Story Collections

May 13, 2008 ~ Las Vegas, Nevada ~ Pure Nightclub

Creating ridiculous situations is one of the few things in which I excel, but the admiring look that the familiar face gave me as I escorted my list of characters through the masses of the aromatic glitterati at Pure would have been enough for me. I had worked closely with Alex, a VIP host at the time, enough times in my corporate event planning life that he didn’t ask me any questions when I submitted my list of players for the evening – the fabrication of a slightly buzzed mind written and sent from my home a few days earlier. He must having taken pause, however, even if only briefly, to admire with his own eyes the odd collaboration of personalities coming off that written page that included a reclusive dj with an aversion to sunlight, an Asian billionaire with Triad mob ties, and an erotic dancer with her own cabaret show in Manhattan. I slipped him $100 of our pooled money as he gave me a smirk and a wink. And with that, a 350-lb bodyguard and two girls a quarter his size escorted me and the seven bar staffers from Auburn, Alabama behind me into the sea of electronic hysteria and manic festivity that is Las Vegas.

5 Days Earlier ~ Auburn, AL ~ Sky Bar Cafe

I gave Sunny a hopeful look through the smoke that lingered over her station at the bar. We had been friends for years and she was used to my humming in her ears to take time off once in awhile. She was a diligent worker, and had been a giver since the day we met. Whether it was for her mother, her animals, or her friends, she thought of others first. I, on the other hand, had found a way to hit the desert six times since the previous fall.

“You’re going”, I said with purpose. “I’ll cash in every favor in Vegas to make this happen. They still don’t know I’m a fraud.”

I saw a different look in her eyes than I’d seen the previous several times I asked her to do something absurd. Somewhere in there she knew that she deserved a break, and thankfully she took it. Before she pulled back the smile on her face my phone was dialing Beth and resting on my ear. Beth is one of the mysterious characters in my shadowy network of connections that grease my passage between desirable destinations – places that I have no business being but access by riding the coat tails of clients that have the money to make just about anything happen. Within minutes she accessed my Delta mileage account and Sunny was booked in an upgraded ticket next to me in first class. She slid me a shot of Jack Daniels across the damp bar top and I raised it…”to Vegas”.

With some help from more Jack Daniels, my mind started racing that night. I had spent more time in Las Vegas lately than I had in Auburn, but it was hard for me not to take note of the unique group of individuals signed up for this trip, especially with the addition of Sunny. It had become a veritable “who’s-who” of Auburn’s nightlife.

There was Brett, the general manager of one of the largest bars in the Southeast, a Vegas casino regular, and a heavy gambler. Casinos love Brett for this reason, so our accommodations were always taken care of. Vegas is an anomaly in this way. It’s the only place in the world where I don’t receive any preferential treatment in the hotels because of the corporate group business I represent. The reason? I’m not a huge gambler. I figure I live a charmed life as it is, why tempt fate? I can escort dozens of people in and out of hotels all over the world and be treated like a king for it, but in Vegas they’d rather I bet $100 a hand then bring a hundred people through the doors.

Tommy, Tina, and Swing were three other players that I had already spent some time with in Vegas. Tommy works as a manager at the same bar as Brett and Tina as one of its tenured bartenders next to Sunny. Swing was a local DJ.

On another trip to Las Vegas, I made the mistake of settling our main tab at Ghost Bar and giving Tommy my American Express card to take care of any “emergency” situation he might find himself in before I made my way back to the MGM. He stumbled in early that morning “wearing” an unbuttoned white shirt ripped in several places and covered in blood with no explanation. We had to find out later from the girl he was talking to on his cell in the midst of his escapade that he had walked home from the Palms, a solid two-mile journey. She said it sounded like he may have caused a ten-car pileup shortly after scaling and getting himself hung on the fence separating the access road from the interstate.  I was driven back to the hotel by a girl I met that night whose job it was to massage people as they experienced blissful rejuvenation at an oxygen bar. In an effort to keep us from calling her the wrong name, we simply referred to her as “O2”. Tommy had knocked a few pictures off the walls and replaced them with blood stains as he returned to the room. And Swing, who only four hours prior convinced a group of girls that I owned the Varsity in downtown Atlanta and that Tommy controlled the world’s largest tuna and whaling fleet off the coast of Japan, returned from an evening at the Monte Carlo with a young lady from the Eastern Block who he convinced that “staying over isn’t customary in our country”. Three weeks later I received a bill from Amex that included a charge of $148 that Tommy couldn’t come close to explaining.

The rest of the pack was made up of supplementary slovenly figures including Laura (Tina’s sister) and Cole (a bartender/pilot, in that order). And of course Sunny, whose life had mostly been set in Alabama, Georgia and Florida. And then there was me. To most of the students around town, I was the owner of Tiger Meat; the guy who had hot dog carts outside the bars feeding their drunken desires in his local life, but treaded the waters of places like Vegas frequently in his other life, and I was set to unleash at least one night on this group of complementary personalities the only way I knew how: with the reckless irresponsibility of posing as people who matter.

I made my way home and sent an email to my contact at Pure explaining that I would be in town with a group of clients from the Southeast that were involved in a club opening and promotion I was handling. A lie. In that email I briefed him on a background and listed my “clients” along with brief dossiers including fake names.

The stage was set…

Sunday ~ Las Vegas, Nevada

We arrived in Las Vegas without incident and I fell into my normal routine of ultra pools by day and club hopping by night. Our night at Pure was to be our last night, so there was plenty of time to kill and money to spend before unleashing anything left on Tuesday.

A few of us headed to Tryst on our first night in town which ended, as it always does, eating a sunrise gourmet meal at Fat Burger. That has to be the only trash on the floor, grease on the walls burger joint in the world whose clientele look like they just left an Oscar’s after party at Dennis Hopper’s house.

I woke the next morning to a text from O2 asking if I wanted to join her and some friends at “Rehab” over at the Hard Rock. I gave her the “I’ll see you in 30” text back and started gathering my wits to focus on the scene around me.

My eyes aren’t great, especially with no contacts in, but I’ve worn them since I was in the 4^th grade so I’m an accomplished squinter. I surveyed the room through the millimeter left between my eyelids as I squinted down to 20/20 vision. Sunny was curled up in a ball like a Labrador in the bed next to me with what appeared to be all the covers from both beds. Tina and her sister were in the other bed huddling together for warmth and the room itself looked like a pizza delivery vehicle had just crashed through an Express clothing store. Either I’ve slept through a week’s worth of partying or the mess in our room after one night out is excessive. Either way, O2 was at the Hard Rock and I planned on gathering a pool crew.

Swing, Laura, Tommy, Cole, and I ended up being the only ones that could muster the energy needed to take an elevator down to a cab and ride to the Hard Rock to pass out in a pool chair.

The line at the Hard Rock pool entrance was extensive as always. After we all did an 11:00 AM shot of Jagermeister, I gathered the group and walked toward the front of the line. I looked at Swing and told him not to react to what I was about to say to the door man. We got those familiar “who are these people” looks from all the disgusted patrons impatiently awaiting passage to the lush grounds of the pool deck as we stumbled forward wafting the stale stink of a long night.

“Todd Bordini plus four”, I mumbled to the glorified pool boy standing guard at the threshold. He lifted the velvet rope and we filed through.

Once we were clear of the door I felt Swing’s question coming before he asked.

Who the hell is Todd Bordini?

I silenced him with a quick wave. “Don’t ask,” I said, fending off his confused look.

The sun hit us like a punch in the face and as our eyes adjusted, hundreds of people came into view through the palms and fronds of the pool paradise. Never wanting to look like I don’t know where I’m going, I made my way across a bridge to one of the many bars around the gardens without hesitating to look for O2. There were simply too many people. We ordered a round and I sent a text to her while forcing down the day’s first sip of vodka.

Swing met O2 briefly before he disappeared into the night with the Bulgarian tourist a few months prior and although I doubted he could describe her to a police sketch artist, I was confident he would know if he saw her. Just then I heard Laura say with a bit of a shutter,

“Todd, could this possibly be her?”

I laughed a little to myself as O2 made her way carefully down the bridge stairs in six-inch heels, D&G shades, a candy apple red string bikini.

“Let’s get these girls out of some of these clothes,” she said slyly directing her gaze at Laura who was wearing a t-shirt over her bikini. “I went out last night wearing less than you have on right now, baby.”

“Perfect start to the day”, I said as I greeted her with a vodka drink and cleared the way for her to lead us to the area that would become our waterside home for the next four hours.

That night we hit Jet Nightclub at the Mirage followed by another late night health boost at Fatburger.

Tuesday morning I woke Sunny up and set up the next 24 hours.

“Sunny, if you do everything I tell you to do today to the letter, I promise you this will be the best day of your life,” I stated with confidence. She agreed and before she could stop shaking her head in accordance, I handed her a glass of water and a multivitamin.

“Take this, finish a second glass of water and get ready for the pool,” I said with purpose. “We leave for Tao Beach in 30 minutes.”

We had a bigger group for the pool that day. Tina, Laura, Sunny, Cole, Swing and I descended on the Venetian feeling a lot better than we probably should have. Haley was the VIP hostess that day at Tao Beach on the roof of the Venetian which was a bonus. She has given me access to the different VIP cabanas several times to take naps during days that I have spent out at that pool by myself over the last few years.

Haley set us up in one of the cabanas with a flat screen TV, a Playstation console, a bottle of Absolute, a dozen Red Bulls, a pitcher of raspberry mojitos and a basket of Tao Beach logo’d products. I handed one of the bottles of water to Sunny and told her to drink it before she had anything else.

The rest of the day at Tao Beach was just what it needed to be…relaxing. The only exception was a hunt for an “over served” Cole, who disappeared for about an hour before he was brought back to the cabana by 2 girls that had an escorting arm around each of his shoulders like older sisters of bad influence.

When we returned to the hotel, I made the call that I usually make the day before I arrive in the desert. It rang only twice before Kristy Vegas answered.

“Lance!” she shouted referring to a playful identity game we play. “It’s been a while.”

I met Kristy years ago and she has driven me in her limo a dozen times with clients, friends and often times when I’m by myself in the city. The night we met she started calling me Lance because she thought I looked like the magician, Lance Burton. I call her Kristy Vegas simply because it’s hard enough for me to remember one name, let alone two. But Kristy has driven me through the Vegas underworld in her chariot for years now and I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do as good a job.

I wanted to surprise the group with a limo to Pure that night as an added bonus to what was already destined to be an epic event. There were members of the group that had never been to Vegas so I just saw it as the right thing to do. I had given everyone a set price for “the best night of your life”, and I was planning on using every dime of that money.

I told everyone to be at the front of the hotel at 7 p.m. and to be ready for anything. I had printed out several copies of the various identities and back stories I had developed and distributed them to the hotel rooms. Everyone was primed and ready but had no idea what the night entailed. I hadn’t even shared our destination for the night. Somewhere at that moment however, Alex was reviewing the dossier sheet I’d sent him and probably laughing a little to himself.

The limo pulled up, we all got in and the first drinks of the night were poured. A quick stop was made for Cole to throw up, and then we made our way to the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign for a picture. We followed that with a trip downtown to see the original Vegas light show and then a stop at the Bellagio fountains before being dropped at Caesar’s Palace.

The night seemed to escalate at a dizzying pace with the crescendo coming at the entrance of Pure. The sea of people parted as Alex caught a glimpse of me approaching. The ropes were lifted and the group hurried into the cover of various security staff as if one of us was targeted for assassination.

I exchanged a few necessary pleasantries with Alex as he corralled the group in a small area in front of a sectioned off partial that had five different lines of people feeding into it.

There are a lot of funny things about how the nightlife in a city like Vegas works, but one of my favorites is the front entrance to a popular nightclub. You stand in a line shoulder to shoulder with scads of beautiful people that are nobodies until they’re on the other side of those ropes. Once there, they leave you standing separated from the rest on display long enough for you to be seen and feel an air of importance before they send you to your ultimate destination. It feels a little like a product viewing before an auction.

And so…

I slipped him $100 of our pooled money as he gave me a smirk and a wink. And with that, a 350-lb bodyguard and two girls a quarter his size escorted me and the seven bar staffers from Auburn, Alabama behind me into the sea of electronic hysteria and manic festivity that is Las Vegas.

Swinging pendulums of light swept down from high blinding us briefly before illuminating our clean path through a mob of sweat and shame. Zeus, our bodyguard, produced a flashlight from somewhere within his triple-digit jacket and sent another beam of light into the eyes of anyone in his way leaving us following hastily obscured in his wake. Send a big enough guy with a flashlight in front of you and you create your own red carpet.

We wound around the massive room and through three more security checkpoints before entering the VIP area and our private section adjacent to the dance floor. Pulsing bass beats pounded off the walls and seemed to hang in the air all around us as DJ A.M. spun away on a raised platform above the back of one of our couches. I huddled Alexa and Kimmie, our servers, as the group filed around the white leather lair. The girls were the typical VIP club servers – young, hot, and ready to bring you anything you ask for knowing that by the time the sun rises they will be scurrying out the back doors with a four-digit take home purse for eight hours of work. They will put up with just about anything to ensure that they hold on to the good shifts and cash in within the very small window of their lives that they’re young and hot enough to do so.

I handed Alexa my AMEX and another $100 bill from our pool and chose five bottles of liquor and a selection of mixers from the menu in Kimmie’s hand. The girls hustled off and the security manager waiting behind them approached and introduced himself to me. He directed my attention to Zeus who stood at post in front of the entrance to our section, casting a shadow over our table even indoors. He would stay with us for anything we needed, and Tony, the manager, would be at the entrance to the VIP area and readily available as well.

