The Mirror Thief(6)
Curtis watched Damon’s Audi pull out of the lot and disappear up the onramp toward the Whitman Bridge. He finished his slice of apple pie along with the chocolate napoleon that Damon had barely touched, ordered himself another coffee, and sat not reading his newspaper until nearly rush hour, when he walked back to the subway. The next morning he awoke at four with Danielle’s alarm, listened as she dressed and left for work, and lay sleepless and staring at the sky through the miniblinds as it went from black to red to yellow to white. Then he rose and cleaned up and caught the bus down to Collingdale, where he bought the gun.
South of Fashion Show Mall the casinos are bigger, busier now that it’s later in the day, and everything takes longer. By eight o’clock he’s past the airport, leapfrogging places that seem unlikely, feeding quarters to the southbound trolley as it carries him from block to block to block. He stops at the buffet at the Tropicana to load up on prime rib and peeled shrimp by the glow of heatlamps and coral-reef aquariums, then sits for an hour above the deserted pool and watches the reflections of palmtrees nod in the wind-purled water. Once his food has settled, he humps it east to the H?tel San Rémo, west to the Orleans, south to the Luxor and Mandalay Bay.
On the long ride back to his own hotel he nods off for a second, then jolts awake, his heart skittering. Outside the streaked bus windows the city seems different, alive in a way that it wasn’t before. There’s steady foot traffic along the boulevard, laughing and shouting and acting out, and the street is full of high-end rental cars, windows down, stereos rattling. Stretch limousines idle at curbside, sly and circumspect, while the sidewalk procession slides backlit across their mute black windshields. Time seems to pass in a hurry. Curtis thinks of bad places he’s been, of nights he’s spent along razor-taped perimeters, eyeing burning wells and distant winks of small-arms fire. Very different from this. But the same nervous thrill, the same sense of something gathered just beyond the lights, waiting for a signal to move. For the first time in a long while Curtis feels as if he’s in the world again—the real world, inhuman and unconstructed—where he can be anybody, or nobody, and where anything is possible.
He’s reached the door to his room, is swiping his keycard, when his cellphone throbs to life. The unfamiliar ringtone startles him; he jumps, the door swings open, and the keycard drops and slides along the tile just inside the jamb. Curtis digs for the phone as he stoops to retrieve it.
A loud voice on the line, not one he can place. Curtis! it says. How you been, man?
I’m good. What’s up?
You know who this is? You recognize my voice? It’s Albedo, man! Remember me? I hear you’re in town!
Curtis doesn’t know anybody named Albedo—or Al Beddow, for that matter. A white guy, probably his own age. Blue Ridge accent: North Carolina, Virginia. Crowd noise in the background. Yeah, Curtis says. I’m here for a few days.
That’s great, man. We gotta hook up, we gotta hang out. What are you doing right now?
I’m—I just got back to my hotel.
Your hotel? Fuck, man, it’s like eleven. You can’t go back to your hotel. Look, I’m at the Hard Rock right now with some people. You need to get your ass over here. You know where it is?
Curtis knows where it is. He’s half inside his doorway, dead phone cradled in his hand. Trying again to place that voice. Maybe somebody he talked to earlier. Maybe somebody who’s watching what he says because of who he’s with. Curtis closes his eyes, tries to form a picture of Albedo—shrouded in dim light, loud music, the clamor of raised voices, Stanley’s maybe among them—but at the center of Curtis’s picture is an absence, a void in the smoky air, and he quickly gives up.
Leaning farther into the dark entryway, checking the fax and the message-light, he hears a door slam somewhere down the corridor and is suddenly uneasy, an interloper in shared space, aware of the closeness of unseen others. Somebody’s been here while he was out: housekeeping, of course. For a second he can sense the strata of odors in the room—a hidden history of cleansers, perfumes, sweat—before his nose habituates and they’re blended, gone. Due south, a block off the Strip, some kind of event is going on, the grand opening of something. Four times a minute the beam of a swiveling searchlight falls through the open curtains; the suite’s furnishings appear, disappear, appear. With each sweep, the air over the city turns a solid blue, flat and opaque, and the room seems telescoped, shallow, a diorama of itself.
After a couple of passes, Curtis pulls his revolver and checks it in the wan light that leaks from the hallway. Then he hurries back to the elevators, and the door shuts itself behind him.
7
The Hard Rock is on Paradise Road, between the Strip and the UNLV campus—not far, but Curtis doesn’t want to risk missing Albedo, so he hops a cab and is there in minutes.
He’s been here before, but only briefly and drunkenly, and he doesn’t remember it well. It’s small, chalk-white and curvy, lit from below by purple-gelled spots; the glowing diodes of a streetside readerboard flash OZZY OSBOURNE! as the cab turns onto the palm-lined drive. A parade of revelers—off-duty dancers and bartenders, highrollers from the coast—pours inside by the light of an enormous neon-strung guitar.
As soon as he’s stepped through the Gibson-handled doors Curtis knows Stanley won’t be here. It’s all young MBA types inside, college kids on extended spring break: aside from Ozzy, Curtis is probably the oldest guy in the place. On his way through the crowded lobby he passes a cardigan-clad Britney Spears mannequin, somebody’s glassed-in drumkit, a chandelier made of gleaming saxophones. Aerosmith blasts from speakers overhead. In the circular casino Curtis stops to read the mulberry baize of a blackjack table: there, above a line of lyrics he can’t place—something about getting lucky—is a notice that dealers must hit soft seventeens. Stanley wouldn’t be caught dead within a hundred yards of this joint.