We’re only going to be gone for a day, but it takes me a long time to pack because I don’t know what to pack. I’ve never flown anywhere before and I don’t know what to expect. It’s April, I think, but I don’t know what the weather’s gonna be like in Las Vegas.
I pull my backpack out of the bottom drawer and fill it with random clothes. The photograph stuffed in the lining crinkles when I shove in my pants, and I stop for a moment to take it out and look at it.
The girl in the picture—the one who saved me from the car accident—looks happy. I’m smiling, too, but I look a little scared. The water in the background is almost white like the beach; the hills and mountains on the other side are brown. There’s still nothing that looks familiar.
But I don’t know what there is near Las Vegas.
When I get out to the patio, Damon’s already there, waiting. He’s got an actual suitcase. When he sees me he looks up, raises an eyebrow. “T’sup.”
I’m going to have to spend the next day with him. I raise my chin at him and sit down on a lounge chair nearby. “You been to Vegas before?”
He looks startled by the question. He shakes his head. “Nah.”
“It’s pretty chill.” I don’t say chill. I don’t know where that came from.
“You’ve been there?”
I shrug, nod. “Yeah. With my mom a while back. We drove there from LA.”
He smiles. “Longer drive from Ohio.”
“That where you’re from?”
He nods. “Yeah. New Lebanon, actually.”
“New Lebanon?” I squint at him.
“It’s small, man. Between Dayton and the Indiana border.”
“I’m from LA, went to Belmont High School.” I immediately feel dumb because it’s not like he has any idea what Belmont is.
“You play anything?”
I shake my head. “Nah.” Then: “Handball, but . . .” Then: “You?”
He nods. “Football, but I played basketball and baseball, too.”
I nod. I’ve watched him play one-on-one with Calvin. He’s good enough that I wouldn’t have played him if I’d been invited.
“Mr. Mata?”
I turn around. Bishop is standing at the entrance to the Long Hall. He waves me over and when I reach him, he hands me a bag. “What’s this?”
“Your waiter’s uniform and the ID you’ll need to get into the hall.”
I take the bag and open it, pull out the ID. “How will I know what to do?” I put the ID in my wallet.
He looks at me like I’m stupid. “You don’t have to. You’ve already done it.” He turns around and walks back into the Long Hall, leaving me holding the bag.
When I return, Damon looks at the bag. “What’s that?” But he doesn’t wait for an answer. “Never mind. I don’t need to know.”
Richard comes out the gym door, sees us, smiles. “Grab your gear.” He points to the hallway door. “We’re hitting the road.”
Richard drives us back to the city, and to an airport that looks too small to be the main one. “What airline are we flying?” I ask to try and sound like I’m not completely new to this.
“Not an airline,” Richard says, pulling up to a security gate. “You’re flying on Jeff’s plane.”
I keep quiet and examine the planes around us. There are a bunch with propellers off to one side and on the other there’s a scattering of private jets. Richard pulls up near a big one with six windows. There’s a staircase leading up to a door, and a woman standing at the top watching us. When Richard gets out of the car, she smiles and waves. I sneak a glance at Damon. He looks as nervous as I feel, which makes me feel better.
“You ever flown before?” I ask him.
He doesn’t take his eye off the plane, but nods quickly. “Once.” Then: “Had to fly to Wisconsin for a Great Lakes Division tournament.” He turns to look at me. “You?”
I shake my head. “Nah.”
Richard’s talking to the lady from the plane. She gestures to the car and laughs. Richard turns around and rolls his eyes before waving for us to get out of the car.
“You ready?” I ask Damon.
He nods. “Yeah,” he says, then grabs his bag from the seat between us. “Let’s go.”
The lady on the plane introduces herself as Claudia. She shakes each of our hands as we walk on board. She’s all smiles and chat, but I’m so distracted by the inside of the plane that it’s hard to even be polite. There’re couch-chairs facing each other across wooden tables. There’s a bench seat along one side wall of the plane that faces the windows across from it. It doesn’t even make sense until I notice the huge screen that’s lifted like a shade above the windows.
“Damn.” I look at Damon.
He’s already looking at me. He smiles. “This is different from the last time I flew.”
Claudia tells us about the fridge and snack center and that she’ll be taking care of us for the duration of our flight. We both nod.
She tells us to get buckled in because we’re ready to take off.
As soon as the plane starts to move, my excitement shifts and I’m suddenly nervous. It’s not just me, either. Damon’s looking scared. “You scared?” I ask him, hoping he’ll say yes.
He shakes his head, but then there’s a thump somewhere on the plane and he jumps. He laughs. “Little bit.”
“Me too.”
He looks at me. “Why are you scared?” He points at me. “You’re guaranteed to survive—you’ve been seen.”
He’s right. I feel myself relax. “Yeah.” Then: “You can relax, too. It didn’t look like I’d recently survived a plane crash.”
