The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill

by James Charlesworth

  They’d gone back to the Pal after a two-week hiatus only to discover that it had been too long. Two of the girls who’d been dancing downstairs had seen their act enough, had stepped right in and not missed a beat, a blonde and a redhead replacing two brunettes. They’d been relegated to the first floor, pleasing a few pathetic old reliables who seemed to think their loyalty might earn them something more than a lap dance. If they could do this for a few more months, maybe they could revive their act somewhere on Fremont St., maybe even somewhere on the Strip. But Michaela’s heart was no longer in it. The regulars stopped coming two nights a week, then stopped coming entirely. The new customers were too jammed up in the line that stretched two blocks down the Strip. And then there had been the accidents. The backstage antics that Maddie and Michaela had gotten away with before—for what was anyone going to say to the top revenue generators in the entire city? Michaela would move in slow motion, dazed. Maddie once missed an entire scheduled dance and a substitute had to be urged on stage without preparation while one of the bouncers fought to resuscitate her. In the end, they’d quit before they could get fired, had gone home to the warehouse apartment on the outskirts and had a knockdown drag-out fight that had caused ambulances to arrive and three of the stewardesses with whom they’d been sharing the place to move out the very next day, hospital rooms on different floors, detoxing, a month apart, an opportunity, perhaps, for each to find her own solid ground and a way to move on. Yet it hadn’t happened. They’d moved back in together, had developed a perilous sort of dependency, had worked out a certain “deal” with the sleazy landlord to temporarily lower the rent while they looked for new roommates, for new jobs, new alternatives. There had been long nights and discussions, Michaela contemplating a new direction, ordering books to help her study for the LSAT, books that she’d carry around for a week before letting them settle into neglected nests of dust on the floor. Trying to come up with something. She was almost thirty, after all. She was over thirty, for God’s sake. Well past time to figure out exactly what she was going to do with her life. You too, Maddie. You could go back to school, too. But Maddie could not allow these conversations to take place, would grow indignant any time Michaela came to her with some new terrible concession for them to make a few measly bucks. A waitressing job? Was she fucking kidding? But Michaela had taken it anyway, just to spite her, had dressed up in the pastel outfit the Tropicana had provided and ridden the monorail into town with Maddie, who’d come along for reasons she couldn’t explain, the two of them going their separate ways from the train stop in silence, a silence that still rang in Maddie’s brain as she’d sat, later that same evening, in one of the raucous sports bars in one of the lesser-known and lesser-regarded grand resorts, the bar and main dining area packed due to some obnoxious sports game taking place on the forty-inch televisions—March Madness, the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels, whatever—long-legged swerving waitresses bearing overloaded trays, Maddie sipping a margarita at a tall stool in the corner, waiting for halftime or for the game to end, for one of the hundreds of men in attendance to notice her sitting by herself.

  It took less than an hour for one of them to approach, to lean against the elbow-high table and engage her in the sort of small talk she knew was typical, a coy smile with one side of her mouth sufficient proof to make him lower his voice and get down to business, speaking into the table, asking how much for a half and half? How much for an around the world?

  For years, she had been contemplating this moment, its simplicity inviting her every time she’d happened to see one of the countless girls who made it their job to sit alone in bars, skinny white girls going it on their own—for who needed a pimp when you could do it this way? Outlaw style, a commission to the bartender, just watch out for the floor managers. For years, she had watched the men who approached these girls with propositions, had learned the lingo of the trade. Ever since they’d lost their gig at The Pal—and, in truth, long before that—she had spent many an evening explaining her plan to Michaela, trying to convince her that there was nothing immoral about it, that even if there were, it was not the girls to blame but rather these men out shopping for whores during company conferences or, even worse, on family vacations. Married men coming to Vegas for bachelor parties or weekends with the boys and deciding the gambling floors and showrooms weren’t enough, that they needed a real taste of Vegas.

