by Lamar Giles
Still giggling, I said, “That’s not what I meant. Why’d you prank him at all?”
He chewed his lip for a second. “He talked trash about my dad and me and Cedric.”
Talked trash like how his dad might be a crime king, and how Davis and his brother were the princes? Talked trash like Molly, Gavin, me, and everyone else at VR probably does?
“I get it,” he said, maybe sensing my hot flash of guilt and wanting to give me a pass. That’s what I hoped. “Big Bert Carlino’s freaking Tony Soprano. Came in and took Vegas by force. I know I can’t shake the rumors, even if they’re crap.”
Were they, though?
“I kept cracking jokes in class and got sent to the office. The principal went on this rant about how ‘hoodlum behavior’ wouldn’t be tolerated, like I’d been extorting money from teachers. He was all ‘seems like I’m going to have to hammer this message home for each and every one of you Carlinos.’ When he berated me enough to warrant my release, I decided to spend my evening finding a back door into the system and …” He shrugged.
“They kicked you out for that?”
“Well, actually, they pressed charges.”
“What?”
Another shrug. “A healthy donation from the Nysos got them to back off formal charges, but after that, I had to go.”
My mom once had a near meltdown because a teacher overheard me singing a curse word from an old Tupac song in the hall and hit me with detention. I couldn’t imagine the blast radius if cops were involved. “How angry was your dad?”
“On a scale of one to ten. Six, maybe. He was most upset about the legal action, but that’s because he’s heard the Carlino rumors, too, and doesn’t want me and Cedric living up to everyone’s exaggerations.” He momentarily delved into the Big Bert Carlino voice from the other night. “ ‘Never get arrested! Never end up in the system!’ Deep down, I think he liked the joke.”
“It was sort of boss.”
“So, Nikki, is that short for Nicole? Nickels? What?” he asked, changing the subject.
“It’s Nikalosa.”
“That’s … that’s beautiful.”
He looked at me. Like, really looked at me. “Thank you.”
“Does it mean something?”
“To my mom it does. When she was pregnant with me, her and Dad”—there he goes again—“took a trip to Cabo. They were at this restaurant by the water, looking at the stars. Dad said he wanted them—us—to live in a paradise like that one day. He promised her we would. Mom said they needed to make a pact. Dad joked about the steak knives being too dull for a blood oath, but Mom said that part was taken care of already. They just needed something to anchor us to that specific place and time. When the waitress brought the check, Mom gave her a big tip. Partially for the service. Partially for stealing her name.”
“She was Nikalosa,” Davis said. “You were the blood oath.”
“Yep.”
The air around us felt heavier. Neither of us needed to state the obvious. I was there in Vegas, not on some Cabo beach, oath fulfilled.
When the next jet took off, Davis craned his neck to such an extreme I thought he’d tip backward into the windshield. “I like flying away from here.”
That was unexpected. As was the gut twist and hot flash it triggered, like being shoved by a bully. “So you’re a Vegas hater? Can’t wait to leave?”
“Weren’t you just talking about college on the East Coast and a magical Mexican paradise?”
True. A little hypocritical. But talking about Vegas was like talking about my parents. I can say bad stuff about them.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “It’s always sunny here, so when you fly, and you get over the clouds, you see all kinds of things. Like that game when you look up and call out animal shapes in the sky, only, in like, IMAX.” His voice went soft. “I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
It was the kind of admission that you didn’t make easily. It left you open, exposed.
“It’s not stupid,” I said, meaning it. “I’ve noticed something similar.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
The other part I didn’t say. The few times I’ve been on planes, above those clouds, I didn’t see animals. I saw gods.
Giant, angry gods. The ones that inspired the name and themes and future of my casino jail. Their protruding chins, their cocked arms ready to throw punches and lightning and judgment with no regard for the humans they’d damage as their battle wreckage fell to earth, invisible in that same Vegas sun that allowed you to see their majestic indifference so clearly.
This conversation, this thing we shared, made me nervous. I’d never talked like this with anyone before.
“One more question,” he said, “is it stupid that I want to kiss you right now?”
I didn’t know what to say. Yes! was the only word that came to mind, but it wasn’t the right answer to that exact question. Was it? No one ever asked about kissing me before.
There was something kind of hot about it.
Davis waited for my answer, the one I couldn’t quite formulate with blood rushing through my body. It pulsed in my ears instead of my chest. Things throbbed. Breathing had become this optional act.
“Not stupid at all,” I finally managed.
A smile flickered across his face, as if he was genuinely surprised by my answer. Then he leaned in and his lips found mine, his hand snaking around the back of my neck, pulling me closer.
My eyes squeezed shut on their own. I couldn’t hear or smell. Touch and taste were all I had left, all I needed. It was a sensory-deprivation kiss.
The rush and need drove me into Davis, and the sudden body collision didn’t play nice with the waxed hood. We started sliding, and it was either go off the front of the car or lock together to anchor us. We went for locked together.
His hands traced my spine and the back of my ribs through my jacket. My fingers threaded into his hair. It was everything.
Then the hood dented.
There was a groan of stressed metal, and a TH-WOOMPF sound as we sank into a body-shaped depression. With equal parts reluctance and panic, I flung myself off Davis, landing beside the car, gravel crunching under my feet. He remained in the pit we created, eyes wide and slight panic on his face.
“That was so worth whatever Cedric’s going to do to me.”
Then he laughed. Which made it okay for me to laugh, too. By mutual decision, we decided that was enough for the night. Our kiss had the equivalent force of a fender bender. Pushing it further might down one of these planes.
Also, it was close to my curfew.
We climbed into the car, where I’d left my phone. Mom was calling, a follow-up to eight missed calls. I let it go to voice mail.
Whatever she wanted could wait.
We hit traffic close to Andromeda’s. I was no longer near curfew, I’d crossed the threshold and was sinking in the sucking sands of the Tardiness Desert, indicated by Mom blowing up my phone like a stalker.
“I’m going to need you to drop me off on the back side of the hotel.” I could key into the alley door, cut through the poker room, then skirt around to the business offices. Call Mom from my desk phone, say I was working late and my cell died. Perfect.
“No problem,” Davis said, “if we can ever get through this traffic jam. What’s going on up there?”
Cars were moving, but with thrusters set to snail. I saw the police up ahead redirecting traffic off Stewart onto East Ogden. And that was backed up.
Davis said, “You up for a walk? Just a couple of blocks.”
“Maybe.”
“You gotta hold my hand, though. It’s dark and scary.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”
He parked in the Denny’s lot off of South Fourth Street, and we strolled hand in hand. Maneuvering past the congested traffic and its unseen source was simple enough on foot. There were cops ahead, keeping congregating bystanders away from the all
ey. My alley. That led to my poker room.
A couple of orange traffic cones were spaced in the opening of the walkway. Poles extended from the top hole in each cone, and stretched between them was the yellow crime scene tape anyone who’s ever watched TV has seen a million times. It’s not so entertaining in real life.
I broke free of Davis’s grasp and pushed through the onlookers, unconcerned with their annoyed grunts and admonishments. A uniformed Metro officer saw me coming, stepped up to block my path. I outmaneuvered quicker girls every day in soccer practice. Past him and under the tape before he could do a double take, I was outrunning his shouting to the other officers ahead of me. No uniforms, but they were cops. The bold DayGlo POLICE across the back of their windbreakers was the first clue, the holstered guns on their hips was the second. The big brick of a camera one of them aimed was as familiar as the crime scene tape.
“Stop!” the officer I juked yelled.
I did, too. Not because he told me. Because the wind shifted, and I got slapped by the smell.
I’ve thought about it so much since. Too much. It’s easier to think of that smell than what I saw when that camera flash threw a spotlight on him sprawled on the ground, with the back of his head a flattened, bloody mess against the concrete.
“Dad?”
I was running. Screaming. Hands pulled me back, tried to turn me away. Three or four people and they could barely hold me.
“Dad! Dad, get up! Get off the ground! Please!”
Eventually—I couldn’t tell you how long it took, a minute or a month—my strength waned. The people trying to spare me from what could never be unseen—Mr. Héctor among them somehow—took me away. Once I was out of the alley, my legs were as supportive as cooked noodles, and I was dragged along with my toes scraping the ground. Davis pushed away from the bystanders, his concern bringing him close, and Mr. Héctor shouted, “You should go!” Stopping him cold. I couldn’t figure which one of them was right.
Time skipped. Those strobing cruiser lights flashed over me, I blinked, I was inside the casino. People still gambled on the gaming floor. Blink. I was in the business offices, Mom’s office. She hunched over her desk, one sloppy wet hand cupped her face. My legs regained muscle and bone, and I rushed to her.
She saw me coming and ejected from her chair hard enough so it crashed into the wall behind, forcing Tomás to leap backward or endure a bruised hip.
A brief What’s he doing here? flitted through my thoughts, when Mom embraced me, whispering “Thank god” over and over. My concern about him and his infatuation faded like a dream in daylight.
I squeezed into my mother and closed my eyes against gushing tears. But when I shut them on the world around me, I saw the photographer’s flash again, illuminating the most horrible thing I’d ever seen. My father’s eyes open and on the stars. Forever.
There were questions. Statements. Everyone talking to Mom and not to me, even though I sat right beside her with our fingers laced. One of the police I’d seen outside, a detective named Burrows, sat on the other side of Mom’s desk. Old and overweight, his pale complexion made me wonder if he spent most of his time investigating caves.
His recorder was a slim digital thing with a microphone aimed at us. Mom reiterated she didn’t know where Dad had been the last two days, and she didn’t know if he had enemies.
That part was a lie. Dad made enemies of the city’s cops and lawyers the minute he and Dan Harris made noise about his conviction. It was a lie I understood. When Detective Burrows finally asked me if I knew anyone who had it out for my father, I told it, too.
Burrows pushed for more info. Some of his questions were precise, some vague, and some he asked three times using different words. He returned to me, said, “Where were you coming from tonight?”
I didn’t answer because I honestly didn’t know. It took a moment to remember there was a point when this was a good night. While I collected myself, Tomás returned to the room—I hadn’t noticed he’d left—announcing news vans were outside. I fought through my haze. “They’re not going to show him on TV like that, are they?”
It was calmer than I thought myself capable. Something about that chilled the room, made me ashamed. It’s the thing I used to think when Dad was set to die strapped to a gurney in Ely State. Would there be cameras there? Would people know? This was a fate I thought we’d avoided.
“No.” Mom had steel in her voice. “They won’t.”
She looked past Detective Burrows to Tomás, who nodded before chirping orders into a casino walkie. Back on the job, at least for tonight.
Detective Burrows said, “Was your husband using illegal substances?”
Mom threw her hands up. Furious. “No. Never! Why are you even asking me a stupid question like that?”
“We found some paraphernalia in the alley.”
“It’s an alley. I’d be surprised if you didn’t find junkie paraphernalia in every alley in Vegas. Are we done?”
“A few more questions if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind,” Mom snapped.
The detective’s mouth hung open, clearly not expecting that.
“How about you answer some questions. What do you know? How’d my husband get out there? Did any of those ghouls huddling around our home see anything? Since they’re out there and we’re in here, maybe you ought to interrogate them and let me and my daughter have some time.”
Mom was on her feet, her hands planted on her desktop so she wouldn’t tip when she leaned into the detective. Burrows closed his mouth and kept his expression perfectly neutral. “I assure you the investigators outside are—”
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
Burrows frowned, confused. “The investigators outside are—”
“There’s that word again. Outside.”
