“Mister,” said the lady with two dried flowers glued to her hat. “Mister, I can see you’ve got a good heart. I’m a little psychic, you know. Not all the time, but it’s kind of upsetting to know when people are gonna die.” She grabbed my hand. “Mister, I came from Los Angeles by car and now I don’t even have enough money for gas. You’re not gonna let me walk back, are you? I come up here every weekend. Five hours by car, and five hours back, but this never happened to me before.” She opened her handbag. “You see,” she said, “Nothing left. Some lipstick. From France. When my husband was still alive we went to France. But what’s in France for me now? The only place I come is here. Every Friday. If you could use it, I’d give you the lipstick, but what good is a lipstick to you?”
A waitress in the shortest skirt I’d ever seen asked us what we wanted to drink. We ordered two cocktails and a pack of cigarettes for the lady. The drinks and cigarettes were free. I moved up two machines. She followed me. Her skin reminded me of an apricot forgotten in a fruit bowl.
“Mister, I’m from a good family. If my husband could see me now he’d turn over in his grave. But I don’t think we’ll ever see each other again. I don’t believe in life after death. That’s why I’ve been living it up since he died. If you’re not gonna see each other anyway, why hold yourself back, don’t you think? He had his own plane, and cows. If you knew how many cows he had…There’s nothing left of it, because I’ve been living like mad. My husband took good care of me, Mister, but he never touched me. In all the thirty-four years we were married. He touched me a few times before our wedding, but never since we got married. He touched cows and bulls and dogs and strippers, but never me. I never complained, Mister. I went through life with my head held high.”
Our drinks came. She lit a cigarette with trembling hands that had brown spots on them.
“Not until he was dying, Mister, did I have the courage to ask him. He was drugged, morphine, but he was still screaming from the pain. Why didn’t you ever touch me, I asked. I never had the time, he said. That gave me peace of mind. It wasn’t because he hated me or thought I was disgusting or because he secretly didn’t like women. That would’ve been the worst, if he’d told me he didn’t like women.”
I wasn’t looking at her anymore, only at the machine I was playing.
“Mister,” she said, “You could be my son. I never had children. Three of our maids had a kid by him. I was like a mother to them, which was hard, since they had their father’s meanness and their mothers’ stupidity. Illegal Indians who couldn’t tell an A from a B. I’m no racist, Mister, but those people are three thousand years behind in evolution. I knew my husband was going to die soon, like I said, I’m psychic. That’s why I stuck it out with them. Now there’s nothing left. The ranch, the plane, the cows, nothing. All I want is thirty bucks for gas. So I can get back home. You’re not gonna let me walk back, are you Mister? I can see you’re an artist, a very sensitive one.”
I put another hundred-dollar bill in the machine.
“I’m a cockroach with the money plague,” I said. I think those were my first words.
“No, no, Mister,” she said, “I’ve seen a lot of cockroaches. You’re not a cockroach. Maybe you want to be one. You’re not gonna let me walk back, are you, Mister, I can see that in your eyes.” I took a fifty-dollar bill out of my shirt pocket. She put it away in her purse without saying anything. Then she took off her hat. She was as bald as a guy. Only a few gray strands stuck out of her head.
“Do you want to touch me?” she whispered.
“Where?” I asked.
She bent her head. Her scalp felt like a frying pan that hundreds of eggs had been fried in, but that had never been washed.
I got up.
“Your name?” she whispered.
“My nickname is The Cockroach, that should do it.”
I went over to the roulette table. A chubby man with a sweaty head put up five thousand dollars, lost it, and walked over to the next table. Over by the wall was a teller machine that accepted every imaginable bank card.
An hour later the lady with the hat walked by. “Go home, Cockroach,” she said, but I shook my head.
By six the next morning, I’d blown all the royalties from Blue Mondays, except for 160 shares of Dutch telecom. I got up and went to the restaurant in the corner of the casino and ordered a hamburger.
“Is this your breakfast, lunch, or dinner?” the waitress asked.
“Make it brunch,” I said.
I felt neither happy nor unhappy. Slightly amazed, at most. Reality had definitely turned surreal.
I finally took the elevator to my room on the thirty-sixth floor. Las Vegas stretched out below me. And beyond that, the desert. As far as the eye could see, the desert. Nothing but desert.