And so the night truly began. I had greased the necessary palms to establish my identity as head of the group to stay in character and precipitate service. The tips at the beginning of the night served a purpose as well. Both were either seen or received by Alexa and Kimmie, the actual targets of that particular show. It appeared to them that I was both gracious and aloof with money, and believe me, those girls take note of that. In reality, I meticulously crafted a detailed budget funded by a bunch of characters that had to work two weeks straight just to afford this one night. But I had no intention of anyone else knowing that. To anyone that mattered at Pure that night, there was a shine of importance radiating from our section. My job was complete, so I just sat back and watched it all happen.

From that moment on the night ran through like a laser of activity. Without involving a serious trip to the hospital in an ambulance, five bottles of liquor can’t be consumed by eight people in the amount of time we were given, so a certain amount of liberty was given to anyone in the group that decided to bring someone from the dance floor across the velvet rope for a very quick drink and casual introductions. I didn’t really want anyone lingering long, just long enough to send a buzz around the room. All it took was a little glance at Zeus followed by a point in someone’s direction and he would escort them over to us. The VIP scene is a brilliant concept in this way; you never have to move. Be it something with an alcohol by volume content or a heartbeat, they come to you.

Various guys and girls were coming in and out to talk and have a drink with us. Alexa and Kimmie were pouring and mixing as fast as they could when I felt my cell vibrate in my jacket breast pocket. When I saw the screen I was disheartened to see that I had missed several calls from the guy that appeared on my dossier as “Casey”, the pro baseball pitcher that was my friend from childhood. The “friend from childhood” part was accurate, but that’s where the validity stopped. “Casey” was in town on business and I had invited him to join us for the night. He had obviously arrived late, but that wouldn’t be a problem. However, he had been calling me for a while and I’m sure was quite perturbed by the chaos at the door. I texted him back quickly to let him know that I was on my way. He immediately shot one back saying that he was already in the cab line ready to go back to his hotel and told me not to worry because he needed some sleep anyway. I set a new record on speed texts.

“Turn your ass around, you don’t want to walk away from this.”

I looked at Zeus who already seemed to sense that there was trouble. I had to shout over the heads of Tina and Sunny who were putting on a dance show and seemed to be in another world. Brett was smiling and leaning back comfortably on the couch, Swing was staring blankly in the direction of DJ A.M., Tommy was nodding his head in my direction and giving me a thumbs up, and Cole was missing. Alexa frantically cleaned up the spilled puddles of Red Bull while Kimmie pinched my cheek and asked if I needed anything.

“Zeus and I are on a mission,” I answered as I shot off my seat and let the girls shimmy by me.

I met Zeus’s inquisitive stare and yelled, “Zeus, we’ve got a broken arrow, let’s roll!”

With the help of his frame and his flashlight, Zeus had me at the front entrance in less than a minute. I saw Casey’s face hovering over the rest of the outside crowd with a look of utter confusion and disbelief. It didn’t get any clearer for him as the crowd in front of him parted and Zeus approached. I must have looked like a white knight when I peered around Zeus’s waist and said, “I’m here to take you home.”

We were plus one at the table now and everyone was settled into their respective activities. The dance floor was a frenzied mess and a lot of the group was in the middle of it. Sunny pulled me out at one point for a quick dance. I could see in her eyes that she was truly enjoying herself. That was the entire goal of my trip, so I was able to relax.

I returned to the table to check on the troops. Everyone was more than occupied including Casey, who was talking to a girl that looked very familiar. As I approached, so did Tommy. The girl met our gaze and blew our cover.

“Wait a minute, aren’t you guys from Sky Bar in Auburn?”

I couldn’t believe it. This girl recognized us. She was a recent graduate and Tommy remembered her. Thankfully, Casey was pretty oblivious to anything that was going on, so no lies had blatantly been passed along. She hung around reminiscing for a while and then she moved on.

Alexa grabbed the near empty glass of vodka from my hand and replaced it with a fresh one. The tank was full, so I grabbed Zeus and said I needed to head for the head. He thrust his flashlight forward and led me through the crowd toward the restrooms. I never feel right about this part of the VIP treatment, but that hasn’t stopped me from taking advantage of it over the years. The entrance to the restrooms is outside and reachable after a short elevator ride. Zeus blocks the elevator doors as I enter so we’re riding in our own lift. As we exit the sliding doors one floor up, the men’s line snakes out of the restroom door by only a few people. But that’s still an unacceptable wait for someone of my importance. I’d laugh if my bladder wasn’t about to burst, so Zeus clears a path for me and eases my entrance past all the guys patiently waiting. He stands firm outside my stall as I go about my business ignoring the hateful stares of those remaining in line. We exit and make our way back down to the VIP area the same route we came up.

As I approached the table, my heart skipped a beat. Everything seemed to be as I left it, which was chaotic, granted. But a vibe of horrible consequences came rushing at me like a stampede of wild animals. The analogy works in this case because of the person who met my bewildered gaze. Casey, our “plus one” was haphazardly handling a drink that was spilling with abandon dreadfully close to our now “plus two”: “Iron” Mike Tyson.

Don’t get me wrong, a random celebrity at the table can be a good thing. But I could have picked a better surprise guest than a guy with a well documented anger issue that could knock out my entire group with an aggressive reach for his drink. Not to mention the fact that Sunny was hanging off of one of his shoulders and Casey was spilling his drink on the other.

Sensing an impending disaster, I sprung into action. Casey was finished. He wasn’t making a lot of sense and now he was looking at me for assistance. I signaled Zeus and explained that I needed Casey taken to the Bellagio and confirmed in his room safe. Zeus gave me a pat on the shoulder, a nod, and Casey was gone.

I approached “The Champ” and shook his hand. Surprisingly, he was very understandable, likable and coherent. Sunny had me snap a picture of the two of them. Once that was done, Sunny weaved back to the table and the secure setting hosted by Alexa and Kimmie.

Tyson watched Sunny walk away and said to me casually,

“That’s a beautiful girl right there.”

I soon found out that it wasn’t Sunny that he was interested in, however. It was Tina, who for some reason he thought was Cameron Diaz. I was wondering when that Buster Douglas left hook was going to make itself known. Before I came back from the bathroom Tyson had made his inquiries regarding Tina as well as a proposal for her to leave with him. I looked over at our section and barely saw Tina hiding behind her sister in total disinterest and a little fearful. I smiled inside as I met the rest of Tyson’s small group and Kimmie whizzed by to hand me another fresh drink.

The night went on as such. An endless tale of false entitlement that can only be truly understood by the ones that were there. I have to applaud the group because other than Casey’s quick exit there were no real casualties. Sunny continued to drink water when I told her to, and I think she would tell you that it was one of the best nights of her life. As we left the club that night, we appeared to be a couple as she had hold of my arm. When I wandered away from her briefly, a guy approached her and told her if she dropped me and went with him for the night he would give her $2,500 in cash. This guy made the mistake of saying this within earshot of Tina who quickly blew a gasket and exploded toward the poor jackass in a fit of rage. Knowing none of this, I walked back toward Sunny and I noticed Tina being physically held back by Swing and Tommy in a continued attempt to defend her friend’s honor.

I gestured toward Tina, looked at Sunny and said, “Do I want to know what this is about?”

“Nope,” she replied.

And we were gone…

————————————————–

Wednesday, April 6, 2010 ~ Auburn, AL

Recapping stories like this always makes me nostalgic. People and places will drift in and out of your life, which has always been a challenge for me to accept. It’s just another bullet point under the main title of indisputable truth: Time Marches On.

Certain things haven’t changed since this night, but even more have. I’ve been back to Pure a few times, but Alex has moved on to another post. Alexa and Kimmie have more than likely been downgraded to one of the many cocktail lounges in one of the main properties on the Strip, and DJ A.M. was found dead in his apartment in Manhattan late last year.

Kristy Vegas still drives my chariot when I’m in town, and she’s always at the airport greeting me with a smile and a hug on arrival. Each time I see her we’ve both aged a little.

Sunny is rather pregnant and due in the next few months. I haven’t seen her in over 10, which is a sad fact. But she is well and happy.

Vegas continues to lie in wait, and will never disappear. I don’t sustain the same frequency – there was a time that I was there once every few months – and so my contacts there aren’t what they used to be. I’ve lost touch with more people in Vegas than there are hotels. But now I look at the place as a snow globe of memories. They linger and I can visit them any time.

Today I sit at Tiger Meat Beach, a poolside grill I opened last year that was inspired by Tao Beach at the Venetian. Haley doesn’t sit as a VIP hostess at the entrance, and the Europeans don’t walk around topless. But if I close my eyes when the sun’s just right, I can still see Sunny sitting with a drink and a truly peaceful aura radiating from her, shaded by the lush lace curtains of a Tao Beach cabana.

April 22, 2009

The Palms Resort; Las Vegas, NV

The endless noise showering through the casinos in the early morning is something you have to get used to. The main casino floor at the Palms was already buzzing and it was still early. Five minutes ago the phone in the Kingpin Suite rang and I nearly fell out of the bed trying to answer it. My driver was downstairs, a stranger’s voice told me, sent over from Mandalay Bay as I requested the night before. I didn’t have any luggage, clothes, or personal items in the suite anyway, so it was just a matter of splashing cold water on my face and heading to the elevator.

The bowling alley-themed suite was pretty trashed, but that will happen when sixty people are given free food and booze. Not even six hours ago I was bowling naked in the same suite. It sounds a little crazy, but I was alone – my corporate guests long gone. I calculated the probability of ever again having the opportunity to bowl naked on a lane in my hotel room, which was so small that, mathematically speaking, it had to be done.

I pushed the main entrance door open and the first breath of fresh air I’d felt in hours washed over me. Opposite the valet stand I spied a black sedan with a female chauffeur leaning against the passenger door. She eyed me as I approached.

“Mr. Todd,” she announced while gesturing toward the open rear door. Someone at Mandalay Bay must have described her passenger as someone who looked like they were possibly up all night bowling naked.

“That’s me,” I answered quickly as I ducked into the back seat, closing the door behind me.

I watched her from the back seat as she made a few inaudible, but loud cackles toward the door guys in front of the Palms. They smiled and said a few things in return, which I also couldn’t make out. She moved pretty well for her age. She even gave the guys a quick shimmy as she spun around the front of the car. She flipped one of them off laughing as she reached the driver’s side door handle, yanked it, and fell into the front seat.

She was in her late sixties if I had to guess, which made it weird that I noticed her jacket was struggling to contain her breasts. She wore a black pantsuit typical to any chauffeur, and thick glasses that made me wonder about her qualifications as a safe driver.

“How do you feel this morning?” she asked, looking me up and down through the rear view mirror. “Long night?”

“As long as any other in Vegas,” I replied.

“I heard that,” she said while chuckling roughly. “Well, where are we headed?”

Her voice was deep and rough, which I assumed was brought on by years of smoking.

“I need to refresh myself a bit at Mandalay Bay, so that’s the first stop if that’s ok,” I said.

“Whatever you say,” she said as she started rolling forward. The tires hadn’t yet made a full turn before she had to stop to wait for an exiting car that was slowly cruising through the arrivals lobby, both passengers gazing in awe at the lights, sounds, and sights all around them. Tourists.

They were pretty startled when she laid on the horn to get them to speed up. It was so out of place, and woke me up as much as it did Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver in the rental car. They sped up and got out of her way.

“Vegas is so different these days,” she started venting as we pulled out onto Flamingo. “Too many damn tourists, too many fucking people.”

Whoa…all right then. She’s pushing seventy and dropping unsolicited “f-bombs”. I crouched a little lower in my seat and tried to pull my typical fake phone call trick to avoid having to speak to a stranger. I excel at that. Usually.

My being on the phone didn’t stop her from moving along with her conversational bombardment as she gunned the engine and we blazed down Flamingo. “I assume you’re staying at Mandalay Bay? They’re the ones that sent me over here anyway.” Before I could muster an answer, she went for the obvious question, “So you got lucky last night or what?” She was staring at me through the rearview mirror and I could feel her hoping I’d give her a story she could pass along to her next client.

I rewound a bit. “Yes, I’m staying at Mandalay Bay.” She started nodding with a big smile, her glasses magnifying her eyes in the mirror. “No, I didn’t get lucky last night. I hosted a party in one of the Fantasy Suites and just decided to sleep there instead of heading all the way back to my other room.”

She turned her attention back to the road and the bevy of cars we were passing.

“Well, that sucks for you, huh?” she spat with laughter that shook the inside of the sedan.

We pulled onto the ramp leading to I-15 and headed south. Off the highway to the right was Dean Martin Drive and to the left was Frank Sinatra Drive, the Interstate cutting through the two like the future through the past. My head drifted over against the window as I watched the cars below us easing along.

“Holy shit!” she yelled as she hit the breaks long enough to miss a car cutting her off. She laid on the horn as she sped back up. “Back in the day, that guy does that to the wrong person and you’d never see him again. The guys I hung around with anyway. I saw it plenty of times.” Internally I was rolling my eyes, but I didn’t know how to follow that statement up, so I just stayed silent.

“You know what it means to ‘86’ someone?” she asked, starting to calm down and settle back into her seat, her eyes darting between the rearview and the road.

“Get rid of them,” I answered.

“The Vegas Mob coined that phrase though. You know what it actually means?”

“I never really thought about it,” I answered, telling the truth.

“Eight miles out into the desert, six feet under the ground,” she said. “That was their code to get rid of someone. And that would have happened to that guy. No one would have thought a thing of it.”

My bones chilled with her casual mention of mob murder and body disposal as we whipped through the entrance of Mandalay Bay; the massive structure’s shadow consuming us. She exited with the brute of a man’s manner into the vehicle lobby and shouted a smoky hello to one of the valets as she made her way to my door. My brain was working in a low gear, but I couldn’t glass over how odd of a character she was, especially for someone with a limo driver job in Las Vegas, where she could easily be escorting someone of minor importance rather than a burnout who stayed up a little too late bowling naked.

