8

Letty's feet were killing her. She eased down into one of the chairs at the empty table.

Steaming.

In shock.

She'd choked.

Her first job since last Christmas, and she'd blown it.

A promoter materialized—cute brunette with chopped hair. Amazing dress. Nametag read Jessica.

She smiled at Letty and knelt down so she didn't have to shout.

"Hi, what's your name?"

Letty said, "Gidget."

"Well, Gidget, this is actually a reserved table. I have a group I need to put here."

Screams from the next table over drew Letty's attention. Looked like a bachelorette party unfolding. Pure, smashed joy.

Letty slid back into her pumps, struggled onto her feet.

"All yours."

# # #

Letty headed back toward the dance floor. Just wanting to get out of the noise, out of the movement.

Inside, it was impossibly more crowded than before.

A wall of bodies.

The music ear-rupturing.

The bass heart-stopping.

She moved along the perimeter.

A group of three guys at a table called out to her with Boston accents. They were working their way through a 1.75L bottle of Jack and they reeked of desperation. Any other night, she'd have had a drink and grabbed their wallets.

It took her five minutes to push through the crowd and past the entrance into the front lounge.

The barrage of self-destructive thoughts firing away.

You've lost it.

You're washed-up.

Then she was passing a line of nightclub hopefuls that snaked through the lobby of the Wynn.

Then she was outside, sucking down gulps of exhaust-tinged desert air.

She kicked off her shoes and carried them.

Her head swirling.

She felt her phone vibrate. Opened her purse.

A text from Isaiah: wtf was that?

Good question.

She hit him back: location?

He answered: stand down see u tomorrow

# # #

She went up to her room, but she couldn't calm down. Couldn't stand the thought of lying in bed playing her epic fail over and over again.

She needed to score.

Challenge the thought.

I need to get high.

Challenge the thought. Think about your son. Think about—

I need to get high.

# # #

She wound up at the Zebra Lounge, a bar in her hotel with tons of seating upholstered in zebra print. Onstage, dueling pianists played something fast and obnoxious.

She sat at the bar. Hadn't had a drink since starting rehab in Charleston, and she wanted to fall off the wagon with something big and noisy.

While the bartender made her Long Island Iced Tea, she studied him, trying to get a read on whether he would further her ultimate ambitions for the evening.

He was twenty-three or twenty-four. Smooth-shaven. Cropped hair. Lifted weights for sure. No tats that she could see, although he wore a long-sleeved black button down which didn't reveal much.

He set her drink in front of her, said, "Seventeen dollars. Start a tab?"

"Sure, put it on my room." She gave him the number. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Darren."

"Darren, if I wanted to get my hands on something a little stronger than booze, would you be able to point me in the right direction?"

She could see in his eyes that he got asked this all the time.

"Talk to Jay at Japonais in the Mirage. He's working tonight."

"Appreciate that."

He left her to her drink.

It was strong and very good.

Yes, the night had blown up to this moment, but she was about to turn it around.

Letty leaned over her drink and sucked the rest of it down.

The liquor hit her gut in a burst of beautiful heat.

9

Letty crossed the boulevard.

The Strip at midnight sleepless and blinking and radiating a nervous energy that filled her junkie soul with the closest thing to joy she could ever hope to know.

Even at this hour, too much traffic creeping between the median of palm trees.

Almost everyone she passed was lit up.

Hell, she was too.

It felt good to be outside again, walking and buzzed and the Mojave air skirting over her shoulders, between her knees.

Surreal to be in the midst of all this stimulation and to know that twenty miles in any direction would put you in abject emptiness.

Between Treasure Island and the Mirage, a small black man wailed on a harmonica. Playing for tips, but no one was tipping. Letty dropped a twenty into the Panama Jack hat lying upturned on the sidewalk beside him.

He looked up.

"Bless you. Bless you."

Huge, milky cataracts covered his eyes, but he stared right at her. His smile both penetrating and disarming.

Letty moved on.

"You don't have to give up!" he called after her. "I hope you know that!"

She quickened her pace.

The giant marquee on the Mirage blazed down like a midnight sun.

The volcano in front of the casino erupted.

A crowd snapped photos with their phones.

Letty cruised through the tropical landscaping into the hotel.

An adult fantasy world.

The atrium filled with vegetation.

A massive aquarium behind the front desk.

It took her five minutes to find the bar, another ten once she was seated before the rail of a man with long, curly hair finally came over.

She said to him, "Are you Jay?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I'd like a Floating Orchid and some advice."

"Who sent you?"

"Darren from the Zebra Bar."

She watched him make something out of vodka, Cointreau, and the juice of a pear and a lemon.

He set it in front of her, and she gave him a fifty dollar bill, said, "Keep it."

Jay looked like Joey Ramone circa the Carter administration. He put his elbows on the bar, leaned toward her, said, "What are you looking for?"

"Crystal."

He gave her a corner in North Las Vegas, a first name, and a description of the dealer.

She never touched her drink.

# # #

Heading down the sidewalk, on the lookout for a cab, the trigger sweats kicked in. Like beads of anticipation rolling down the inside of her legs. That wasted woman Letty pictured as her need now screaming in her ear, wild-eyed, ebullient for the coming fix.

Challenge the thought—

I have. The thought kicked my ass.

Somewhere between the Mirage and Caesar's Palace, the sound of high voices pulled her attention away from the taxi search.

Up ahead, a group of Mexican kids were singing their hearts out in Spanish.

Letty didn't know the words, but she recognized the tune.

Sublime Gracia.

Amazing Grace.

It stopped her in her tracks. Something about the contrast—these little voices surrounded by all this decadence.

Before she knew it, she was lost in the spectacle.

They finished the song and moved on.

Behind them stood a small church—utterly out of place on the Strip.

There were lights on inside, and she could hear a man's voice pushing over the din of boulevard traffic.

She climbed the stone steps toward the double doors.

Shrine of the Most Holy Redeemer.

Some mysterious gravity drawing her out of the commotion of late-night Vegas.

She slunk in, took a seat in the back pew.

The sanctuary was brightly-lit. It smelled of coffee.

There was a simple crucifix behind the altar. A statue of the Madonna. A statue of Christ holding a child.

At the podium, the harmonica man spoke to the group of twenty or thirty people.

"I’m here to tell you that sobriety ain’t easy. But it is simple. If someone told a cancer patient all you had to do was follow these simple steps. Go to meetings. Help others. That you’d get well. You’d do whatever you needed to do to save your lily-white behinds.