The plane takes off. The movement pushes me into my seat like I’m on a coaster at Six Flags, and then we’re in the air. The plane pushes up through the clouds quickly, and then we’re above them and the sun is shining bright. I smile, feeling deep relief. I didn’t even realize how much I missed the sunshine. It seems like it’s always cloudy in Seattle, so it’s literally been months since I’ve seen it.
Claudia shows us how to bring down the big screen, and Damon and I spend the flight playing games. He may be better at real sports, but I absolutely own him in Madden.
The screen goes up when we start heading down toward Las Vegas, and we go back to the chairs and stare out all the windows. I point out the things I recognize—the Luxor pyramid and the Stratosphere—I tell him about going up there with my mom when I was a kid. Talking about it makes me a little bit emotional, but he doesn’t say anything.
A car meets us when the plane stops, and Claudia says that it’s going to take us to our residence. I’m expecting a regular hotel on the strip, but when the car finally pulls out of traffic, it’s into a driveway that takes us under the front of a mall and then out the other side of it and drops us at a double-door entrance that looks way too small for the building it’s attached to.
The car door is opened by a black guy in a suit and tie who greets us by name and tells us that we’re in Sabazios’s personal suite. He takes our bags and points us to the front desk through the double door where there’s a white guy looking at us. When the desk guy sees me look at him, he smiles, gestures for us to come inside.
He gives us each a key card and points us to the elevator. I go to swipe my card but Damon beats me to it. He smiles at me.
“Dick,” I say, but I’m smiling, too.
When the elevator door opens, I’m expecting a hallway, but there isn’t one. It opens right into the living room of an enormous apartment.
“Jesus,” Damon mutters.
I look around again. “This is all for us?”
The desk guy laughs. “Mr. Sabazios was very clear that you two should be given full access.” He points at a box on the wall. “My name is Michael, and if you need anything, just press the button on the box and I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”
I nod, barely looking at him. The wall across from us is all windows and we’re looking out at the tops of all the buildings at New York-New York and above the whole strip. The mountains in the distance are lit red with the sunset and the whole place feels like a magical kingdom. “Thanks.”
“I’ll let you two get settled.”
When the elevator door closes, we both stand still for a moment, but then Damon jogs over to the couch and dumps his bag on it before walking around to the partial wall that separates the kitchen and dining area from the living area.
He says something, but I can’t hear him. He’s too far away.
I take off in the other direction and find three bedrooms, each with its own enormous bathroom. I choose the one where the bathroom has a wall of windows across from the tub because it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I dump my backpack on the desk and flop down on the bed, which is bigger than my whole bedroom was at home.
Damon steps into the doorway a moment later. “You asshole, you took the only one with windows in the bathroom.”
I laugh. “I left you the one with the hot tub, though.”
“There’s one with a hot tub?”
I point down the hallway. “Last one.”
He nods. “Alright, then.” He takes his bag down the hall, but comes back a minute later and stands there.
“What?”
He shrugs. “You tell me, bro.” Then: “It wasn’t my glide that landed us here.”
I think about it. I actually don’t know anything except that I’m supposed to be in the convention center sometime before lunch tomorrow.
I sit up. “I don’t think it’s until tomorrow. We’re free tonight.” I freeze. “We don’t have any money.” It’s been so long since I’ve needed any I didn’t even think about it until right now. “How are we supposed to—“
But Damon’s holding up an envelope. Our names are written on it in black marker. He wags it and then dips inside and pulls out a small stack of hundred-dollar bills. “I think we’re set.”
I hop off the bed and go to inspect the envelope and the money. He hands it to me. “A thousand dollars. Ten hundreds. We each take five.”
I nod and count off five, put them in my pocket, then rethink things and redistribute two to my sock, one to my left pocket and two to my right. Damon watches me, then does the same thing with his five.
We eat at the Hard Rock and spend hours just walking around, looking at New York, Paris, the MGM, the Monte Carlo, and the Luxor. People are everywhere. It’s loud and crowded and dirty and it smells like booze and smoke and it’s enthralling. Damon’s focused on playing at the tables, but he’s not twenty-one and neither am I. When we try at the MGM, we get booted before we can even sit because we can’t show ID. The best we can do is play slots at New York, but that’s only fun for a little while when I realize I’ve dumped $200 into them and it’s only been an hour.
Eventually we head back to the apartment, but not before Damon manages to convince a guy to buy us a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
Back in the apartment, Damon makes us Jack and Cokes and we sit in the living room drinking them, staring out at the world and talking.
He hasn’t seen his daughter in two years. He came to the compound because they promised him money to take care of her forever. He sends money home every week, but he can’t tell them where he is or where it comes from.
The more we drink, the sadder and angrier he becomes.
I tell him about my parents, about Pete. I tell him that everybody thinks I did it, and how it makes me feel. I get angry, too.
But we’re angry with the world, not with each other.