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“I hope so. But I can’t help but fret.”
“This is a lot. I understand.”
“Thank you.”
“And, of course, there’s your sister. I get that, too. How are you two getting along?”
“Fine, I suppose. We haven’t seen much of each other,” I answered. “But I did a little homework into her new career. Into Futurium. Cryptocurrency isn’t much of a thing yet in the casino business.”
“Did you think it would be? The gaming laws are pretty strict. I know you have to gamble with American currency.”
“There are a couple of really low-end casinos that accept Bitcoin for hospitality charges. Hotel rooms, entertainment, food.”
“Man, you cash in some Bitcoin for room service at some dive and you will be living large for a long time. A forty-dollar room at a place like—”
“I know. It’s madness.”
“But it’s coming, Crissy. Even at the Bellagio or the Venetian. The laws will change. Look at Erika ‘Guns and Crypto’ Schweiker,” he said, and instantly my stomach lurched. I hadn’t told him that I called the woman and last night she had phoned me back. The coincidence made me feel worse than an hour of airplane turbulence. “Hell, if she ever had her way, the Federal Reserve would be replaced by some sort of crypto clearinghouse. My guess is that it will begin in Vegas with the slots. You’ll have your crypto wallet linked to a gaming account, and the new slot machines will accept your coin.”
“So, you can dump ten grand into a slot machine?”
“Why not? Soon enough, even your little piece of heaven will be allowing the big spenders to use crypto in the high roller rooms.”
“Our high roller rooms are not exactly stratospheric.”
“You know what I mean. Crypto just makes too much sense. The people who invest in cryptocurrencies are a perfect fit for the caves with the chip stacks in the thousands.”
“But why would you even have a chip stack if you’re using crypto?”
“Metaphor. I see people showing their bets on a screen.”
“Are the cards real?”
“No idea. Maybe, maybe not.”
“God, I just figured Futurium was here because the energy is cheap.”
“Soon even that won’t matter. The new coins have backends that are less energy intensive. But Crissy?”
I waited.
“Why do you care about any of this? Are you obsessing about cryptocurrency because your sister’s in town and has a job in the industry? Look, that’s her life, not yours. And when crypto does become common in Vegas? All it will mean is that there will be people in your audience who bought their ticket with a digital wallet.”
He raised a valid point. Especially after my talk with Erika, why couldn’t I leave a labyrinth that was only going to leave me flummoxed and befogged? I hadn’t heard from Betsy since I’d dropped off Marisa and her at their apartment a couple of days ago. And so I thanked him for that reminder and decided to do something wild and crazy when we got off the phone. I would pop a Valium, order a gin and tonic, listen to the Bee Gees, and doze.
* * *
It hit 120 degrees on the strip that day. Off the strip, in the residential neighborhoods and the gated communities in the suburbs, people couldn’t walk their dogs on the sidewalks or the pavements without dog booties because it would scorch the animals’ paw pads, and if you left your car parked in a supermarket lot and forgot to roll down the windows, you’d best not have bought ice cream: it would melt in the moments before the vehicle’s AC kicked in. Good God, you risked heatstroke yourself waiting for the AC to dial down the sauna.
There was no breeze, and the sun’s progression skyward gave all of us who lived there dread like a low-level fever. The tourists? They would say, in their desperate delusions of carpe diem, that it was a dry heat and so it was tolerable.
It wasn’t. It never was and it never is.
Even my cabana was toasty, and usually it was an oasis in the wasteland. The guests at the pool spent their time in the water, drinking and flirting and hooking up, and hoping the insane heat would bake their hangovers away.
* * *
The second-to-last song I sing is “Kiss Me Goodbye.” It wasn’t a massive hit for Petula Clark, but it was still a Billboard Top Twenty. It’s a poignant song about unrequited love, and the lyrics were perfect for Diana:
