When the plane stopped, the man and the boy got off and were holding each other around the waist, as though one or perhaps both of them had just recovered from diseases that made it hard to take deep breaths. Back home, the boy would not have been caught dead holding his dad in that manner, but this was out West where none of his friends could see him, and it seemed all right to do so. The man was Harry Towns at a sad time in his life; he had been living apart from his family for awhile, making up all kinds of stories for the boy as to why he had to do so. Except that now it looked as though a divorce might be in the picture and he had told this to his young son, straight out. So the boy kept giving him looks every few minutes and saying, “You all right, Dad?” as though the impending divorce might suddenly show up in his face as a rash. Towns would say, “Sure, how about you?” The boy would answer, “Fine.” They kept reassuring themselves in that way but holding onto each other all the same. Towns did not really know the boy very well. He had taken him for granted, as he might have a fine, reliable watch that would inevitably be right there on his wrist whenever he wanted it. Now that it looked as though the family would break up officially, he had moved forward in a clumsy rush to spend more time with the boy, some of it play-acting, some of it an honest attempt to savor the child and store up moments with him as though building a secret bank account. He had asked the boy where he would like to go for a trip and the boy had picked Las Vegas, aware of the gambling, but probably mixing it up a little with Los Angeles although he would never admit this to his father. Towns could have straightened him out on this, but he didn't, figuring he could sneak in a little gambling himself, and at the same time, see to it that the boy had a terrific time. There were some slot machines in the terminal, but a sign said you couldn't play them unless you were twenty-one or over. The boy was disappointed and wondered whether he could slip a few coins in anyway when no one was looking. His father said all right, that he would act as a lookout, but after the boy had played three quarters, Towns got nervous about it and stopped him. “I think they mean it,” he said. “I think they can lose their license.”
“That's too bad,” said the boy. “Because I know those are lucky ones. I can tell those are the best in Las Vegas.”
“It's too risky,” said Towns. “Right at the airport. Maybe when we get deeper in.”
The reservation story had been dismal, but a friend of Towns had gotten them fixed up in a small, little-known hotel on the edge of town, saying that a famous band-leader always stayed there when the Sands was overbooked. It was called The Regent; they took a cab to it and found it to be a noisy, rugged little place, one with a half-dozen slots and two blackjack tables in the lobby. An Indian with coveralls and a great perspired shine on his face was the only blackjack player. “That fellow's an Indian,” Towns whispered to the boy as they approached the desk. “So what,” said the boy. He was always quick to spot it whenever Towns passed on formally educational little bits.
The room was quite small and Towns was embarrassed about the size of it, feeling that he had let the boy down. But the boy said he loved it; he got into his pajamas and leapt into bed with miracle speed. “It's my favorite hotel in the world,” he said.
‘We're going to have a great time,” said Towns, tucking in the boy and clearing back his hair so that he could kiss his forehead. “I'll kill myself to see to it.”
“You don't have to kill yourself,” said the boy.
Towns turned out the lights and then went into the bathroom to treat his crabs. He had gotten a case of them a week before he had left for Las Vegas and felt terribly degraded about it, mostly because his new girlfriend was from Bryn Mawr and there was a chance he had passed them along to her just before he had left. There was also a distant possibility he had gotten them from her, but he didn't want to think about that. The thing he hated most was the name: crabs. The medicine bottle referred to them as body lice and that was a little better but still didn't do the trick. The doctor said that if he shampooed his body, they would go away in nine out of ten cases, but he couldn't imagine that happening. “Once you have them on the run,” an adventurous friend had told Harry Towns, “they can be amusing.” Maybe that was true if you were bogged down in trench warfare at the Marne, but to Harry Towns they didn't have a single delightful aspect. He just wanted to see them on their way. He soaped himself up with the medicine, stood around for ten minutes, in accordance with the directions, and then hopped into the shower and soaped himself some more. He got the feeling somehow that he was spreading them to other parts of his body, the hair on top of his head, for example. When he got out of the shower, the boy, hollering through the door, asked him why he was taking so long. “I'm just relaxing in here,” he said.
