It’s disorienting the way every area is identical, tables and slots, tables and slots. I reach a clearing and I see a Hangover slot machine and he’s not there and I walk toward another mess of tables, white leather chairs, more of a palace than Caesars, and that’s why Forty is here, sitting in a white chair at a blackjack table. His hair is a wreck. He’s wearing two pairs of fucking Wayfarers, one pair on his head, one on his face. His collared shirt is wrinkled and his feet are grimy and he’s got them propped up on two chairs, like he owns the joint. He’s playing three hands, smoking two cigarettes. Chips fall out of his pocket and he doesn’t bend over to retrieve them. I want to bash his head into the table but the ceilings are high and the cameras are everywhere. I sit down at a slot machine. Texas Tea. I put in ten dollars. I text Love: I’ve looked and looked and I haven’t seen him but I’ll keep looking.
She writes back: My dad says thank you. You are the best.
I write back: We’ll find him.
I play two cents a round on Texas Tea and Forty plays a thousand dollars a hand on his three hands. He’s losing. He is loud. Even several feet away, I can hear him. He sits with a hooker and he periodically grabs her neck and licks her chest. A Chinese lady stares at him disapprovingly. “I’m sorry if I offend you, honey, but this is Vegas and if I want to blow lines off Miss Molly Tupelo’s lovely, enhanced chesticles, then I will do it all night long.”
The Chinese woman gets up and walks away and I can’t believe this city is so crowded.
Forty loses a hand. “Is that cuz I pissed off the Chinawoman?” he asks. “Because if that’s the case, then you’re gonna have to call the pit boss.” He smashes the table with his drink. “Fuck this!”
Forty walks five feet and sits down at another table. And it all happens again. A girl in a short skirt sits down next to him. A new old Asian woman tries to sit down too. Forty grabs the seat. “Does it look like I want company, lady?” He knocks back his whiskey. “Fuckin’ A. Back off.”
The girl in the short skirt laughs and tells him he’s funny. He says she can stay but only if she’s lucky and she says she hopes so and I officially hate it here.
The dealer tries. “Maybe a little lady luck would do you some good, sir.”
Forty sneers. “I’d rather have some face cards. You know what? Fuck this.”
And he’s up and I leap to follow him but no. He sits at a neighboring table. He lights up next to a pregnant woman.
“Do you mind?” she asks. She points at her protruding belly.
“You should be at a non-smoking table,” he says. He blows smoke into the air. “Or really, you should be home. You fucking pregnant people, you own the whole world. Do you really need to own this too? I can’t smoke anywhere because of you and you really need to tell me I can’t smoke in fucking Vegas?”
The dealer asks him to quiet down and Forty rises. “Do you know who I am? Motherfucker, I own this city. I just sold a screenplay that takes place in this fucking city for more money than you’ll see in your whole fucking life.”
My hat itches and I have lost nine dollars at Texas Tea.
The dealer is trying hard not to laugh. Forty knocks his drink onto the floor and snaps his fingers at a waitress. “I’m empty, sweetheart.”
She looks tired. In Vegas they force the waitresses to walk around in sequined bathing suits and panty hose. The woman says she’s delivering drinks and she’ll be back to take orders after she drops off her drinks. Forty is irate. “I don’t care what you’re doing,” he says. “Why the fuck do you think I care what you’re doing, honey? Do I look like I care? I told you I want a gimlet. Goose. Gimlet. Now. As in now.”
“When I come back I can—”
He barks, “GET ME A FUCKING GOOSEY GOOSE GIMLET.”
She walks away and the boss man in the pit—I’ve seen Casino a thousand times—approaches Forty. “Mr. Quinn,” he says. “We’re so happy to have you back. I hope you’re having fun gaming with us.”
“Rocco!” Forty says. “It’s a helluva lot more fun to game when you’ve got a nice big Goosey gimlet. What the hell is going on here?”
Rocco tries to resolve the gimlet situation while Forty loses a few thousand more dollars and I win fifty-two cents at Texas Tea. Forty is on the move. I follow him. My pants itch.
He cruises around the casino and every few feet, he ducks into a row of slot machines and takes a bump of blow. He stumbles up to a depressed-looking leggy girl in a tight dress at a slot machine and pulls her hair. She yelps.
“What the fuck, dude? Get your hands off me!”
“How much?” he asks. “I wanna go for a ride.”
“I’m not a fucking hooker, motherfucker,” she says. “I’m a teacher.”
“I can get hot for that,” he says. He reaches for her. “How much?”
She smacks him with her purse. “Stop it.”
He laughs. “Honey, honestly, by the look of your dress, you could use the money and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, you know what I mean, jelly bean?”
She spits at him and he doesn’t wipe off her saliva. He sits down at the machine. He loses a hundred dollars. A hooker witnesses his fight and approaches, so obvious—Vegas! Why didn’t Delilah just move here?—and she tells Forty she wants to party. He looks her up and down.
“I’d love to sweetheart, but I’m not a homo.”
She stares at him.
He slips her a hundred dollar bill. “Take this C-note to the craps table and get it up there and do yourself a favor and go buy some tits.”
She doesn’t register any emotion. She says thank you, baby and walks away and this is the most depressing place I’ve ever been. There are no clocks or windows and the people are either incredibly sloppy or incredibly overdressed.
Forty walks up to a craps table and spills a drink. People boo him. “Yeah,” he says. “Boo fucking hoo. Do you people know that I have a two-picture deal at Annapurna? Yeah. Have fun with your boring fucking lives.”
He walks away. Nobody at the table knows what Annapurna is. He sits down at a new blackjack table and gets a marker for fifty grand. People are gathering to watch and he is bragging about being a huge writer. When people ask if he’s here alone, he says, “I’m with my girlfriend, Love. She’s upstairs.”
My girlfriend, Love. I shudder. The song “Born in the U.S.A.” comes on and he groans. “I hate Bruce Springsteen,” he says. “Can we do something about this? Goddamn whiny Democrat, we get it. You’re from New Jersey and you think it’s cool to be poor. Just fuck off already.”
The dealer says he prefers the song “Thunder Road.”
Forty huffs. “You also probably think a Chevy is as solid as a Beamer. No offense . . . but there is such a thing in this world as fucking wrong. Like these cards. Is there a rule against giving out tens in this shithole? And about a hundred years ago I ordered some gimlets.”
He sat down ten seconds ago but nobody tells him he is wrong and “Thunder Road” is a great fucking song. I sit down at a Hangover slot machine. I lose ten dollars in a few seconds and Forty splits tens. I know this because the dealer calls it out to the pit boss and the people standing around are gasping.
He loses.
A newly married couple enters the bar and everybody claps and Forty stands up and whistles with his hands. He motions for the band to stop playing. The lead singer looks at the doorway where a man stands with his arms crossed. He nods. This really is Forty’s playground. Forty goes onstage and grabs the mic.