What Stays in Vegas (22 page)

“Sure, let’s get nuts.  Maybe we’ve been missing out on something great.”

“But I’ll get all wet!” I said.

“And the problem is?” He raised his eyebrows and gave me a devilish grin.  “Come on.”

I stepped over puddles as I followed him to the ticket counter, cringing at the thought of how wet and dirty they were about to become.  But sneakers be damned, I would have followed him anywhere at that moment. 

***

Over the next few weeks life took a turn for the better for all three of us.  Chris and I were in that mushy romantic phase that some, myself included, might refer to as obnoxious.  I had the luxury, however, of knowing that underneath all the mush lay plenty of substance, and that in due time substance would take over.  There was no sense in rushing it. 

Kendra held true to her word and laid off the alcohol and the late nights, though my desire to spend time with Chris rather than packed into sweaty bars may have contributed to her success.  Sometimes the three of us would go out to dinner or play miniature golf while Kendra eternally worried about being the third wheel.  "If I ever become a pain in the ass, just tell me to get lost," she kept reminding Chris and I.  We always reassured her that we would.  But in private we agreed that she was still our boss, and telling our boss to get lost probably wasn't in our best interest.  Still, we usually didn't mind the company.

I was also spending two nights a week in my studio at Mocha Fresco, and on a whim one afternoon took a rather tacky Las Vegas themed wall clock that I had made over to one of the local gift shops.  I plunked it down on the counter. 

“What’s this?” the shop owner asked, as if he wasn’t already surrounded by piles of tacky Las Vegas crap.

“It’s a clock,” I said.  “I made it myself.  I was wondering if you bought and sold stuff from, um, from local artists?”

  The owner picked up my work and turned it around in his hands, inspecting it like an art critic, holding it up to the light and peering at it from all angles.  While I waited for him to finish I looked over the racks of Bud Light t-shirts and rolled my eyes.  I pulled a cat figurine, complete with fake fur and vacant marble eyes, off a shelf and held it up in front of him.  “Did you inspect these the same way?
”

He laughed.  “You’ve got me there, but the thing is, those cats get pumped in from China and cost me less than two bucks.”  I flipped the cat over to read the price tag.  $6.95.

“To be honest with you, sir, I haven’t sold
anything
before.”  I put the cat back on the shelf and looked the owner square in the eye.  “I will give you this thing for free if you want.  All I ask is that you put it on a shelf with a price tag and let me know if anybody buys it.  Please?”

“I’m sorry, miss, but I don’t really sell this type of thing here.  Why don’t you go to the Bellagio?  They sell art over there.  Me? I sell -”  he motioned to the cat figurines.

“I know,” I said.  “But look at it, the clock part came from Wal-Mart.  I made the rest of it out of bottle caps and post cards.  Do you really think this thing would sell at the Bellagio?  Come on, it’s tacky, but it’s not bad.  What have you got to lose?”  I almost heard a little Rob Dorfman in my voice - Rob Dorfman the businessman, not Rob Dorfman the douchebag.

The owner shrugged and rolled his eyes.  “Okay, fine.  Ten dollars.”

“You’re going to pay me?”

“Of course I’m going to pay you.  I give you ten, I sell it for twenty, everybody wins.”

“You think somebody would pay twenty dollars for this?” I asked.

“I sure as
hell wouldn’t,” he said.  “But tourists buy some strange stuff.  If this thing doesn’t sell though, you and I never do business again.”

"Thank you!" I said, grabbing his hand and pumping it up and down.  "I would love the opportunity to possibly never do business with you again!"

I returned to the store two days later and walked up and down the aisles trying to find where he had displayed it, but I found nothing. 

“Hey, little lady!” the owner called out to me from a back room.  “I was hoping you’d come back.”

“Where’s my clock?” I asked, walking to the front counter, half expecting to see my creation poking out of the trash can.

“It sold.”

“It sold?” I asked, disbelieving. 