She opened the door and I reaffirmed with her that I still needed to go to the Venetian for a day of recovery at Tao Beach. I would be maybe twenty minutes upstairs and then back down to continue that way. She popped me with an open hand across the shoulder assuring me she would be there when I came back down and I hurried along the driveway toward the entrance.

I overheard two of the valet staff in a muffled conversation about the driver that my clouded mind found so intriguing. They were looking in her direction and giggling boyishly about something I couldn’t quite hear. I was happy to confirm that I wasn’t the only person affected by her oddities.

“Are you all talking about my driver?” I asked, not thinking that they might feel invaded by my nosiness, not to mention embarrassed that a guest caught them in an unprofessional moment. I took a step toward them with a hand outreached to assure them that I was in no way coming down on them for bawdy behavior. I was just curious.

“Is Lisa your driver?” one of the valets asked, smirking a bit as the words dribbled reluctantly from his mouth.

“She is, just for the morning,” I explained, glancing over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t standing right behind me. “She’s a little crazy, no?”

“You know who she is, right?” the second valet leaned closer, excited with the prospect of telling me something I didn’t know. “Lisa was the first topless showgirl in Vegas. She’s a wild one.”

I glanced over my shoulder and confirmed that Lisa was on the phone now, leaning against the hood of the car. “You’re kidding me,” I said, gesturing for them to follow me inside. Even with this new information I had to keep moving toward my room – every minute here was a minute I wasn’t relaxing at Tao Beach.

As we cleared the entrance doors and the mechanical dance of the slot machines rang around us, the shorter of the two valets pointed over to a gift shop and asked me to follow him. Just inside the door was a carousel of Vegas-themed books. He spun it half a turn before reaching in to pluck out one titled, “When The Mob Ran Vegas”. He flipped it over to the reveal the back cover and handed it to me.

An involuntary smile spread across my face.

Holy shit. That’s her.

The picture was probably taken fifty years ago, but the girl on stage with a full floral headdress flanked by less opulently dressed dancers was unmistakably her. And she was the focus. The star.

“She’s mentioned in here a few times actually,” the shorter one went on, obviously the more local of the two valets now escorting me around a little Vegas history. “She was pretty connected to these guys evidently, the Mafia. As well as the Rat Pack I think. Can you believe it? Now she drives a limousine.”

It all made a lot more sense to me now. And then it hit me that all the things she had said on the way over, all the things I had dismissed as hyperbole, trying to get a rise out of me, were all probably true. How much had she actually witnessed? I was beyond intrigued.

Being chauffeured by the city’s first topless dancer didn’t alter my state of cleanliness. I needed a shower. I hustled to the elevator bank, punched the button for my floor, and was in and out of the 180 Suite in a matter of minutes – fresh and clean.

When she saw me exit the hotel lobby heading her direction she took a long drag from her cigarette, smoke wafting around her face, and crushed it into the pavement of the porte-cochere.

She opened the carriage door and we were off once again.

“So the Venetian?”

“Yeah, there’s a pool cabana there calling my name,” I said, trying not to let on that I was searching for a cool way to ask her a hundred questions.

“Those new club pools are something else,” she said. “Really expensive, right?”

“They are, but I don’t have that kind of money. I know the girl that works the door at TAO Beach and she let’s me pass out for a few hours in one of the cabanas that isn’t yet reserved for someone.”

“That’s a good deal. What kind of favors are you giving her?” she said with an impish smile, glancing at me through the rearview mirror.

“Nothing like that,” I said, “she’s a fan of my college Alma Mater and I usually bring her a hat or a shirt whenever I’m in town. It’s an easy price to pay for the comfort of one of those lush cabanas.”

“You’re not kidding! Those pools have been popping up all over Vegas, like a spreading disease. I’ve heard those cabanas are nice, I wouldn’t be able to listen to that rapping DJ shit they play all the time though.”

“What kind of music do you like?”

“I like all kinds of music really, that shit just doesn’t fit the Vegas I know. It used to be so much more about the live entertainment. Small lounge acts that would sing and entertain. You could be sitting right next to some of the biggest people in Hollywood, like they were your friends. When you left those shows, you really felt like you saw something.”

“I can handle the DJs in some situations, but I agree with you,” I said. “There’s nothing like seeing a live show by someone with real talent. Especially in a small, intimate room.”

Should I just ask her if she slept with Sinatra? If she ever held Momo Giancana’s hat while he “86’d” someone?

“So how long have you been chauffeuring?” I asked, wimping out on the questions I really wanted the answers to.

“About five years I guess,” she answered. “Back in the day I was a dancer.”

“Really?” I played dumb, but I’m not sure why. She obviously had no trouble sharing. “What was that like?”

“It was like living a rock star life, man. The 50s and 60s were crazy in Vegas. That’s when this town was great. I was in Folies Bergere at the Tropicana for years. I was actually the first girl to show my tits in Vegas if you can believe that.”

“How’s that?” I laughed a little to loosen her up. “Was that in the Folies show?”

“No, Folies came along a few years later. Actually, Lido di Paris was first, then Folies. But this gig was in 57’ at the Riviera. It was a Harry Belafonte show and they wanted a girl to stand still under this waterfall with only certain parts covered, you know. It was illegal see, to dance naked, so I couldn’t dance. I had to be like part of the background or the set. But then I would shift and you could see my tits and the crowd went fucking wild. That was me. They liked me for that because I had’em, and people wanted to see’em. Simple as that. But that was the breakthrough. That’s how it went down.”

“That’s crazy,” I said, not having to fake interest. “I bet you have a treasure trove of unbelievable stories.” Was that too obvious?

“You name it, honey, I’ve done it,” she continued. “It was a whole different town back then. What are you wanting to know?”

Here we go.

“Are you going to tell me you had a thing with Sinatra?”

She cackled the second I got it out.

“Everybody always wants to know about Sinatra. If you were a showgirl in Vegas and didn’t have a thing with one of the Rat Pack guys, you were at the wrong party, honey.”

“That’s the general consensus,” I said, trying to figure out if she really answered my question.

“Cary Grant wanted to put a baby in me,” she said as we turned onto Koval and started making our way north behind the MGM Grand and away from the tourist traffic of Las Vegas Boulevard. “He was going to set me up for life if I agreed, but I had a feeling he was gay. I couldn’t deal with all that.”

“Wait. That was a lot of information,” I said.

The Venetian was closer with each second passing, and the impending end of my trip weighed on my mind.

“You were dating Cary Grant and he wanted to have a baby?”

“We were dating, yes, and he wanted a baby, but he wanted the baby more than he wanted me. He was gay, there’s no question in my mind.”

“What about the mob? Any crazy shit you can tell me about without getting us whacked before we get to the Venetian?”