The doctor had told him to get rid of all clothing that had come into contact with the crabs and he did that, throwing away his underwear. He was reminded of a fellow at college who threw away suits of underwear after a single day's wear. And that was without crabs. At the time, Towns couldn't imagine anyone rich enough to toss away underwear after one use; years later, he came to the conclusion that the fellow was unhappy and was trying to catch his unloving parents' attention. Meanwhile, Towns had to figure out how to deal with his suit. He decided to hang onto it and keep his fingers crossed that a stray crab hadn't wandered onto the fabric. He carefully hid the medicine bottle so that the boy wouldn't accidentally come across it and ask what it was. Then he got into a pair of fresh pajamas and slid into bed; the boy was sleeping, and it seemed to Towns that he itched more than ever and that he had roused the crabs to a fury, and sent them scurrying far and wide. He went into the bathroom and, not knowing whether he was awake or dreaming, began to shave off his pubic hair, being very cautious and tentative at first and then warming to the task and slashing it off with great verve. He took some off his stomach, too, and began his chest but then stopped and said the hell with it. He looked at himself in the mirror, standing on a chair so that he could see the shaved areas, and decided he looked very new and young and unusual. It was a little exciting. But then he realized there was no way to get the hair back on; indeed, he had no idea how quickly it would grow back or if it would grow back at all. It still itched like hell, but he knew it couldn't have been the crabs that were doing it and this was comforting. In bed, he realized that he would have to tell his Bryn Mawr girl he had them and wondered how she would react to that. It made him sick to think about it. He decided to tell her he had “body lice” but then changed his mind and went over to straight “crabs.” He would simply hit her with it—“I've got the crabs”—and if she ran away, he would get along without her, even though she was quite gentle and extraordinary. He would then have to find a girl who had these qualities and was also tough-minded enough to accept crabs.
In the morning, the boy was dressed and ready to roll by the time Towns opened his eyes. The itching had kept him awake most of the night, leaving him tired and irritable. It seemed to Towns that getting out of bed and being easy and kind to the boy was going to be the single hardest thing he had ever done in his life. He felt inside his pajamas on the slim chance that he had only dreamed about the shaving, but he was clean as a whistle. “Do you think we can play the slots before breakfast or shall we wait till afterward?” asked the boy. When Towns reminded him that you had to be twenty-one to play them, the boy fell back in astonishment and slapped his head, saying “What?” as though Towns were giving him the information for the first time. All through their trip, the boy was to pretend it was all right for him to play the slots and fall back in amazement when Towns reminded him that he couldn't. Towns didn't know whether to be irritated or pleased by this stunt and decided finally that it was a good thing for the boy to keep trying in the face of ridiculous odds. On the way downstairs, Towns told the boy he was going to be scratching himself a lot on the trip. ‘That's because I've picked up a skin condition,” he told the boy. “It can drive you nuts.”
“I hope it clears up, Dad,” said the boy.
As soon as they hit the street, Towns realized there wasn't going to be much you could do with a young boy in Las Vegas. Gambling was the name of the game; Los Angeles, of course, with Disneyland, would have been the correct choice. To compensate for this, Towns made a big fuss over every little thing they did. When their breakfast eggs were served to them at a small diner, Towns said, “Well, there they are, Las Vegas eggs.” The boy went along with Towns, saying, “Las Vegas eggs, that's great.” But when they went out to the main street and Towns said, “Look at this place, isn't it something?” the boy said, “I don't see what's so wonderful about it. Maybe it is, but it's hard to tell so far.” Towns wondered if they ought to rent a car and drive to Los Angeles after all; but then he decided that the important thing was that they be together and draw very close. He put his arm around the boy's shoulders and the boy, pretending they were the same height, reached way up and got his arm around his father's shoulder. They walked lopsidedly through the main street of Las Vegas that way. The boy was something of a coin collector and when they got to a shop that sold them, Towns took twenty dollars of the money he had more or less set aside for gambling and gave it to the boy so he could buy some special ones.
“I don't know whether I should be taking this away from you, Dad,” said the boy.
“It's all right,” said Towns. “I want to give it to you.”
“But I feel it will hurt you if I take it,” said the boy, looking very sad and sick.
“You'll be making me happy,” said Towns. “My own folks made me feel guilty when they gave me things and I don't want that to happen to you.” Hearing his own words, it seemed to Towns that he was trying to be a wonderful parent in a big hurry, leaping at every opportunity to get across slices of wisdom. So he promised himself he would try to be a little more natural. Towns waited for the boy outside the coin shop, feeling restless about being that close to all the gambling and not having gotten to it quite yet. It would be obscene to make a trip to Las Vegas and not get in any gambling, but he knew he had to feed the boy a certain number of good times before he thought about the tables. The boy came out after a bit and said, “Let's get out of here, Dad. I think I just got a coin that's worth thousands and the man hasn't caught on to it yet. Is there any way he can trace us back to our hotel?”
Towns told the boy he was kidding himself and that it was a lot harder than that to make money in life. “That man's been in the coin business for a long time,” said Towns. “He knows more about it than you and doesn't give away thousands that easily.” More wisdom. The boy said he was sure the coin was worth a fortune, but he said it with little conviction and Towns felt like digging a ditch for himself. Why couldn't he just go along with the kid and let him dream? “Maybe you're right,” he said. “Hell, I don't know much about coins.” But he said it much too late for it to do any good.
That afternoon, Towns, desperate for young-boy activities, signed up for a bus visit to a dam that bridged two states, Nevada and Arizona. When the boy found out they were going to a dam, he said, “I'm not sure I'd love to do that,” and Towns, short with him for the first time, said, “Cut it out. We're going. You don't come all the way out here and not go to their dam.” On the bus, the itching got the best of him and he was sure he had come up with a type of crab that actually ducked down beneath the skin and couldn't be shaved off. He felt sorry for himself, an about-to-be-divorced guy, riding out to a dam with crabs and a young boy. At the dam site, the guide lectured the group about hardships involved in the building of the dam and Towns said to the boy, “They must have had some job. Imagine, coming out here, starting with nothing and having to put up a dam.”
The boy said, “Dad, I'm not enjoying this. I just came out here because you wanted to. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I'm not having that great a time.”
“You can't always have a great time,” said Towns. “Not every second of your life.”
When the guide led the tour group through the bottom of the dam and into Arizona, the boy perked up considerably. “That's great,” said the boy, running around in the small area. “I'm in Arizona. It's great here and that means I've been to another state.” He kept careful track of all the states he'd been to and even counted ones he had just nicked the edges of on car rides.
That night, Towns told the boy to dress up and he would take him to one of the big shows at a hotel on the Strip. He found out the name of one that admitted kids and when they got to it, he gave the headwaiter a huge tip to make sure they were put at a fine table. The head-waiter led them into the dining room, through a labyrinth of tables, getting closer and closer to the stage, the boy turning back to his father several times to say, “Look how close we're getting. How come he's taking us to such a great table?” The headwaiter put them at ringside right up against the stage, and the boy said, “This is fabulous. He must think we're famous or something.” Towns smiled and said, “He must.” He didn't mention anything about the tip, but after they had eaten shrimp cocktails, he told the boy he had given the headwaiter some money, trampling on the dream again. “Oh,” said the boy, a little forlorn. There was just nothing Towns could do to control himself. On the other hand, maybe it was wise to fill the boy in on tipping behavior. Otherwise, he might wonder, later on, why he wasn't getting fabulous tables on his own hook. Towns had been to Las Vegas several years back and he remembered the women being a lot prettier. “The girls look a little hard, don't they?” he said to the boy, realizing he was trying to draw his son out on his feelings about women. “They're okay,” said the boy, who didn't seem to want to dig into the subject.
The show was a huge, awkward one with plenty of razzle-dazzle. When it was over, the boy said it was the greatest show he had ever seen and wondered why they didn't bring a show like that to New York. “They might,” said Towns, “and you'd be able to say you'd seen it first out here.” The casino was bulging with activity, Towns feeling the lure and magnetism of it. “I wouldn't mind doing a little gambling,” he said to the boy and saw that he was asking his permission. He did that often and wondered if it was proper behavior. Once, they had gone “mountain climbing” on a giant slag heap in their town. The boy was great at it, shooting right to the top, but Towns looked back over his shoulder, got panicky, and the boy had to reach back and grab him. Were you allowed to have your son take over, even momentarily, and become your dad? Towns decided that you were, much later on, but he was getting into it a bit early.
“What if you gambled and lost your money?” the boy asked.
“It doesn't make any difference,” said Towns. “You just play for pleasure and never gamble more than you can afford. That way you don't feel bad if you lose.” Towns was actually the kind of gambler who fell into deep depressions when he lost a quarter and even got depressed when he won. It wasn't that wonderful for him when he broke even either. Once and for all, he had to stop telling the boy things that seemed nice but that he really didn't believe.
“I couldn't stand it if I lost anything,” said the boy. ‘Therefore I don't think you should gamble.”
Towns asked him if he thought he could keep busy for a while and the boy said, “Sure, Dad,” with great cheerfulness, but then he asked Towns exactly how long he would be.
“About an hour,” said Towns.
‘That long, eh?” said the boy.
He went off to roam around the lobby and Towns sat down to play blackjack with a dealer named Bunny. The dealer was slow, and Towns liked that, but he was aware of having to keep an eye on the boy and felt as though only half of him was sitting at the table. The boy would disappear and then bob up between a couple of slots or behind a plant, a duck in a shooting gallery. Towns was edgy as he made his bets, as though some tea was boiling and any second he would have to run out and turn off the gas. He told himself it didn't matter, all that counted was whether the cards came or not, but he didn't believe that for a second. He felt that the boy, running around the lobby, had a strong effect on the cards he was drawing. A dark-haired, hard-looking woman played at the seat on his right; she was attractive, although Towns felt she was just a fraction over the line and into hooker territory. He wondered whether it would be possible to dash up to a room with her and still nip back to the tables before the hour was up. That arrangement would be just fine for a Las Vegas hooker. Then he remembered the shaving and knew it wouldn't work out. Hooker or not, she would be experienced enough to know something wasn't exactly right. Towns forgot whether he was winning or losing. The boy called him away from the tables at one point and said, “Dad, I don't want to disturb your game, but a man wants to kill me.” Towns knew that the boy had a way of dramatizing routine events, but he followed him nevertheless to a Spanish busboy who leaned against the wall of the dining room and didn't back up for a second when he saw Towns coming. “You bothering the kid?” said Towns, standing very close to the man. “That's right,” said the busboy, “he spoiling the rhythm of the place.”
“Just lay off him,” said Towns, pushing a finger up against the man's face. He had planned to do just that no matter what the man said.
“Tell him to behave then,” said the busboy, not backing up an inch.
“I'll take care of him and you lay off him,” said Towns, breaking away from the man, as though in victory.
“Do you think you could have taken him?” asked the boy as they walked back to the casino.
“I don't know,” said Towns. “I wasn't thinking about that.”
“I've never seen you really fight a guy,” said the boy. “I think I'd like that.”
“I've had some fights,” said Towns. “The trick is to get what you want without fighting. Any animal can fight. Any time you do, you automatically lose.”
“I think I'd like to see you do it once,” said the boy, and Towns realized that once again he was saying things to the boy that he hated. If someone had given him the kind of advice he was passing along to the child, he would have vomited. He was feeding him stuff he felt he was expected to feed him. But who expected it?
“Are you going to gamble some more?” asked the boy. “Your hour's up.”
“It's a little hard when you have someone along,” said Towns.
“Do you understand why they don't let children gamble?” the boy asked. Towns started to tell him it led to other things like missing school and crime, but then he said, “Strike that. It's garbage. I don't know why they don't let kids gamble. It would probably be all right.” Towns felt proud of his honesty, but the boy didn't seem to care for it much and said, “I thought you knew the answer to things like that.”
It suddenly occurred to Towns that it might be a good idea for them to spend their two remaining days at the giant plush Strip hotel. On a hunch, he asked the clerk whether there were rooms available and the clerk said yes, there had been a few checkouts. Towns and the boy made a dash back to their small hotel in town where they packed quickly, the boy saying, “I don't know about this. I liked it here. And I don't want to hurt this hotel's feelings.”
“You can't hurt a hotel's feelings,” Towns told him. They checked into an enormous, heavily gadgeted room in the Strip hotel and the boy said, “I admit this is great, but the other one was great, too.”
The hotel was bigger and cleaner and noisier than the other one, but when you took a careful look at it there wasn't that much more for boys to do at it. Towns checked on some saddle horses the next day, but nobody knew where the stable was or how to get to it. He heard about a college nearby and made a feeble attempt to sell it to the boy, saying, “Imagine, a Las Vegas college. I wonder what it would be like,” but the boy didn't even nibble at that one. Towns knew that the swimming pool was closed, but he led the boy out to it anyway; they took off their shirts and sat in chairs alongside the empty concrete pool.
“Is this what you want to do?” asked the boy.
“Just for a while.”
“What good's a suntan?”
“They're great,” said Towns. “You've forgotten that it's cold back East. It's good to take advantage of things like this.”
“I'll get one if you say so, Dad,” said the boy. “I don't really want one, but I'll get one.”
They ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant that night. On the way to it, Towns took a wistful look at the casino and his son did, too. “Maybe I can play the slots at this one,” said the boy.
“I thought maybe since this was a big hotel on the Strip they let boys play.”
“They don't,” said Towns. He thought of a tough friend of his who had four little girls and almost died because he didn't have a son; he had the feeling that somehow his friend would see to it, if he had a son, that the boy got to play the slots. And Towns wasn't able to pull it off. At the Chinese restaurant, Towns told the boy he loved Chinese food so much that he often thought he could eat it every night of the week. The boy took hold of that, saying, “Every night? For the rest of your life?”
“That's right,” said Towns. “I think I've had enough at the end of each meal, but the next day I'm ready to have some more.”
“That's amazing,” said the boy, who was thoroughly pleased by the thought. “I never knew that about you.”
The Chinese restaurant had a girl singer who did old Jerome Kern tunes. After she went offstage, Towns, who knew his boy had a singing voice, said to him, “Why don't you get up there and sing a few songs?”
“Are you kidding,” said the boy. “Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? I'd rather be shot dead than get up there.”
“You're a singer, aren't you?” said Towns.
“I sing,” said the boy, “but are you kidding? You must be crazy, Dad.”
Towns said he had a mother who pulled that kind of stuff on him—so he was pulling a little on his son. Only his mother really meant it, whereas Harry Towns was just goofing. The boy loved hearing things about the way it had been for Towns when he was young.
On the way back to their hotel, Towns spotted a bowling alley and he suggested they try a few games. It was midnight and he wanted to get at the gambling, but he thought it was the right thing to do and he was proud of himself for the way he was putting himself out for the child.
“I'll bowl with you,” said the boy, “but only if you promise it's what you really want to do.”
“I promise,” said Towns.
The alley was a giant one, completely deserted, and Towns asked the proprietor if anybody ever bowled in Las Vegas. “Not too many,” said the proprietor. While they were selecting their balls, the boy said, “How come you just walk up to people and ask them questions?” and Towns answered, “It's a style of mine. I like to find out things. So I figure that's the best way.” “I could never do that,” said the boy. “That'll change,” Towns assured him.
The boy tried several of the balls for size, and after a while declared that there was no ball just right for him in the entire alley and that he probably wouldn't be able to do any great bowling. Towns did not know how to keep score and neither did the boy, so he asked the proprietor to help them out; but even after the old man explained it with great care he still didn't know how to keep score. It was one of those things he knew he would never learn as long as he lived. So he kept a sort of rough score. Towns went over a hundred, by rough count, in the first game, topping the boy, who was amazed and said, “You never told me you were a great bowler. Incredible. And you probably haven't bowled in years either. If you kept it up, you could win thousands of prizes.” Towns didn't want to win any prizes. All he wanted to do was get back to the casino and take a try at the tables. He planned to take it easy and let the boy beat him in the second game, but when they got into it, he abandoned his plan and tried as hard as he could and wound up beating the kid again. He always did that with the boy, even in checkers. He just wasn't easygoing enough to let the boy win a few. He told himself it was all right, because when the boy really beat him legitimately, it would mean something. But that was bullshit. It would be better to take it easy once in a while. Of course, it was no picnic finding just the right level— when you had a son. Towns had a feeling he was working too hard at it.
“I'll never be able to beat you as long as I live,” said the boy. “Yes, you will,” said Towns. “One day you'll go past me and you'll stay ahead forever. All I ask, is that when I become a bent-over old man you won't come along and kick me in the head.” He meant it as a joke, but the boy didn't see it that way and said, “Are you kidding, Dad? When I'm older I'll give you every cent I have.”
“Just be a good kid,” said Towns, “and that's all I'll ever ask.”
After the third game, the boy seemed to be settling in for an all-night session. Towns took him by the shoulders and said, “Son, I really would like to do some gambling.” The boy took it very well, saying, “Why didn't you say so, Dad? I thought you loved it here.”
“I did,” said Towns, “but I think I've had my fill.”
They returned to the hotel and when the boy was undressed, he said, “What do I do if someone smashes down the door and gets me?”
“Someone won't,” said Towns.
“What if you lose?” asked the boy, with real terror in his eyes. It was as though his father was going off to war.
“Then I lose.” said Towns. “Meanwhile I've had a lot of fun.”
He closed the door and even though he knew it was a sure sign he was going to lose he actually found himself trotting down the hall to the casino. He looked for the slow dealer named Bunny and when he found him, he sat down at the table, got some chips, and, with all the exhilaration of a new thief with his hands on some jewelry, began to gamble. Bunny gave him plenty of time to think and he began to win and at the same time to dispense advice to a fellow next to him who wasn't doing that well.
“Blackjack is the only game where you've got a break. The casino gets its edge from people who really don't know the game, women, for example, who just throw their money away and will split pictures every time they get them.”
“Fine,” said the man next to him.
Towns played for about three hours, winning four hundred dollars and then stopping, with the idea that he would return on the following night, his last one, and try to bump his winnings into some significant money. He had pulled that off once, in Europe, probably the only time he could think of when he had had no pressing need for the money. He won at roulette, not knowing much about the game, and with no particular system. He won thousands of dollars, a lifetime of luck seemingly crowded into those few weeks of playing in French casinos. He bought a German car-boat with the money, one you could drive up to the edge of the water and then drive in and have it become a boat so that you were driving through the water. And then he sold it. There just weren't enough places where you could drive off a highway and into the water. You had to be living in Canada somewhere, not around New York City.
Before Towns left the table, he told the man next to him that the trick in gambling is to get some of the casino's money and play on that. The man seemed relieved to see him go. Towns cashed in his winnings and when he got back to the hotel he woke the boy at four in the morning. It was one of those things he knew was wrong to do, but he couldn't resist it.
“How'd you do?” asked the boy.
“Won four hundred,” said Towns. “And fifty of it is yours, for coins.”
“That's not fair,” said the boy. “It's your winnings.”
“I want to do it for you,” said Towns. “You were my partner.”
“What if you'd lost?”
“That's different,” said Towns.