“Sure did,” he said.  “This guy thought it was great.  'Like nothing he’d ever seen before' were the words he used.  Told me he’s going to hang it up in his office.  I really talked you up too, I told him that once you’re dead that thing will be worth a
lot
.”

“One can only hope!” I said. 

Why had I never tried to sell anything before?  Did it really just take a little bit of effort?  All those things they tell you as a kid about "being anything that you want to be," it couldn't possibly be true could it?  I mean, that would be cra -

“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” said the owner, interrupting my thoughts.  “My name’s Leo.”

“Tessa Golden,” I said.

“So, Tessa Golden, you got any more of this crap?”

The second I got out to the street I called Chris to tell him the news.  It had been exciting in itself when the store owner bought my lousy clock, but now a person who I did not know would have my work on display in their office.  In the context of my life, this was a truly unbelievable turn of events, and all it had taken was a little bit of initiative.  I bought myself a frozen margarita-by-the-yard to celebrate and stood watching the gondolas outside the Venetian.  If I had a hat I would have tossed it in the air, Mary Tyler Moore style.

With this newfound optimism, I approached Kendra for the second time with the idea of starting our own art business together.  But again she turned me down.  She was in a fairly stable place in her life, quietly seeing Bryce Storm who, to all of our surprise, had called her for a second date a few weeks after their one night stand. 

Things in the engineering world were running smoothly, and she had heard from Rob Dorfman that Jasper Quick was in the process of getting our zoning approved.  She would still need years of therapy to recover from spending the night with him, but at least it was not for nothing.  I was happy that she was happy, and I did not want to push her further.  But the tiny bit of success I’d had at the gift shop left me with a nagging for more, and my days spent at the office filing and copying were becoming more and more unbearable.

I was also left with the nagging thought that it was already March, and I had only a few weeks left before Marisa was to return from maternity leave, and I was to return to Massachusetts.  Chris and I discussed it on occasion, listing the pros and cons of a long distance relationship.  There were certainly more cons than pros.  If I was going to put in for a permanent transfer to the Vegas office, I would need to do it soon, and even then there was doubt as to whether they would have a position for me.  If they didn’t, and I still chose to stay, I would need to begin searching for another job.  The thought of starting over as an administrative assistant at a new company and continuing the cycle I had fallen into nearly five years ago, made me nauseous. 

“I can’t do it, Chris, I can’t,” I said over a late Mexican dinner one evening.  I stabbed at my enchiladas, watching the orange cheese squish out.  “I don’t want to move out here just to end up in another dead end job.”

“So quit,” he said.  “Do something else.”

“But that’s all I know how to do!  I could make like twenty bucks a week if I keep selling to the gift shop.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t live off twenty bucks a week.”

“I’m sure Rob could hook you up with a part-time job at The Jiggly Kitty.” 

“
That
joke never gets old.”  I rolled my eyes.  “But hey, maybe that’s what I’m meant to do.  Dancing every night, probably on drugs, guys throwing money at me.  It might not be so bad.”

“And thanks to Flamhauser-Geist,” said Chris, “traffic flow is phenomenal.  You’ll never have trouble parking.” 

“Exactly.  Parking concerns have always held me back from a career in stripping.”   I squished more cheese out of my enchilada.  All joking aside, the decision becoming clearer to me each day was that I should remain in Las Vegas.  The only question was how I could make the most of this change that I’d been waiting for possibly my entire life.

We headed out to the street after dinner, stopping to watch the  dancing waters at the Bellagio.  I respectfully waited until the last strains of Viva Las Vegas played through the speakers, and the fountain went silent, before flipping open my vibrating phone.  I had one new text message.

meet me at the kitty very important

It was from Kendra and that was all it said.  Meet her at The Jiggly Kitty.  Very important.  I showed the message to Chris who rolled his eyes.

“What the heck do you think she’s doing there?” I asked. 

“It’s probably her and Bryce’s idea of an interesting date,” said Chris.  “You want to go?”

“Not particularly,” I said.  “But she said it's important.  Let me text her back and see what she wants.”  We hung around on the sidewalk for ten more minutes waiting for a reply, but nothing ever came. 