She laughed again while dodging to the left of a slow moving car and accelerating through the intersection at Flamingo. Way too fast.

“Nobody’s gonna kill us today, honey,” she said. “I used to run cocaine and girls for the mob in the 70s once I was done dancing. They ran the town and you didn’t fuck with them, that’s for sure. In the 70s, those guys were out of control and it was a bad time for a lot of people. The old mob guys back in the 50s and 60s were much more discreet. They were classy even. They were around the clubs, and you knew who they were, but they were polite. Fun.”

I’d spent years infatuated with mafia stories, not just in Vegas but everywhere. As we pulled into the motor lobby entrance of the Venetian she left me with one final statement that would haunt me for years after, only because my time was up and I knew there was so much more to hear.

“My dad was poker buddies with Bugsy Siegel in L.A before they blew him away for fucking up the Flamingo Hotel. Bugsy started Vegas you know. The Vegas everyone knows today anyway.”

“Yeah, I know the story.”

Las Vegas. Unique in that the mere mention of it triggers equal amounts of exhilaration and nausea. The thrill of hearing bells toll from a slot machine in your financial favor, the thought of having to check out by noon for your flight at midnight, the throttling bass beats as glitter falls across your private table, the gluttonous wasteland of the $10 all you can eat seafood buffet, the gorgeous girls, the screaming rednecks, the long limousine, the pungent cab. I’ve experienced every glamorous offering and endured each grimy waste product of the desert oasis. Sin City.

I’ve had a complicated twenty-year relationship with Las Vegas, which started on “official assignment” in 1997. I kept pretty tight with the glamorous side of the city during those years, highlighted with a two-year stretch between 2006 and 2008 where I kept up a furious attendance frequency of about once every six weeks. Looking back, I’m not sure what I was thinking – but that’s really the best part I guess.

The stories are of the typical Vegas fare: dodging death with the city’s first topless dancer, mistaken for a magician, posing as an ambassador to get a police escort to the airport, spending odd amounts of time with Britney Spears and family, having to convince Mike Tyson that the girl with me isn’t Cameron Diaz, etc., etc.

But the life expectancy in Vegas is short, and my connections there started to dwindle. Life in the desert marches on like anywhere else, and eventually my trips started sparkling less and less. The time has come to say goodbye, but not to the stories.

Catching myself telling these stories so often made me realize that I was forgetting more than I was remembering. I needed to put them to paper.

Leaving Las Vegas is a collection of sinful short stories highlighting my most interesting times there. For me, it’s a goodbye letter to a city that gave me a lot of material. I’m not saying I’ll never be back, but I’m confident I’ll never again be afforded the opportunities there to have as much fun.

~

     I’ll be posting a different story every few weeks until I run out. Stay tuned, and follow LESS TRAVELED TALES to be notified when another story drops. All the “Leaving Las Vegas” stories will include a (LLV) in the title to make them easier to find. The stories aren’t chronological, so you can read them in any order.

October, 2008

Sky Bar Café; Auburn, AL

October in Auburn means football and masses of people regardless of the night, but it was early, and still manageable by Sky Bar standards. The hot dog business was good, thankfully, because my corporate income fizzled away with the rest of the waste handed to us by the collapse of the housing market and the subsequent aggressive recession. People were still going to drink, and people were still going to eat.

My travel schedule wasn’t what it used to be, but I had directives in place for Tiger Meat for when I was on the road a lot. The business ran pretty well without me, I just had to give up some of my profits to someone taking my place lifting heavy coolers and carts. I made sure that it was considered a bad night if the girls had to lift more than a loaded hot dog. They were well kept, whether I was there or not.

I was leaving for Las Vegas the next morning, so I sent out a note to the girls telling them if I owed them any money, and they wanted it before I went wheels up, they needed to meet me at the bar by a certain time. My plan was to have a table and just let them join for a few drinks if they felt like staying out a bit, but more importantly, that when I left I was leaving with all wages paid and free to fall off the earth if I was so inclined. I think they were always considering that possibility too because everyone showed up that night at some point.

As the night went on I found myself drinking more than originally planned. There were about three girls at the table when I made a bold statement.

“It’s depressing that I’m going to Vegas alone for my birthday. The first one of you that buys a Jaeger shot for the two of us and brings it back to the table is coming with me.”

With that, the table cleared with the thunder of heavy patio chair legs bouncing across dilapidated planks of wood. Just as the girls scattered in different directions toward their favorite bartender, Courtney leaned over my shoulder and placed two shots of Jaeger in front of me. She pulled up one of the overturned chairs, sat down, and asked, “Why did everyone just run off?”

~

I have a soft spot in my heart for all the girls that worked the Tiger Meat carts over the years. I depended on them, especially when I was out of town, and with few exceptions they always came through. They knew I was specific with my hiring, and the money versus the actual work was certainly good. They didn’t want to let me down.

I would have had fun in Vegas with any of them, but it’s hard to imagine a better girl than Courtney to win the shot challenge, even if it was by sheer luck. Courtney was built for Vegas, and even more encouraging was that she had never been.

~

Departure day came early after a night that lasted longer than I wanted it to. This made giving Courtney my seat in first class even more surprising. She gave me a quick tip of her mimosa-laden champagne flute as the boarding door closed. I closed my eyes and drifted away.

May, 2008 (5 months earlier)

MGM Casino; Las Vegas, NV

The vibrating alarm on my phone reverberated through the plush pillow and gently brought me back to the room. I’ve always been amazed by the attention to detail I practice before bed after a long night out. It’s as if I know that things are going to be a little hazy, so I leave myself a roadmap. A quick glance over the edge of the bed confirmed the success of my “night out” ritual. My shoes were placed perfectly where I couldn’t miss them; my wallet, watch, and room key all placed securely within one of them.

It takes a second to get my bearings, the crisp white sheets pulled almost entirely over my head. The room is incredibly cold – the air conditioner humming in the darkness. There’s a warm body next to me with only some frazzled hair peeking out from under the comforter. No wonder I’m freezing. Somewhere in the night I lost the battle for the bulk of the bed and the comforts of its full dressing.

My friend Sunny was the thief – I could tell by the small amount of her hair that was showing. There were a lot of us on this trip and sharing beds was part of the deal. It was all coming back to me now. My phone, as I mentioned, was under my pillow. I needed to be up long before anyone else, so as a courtesy I set up the muffled, vibrating alarm clock. I’m so good.

Having to tiptoe out of your hotel room at noon to avoid disturbing the four other people passed out there on a Tuesday would usually be a red flag, but in Las Vegas the days and nights bleed together into one large cocktail that tastes the same regardless of the day. I glanced over my shoulder as I left the room and smirked knowing what was going to happen later that night to the unsuspecting subjects slumbering about. Sunny (Daze), a fake stage name I bestowed on her for this night only, continued sleeping in peace with the water bottle I prepared her before we all passed out within arms reach. We spent the night before at JET nightclub, so they needed the rest. In six hours time they would all be given their fake identities for the night; a night that I hoped would go down as one of their best ever. I pulled the door shut carefully with an inaudible click.

