There’s that damn topic again. Money. I guess it’s natural. We’re in Vegas, on a casino floor. For the first time, it occurs to me that it’s Monday. And Mom and Dad have been staying here the entire time. I’m assuming Anterdec is comping their rooms, so they don’t have to pay for that. What about food, transportation, and all the rest?
Talking about that seems too prickly, especially given Dad’s rare frown. I tuck my questions aside for later and pick something safer.
“Declan designed this resort. It was one of his first jobs at Anterdec.”
“And he did a fine job. It’s just not my style. How about we get out of here and go outside. There’s an ice cream shop across the street on the Strip.”
“You’re remarkably fluent in my language, Dad.”
“We’re in the land of milkfat and honey, Shannon.” He gives me a side hug. “I’d better be, after all these years.” We walk through the casino, which starts to feel like it never ends, a repeating pattern of fake Persian carpeting and marble-like wallpaper on the high walls giving the appearance of eternity.
Dad takes a deep breath. “Do they pipe in some kind of money scent?”
I shake my head.
“Focus-group-determined aromatherapy designed to convince people it’s safe to keep gambling away.”
Horror fills Dad’s features just as we reach the main lobby. A twenty-foot ceiling with a skylight the size of an ice-hockey rink is covered with stained glass.
“What? Quit joking.”
“I’m serious.”
“This place is so fake.”
Relief pours through me, and I bump his shoulder, a nudge meant to convey approval. “I know. I can’t stand it.”
He gives me the side-eye. “Good girl.”
We walk down the curved sidewalk that wraps around the enormous fountain outside and reach the main sidewalk. Other than my quick trip to the drug store and my foray next door, I haven’t actually walked outside, in daylight, along the Strip. This is the famous Las Vegas, the center of decadence and luxury.
And the first person I encounter on the sidewalk is wearing a billboard on a backpack, the picture flashing a topless woman crouched over the mouth of a man with a one-hundred dollar bill between his teeth.
“GIRLS!” he screams, forcing a small business card in my hand. “Free shuttle to see the girls! Getcha booty on!” Dad gets the same treatment, recoiling and dropping the card.
“Geez,” I mutter.
“At least in Boston the street hawkers are more polite,” Dad mutters.
“I know!”
“They’re just doing their job,” Dad adds, his voice changing. “I remember those days. You’d get a chance at a few bucks to stand on a corner handing out flyers and that helped you make rent.”
A woman about Mom’s age, wearing a neon pink shirt that says “ALL GIRLS ALL NIGHT” hands me a flyer.
I take it.
Over the course of a single city block, I stop counting the hawkers when I reach twenty. Beggars dot the walk as well, in wheelchairs, sitting on blankets next to dogs wearing bandannas around their necks, and all of them call out to us.
With each encounter, my unease increases. Daddy’s expression turns into a scowl.
We reach...an escalator?
Outdoors?
“What’s this?”
“Isn’t it the damnedest thing? Escalators outside. Must not rain much out here.”
“It’s desert, Dad.”
“It sure isn’t New England.”
The sky is so clear and blue, with puffs of clouds that run lower than you’d think, as if they just want to try a chance at a slot machine, or to put twenty bucks on red, and if they dip their cotton goodness down low enough, they’ll get a shot. Behind the escalator, the Strip rolls on like someone created a Richard Scarry Busy Town, only a very naughty version of it.
The Caesar’s Palace sign caps a building so ostentatiously imitating a Greek building, and Linq, across the street, has some sort of wrap spray painting on the entire side of the building, guest room windows and all, advertising a singer who I thought died before I was born.
Maybe cloning has actually happened and the entertainment industry is keeping it a secret.
In order to continue straight down the road, we have to enter a building—which we immediately realize is a mall, replete with a Chanel clothing store, two jewelers, a gelateria and a coffee bar.
That serves Kahlua-spiked lattes.
Where was this place when I was in college?
It’s dizzying, though, figuring out how to find our way back to the simple sidewalk outside.
“They make you go through the malls. You have no choice.” Dad’s observation is so tinged with bitterness I look up in surprise, thinking the voice is some other man.
It’s not.
“More consumer value extraction,” I surmise.
“More fakery. Is this supposed to be luxury? I don’t understand.”
We find ourselves at an impasse, realizing we have to go back and to the right to find a walkway that will then lead to an escalator going down.
“Should we just get gelato here?”
Dad’s eyes fill with panic. “Here? In this mall? No. I found a better place.” He slings an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go over the land bridge and fight our way through the people selling sex on a card.”
“On a card?” I laugh.
“On a credit card,” he says with a sigh.
We walk through a revolving door, onto the land bridge, and face nipples.
Big, uncovered, live nipples.