  It was from watching it all take place a hundred times—not exactly taking notes but certainly keeping her eyes open—that Maddie had known what was meant and what to do when the man had lowered his voice and spoken the magic words, and though she had responded like a veteran—her drink abandoned half-finished, the two of them in an elevator and out on the hallway of the twenty-third floor, negotiating a price on the way, the electronic room key gaining them admittance to the mauve and yellow room where Maddie had gone over to the refrigerator in the corner in search of the “complimentary” bottle of wine—though she had acted immediately like a pro, she had trembled uncontrollably later, the following afternoon into evening, in the warehouse apartment, while relaying the story to Michaela, whom Maddie could tell had been able to detect it in her demeanor, had known something was wrong during the monorail and taxi ride back home, where Maddie had shown her the money, let her hold it in her hands, a bundle of cash large enough to make anything seem tempting. And how easy it had been! She had not been out there soliciting, Maddie told Michaela—and, in a way, this was true, for when Maddie thought of soliciting she thought of the less-popular girls from their days at the Pal, who had to wander around snapping the straps on their bikinis. She had not been soliciting. A man had simply come up to her and asked for it, and he had gotten it. Damn right, he had gotten it. “I don’t feel a single ounce of shame or guilt,” Maddie said. “And neither should you. He was the scumbag who was slinking around looking for a whore. He was the one who came up to me and started talking about blowjobs and fucking my ass. I just took him up on a business proposition.”

  Michaela had smiled—that tense, cautionary smile of hers that was like a frown—had fought against her friend until Maddie had poked and cajoled and finally reached that place deep inside her where Michaela could not resist, had never been able to resist, the afternoon wasted thinking of ways they would blow their new fortune, for if one of them could make a stack of money like that for only a half hour’s work—Maddie had theorized—then imagine how much both of them could make. In just a month or two they could pay off all the money they owed their sleazy landlord in back rent, they could get on their feet and figure out what their next step was, they could do all the things they’d been planning on one day doing, could maybe get the hell out of Vegas and move somewhere a bit … well, a bit more suitable for two women hovering around the age of thirty.

  It was with these images of the future that Maddie had soothed Michaela’s wavering confidence as they’d come into town that evening, dressed to kill but not too obvious, a Saturday night not unlike the one on which they’d first met some ten years ago, convening by the slot machines a final time, Michaela’s mascara running while Maddie pulled her into the bathroom and told her to get it together, bought her a shot while Michaela sat on the toilet behind a locked stall door, telling her she wasn’t sure she could go through with it. It was with these promises of a life Michaela had always, Maddie knew, secretly craved—a quiet life as just another suburban woman sitting at home watching television—that Maddie had gotten her, after three shots, to stop crying, to agree again to give it a try. It was with these half-formed visions of a vague future together still on her lips that Maddie had left Michaela at the bar, sitting alone on a high stool in the corner, watching long enough to see a certain gentleman in a pinstriped suit intermittently glancing Michaela’s way. It was armed with the victory of having convinced at last her closest friend (her only friend) of the benefits of her dangerous plan that Maddie had gone across the street, had settled down to wait for her own trick—and how she suddenly appreciated the
meaning behind that word! The weird obvious charade of the whole ceremony felt a little like fishing, which she’d done a few times with her twin brother and their older half brother Jamie in the wilderness north of Fairbanks a hundred years ago. Nothing happened until you started to get bored, until you started to wonder if you should pick up and move a few hundred yards downstream (if you should order another margarita or try another bar) … and then you had to be ready.

  This one was a doctor. He’d been quick to point out this fact to her when he’d brought over the drinks and settled down, his shoulder propped against the wall. Like the man from the previous night, he was wearing a wedding ring, had not bothered to take it off or even hide it from her, a trivial detail not to be mentioned—not by a man like him and certainly not to some whore like her. With her back to him, facing out the window of his room and over the southern extension of the dark Strip while he lay on the bed and watched her, she thought of Michaela, looked across the boulevard of sky trying to pick out which darkened window on the high towers of the adjacent resort was hers, wondered how she was making out with the man in the pinstripes, hoping she had not flubbed this most important moment, this most crucial step. As for the doctor, she hadn’t asked him if he wanted a drink, for what if he’d said no? What if he’d been the type who just wanted to get it done as quickly as possible? He was distracted enough just watching her, having undressed as soon as they’d arrived in the room, having gone over to the bed in his underwear and asked her to strip for him, slowly. She’d originally guessed him to be thirty-five; now she figured he might be as old as fifty. A fifty-year-old man paying for sex on his vacation, pulling himself out of his briefs while she had postponed the dance—against his pleas, down to her bra and panties now—and stepped over to the refrigerator.

  “Don’t you get it?” she had said to Michaela that afternoon, and wanted to whisper now, her face inches from the one-way glass window, wishing she could walk her through this trickiest part, which consisted of retrieving from your purse a tiny bottle of Visine and squirting a few drops in his drink, wishing she could remind her friend—at this scariest and best part of the transaction—that it was fail-proof. “That’s the brilliance of it,” she wanted to remind her. “They all think it’s legal. None of them know that prostitution is legal and monitored in every county in Nevada except for Clark. Except for Vegas. Who in the world would ever know that? Who in the world would ever believe it? Unless you live here?”

  The Visine acted faster with the doctor than it had the previous night’s victim. The Tetrahydrozoline lowered his body temperature and constricted his airways; within thirty seconds of swallowing the drink in one gulp—tossing the plastic glass and pulling her by the hips into bed—he was shoving her aside, flailing his way toward the bathroom, throwing open the door and letting loose with a sound Maddie had to turn away from. Though he was a doctor, the suddenness of it all had confused him, had made him lightheaded and disoriented, and so, like the man from last night, he’d tried at first to encourage her to stay, had tried to protect his investment. “Gimme just a moment. Must’ve been something I ate …”

  It was while he was uttering these phrases, punctuated by groans and more vomiting, that Maddie had removed the three twenties from his wallet and ransacked his belongings, scattered among a couple duffle bags by the window, looking for socks. Jackpot. A thick bundle of fifties and hundreds. Threw it in her purse and scanned the room. Forget anything? At the door, she paused. She couldn’t help it, couldn’t help but delay for an instant to see the vomit splattered on the shower curtain and on the white porcelain, on the tile floor and even on his legs. For somehow it was this moment she most treasured. Even more than the money, it was this moment when the doctor had begun to understand—when his pleas had changed from requests for her to stay to more urgent matters (Take what you want! Just tell me what you’ve given me! I’m a doctor and I need to know!)—it was this moment that was the one thing she’d wanted to remember to tell Michaela, the one detail she knew could make her friend smile, a scene whose glory had slowly dissipated while she’d waited at their agreed meeting place—a half mile north and a couple blocks off the Strip, the sort of third-rate place no outsiders knew about—for a half hour, an hour, had paced up and down the worn-carpeted avenues of the casino floor, cursing the hands of the clock as they revolved. Later, she couldn’t say when exactly it had gone from Michaela was late to Michaela was missing to Michaela was gone, didn’t know at what point she’d accepted that their meeting at the bar would not take place; she could never tell Prince Dexter or anyone at what point she’d finally given in and hailed a taxi back to the apartment with the money stolen from the doctor, entertaining a brief hope that Michaela would be there, in her pajamas, red-eyed, saying, “Sorry Maddie, I just couldn’t go through with it.”