“Ill take it,” said the boy, “but I don't think it's right. I didn't do anything.”
“You're my son,” said Towns.
They slept late their last full day in Las Vegas and when they awakened in the early afternoon, Towns felt compelled to tell the boy a little about what had happened between the boy's father and mother. “Sometimes people get married young and maybe they shouldn't have and then all of a sudden they're not getting along at all.” Of course that wasn't telling him much. He wanted to tell the boy about the Bryn Mawr girl, but if he knew anything he knew that was the wrong thing to do although he was certain the boy would like her. If not on the first meeting, then on the second for sure.
“I'd want to stay with you,” said the boy.
“No, you wouldn't,” said Towns, but he was pleased the boy had said that. How could he not be?
Towns discovered a gym in the hotel, and after lunch they went into it for a workout. When the boy had stripped down and gone into the workout room, the owner said, “That's terrific the way the kid comes in here. When he grows up he'll have a helluva build on him because he's starting now.” Because of the crab situation, Towns was careful to keep himself wrapped in a towel. The gym had some unfamiliar apparatus and he was scared out of his wits that the boy would get tangled up in it and kill himself, or at best hurt his trick knees. All he wanted was for them to work out and get the hell out of there, safe and sound. He hardly did any exercise and spent most of his time warning the boy about the apparatus. A massive black fighter skipped rope in the middle of the floor; Towns recognizing him immediately as a main-eventer who had suffered an important reversal in recent months. Towns moved protectively toward his son, and when the fighter left, he told the child he had been working out right next to a famous fighter. “Why didn't you say so?” said the boy. “I would have asked him what happened in that last fight.” Everyone in the gym got a kick out of that, and the owner said, “That's all you would have needed.” Towns went in to take a shower, and after a moment, heard a loud noise and then some unnatural stillness. Without looking, he knew what had happened. He walked into the gym and saw his son's body stretched out with a heavy weight over his face. The owner and the masseur were kneeling beside him, the owner saying, “See what happens,” and the masseur adding, “Don't move him, you never move them.” Towns took his time walking over to the boy, aware that it would look good if he came off as a calm, clear-thinking father. He picked the plate off the boy's face, expecting to see only half a head under there. The boy's eyes were closed and his right cheekbone had an unnatural color, but there was no blood. The boy opened his eyes and asked, “Am I all right? I can't tell. I think I was unconscious for a while, my first time.” Towns said he had probably overloaded one side of a barbell with the result that the heavy side tipped over on his head. “It happens to every fellow in a gym,” said Towns, “except that the weight doesn't always hit them the way it did you. It'll probably never happen to you again.” The boy was delighted that he had been unconscious. “In all my years that never happened to me,” he told the owner. The owner said the boy had just been shaken up and that he would be fine, but Towns wasn't so sure and figured the owner was making light of it to fend off a possible lawsuit. He asked for the name of a doctor and when the owner gave him one he called the fellow who said, “Listen, I'm eating dinner thirty miles away.” Towns said it was an emergency and the doctor asked, “Were any bones driven into the skull?” When Towns told him he couldn't tell, the doctor said he would meet them in the hotel room. Towns carried the boy up to the room, feeling terrible about what had happened; here he'd watched his son like a hawk and then just two seconds after he'd turned away the boy wound up with weights on his head. Why was he taking his boy to gyms and casinos? Didn't other fathers take their sons camping and duck-hunting? Next thing you knew they'd be passing hookers back and forth. Wait till a judge got wind of the way Towns was bringing up the kid. They'd let him see his son once a year, if he was lucky. “I'm dizzy,” said the boy, as Towns put him on the bed, “but I think I'll be all right, except that maybe I won't be.” When the doctor arrived, he looked at the boy and said, “The bone hasn't been driven into the skull. Hell be okay, except for the banged-up place.” It was a terrible thing to think, but Towns felt guilty about the injury not being a little more serious—to justify taking the doctor away from his dinner on a thirty-mile trip. “I'm positive I'm going into a coma,” said the boy. The doctor laughed and when Towns tried to pay him, he put up the palm of his hand in a negative gesture and said, “That's all right, I've got a boy.” When the doctor left, the boy said, “I'm sorry to be spoiling your good time,” to which Towns replied, “Are you kidding? I'm just thrilled you're all right.” Towns packed his face down with ice and sat with the boy while he dozed on and off. If the bone had indeed been tucked back in the boy's skull it would have entailed staying in Las Vegas for days, maybe weeks, or possibly some special kind of plane to get him back East; he was relieved they weren't going to get into that. The boy was good-looking, but in a curious, unconventional way; Towns decided the banged-up cheekbone wasn't going to hold him back much. It would be just another curious feature adding to his curious good looks. The boy said he was a little dizzy and had no appetite so Towns simply sat with him until long after the dinner hour. They were leaving the next morning and Towns wondered if he could get in one last session at the tables and try to boost his winnings to an important level, like that time in France. Only this go-round, he wouldn't buy a German car-boat. He would salt it away, about half for his son. Towns would hand it over to him when he was twenty-one and say, “Here you are, kid, five grand—do anything you like with it.” And that would include gambling and hookers, if the boy wanted to go that way. The important thing was not to put any strings on it. When it was close to midnight, he suggested to the kid that he might like to take one last shot at the tables. Appearing to be startled, the boy said, “You would do that? Don't do it, Dad. I was unconscious for a while, the first time in my life.” Towns said okay, okay, he wouldn't leave him, and the boy dozed off again. When he awakened, a fraction after midnight, Towns brought it up again. “And don't forget, you're my partner,” he said. “If I win, I'll give you a lot of it for coins.”