~

As I sat eating my steamed dumplings against the railing of my favorite restaurant in MGM, I fought back a nervous tension. It had been close to fifteen years since I last saw or even spoke to Jay before a call came through the questionable cell network in Barbados, where I was in residence for a week just a handful of months prior.

“Is this the Todd Gilbert I lived in the Hotel Havana with in Spain back in 1994?” a familiar voice asked.

Facebook, of all things, made this reunion possible. I had exhausted all options over the years trying to reunite, mainly because the name “Jason Lee” is hardly uncommon. Before the Internet, one residence move and you could easily lose someone forever.

We met in Spain and quickly became confidants in an unfamiliar country. We traveled down the coast of Portugal sleeping on beaches. We ran from bulls and toward bars, all the while demonstrating nary a care. When we returned from abroad there were a few trips, him to Auburn and me to Gainesville, where he was in school at the University of Florida. And then, regrettably, we lost touch.

The things you have to cover after that much time has passed, especially at that point in your life, are awkward.

So, how long have you lived in Vegas?

What are you doing for work?

Are you married? Have kids?

There was a lot of catching up to do. We arranged to meet at MGM that day, and I was more than thankful for the reconnection.

“Actually, I just got married in San Francisco a few weeks ago,” he explained. “It was a small, family-only wedding. But we’re having a celebration of sorts this October – like a wedding reception for family and friends. I’d love for you to come.”

October, 2008

Caesar’s Palace; Las Vegas, NV

“Is this your hair?” I asked as a mane of dirty blond locks I found on the hotel room floor cascaded across the width of my outstretched hand. Courtney, a curling iron spearing the left side of her head, glanced at me briefly then turned back toward the mirror with little concern.

“Not technically, but you’ll think it is in a few minutes.”

Our blocks of time getting ready being vastly different, I spent the next hour or so explaining the history of my friendship with Jay and our reunion back in August. Tonight we were on our way to a welcome reception for “wedding” attendees at Nine Fine Irishmen at New York-New York.

Courtney and I arrived on time and were greeted at the door to Nine Fine by Jay’s mother, who hugged me like a bear once I introduced myself. We had never met but stories crossed the pond as one would expect.

Before we could pass through the entrance, Jay made his way through the humming crowd just inside to meet us at the door. It wasn’t more than a few seconds of salutations and introductions before there was an obvious disturbance just beyond the threshold of the party. There was a growing murmur indicating that something was wrong within.

As we all peered inquisitively inward, a girl squeezed her way out with a panic stricken look on her face that contrasted her otherwise radiant appearance. The bride.

Courtney and I watched nervously as she grasped at Jay with both hands in desperation.

“My dad just collapsed,” she explained, her hands shaking on either of his shoulders. “Call 911!”

“I got it,” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket as I ushered Courtney off to the side.

Paramedics were there quicker than I expected, but I suppose medical emergencies of all types are standard in Vegas. I was standing with Jay’s mother and Courtney when the paramedics started to come out with his father-in-law on a stretcher. Jay led the way and came directly to us.

“I have to go to the hospital with Wendy and her dad,” he said, looking through us as he watched the paramedics descending the staircase. “I’m not sure what to do. The party just started so I’m not sure if people will stay or what. I haven’t had a chance to talk to any of the staff.” There were way too many things for his brain to process at one time.

I stopped him mid-thought.

“I got this,” I said. “This is what I do. I’ll deal with the staff and Courtney and I can host the hell out of these people. No one knows us anyway.”

I gestured to the girl to my right, a stranger’s hair falling across her left shoulder. “This is Courtney by the way.”

The first moment Courtney and I stepped into the actual party came an hour after we arrived, and we were holding trays of champagne-filled flutes. I huddled the Nine Fine staff to explain the situation and that the party would continue with me as their main contact. The champagne trays were the best way I could think of to introduce us to the group and relay the state of the evening: There was nothing that anyone could do to help with the medical situation, and the paramedics indicated that the patient’s condition was stable. It’s Vegas, and the show must go on.

“This is a little crazy,” Courtney muttered from the corner of her mouth as she balanced her tray over her right shoulder.

“Yes it is,” I replied as we took our first step into the room of strangers.

“I know you!” roared a woman’s voice to our left, buried in the crowd.

“That figures,” Courtney whispered, laughing a little without turning her head from her forward gaze.

A blond woman wedged her way through to stop us in our tracks. “You’re the naked guy from that golf course in Cancun.”

“Sounds about right,” Courtney spat with a laugh as she dove ahead into the masses, her flutes picked off one by one.

The blonde in front of me looked familiar, but there was no way I was going to pull her name from the dark corridors of my memory. I had to assume she knew m, because about five months before that night I was, in fact, standing naked on a golf course in Cancun.

“Did you get paid to do that?” she asked as she snatched a glass from my tray and took a quick swig. “And why the hell are you here?”

“Well, I didn’t get paid. That was a volunteer job.” At no point in Cancun did I assume I would be in Vegas five months later answering questions about that day. “And I’m here because I’m friends with Jay. We used to live together in Spain. As you probably remember I do corporate events for a living, so I told him I’d handle this reception so he could go to the hospital. I didn’t think I would know anyone here. I’m Todd. Remind me of your name?”

“Teresa,” she answered as she set the empty champagne glass back on my service tray. “I can’t believe you’re here. Let’s do some shots when you’re ready.” Teresa funneled her way back into the crowd through a hole Courtney made stepping back out.

“Is this your girlfriend?” Teresa asked abruptly while looking Courtney up and down. “She’s hot.” The blond fireball never stopped moving as the crowd swallowed her before I could answer.

“Naked on a golf course in Cancun?” Courtney smirked. Her tray was empty and I noticed a small scratch sheet of paper filled with drink orders lying in a small puddle of champagne in the middle of it. “Go…”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I explained.

“Well, that sucks.”

“There’s an annual networking event in the hospitality industry for women, many of them suppliers working for hotel chains or what have you. They’ll choose a host hotel and destination and put together a program – in this case Cancun. I was asked by an old friend to accompany her and assist with her ‘marketing’, which happened to be on a golf course where she was hosting a hole. 10% of our time in Cancun was spent on this golf course, and the other 90% in and around the hotel pool or in a local cantina. You can probably imagine how a trip like that goes. Anyway, we were assigned a somewhat isolated Par 3 hole that was patrolled by one of the biggest alligators I’ve ever seen. She had packages of free weekend stays to give away, and we had to come up with creative ways to do so. I was also mixing drinks for people as they approached the tee box, so as the day rolled on things got relaxed to say the least.”

Just then one of the Nine Fine cocktail waitresses came up to Courtney to take the orders she had collected. They laughed and spit out a short back and forth that was too fast for me to hear or understand. It was like they had been working together for years.

“Go on,” Courtney said as her girlfriend made her way to the service bar.

