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“Second show? Is that the one you’re going to see?”
He nodded.
“Then yes.”
“Good.” He started to button his shirt and went to the window, pulling open the drapes.
“I’m sure you have a much better view from your room at the Venetian,” I murmured apologetically.
“Nothing wrong with a view of a swimming pool.”
“And a parking lot.” I was embarrassed, which was stupid. But I wished I had a room that faced the strip. When I strolled past the A-list casinos on my nights off, I never grew tired of the marquees or the lurid gaudiness of the hotel lights, the great concatenation of color created by millions of bulbs, blinking, neon, scrolling. “What are your plans today at the conference?” I asked him.
“I’m going to a panel at two. And I have a meeting with a staffer for a member of your congressional delegation.”
I perked up. “Senator? Representative?”
“Congressperson. Erika Schweiker.”
I was both relieved and unnerved. Erika Schweiker was a far-right madwoman. Our senators were both moderate Democrats, including my former paramour, John Aldred. So were three of four congressional representatives. But then there was Erika, our fourth, one of the two who represented Las Vegas. Aldred was defending his Senate seat against her that November, and the polls suggested it was going to be close. So, although I was calmed by the idea that there was no strange coincidence of a new lover meeting with a staffer for an old one, I was unsettled by the notion he was seeing someone who worked with Schweiker.
“Why?”
“Why am I meeting with someone in her office?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Banking regulations,” he answered.
“Can you tell me more?”
“I could, but you would fall back to sleep. I would, too.”
He was being evasive. I could press, but it was none of my business. I didn’t know him well enough.
“I’d ask you to wander around the conference with me, but it would be less interesting than anything Princess Diana does.”
“And, alas, I am tied up during that panel you’re going to attend.”
“But not in a good way.” I heard a hint of playful lecherousness in his voice. He was gazing out the window and fastening his cufflinks.
“No. Not in a good way,” I replied simply.
When he was gone, I went to my phone and scanned the news. I saw that my senator and ex-squeeze had a local campaign rally scheduled that day. I would not be going. I saw there was turmoil in Europe, another dire climate change study, and crypto was expected to bounce back within weeks.
As if on cue, a text arrived from my sister—though it had nothing to do with Futurium. It was a picture of Marisa. There she was, my niece. She looked older than thirteen, but mostly because she was wearing seriously goth black eyeliner and a shade of lipstick that could only be called Harlot Red. She had auburn hair that was considerably lighter than the creosote that was Betsy’s and my natural color, and eyes that were brown velvet saucers. She had eyelashes I would have killed for. She was a pretty kid, but she was wearing a studded dog-collar choker and a vintage Sex Pistols T-shirt.
I think you’ll like her.
That’s what Betsy had texted with the photo.
And so I called room service and ordered a salted caramel sundae sent to the suite—it came with a warm chocolate chip cookie the size of a salad plate—asking them to bring it in thirty minutes so I would have time to shower and get dressed. It wasn’t breakfast fare, but I didn’t care. I would eat every bite of the dessert, scraping my spoon along the plate for the remnants of the sauce or using that cookie like a sponge, staring out my window at the pool and the corner with my cabana. Then—this morning, anyway—I would adjourn to my bathroom and hover on my knees for a long, anticipatory moment before the suite’s black toilet, two of my fingers poised like a small baton before my mouth. When I was finished, I would curl up between the toilet and the bath, feeling both better and worse, focusing on the chessboard-like marble floor, and tell myself that I was mindful. I wasn’t, not at all. But it was a running joke inside my head, and it always took me a few minutes after a purge to lower the temperature on my self-hatred and climb to my feet, wash my face and hands—God, those two fingers—and Febreze the room so that by the time I left for my cabana at the pool or wherever I was going that day, I could pretend it had all been just another bad dream.
* * *
I arrived in the waiting room outside the suite where Richie and Artie Morley kept their offices at two. It was in the wing with the count room, so there always were guards, but today I also saw a woman I knew from security standing watch outside Artie’s office. She was wearing an earpiece, and her handgun was in a shoulder holster beneath her Buckingham Palace blazer. The doors to both brothers’ offices were shut, and I supposed Richie’s office was empty. At precisely two fifteen, Mary Gifford, the woman who was the gatekeeper for both Morley brothers and had been at the BP since before either of them or I had graced the casino, escorted me into Artie’s office. While I’d waited in reception, she’d told me that Eddie Cantone was behind the door, too. That alarmed me further. Eddie was a throwback to another era. He was easily seventy but had no plans to retire that I was aware of. He knew every act on the strip, and when he spoke, he sometimes ran his fingers through his beautiful hair plugs, now as white as his perfect teeth. He was sitting on the couch against the wall opposite Artie’s desk, his rimless eyeglasses in his hands. Both men stood when I entered the office, and Artie motioned for me to sit beside Eddie, and then he pulled up a chair before the couch so we were all seated together. The walls were paneled with fake mahogany, and drapes were drawn across the two wide windows, helping to keep at bay the scorching afternoon—and spare us all a view of the gangly scrub oaks that were the BP’s idea of parking-lot landscaping. But the rug was plush, a Persian the colors of ripe blueberries and merlot, and his office had a wrought-iron ceiling fixture: a branding iron that, prior to being repurposed, could have been used to emboss the logo “BP” on whatever the Morleys wanted.
Artie leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in what could have been mistaken for prayer. I considered remarking on how ominous this all felt to me, but Artie had just lost his brother and whatever fretfulness and disquiet marked his soul likely dwarfed mine. So, I showed uncharacteristic restraint. Instead I asked how he was doing, given Richie’s death. And instantly everything changed.
