In fits and starts, Lily began to awaken, the passage to her regaining consciousness marked by the increasing volume of her moans. As her eyes gradually opened, she had trouble understanding what she was seeing. The room’s windows seemed to fade in, then fade out. Colors shimmered, appearing and disappearing like will-o’-the-wisps. She reached out a tentative hand, grasping for one of the mysterious reflections, wondering if the light was something that could be touched.
Was she in heaven?
No, she decided. In heaven her head would not hurt this much, and the veins around her temples would not be pounding. She gingerly touched the sides of her head and tried to make sense of things. Then, Lily realized she wasn’t alone and screamed.
A man in a white linen suit was seated in a chair staring at her. He had a dark, carefully trimmed beard. In his hand he held a plastic champagne flute, which he was lightly tapping with a long thumbnail that tapered out like a knife.
“Would you like some champagne?” he asked.
“Champagne?” Her reply sounded more like a croak than a word. Lily’s head felt as if it were exploding.
“Yes. Champagne.”
She made the mistake of looking at him and was confronted by his unblinking eyes. For her, it felt like she was looking at something reptilian, or alien.
“No. Water.”
Her throat was so dry it was hard getting the words out. Lily tried to lick her parched lips, but her mouth was too dry for her to moisten them. Her body told her she’d been on a bender. How long had she been out of it? She remembered being forced to inhale something, and seemed to recall a hypodermic needle being inserted into her arm, but everything was hazy.
And crazy.
“I’m afraid we only have tap water available at this time. I’ll get you some.”
What was she doing in this strange place? Lily sat up on the sofa and tried to focus. A number of questions came to mind, but she resisted asking them. It wasn’t only that her head and throat hurt, making speaking difficult. Instinctively, Lily knew not to trust the man in the white suit. His politeness didn’t fool her. During the past year, she had gotten a terrible education in reading men. The guy was twisted, of that she was sure. His playing nice didn’t fool her. It just put her more on edge.
He returned with a paper cup filled with water. Lily gulped it down.
“More?”
She nodded, and he went to get her a refill. The water made her feel a little less like a corpse, but not much. The man came back, handed the refilled cup to her, and said, “I would drink it more slowly.”
Lily didn’t like the man hovering over her and leaned away from him. The only thing good about Tío Leo was that he’d watched over his sex workers. Not that he gave a shit about them; he was protective of what he thought was his merchandise. But Lily had learned to be careful as well, ready to run, ready to scream, ready to defend herself. She was glad when the man returned to his chair. Once more she noticed lights casting colors and making strange patterns in the room, prompting her question.
“What is this place, and where am I?”
“You are in a penthouse suite in Las Vegas.”
Las Vegas? Why? How?
“What am I doing here?”
“You are my guest.”
This whole thing made no sense. It was almost like she was that girl who dropped down into a rabbit hole. Alice. But Lily wanted nothing to do with this place.
“I want to leave.”
“But you just arrived.”
“You said I was a guest.”
“And you are. If there’s anything you want to eat or drink, a special dumbwaiter will bring it to you. The menu selections are virtually unlimited. And if there’s any particular music you want to hear, I will arrange for it to be played.”
“When can I leave?”
“We’ll talk about that after you’ve settled in for a few days.”
Lily trusted her vibe a hell of a lot more than his less-than-reassuring words. “I’ll scream.”
“I’d like that,” he said.
It was his expectant smile that dissuaded her from screaming. But he did not allow the silence to last and suddenly offered his own scream. Lily started, covering her own mouth as if hoping to muffle his shriek. His demonstration clearly pleased him.
“What exceptional acoustics,” he said. “This suite was designed to my specifications. It’s been soundproofed so that the noise doesn’t carry far. The penthouse is subdivided, so I’m your only neighbor. And beneath us is my special staff. There is no one to hear your cries. It’s sort of like the Zen koan of a tree falling in a forest. If no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
He looked at her. “Do you make a sound if no one can hear you?”
Lily found herself trembling.
“Or are you visible if no one can see you?” He swept his hand, gesturing to the room’s expanse. “All the windows in this suite have been treated so that you can see out, but no one can see in. Like those special windows in interrogation rooms where the police can observe the suspects being questioned without being seen.”
He went back to sipping his champagne.
“I don’t understand why I’m here,” Lily said.
“That is the beginning of the road to understanding, Nataliya.”
Lily wondered if she’d misheard. Had he mistakenly called her Nataliya? It was a name she had heard recently. But where?
“Your situation can potentially provide you a path to enlightenment. There was once a man being pursued by a tiger. His only hope for escape was to leap into a precipice, and as he fell the man was able to grab at a vine. Above, the tiger stared down at him. The man looked below and saw another tiger waiting below. As he hung on to the vine, a mouse began chewing at his only support. And that was when the man saw a plump wild strawberry growing next to the vine. Holding on to the vine with one hand, he was able to pluck the strawberry and eat it. How delicious it tasted.”
He pantomimed the eating of the strawberry. “The man was able to live in the moment. Do you understand?”
Lily wanted to tell him to shove his strawberry up his ass, but she held her tongue, not wanting to provoke him. She got to her feet and took a few steps toward the window before abruptly coming to a stop. The room was high up. Real high. Heights scared her; the sudden onset of vertigo made her feel unsteady and she retreated.
“No need to be afraid. The windows here are more than secure.”
He put down his flute of champagne and smiled. Then he made sure Lily was watching him, and ran as fast as he could at the glass.
Lily couldn’t help herself. “No!” she screamed.
The man hit the glass with his shoulder, ramming into it. The impact could be heard throughout the room, but even louder was the man’s laughter. He bounced from the window, much like a basketball off a backboard, landing on his feet near to the point from where he had taken off.
“That never gets old. Never.” He looked at her. “Again?”
Lily shook her head.
“Do you want to try?”
This time she shook her head even more vigorously.
“Wait until the full moon arrives. There is no better time to window dance. That’s when I turn the music up high. That’s when I howl to my heart’s content. That is when all is revealed.”
The man was now leaning his back against the window. Directly behind him was only space, and the abyss.
As much as Lily didn’t want to know, she had to ask the question. “How high up are we?”
“Such a good question, but the answer is not so easy.”
He turned around, bringing his face up next to the window and looking down. “Two floors below us is the Peak of Heaven Restaurant and Lounge. If you were to ride an elevator up to it, you would push the button for the fifty-eighth floor. But that doesn’t tell the full story. You see, even though everyone likes to say the restaurant is on the fifty-eighth floor, and in TV spots and magazines it’s always described as such, that’s not true. It is one of the secrets of the Yin-Yang. That’s where we are, by the way. You’ve heard of it?”
She shook her head.
“It’s also known as the Y, or the Double Y, although its official name is the Yin-Yang Casino and Convention Center. At the Y, things are not always as they seem. For example, if you were to try and take an elevator to the fourth floor, you would discover there is no button with the number four, just as there is no fourteen, or twenty-four, or thirty-four. In fact, the number four does not exist in this building. If you look at the bank of floors listed on the elevator panel, you will see the next number after thirty-nine is fifty. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tetraphobia.”
It wasn’t a word Lily had ever heard of, but the perv seemed to think it was important. He kept staring at her eyes. It was almost like he was trying to see beneath their surface.
“Repeat it for me.”
Shit, she thought. She couldn’t remember the word. “What was it again?”
“Tetraphobia.”
“Tetraphobia,” she said.
“Perfect. It means the fear of the number four.”
“People are afraid of the number four?”
“Terrified. That sounds silly, doesn’t it? And yet many Asian people are tetraphobic. The number four is bad luck for them. It’s like our superstition over the number thirteen, but much worse. For the Chinese and Koreans and Japanese, the number four is associated with death. To assuage those fears, this building was structured without the number four on any of the floors.”
It sounded batshit crazy to Lily, but no crazier than what she was experiencing.
“In this place we have tried to create a balance between the seen world and the unseen. Are you familiar with the notion of yin and yang?”
Lily shook her head.
“Think of dualism. Some people try to explain it in extremes, like negative and positive, but I see it as something that is more complementary than oppositional. We need light, and we need dark. The north needs a south, the east needs a west. What is fire without water, or winter without summer? For me, the cycle of the moon is an expression of the yin and the yang. From darkness, we proceed into the light, and what is invisible becomes visible.
“We need disorder as much as order, although it is in our nature to try and deny this. The yin and the yang do not define what is good and what is bad. It is a philosophy of understanding the balance between them and the swaying dance that is the universe.”
Lily couldn’t follow the man’s babbling, but something in his words made her remember an image. “Black-and-white fish,” she said.
“That’s right. Yin and yang are often portrayed in black-and-white tai chi fish. We have incorporated that very symbol into the marketing of this property. Every night the fish illuminate the hotel’s walls. You can even see them swim.”
He stared into Lily’s eyes. This predator made her afraid, and she sought to divert him.
“Tetraphobia,” she said, remembering the word central to his lecturing.
“Yes! Fear of the number four.”
His eyes focused, and he seemed to remember himself. “Let me offer a belated introduction. I am Max Miller. Feel free to call me Max, although most call me MM, the owner of the YY. They find that ironic. The initials of my name tell a story in themselves. Each is the thirteenth letter in the alphabet. They fall directly in the middle of twenty-six letters. I have brought you here as my honored guest, Lily.”
He did know her name. Lily would have preferred he didn’t. “Honored?” she asked.
“In a yin-yang kind of way,” he said, pointing one of his thumbnails at her. “You must remember what I said about duality, and the balancing act therein.”
His smile faded. “And given those parameters, I would say welcome to heaven, welcome to hell.”