After placing the bet, Peter spent the rest of the day gambling. He kept insisting I join, and I kept repeating I had no interest. I was content to listen to his chatter and watch people try to shake and rattle the bias from their die. Casinos being foolproof moneymaking ventures, the best way to approach Las Vegas, I explained, would be to take all the money one is comfortable losing and place it on red or black at the roulette wheel where the odds are at least 46.7 percent. Then, win or lose, walk away. Peter did not see the fun in that, but it did lead to him switching from craps to roulette. Three of his friends from Las Vegas joined us, and they all became increasingly intoxicated as the afternoon wore on. They were extremely boorish, particularly “Jame-O,” a squashed, preppy Caucasian with a ring of fat embracing his torso and cheeks that recalled two pockets of berries. I have little to say about these men except to relate this incident.
Jame-O called me “Taj Mahal Badalandabad” after a character in a comedic film (I was familiar with this slur, as I’d heard it before), and Peter, hostile and inebriated, exploded at his friend:
“Bro. Learn some fucking manners. This guy here’s got more to offer in his fingernail than your entire sorry fucking existence.”
I’d long been accustomed to how people become subject to narratives outside their control. Throughout prep school, my peers had christened me all manner of nicknames with and without intended animosity, one of which (“Osama bin Spock”) gained particular currency. Since graduation in 2009, I’ve noticed their furious efforts to remove these “jokes” from social media, deleting comments from the deep recesses of various online forums making reference to me as the South Asian American math geek.
I accepted Jame-O’s effort at an apology, but Peter’s outburst left me disquieted. As they carried on gambling, I couldn’t help but wonder, had I been blind to how Peter actually viewed me? After all, here we were in a gambler’s mecca, so to speak, and was I not just his nifty multitool, an unwitting Dustin Hoffman card counter to his Tom Cruise? And were these transactional relationships not just the way of the hyper-capitalist-extractivist system? I thought of how I’d dismissed my MIT peers now performing various high-speed grifts for the boardrooms of financial empires in Manhattan. Embarrassment swelled that I’d come to think of Peter as my friend.
I left and went down to the street in search of sensations beyond the claustrophobic casino. Sweat ran a torrent down my back in the searing heat of the Vegas Strip. I saw a city of abstract fractal shapes, an artificial construct built only through a massive project of water diversion to create a mirage in inhospitable desert. A proper analogy for the discharging of consequences that people sought here. For all the hype constructed around the city, it is a plastic and uninspired place. Turn the temperature up a few more degrees, and I could picture the whole façade melting like a LEGO city in a microwave. I felt a great anti-magnetism, a desire to flee. Despite my best efforts, agitation turned to panic. Soon back in the hotel room, I sat in a corner running the cool back of the TV remote over my arm to still the particle accelerator speed of my mind.
Hours later, when I’d calmed down, I checked my phone. My mother had left yet another dissatisfied voice mail. Haniya promised me the delay had been helpful. Family we rarely saw had time to fly from Gujarat, and the imam had been away as well. The thought of going inside mosque for the first time in fifteen years, since my last outburst, weighed on me. My sister texted me: Hey I know Mummas at maximum anxiety right now. Stay chill and just get here when you can.
I did not reply to her. In high school, my sister had changed her speech, dress, opinions, gait, wore pro-choice buttons pinned to the end of her hijab, used strange slang, and performed complicated handshakes of greeting with her male Caucasian and African American friends. I learned not to take offense that she ignored me. She and my mother fought over her rebellious streak—she made trouble in the community over women’s equity issues and dated Caucasian men, but Haniya was still faithful. She bore the envious gifts of intelligence and agile charm, which is why she and she alone would eulogize our father. I had not been asked to speak.
The next morning, with five hours until my flight, Peter asked if I would accompany him to a pawn shop. He alluded that he’d had his fill of Jame-O and the others and asked if I wanted to accompany him on a quick but important errand. In the cab, he began probing me about the player efficiency rating, and I explained, for perhaps the third time, the dubiousness of the PER metric. Peter often reengages me in conversations we’ve already had because he needs to use safe angles to approach subjects that make him uncomfortable, as I believe he did here:
“Efficiency’s the game, right, Ash? That’s why the Warriors are a lock.”
“They’re a special case. There’s no comparable precedent for their achievements this season.”
“Lock.” Then Peter abruptly said to the driver: “A pawn shop on the Strip? Do we look like we’re in the church group from Tulsa? Take us off-Strip, my man.” He turned back to me.
I said: “I don’t believe in locks. However, the Warriors are the dominant team in offensive and defensive metrics. That’s how they won seventy-three contests. Over the course of seven games against an opponent like the Thunder or Cavaliers, the inferior team will tend to regress toward the mean.”
“Ah, like you said about roulette. Speaking of, that’s why I’m cashing this in.”
He removed from his pocket a small lavender box, which he opened to reveal an engagement ring with a cluster of diamonds mounted on a band of white gold.
“Bought this for Rachel, but… Guess I threw up a fat fucking brick.”
“You proposed? I wasn’t aware.”
“She said she had to think about it. Then thinking became driving back to Providence to stay with her parents. She called the other night to say it’s over.”
On the outskirts of the city now we passed a strip mall with only a dollar bargain store and cash-advance outlet still open. Beyond the mall were empty crabgrass lots and half-built domiciles flapping flags of forgotten plastic. I’d of course noticed Rachel’s absence in the past few weeks. I tried:
“You could save it for the woman you will eventually marry.”
Peter grinned, and in doing so looked quite handsome. “Whoa—what, am I trying to hex myself? I just want to get rid of it. Figured pawning it in Vegas would be a bad man’s move. As per your wisdom nugget, I’ll put all the money on black and walk away.”
The cabbie pulled over at a random intersection of a six-lane road called Eastern Avenue. Palm trees bisected the lanes of traffic while telephone poles and wire offered the only skyline along the flat expanse of desert sky. The pawn shop was set in the same building as a store called Sinaloa Video, still clinging to its business model in the age of streaming movies. Beyond it was a series of shoddy one-story houses with bars on many of the windows.
Peter’s bartering took place with an overweight man in a black Pantera T-shirt who wore socks under his sandals and heaved a breath with each movement. It was a quick transaction. Peter accepted just over $1,700 from him, mostly in rust-green twenties, and dropped the ring into his fist like he was tossing a coin to a vagrant. On the drive back through the authentic Las Vegas of shuttered stores, battered used cars, and a heat that had weight, I commented: