad a home-cooked meal. I’ll pick up spaghetti, some sauce, bread, maybe something sweet. He likes something sweet.

  The Stop-N-Save also sells disposable phones.

  I haven’t seen much of my dad, but there’ve been signs of activity: tea mug on the table, TV on in the living room, exploded meal in the microwave. Trouble is, I’m rushing to get out the door in the mornings or stumbling in late at night, so we haven’t had a lot of face-to-face time. I tell him I’m going to work, or out with friends, and he seems to buy the explanations.

  I pop an extra box of Nabisco into the cart.

  The disposable phones are on display by the checkout line.

  My wallet’s a little bulimic these days, spitting out cash as soon as I put some in. It’s the bottles of beer and ouzo, the take-out food, the occasional taxi ride from my apartment to Chrysto’s—it’s adding up. Plus I’ve had to cut some hours at work to take my driving lessons. My salary’s tinier than ever.

  Food for my father, or a new phone. Get the food, of course, I think, but my hand’s still holding the phone. I can’t let go. It’s like I’m waiting for it to ring. It’s only when someone behind me asks, “Are you in line?” that I throw the phone back in the bin and shove my cart forward.

  * * *

  I rush out of the Stop-N-Save, but my steps get slower and slower the closer I get to home. I think of my father, sitting up at the kitchen table, waiting for me. What will he do when I leave? I tell myself that he’s on an upswing, and the truth of it is, he is better. He’s spending more and more time out of his room and on the couch; his appetite has returned. Maybe he’s coming all the way back this time. It’ll be like four years ago. He’ll be able to leave the house. He’ll be able to live alone. It’ll all work out.

  No use thinking about it now. Time enough to figure it all out when I pass the test. Just get the license.

  All the same, when I push the front door open I’m relieved to see he’s not on the couch. I peek into his room—he’s asleep. If I’m lucky, I’ll get ahold of Chrysto, make the spaghetti, plate it up, and be gone before my father wakes up.

  Just as I reach for the phone it rings. The readout says BLOCKED CALLER, which has become synonymous with one person—Chrystostom. I’m so relieved he’s called that I don’t wonder how he got my home phone number.

  “Hey,” I say breathlessly, “I was just about to call you.”

  “Hello?” says the voice on the other end.

  It’s a woman’s voice.

  “I’m sorry,” she continues, “I’m looking for Walt Stahl. Is he there?”

  The prickling on the back of my neck. No one calls me Walt but my father. “This is he,” I say.

  “Are you, is your father Owen Stahl?” There’s a slight tremor to her voice, but she lays down each word deliberately. Her voice is warm.

  I nod in answer, and it’s only four fast heartbeats later that I realize she can’t hear a nod. I swallow to get some moisture back in my mouth. “Yes, it is, I mean, he is. My father.”

  There’s a commotion on the other end of the line, and a muffled “Oh my God!” and then the only thing I hear on the phone is my own fast breathing. In out, in out, in out.

  Finally, there’s a scraping sound, a hand being taken from the receiver. She’s back. “Could you, could you hold a moment, Walt?” she asks delicately. I nod again, but no reply’s necessary, since she’s already muffled the phone.

  I’m perfectly still. Does that mean I’m exactly in the right place? I wonder. The only things I feel are my eyes, which have become two little reservoirs, filling up.

  All this time I’ve been trying to figure out what my mother looked like, I never considered what she might sound like.

  She’d sound like this.

  There’s an intake of breath on the other end of the line, a raspy, ragged breath: “Hello?” This is not my mother’s voice. Her voice has been replaced on the line by someone who sounds like Mr. Handy, only wheezier. There’s another strangulated breath.

  “Hello?” I say.

  “Is this Walt?” the person rasps.

  “Yes,” I reply.

  Another wheeze. “This is Vee. Your grandmother. I’d like to meet you.”

  WALTER & VEE

  I’m approaching forgotten territory. No monorail stops here. Even the bus passes by three blocks away. This hotel was one of the big casinos in its day, but now, as the colossal resorts have migrated north, it’s been left dangling at the bottom, isolated and obsolete, the tailbone of the Strip. Where it once towered, it now hunkers down, unloved, marking time until the wrecking ball makes its way up the street.

  When I finally make up my mind to push through the revolving doors, I’m surprised to find a light crowd. Its faded reputation must still have a little glow, like stars that keep twinkling years after they’ve actually died. There are a few shabby suits checking in, a couple of overheated families sitting on their luggage, and a backpacking German couple looking lost as they stare at the dim gallery of celebrity photos lining the wall.

  I’m five minutes early, but instead of heading to the elevators I linger at the photo wall. Black-and-white pictures and color ones so washed out they may as well be black and white. I know most of these old dinosaurs—the same faded grins line the Wall of Fame at Viva—but still, I take my time, read each name off the little gold placards like I’m studying for a test. Liberace and his mirrored piano await me at the end of the row. His eyebrow raises in my direction; he taunts me with those dark, glittering eyes and that open mouth. What are you waiting for? he asks, that devil-may-care, diamond-encrusted hand sweeping the air. Directing me upward.

  The elevator has no mirror or wallpaper. It smells, as the whole building does, of stale cigarettes and slightly rancid cooking oil. The glowing green light overhead patterns itself into digits, until it flashes mine. Ding.

  The hallway on the sixth floor is dim and badly lit. The carpets a
nd wallpaper have darkened into the same shade of dirty mauve. I pass a room service cart jutting out into the hall, abandoned. On the floor next to it is a white tablecloth with a dark red stain wadded against the wall.

  There’s not a sound.

  Step by step by step by step. The hallway goes on forever. When I’m five rooms shy of my destination it occurs to me I should have brought something: flowers, candy, an offering. A black rooster ready for sacrifice. Maybe a bulb of garlic or a crucifix. I don’t know. I wish I knew what I was getting into. I wish I could remember. Anything.

  I’m here. My fingers touch the door. I can almost feel it breathing.

  Tap. Tap.

  The door opens almost immediately, but only a crack. A woman’s face (not Vietnamese, not my mother) appears, quickly followed by her fingers, arms, torso, and then, ta-da, she’s squeezed her entire self out on the other side of the door. Her wide hips are a surprise following such a skinny face. I throw her image into the black void that is my memory but nothing illuminates. She’s no one I think I should know.

  “Walter.” Her smile is warm but rapid, like she’s being fast-forwarded. She’s older than her voice on the phone but not old enough to be Vee; maybe she’s in her sixties. Her hair is straw-colored, gathered into one long braid that drapes over her shoulder. “We talked on the phone. My name’s Jenny.”

  Jenny’s wearing clothes that she’d roast in outside, a long denim skirt and a long-sleeved plaid blouse with a matching bow, plus a dark purple velour sweat jacket embroidered with LAS VEGAS that she’s got wrapped over her shoulders like a shawl. She gives a little shiver for my benefit and pulls the sweat jacket tighter, fussing with it at her breastbone. Jenny’s got nervous fingers.

  “They keep the hotel so cold, we’re not used to it,” she says. “I had to go buy this downstairs.” She blinks rapidly, then gives another quick smile. It might be a tic. “Vee’s very—well, she’s very excited to see you.”

  Jenny adjusts her glasses, then leans in closer, whispering: “Please be careful. She’s not—”

  “Jenny!” a voice growls from inside. “Bring him in here!”

  The voice doesn’t have much force behind it, but it carries.

  Jenny opens the door and steps aside.

  If there was going to be any flash of recognition, any long-locked memories jarred open, it would be now. I’m ready for my mind to crack apart. But all I see is an old person I don’t recognize in a wheelchair by the window. It’s hard to even tell the gender of who’s staring at me behind those thick glasses. White hair cropped short and a body hunched into a shapeless cotton shirt, shrouded by the same purple sweat jacket Jenny’s wearing.

  She doesn’t look anything like me, I think, before I remember that she wouldn’t. Stupid.

  There’s no one else with her.

  I stop in the middle of the room because it’s the closest I want to get to the legendary Vee right now. She’s ancient, as wrinkled as one of those dried apple dolls. People that old don’t last long out here, I think. Out here they’re laid out to bake and eventually fossilize and are mixed into the concrete to repair roads. Vee’s been eroded by age, but you can tell by the way she grips her chair, chin thrust out, that what’s left is pure steel.

  Jenny warned me to be careful. For Vee, or of her?

  She says nothing. Neither of us moves. I fight the urge to look around the room, to check and see if there’s someone else here, hiding in the bathroom, maybe. Waiting.

  Jenny can’t tolerate the silence. “We arrived just a day ago,” she chirps from behind me. “We’re here with a church group. I know it must seem strange for a church group to be meeting down here, but it wasn’t any more strange than for us to be joining them.” Her smile comes and goes like a flickering light.

  “Jenny!” Vee looks like she’s waving a bony good-bye, but her trembling hand is really beckoning. She looks, for a moment, frightened. “Turn me around!” she demands, without taking her eyes off me. “Turn me around, Jenny!”

  Jenny’s there in an instant. She wheels Vee toward the window, away from me. Vee’s hand claws upward and Jenny bends down to meet it. A loud, ragged gasp. “He’s got a lot of her,” Vee whispers hoarsely, as if I’m in the next room and not four feet away. “The eyes. The face. Her.”

  I wonder if this is the time Her is going to be showing herself, but Vee is already circling her arm about, demanding to be turned around again. Her face is wet, glistening eyes magnified by her glasses, but she stares at me defiantly, daring me to notice. Her mouth turns down like a bulldog’s as she looks me over from head to toe. My shoes have never felt so shabby. She moistens her thin, quavering lips and smacks them shut. “There’s a lot of him, too,” she sniffs.

  Jenny’s perched by Vee’s right side, her hand gently resting on Vee’s shoulder. “That’s fine. That’s just fine,” she says, about nothing in particular.

  “I said I would never set foot in Las Vegas,” Vee says, addressing me for the first time. “I meant it.”

  Jenny squeezes Vee’s shoulder. “Well, it’s lucky you’re in a wheelchair, then, isn’t it,” she says brightly. Vee flicks Jenny’s hand away, and it flies up, hovers uncertainly above Vee, and lands on the side of Jenny’s still-beaming face.

  “You ever wonder about me?” Vee says.

  I shake my head.

  “Why not?”

  “I thought you were dead,” I say.

  Jenny’s mouth forms an alarmed O but Vee cackle-coughs. “Not yet, not yet,” she rasps. Her eyes narrow. “It’ll happen soon enough.”

  Jenny flutters around Vee, all denials, but Vee cuts her off. “Jenny,” she croaks, swinging her head to the side, “go down to the gift store.”

  “But I was just there, Vee—”

  “Go again.”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  Vee rumbles quietly, “Buy another thimble, Jen.”

  Jenny’s hand touches down once more on Vee’s shoulder, and Vee meets it, briefly, with her own. “All right, then,” Jenny says.

  The door snicks closed. I’m alone in the room with Vee. This is the time, I think. The curtains part, my mother steps out. Camera close-ups. Studio audience applause.

  “You look exactly the same,” Vee declares.

  “That’s not likely,” I say softly.

  “Manners,” she says. Then: “You remember me at all?”

  I shake my head.

  Vee snorts weakly. “You didn’t just lie in a coma those first five years, you know,” she tells me. “You were old enough to remember something. Come here.” I step next to her chair and she jabs a finger, surprisingly hard, into a faint crescent-shaped scar, pale on the fleshy part of my thumb. “Canning jar—in the basement,” she says. She presses it again, as if it is the button that will release this and other memories.

  It doesn’t. There is no time with her that registers with me, even after she runs down her list of heroics—the ice bath to cool the fever that stayed for days, the slow rocking and the quick back pats to lull me to sleep—none of these catch on any part of my consciousness. She evokes no feeling in me. She smells of age, and sourness.

  Vee finishes her trip down memory lane. I just stand there. I’ve got nothing to add. She glares at me, clearly disappointed. The silence congeals around us.

  And then, suddenly, she breaks it.

  “What about your mother?”

  Here we come to it. That one question: a surge strong enough to pull me up and over the cliff.

  “What about her?” I say slowly.

  “You remember anything?”

  I shake my head.

  “Why not?”

  I look at the floor. “I don’t even know what she looks like.”

  “What? Don’t you have any pictures of her?”

  I shake my head again, and this sets off a palsy in Vee. Her lips are pressed together tight but her body trembles. She balls her hands into fists. She looks like she’s about to explode.

  �
��So that’s how he wants it,” she says tightly. “It’s square one with you. Maybe that’s better.”

  “It’s not,” I say thickly.

  She shrugs. “Too late now.”

  And that’s when I know it; there’s no one else here, no one about to pull back the curtains and reveal herself, at last. This has been a complete waste of time. I want to get out. I want to find Chrysto and hide in the Love Den. I want to go home.

  “Is there something you want to know?” Vee asks.

  Her question feels like a slap. She’s deliberately withholding information. She wants me to beg for it. I hate her.

  I shake my head.

  “Well, then, I’m here to square up some things.” She adjusts her glasses, all business. “You’re going to be eighteen in a few days, that right?”

  I nod, surprised that she remembers, that anyone remembers.

  Slowly, Vee pulls out a manila folder hidden by her side. She lays it on her lap, unopened. It’s got my name on it, written dark in Magic Marker. “First off. Jenny’s getting the house. She’s been there ten years, it’s as much hers as anyone’s. And it’s not like you’ve got any attachment to it.”

  I don’t know what she’s talking about. Why is she bringing up houses?

  “There are a few things in it, though, you might want to take a look at. Things Jenny’s got no use for, but you might. Might not. After that, the rest is yours, when I’m gone. Not much, but it’s something. You have a banking account?”

  There’s a gap here, something missing. I feel the sharp edges of it without allowing myself to see it entire.

  “It’s for you, you understand? Not your father. He wants to cut himself off, that’s his business. But my money is my business and I’m leaving it to you.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  Vee frowns and blinks three times. “You’re family, Walt,” she says flatly. “That’s what family does.”

  “But what about—” But I can’t continue. My mouth is tight, about to begin a question I don’t know how to finish. She looks at me, taking in all my agitation without reflecting any of it back.

  “What about what?” she asks.