“Okay,” said the boy, “but you've got to use some of my money.” He sat up a little, reached into his wallet, and took out twenty-five dollars of the fifty his father had given him. Towns took it, putting it in a separate pocket so as to make sure not to gamble it at any cost. They had to get up at six in the morning to make their plane and Towns promised to be back by two at the latest. He gave the boy a fresh icepack and went off to look for Bunny. He had always said that he could either take gambling or leave it, but now, for the first time in his life, he wasn't so confident about it. When he was in the area of a casino, there was no stopping him. He made sure to be in the area of one some four or five times a year. To a certain extent, when he was alone, he did get some pure pleasure out of gambling. He could sit down at a blackjack table at eight in the evening, get up at four in the morning, and not know what had happened to the time. Sipping brandies and pulling on a delicious cigar or two. Sometimes, when he was ahead, he would slip in a quick hooker and then saunter back to the tables. They had a new kind of semihooker in Vegas, dazed girls from Northern California who would straggle through Vegas on weekends to pick up some cash and then push on. Some were startling in their beauty and almost all were junkies. They were both better and worse than your normal Vegas hooks. They didn't hold you up on the price. It depended on whether you liked dazed and beautiful Northern California junkies or your died-in-the-wool Vegas showgirl types. This was at a time of his life when Harry Towns didn't think much about hookers. He just more or less took them on. That would change later. Of course, none of this applied if you had a son along. Ideally, it was not a good idea to have anyone along when you were gambling. Even a supportive girlfriend. It was a private thing to do and you had to concentrate. Besides, you had all the company you needed, right there at the table. And don't forget the dealer. And the cards.
As on all other nights when he was to win, Harry Towns started off dropping some. But then he made it back and when he went ahead, he began slowly to convert his five-dollar chips into twenty-fives until he was playing exclusively with the expensive chips. Half the fun of the twenty-fives was the extra attention you got from the other players; often you got a little crowd around you. By one in the morning, Harry Towns had a good stack of the high-priced chips; he counted them on the sly, considering it bush league to do it openly, and saw that he was ahead eleven hundred dollars. Anything over a thousand started to be “significant money” to Towns, who began to think of going ahead as much as five or even ten thousand. A comedian started to tell jokes to the crowd in a lounge behind Towns's table; he was sure this would throw him off, but it was one of those nights and he kept winning all the same. And he wasn't that good a player. For example, he never went out of his way to wait for the “anchor” seat where you could survey the board and have a somewhat better chance of predicting the next card to come up. He always took insurance which, statistically, was a bad bet. He just liked the idea of being insured. And he was too interested in the other players. If he saw a man with terrific hands, he would say, “I'll bet you work with your hands,” and find out that the fellow was a champion three-wall handball player. So he would know that, but his attention would have been diverted for a split second, and that tended to widen the casino's edge.
He heard his name paged over the loudspeaker. He thought of leaving his chips where they were and telling the dealer to hold his place—in the style of the real gamblers—but when it came down to it he didn't trust the people at the table not to snatch some; so he gathered them up in his pockets and went to take the call. It was the boy on the hotel phone saying his father had promised to come back to the room at two. “I did, but it's only one-thirty,” said Towns.
“No it isn't,” said the boy, starting to cry. “It's later than that. It's almost morning. Look what you're doing to me.” Towns said it really wasn't two yet, and could he please hold out until it was. “I know what I promised and I'm sticking to it. I'm winning a lot now.” When he got back to the table, someone had taken his seat and he had to sit a few spots over on the end. Bunny smiled at him, as though he knew all about the boy with icepacks in the room. Towns bet heavily and indeed shocked himself by winning a few hundred more; but then, like a veteran fighter coming on in the late rounds, the dealer, with slow, kind, almost remorseful fingers, began inevitably to grind Towns down and take it all back. He took Towns's first-night winnings, the money he was ahead for the night, and five hundred more that he needed badly. When Towns's last chip had been cleared, the dealer said, “One of those nights. I thought you had me there for a while.”