“It’s on our way home,” said Chris.  “We can just stop in.  I won’t look, I promise.”

As we walked to Chris's car in the Bellagio garage, I thought over the reasons that Kendra could possibly want me to meet her at a seedy strip club.

“What if Tooth Model commandeered her phone and is waiting for me in the parking lot?” I asked. 

“I’ll take him down,” said Chris.  “I’ve been working out.  Tearing up my pecs, wailing on my glutes.”  He stopped in his tracks and flexed his ass muscles in my direction, causing me to spit a mouthful of beer onto the trunk of his car.   I was still laughing fifteen minutes later when we pulled into The Jiggly Kitty and had trouble finding a place to park.

“What happened to phenomenal traffic flow?” I asked, noticing that some cars had parked on the grass.

Chris gave me a rude gesture with his finger.  “Dan designed this one.”

“Nice,” I said, “throw your friend under the bus.  Oh hey look, there’s Kendra’s car.  They usually take Bryce’s Jag when they go out.  Weird.”

“What do you think we should take honey, the Beamer or the Jag?”  Chris did a killer impression of Bryce as he squeezed into a space that was much too small for his SUV.  “Well I did just take the Beamer to the bank this morning,” he switched over to his Kendra voice as he straightened out the wheels.  “Tough life.”

I sucked in my stomach and squeezed out of the car, not telling Chris that I left a little bit of his paint job on the other driver’s door.  It was a beautiful evening and I kind of wished that Chris and I were headed somewhere romantic, and not into a strip joint where several pairs of bouncy breasts, none of them mine, were about to be plunged into his face.

It would have been a perfect evening to hang out on Kendra’s patio by the pool with some drinks and some candles, maybe a little Bob Marley on the stereo.  It was such a nice place to relax that I wouldn’t even mind if Kendra and Bryce joined us. 
Maybe I’ll suggest it when we find them
, I thought, looking up at Chris’s face and trying to judge whether or not he was looking forward to going inside this place.  I know he promised not to look, but come on, men are men.  I linked my arm a bit possessively through his elbow as we walked toward the entrance, passing under the neon pink sign that I knew so well - the outline of a pink kitten on two legs twirling around a stripper pole. 

Underneath the kitten was a list of special events taking place that week:  Porn star Dusty Bottom would be appearing on Tuesday, the Breasts & Thighs Chicken Dinner Special was on Wednesday - except somebody had misspelled it “Beasts and Thighs” -  and Thursdays were amateur night. 

“You think if I flash this we’ll get in for free?”  I asked.

Chris looked at me with raised eyebrows and let out a whistle.

"Not
these
," I laughed.  "
This
."  I jingled my pink plastic Jiggly Kitty keychain/bottle opener in his face.  Rob Dorfman had given them to our entire office last Christmas.  “Nothing says V.I.P. like a free keychain.”

“Well in that case, I'm thinking no,” said Chris.  “But feel free to try.”

I took one look at the doorman and put my keychain back in my purse.  We paid the cover charge and pushed through the tinted double doors where two more dancing kittens were etched into the glass.  I scanned the club for Kendra, but it was hard to see faces through the neon pink glow and the fog machines. 

A hostess decked out in pink kitten ears led us to a table close to the stage.  After we were seated I tried calling Kendra's cell phone, but she didn’t pick up.  I was starting to get annoyed, I mean, what the heck was so important that we had to come here?   Chris and I ordered two beers from a waitress who was also wearing kitten ears.  When she turned to walk back to the bar, a matching pink tail swished enticingly from side to side. 

I turned to point this out to Chris, but he was occupied with watching the girl onstage.  He wasn’t watching her in a lusty, oh-baby, kind of way, rather he was watching her in a 'what-the-fuck is going on?' kind of way.  I followed his gaze and am pretty sure that my face morphed into a similar expression, because this girl was truly
awful
.  Her moves were stiff, her skin was loose, and she was wobbling like crazy in her six inch clear plastic heels.  I saw dimples and stretch marks in places that physicians don't even have names for.