Burrows’s neutral look flickered between three or four aggressive emotions before he made a show of clearing his throat, gathering his recorder and the handheld notepad he’d scribbled next to nothing in. “Metro will do all it can to bring your husband’s killer to justice.”
He was halfway to the door when Mom said, “Leave your card.”
Burrows faced us, no longer hiding his annoyance. “Excuse me?”
“You’re going to do all you can, and I’m going to hold you to it. Leave. Your. Card.”
He plucked the card from his pocket and dropped it on the desk.
She made sure he was good and gone before she picked it up. “Come with me,” she said.
I followed because what else was I going to do?
We moved with purpose toward the guest elevator. I glanced across the gaming floor, spotting the security team keeping rabid reporters at bay on the other side of the sliding glass. Tomás was posted by the check-in desk, dealing with a different set of investigators. They weren’t police, not the kind most people were used to. The letters NGCB were stenciled across their jackets. Nevada Gaming Control Board agents.
They kept their noses in casino scandals and crimes, but for them to be here now seemed fast, even for their Big Brother routine.
Mom gave Tomás a signal, letting him know we were going up. When the elevator dinged, and the doors parted, we entered an empty cabin. We’d gone up a floor when Mom collapsed into the sidewall, sliding down in a crouch, racked with hitching sobs.
“Mom.” I went to her, hugged her, and those sobs hit me like a contagion.
Even when the elevator reached our floor, we sat there together for a long time.
I’d avoided watching the press conference when I was mad at Dad. Now it was hard to stop. On that first day, I replayed it until my phone flashed an ominous temperature warning and shut itself down. Then I lay in the dark, wishing my brain and heart would shut down, too.
It didn’t seem quite true, him being dead, because him not being around was my normal for so long. When he was in jail, it might be a week or more before he called, and a couple of months between letters. The days after his death felt like those l
ulls. Except when they didn’t.
My dad is dead.
It was an unexpected bullet from an unseen sniper, fired over and over during a week that felt both too short and infinite. In the shower where my arms felt too heavy to lift the soap, and my eyes burned from exhaustion—my dad’s dead. Forcing down a room-service lunch—my dad’s dead—because I’d been excused from school until after the funeral. When Molly, post-practice, sat at the foot of my bed gossiping, the make-up assignments she delivered—my dad’s dead—between us.
With the thought came an uncommon rage. Throw-something, punch-something, break-something anger. I didn’t do those things. Something had to give, though. I couldn’t stop the uncontrollable, unpredictable reminder of my family tragedy. It even chased me into dreams.
Jerking awake on the Wednesday after, kicking away covers that felt like clutching hands, I wanted my mom the way I did when I was little and the boogeyman lurked in my closet.
“Mom?” I nudged the door linking our rooms. Her quarters were dark, empty. The clock on her nightstand read 1:37 a.m.
Remnants of my nightmare fed my unease; my missing parent triggered full-on anxiety. Back in my room I slipped on leggings, a hoodie, and sneakers. Dialing on my way to the elevator.
The connection dropped on the ride down, not uncommon, but I couldn’t remember the usual annoyances of cell reception when I didn’t know where my mother was. The FAILED CALL message had me freaking.
Ding! The doors parted halfway when I squeezed through, startling a couple of sleepy-eyed guests who leapt out of my way before I barreled them over. Jogging the lobby, on a path for her office—because she had to be there, she just had to—I redialed and got a solid connection.
Mom picked up. “Nikki, are you okay?”
My ragged breathing steadied almost immediately. “I’m fine. Where are you?”
“In my office, couldn’t sleep.”
It’s exactly what I suspected. Too bad she was lying.
I had to pass the Constellation Grill to reach the offices, but there was no longer a need. I saw my mother in a booth. Not in her office like she said. She wasn’t alone.