“Well, our collective minds came up with the idea of me staging myself on the green like a target to shoot for. If a ball hit me, the shooter would win a weekend in Aruba. Then there was the added excitement of the roaming alligator, which could charge me at anytime as I stood motionless during tee shots.”

“You’re still wearing clothes,” she pointed out.

“Not for long,” I answered.

“As I mentioned, the hole was pretty isolated, and the drinks were flowing at a decent rate. I stood alone, except for the alligator, about 160 yards from the tee box. At that distance it wasn’t easy to focus on much more than a body standing in the middle of the green. So when the last group of ladies approached to tee off I thought it would be funny for them to look down the fairway to see a clearly naked, although away from focus, solitary man standing as their target.”

Courtney chuckled, “Did anyone hit you?”

“2 people went to Aruba.”

“And that blond girl that has had about three more drinks since you started telling me this story was one of the golfers?”

“She was in the final group,” I clarified.

“That’s crazy.”

“Yep.”

~

     “This is complicated,” Courtney whined, looking down at the outfits spread across the bed in front of her. We were on to the second night, which was the wedding reception.

“Let me get this straight,” she continued, “we’re going to a wedding reception with family and friends – grandmas, aunts, uncles – then taking a party bus to The Strip and clubbing? All this without me being able to come back here to change?”

“That’s correct.”

“You’re really testing me, Todd.”

“So, that’s the outfit you’re going with?” I asked. She was wearing a very cute and sensible cocktail dress with heels, gripping a clutch purse. A lot of her hair, once again, belonged to someone else.

“For the reception, yeah,” she explained. “I’m bringing two other dress options for later.” She followed my wandering eyes as I combed the area looking for the bag she was going to make me haul around all night. She offered a wry smile while holding up her palm-sized clutch purse to break my gaze.

“In here, dude,” she explained while wagging the clutch in front of my face. “Let’s roll.”

~

The wedding reception was a relatively simple affair with food, a lot of wine, and of course, dancing. The shock of what went down the night before passed, and luckily, the father of the bride recovered without this story having to end in a horrible way.

I went ahead through the early evening festivities staying true to my modus operandi of indecisiveness where open bars are concerned: A water, a beer, a glass of red, and a glass of white, circling my plate like troops amassed at flank.

We sang, we danced, and we had a great time with the people from the night before who were still relatively confused about who we actually were. Near the reception’s end, Courtney slipped into the bathroom with her clutch purse and returned in an entirely different outfit. We were ready for afterparty.

It was bar after club, and club after bar, until one by one, the rest of the group peeled off. Earlier that day I reached out to a connection I acquired through one of my corporate events that proved to be integral through the handful of years I frequented Las Vegas. After initially meeting and working with Lia, we never saw each other again. She just became an electronically linked source of access on an invisible end of my phone. I would text her where I wanted to go and within minutes I’d receive a name of a person to talk to at the door to be led in, unencumbered by lines or cover charges. Usually I’d give a name that wasn’t mine, like “Todd Bordini” for instance (See: Sunny Daze and the Shadow Box Dancers”. Once I uttered the name, there were no questions, no explanations. Something like this is imperative in Vegas, especially for a guy that usually travels alone. Showing up with Courtney, or any young girl with a clutch purse for that matter, will usually render people like “Todd Bordini” unnecessary, but I reached out to Lia all the same.

Courtney and I easily navigated the entrance to TAO and made our way to the bar and eventually the dance floor. I cheerleader-boosted her onto one of the platform boxes and the night moved along as most club nights do. It was the right way to end the weekend.

The last thing I remember was the music suddenly stopping and a projector screen lighting up over the dance floor. A scene from Family Guy commenced, but it wasn’t one I recognized. Stewie came across the screen and said something, and then Brian the dog poked his head out and started singing as he snapped his fingers and sashayed across the screen. Still struggling to remember the episode, it finally hit me that it was a specific scene tailored for this night. The lyrics Brian bellowed included, “partying at TAO tonight”, in the familiar Sinatra-like voice of the show’s creator, Seth McFarlane. At about the time I realized this, a spotlight hit the side of the screen and McFarlane himself started walking across the raised platform singing the very words I was hearing. The crowd went crazy and I remember being pretty blown away by that myself.

Admittedly, this Family Guy finale to the evening took place at a point in the night that was then, and is especially now, pretty cloudy in the recesses of my mind. I swear this happened, but have no real proof that I didn’t just really want it to. Something like this certainly occurred, because I wouldn’t be able to construct that from nothing. I do know that Seth McFarlane’s birthday is the same week as mine, and the way I remember it, he was there celebrating as I was. Courtney has since backed me up on this.

And so we returned to Auburn and the business of street hot dogs. The girls got the week’s schedule on Monday as they always did, and with it came the realization that I didn’t choose this trip to effectively disappear – a realization that was becoming more and more surprising to them as the months and years rolled on.

May 15, 1998

The side door hidden from view, disguised as just another part of a New York City façade, crashed open with the weight of our progress as we spilled onto the sidewalk without breaking pace. Startled by our sudden appearance, a group of tourists jumped out of the way and we fell over each other apologizing all the while not losing a step in our rush. We had to make higher ground fast, and there wasn’t a second to spare. We were already late.

Beneath the Brooklyn Bridge we weaved through hoards of tourists, all seemingly headed somewhere while looking lost at the same time. Some were moving with us, and others moved toward us. Most were standing motionless looking up and around them. Waiting. Wondering, like we were, what exactly was about to happen.

“What’s the plan?” Scott asked as we pushed on at a dizzying clip.

I pointed ahead to a cross bridge hanging above us. “That’s the plan,” I said, already short of breath. “We need to get higher and that’s our best shot. There’s a stairway just ahead at the end of the bridge.”

We took the stairs two at a time until we reached the main platform. Heading to our right we found ample space for both of us to stand against the footpath’s railing. We peered breathless into the lights of the night and didn’t say a word until they started to disappear. I looked at my watch. Thank God they were a few minutes late or we wouldn’t have had such a perfect view.

It started with the cars. They stopped where they stood and turned their lights off. Then slowly, the main event began. Signs, street lamps, billboards, and in many cases entire buildings as far as the eye could see started to disengage one by one like closing time in the desert, until we were left in shadows and poised in silence thirty feet above the street.

“How long will it last?” Scott asked quietly.

“One minute,” I whispered back.

At that time, it had only been done once prior – the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The stillness was remarkable. Not since it lay dormant in a blistering bowl of dust had Las Vegas witnessed such a calming display. And then a faint intrusion came, seeping through the air from every direction. Sweet songs, barely audible, danced along like fairy dust in the desert winds. The collection bellowed from hotel speakers, car radios, and the guttural explosions of fans normally too shy for the attempt. What started as a whisper became a chorus, each selection a favorite.

We stood there silent, Scott and I, suspended between NYNY and MGM casinos, high above Las Vegas Boulevard on the night the desert said goodbye to Frank Sinatra. The weight of the moment swept over me, and I was hooked.