  Twelve years later, sitting at Denny’s with the man who’d come to tell her Michaela had at last been found, Maddie had remembered the words she’d used to convince her friend, the story she’d told of the first trick she’d rolled, the amusing tale of his morning as she imagined it: his waking up in his darkened motel room, finally capable of looking at a glass of water without going queasy, his pompous journey down to the front desk to complain, still thinking himself a reputable man done a disservice in a routine business transaction. Excuse me, sirs, but I attempted to hire a lady of the night from your bar there and was disappointed to discover that she had fucking poisoned me! And what did the staff do? They politely explained for the thousandth time to the thousandth presumptuous tourist that, contrary to popular belief, prostitution is not in fact legal in Las Vegas, and that he just might want to keep his mouth shut about this rather than revealing it to the authorities, unless of course he was interested in extending his stay by a mandatory thirty days. Anything else they could help him with? Well, they certainly hoped he’d enjoyed his visit! Have a safe trip home, sir! And do come again!

  Yup, Maddie Hill had thought, sitting in the cramped booth at Denny’s, telling all of this to a man in a pink suit whom she’d known all of two hours: that was Vegas. That was the reality of this place she’d chosen to live the last twenty-four years of her life, the last twelve alone, because of course Michaela had not been at the apartment when she’d arrived—nor throughout the entire decade of the nineties, during which Maddie had been plagued by memories of that night, returning home to find herself alone for the first time in their vast apartment, sitting down on the couch to find herself unable to get comfortable, going into the kitchen to find nothing worth eating, stepping out onto the fire escape to watch the stars circling over the desert only to find them shielded by cityglow. A decade during which she would contemplate and succeed, off and on, in going clean and sober, would think often about leaving Vegas and all of its vices and disregard behind; a decade she had ultimately spent—despite her best efforts—becoming that strangest sort of hermit, mistress of the casinos, old maid of the Strip, barely able, most nights, to make it back home before dawn. You would see them every night when the lights went on, these tired women coming out from wherever they spent their days. You’d see them at bars, drinking tequila alone, you’d see them at the video poker machines or in the back corners of the rooms at NA meetings, you’d see them in booths in run-down dingy restaurants, drinking coffee, sharing secrets with men who might be wearing pink suits, who might be holding battered tape recorders, who might be passing themselves off as something they clearly weren’t.

  THE BUICK NEEDED GAS.

  Somewhere just short of the Colorado border—the flat stretch of Interstate 70 rising into the high plains west of the Continental Divide—he pulled off the highway at the beckoning of a bright sign on a hundred-foot tower, found himself on a narrow dusty road, a single halogen lamp illuminating a roadside gas station with a pair of ancient pumps out front.

  She was still asleep in the passenger seat. Or feigning sleep. Impossible to tell. At any moment during this long trek across the fluorescent desert he had
expected to look over and catch her staring at him, eyes bloodshot and wide with uncertainty. It had unnerved him. He was uncomfortable with the idea of being watched, resisted scrutiny on instinct. If she would just wake up and start talking again that would be fine—would be something like those endless flights over Alaskan wilderness he’d used to make, not the postal runs but the other independently contracted trips, running tourists out into the wilderness on moose hunting excursions or taking twenty-somethings up into the Brooks Range and dropping them off for week-long wilderness camping. Those trips had often required him simply to listen, and he had always been a good listener, ever since old Jed Winters. That was the template he had applied to this trip in his imagination. He had pictured his sister as one of those clients on their way to a life-changing weekend in the country, when just his presence in the pilot’s seat made even his most laconic contributions noteworthy. Now he felt an uncertainty that translated strangely in his mind, his face a frustrated mask in the pale gas station light where he’d removed the old-fashioned nozzle from its cradle and kept watch on her, waiting to see if she would move, if she’d been playing possum the entire time—his attention so focused that he didn’t realize the pump was not working until the voice came over the intercom.

  “Sir. You have to use a credit card. Or else come inside and prepay.”

  He opened the driver’s side rear door, set the combination on his suitcase, and removed one of the stacks of money, then stepped across the gravel lot to the front door that chimed as he entered. Two men stood at the counter, one behind a cash register, the other eating a candy bar and drinking a beer on the customer side, a bored friend of the cashier, come to spend a lonely evening.