“I didn't,” said Towns. “The thing with me is that I need a lot of time. When I rush I get killed.”
When he got back to the room, the boy was cranky and irritable and said his head was killing him. Towns easily matched him in irritability. “I was winning a bundle until you called me,” he said. He tossed the boy his twenty-five dollars and said, “Anyway, here's your money. I didn't lose that.”
“Yes, you did,” said the boy. “And I don't want it.” The boy started to cry and said, “I was dying in here and you were out there.” Towns said he was sorry and that he would stay with him now. When the boy had cried himself to sleep, Towns smoked a cigarette in the dark, feeling very dramatic about it, and then went into the bathroom to see if his hair had grown back. There was a little shadow around his groin, but he could see that it was going to be a long haul. He checked to make sure the boy was sleeping and then went into the bathroom again where he made a long-distance call to the Bryn Mawr girl, paying no attention to what time of day or night it was in New York. She was drowsily awake and he told her about losing the money and what had happened to the boy. “And I've got body lice,” he said. The girl laughed hysterically and when she had recovered for a moment she said, “You've got crabs. That's the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.” He knew it was going to be all right with her and that made him feel better; but when he came out of the bathroom and looked at the sleeping boy, he felt like a thief for having made a call to the girl when the kid was probably hoping and praying he would get back together with his mother. Towns couldn't sleep at all and decided the trip had been a bust. The dam, the bowling alley, dropping five hundred, and now bringing the kid back with a broken face.
The boy evidently didn't see it that way. He was cheerful when he awakened and said, “Do we have to go back today? I think I love Las Vegas more than anyplace in the world.” That helped Towns out a little, but not much. “How come you loved it?” he asked. “We hardly did anything. And look what happened to your face.”
“I can't explain it,” said the boy, hugging his father. “I just loved it. And I wish we didn't have to go home.”
Towns saw that the boy was really saying he had loved being away with his father, eating together, going places with him, anyplace at all, sleeping in the same hotel room. All that did was make Towns feel worse; he hated himself for not having shown the boy a better time, for having the crabs, for calling up Bryn Mawr girls in the middle of the night, for not knowing how to get back with the boy's mother. When they were packed, Towns settled his account at the front desk and noticed that the doctor's bill had been tacked onto it. They got a cab in front of the hotel and Towns told the driver to take them to the airport. “Oh hell,” said the driver, his shoulders slumping. “I don't want to go to the airport.” The boy looked at his father with a dumbfounded expression and then began to laugh so hard that Towns got worried about his cheekbone. “Where would you like to go?” Towns asked the driver, playing along for the boy's benefit. This time the child laughed so hard he had to hold his face which must have pained him. Towns knew the boy was on to a story he would talk about for years, a driver who only liked to go to places he wanted to go to. Towns and his son shared a whole bunch of those. The driver finally turned on the ignition and started off along the Strip. Towns put his arm around the child and asked him how he felt, and the boy said not too bad, but that the day he turned twenty-one he was going to come out to Las Vegas, maybe with a friend or two, so he could gamble. “That's a ways off,” said Towns, but when he said it he realized it wasn't that far off after all. And that there wasn't too much time. Before he turned around, the boy would be in his teens, away at college, maybe in the service, and God knows what after that. With a divorce coming up, the time with the boy would probably be lumped into weekends and maybe a little bit of the summer. He wished, at that moment, he could start the Vegas trip all over again. If he could only do that, he would forget about the casino entirely and spend every second with the boy, and really show him a time. Maybe they would go camping. He'd buy a couple of sleeping bags and figure out a way to put up one of those fucking tents. When they got to the center of town and began to drive past some of the cheaper casinos, Towns suddenly told the driver to stop in front of one of them. “What for?” asked the driver. “Just stop,” said Towns. He made sure to say it in a measured way so the driver would make no mistake about how serious he was. When the cab stopped, Towns got out with the boy and walked up to the cashier of a corner casino where he changed the boy's twenty-five dollars into quarters and halves.
“What's that for?” asked the boy.
“For you,” said Towns. “To play the slots.”
“I thought I wasn't allowed to,” said the boy, standing in front of a quarter machine.
“Just play,” said Towns.
“I don't know, Dad,” said the boy. “What about him?” He pointed to a uniformed man approaching them from the rear of the casino.
“I see him” said Towns.
“I don't feel right, Dad,” said the boy, putting in his first quarter and pulling the lever.
“It's all right,” said Towns. “Play.” And he took a position with his back to the boy, his legs a fraction bent, his elbows close to his sides, as though he were cradling a machine gun and would kill any sonofabitch that dared to come within ten feet of the two of them.