Paul Theroux - The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

In his room, he fell asleep watching a made-for-TV movie about a schoolgirl persecuted for being new to the school and friendless, and he was moved by it, saddened by its pathos, the weak and isolated girl, her insensitive parents (“You have to face up to them!”), the beasts who teased her until she was in despair, the one teacher who understood and defended the girl. His eyes dampened and he was further moved by his own almost-tears. He woke sorrowing that he had not seen the ending, but hating the thought that lonely people found meaning in such movies. He had been susceptible. It had to be crap.

The following day he made plans to leave Las Vegas. He was humiliated, the worst possible outcome, for now he had to fire Rita and Nina — how could he face them? — and would have to find other housecleaners.

“All our flights today are full,” the airline clerk said on the phone.

“I’m holding a first-class ticket.”

“I’m looking at first class. I’m not seeing any seats. You want me to wait-list you?”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Nothing in first class. I have a coach seat on the seven-ten.”

A coach seat among half-wits returning to the islands, having flung all their money into slot machines. But he took it, because the indignity of the seat wasn’t as hurtful as the humiliation of staying in Las Vegas. He resolved to kill the day in his room. He found the city excruciating for its crass appetites and confidence tricks, and he suspected a greater, hidden debauchery. He went without breakfast, he sat glowering, cursing the place, mumbling denunciations, feeling lightheaded and virtuous because of his hunger.

Around noon the phone rang, startling him. Who knew he was here?

“It’s me.”

Who? Then he knew, it was one or the other, slightly drunk, making no sense, like the grubby gamblers bingeing here in this carnival freak show.

“Gotta talk.”

“Maybe we could arrange to meet somewhere — go out for coffee.”

“I’m downstairs,” she said, and sounded to him like a cop.

He hurried to the lobby and saw Rita. He easily recognized her because she was wearing slacks and sneakers and a T-shirt lettered Vegas. Her hair had come loose. She looked as she had some Saturdays when she arrived with Nina to clean, and that pleased him and gave him hope and put an edge on his desire.

The hotel coffee shop was called the Cactus Flower Terrace, a sign at the entrance saying, Please Wait to Be Seated. Rita muttered something and walked past the sign and seated herself at a booth. Wevill followed, feeling he was trespassing and wondering if the waitress who appeared with menus would reprimand him.

“Just coffee,” Rita said without glancing up.

She looked darkly assertive, with her head down and her elbows out, not looking at Wevill, even when the coffee was poured and she was holding her cup in two hands and blow-sucking at the steamy surface.

“Shoulda had some of this before. As a rule, I don’t normally drink nothing at lunchtime.” Now she looked up, her red eyes on him. “But I was stressed.”

“That’s understandable,” he started to say, thinking, Shtressed?

But she cut him off. “My money’s pau, and plus all that other stuff too, besides.”

He had no idea what she was saying, but he was aware of another creeping sensation that was binding him to his seat, making him wait, holding him captive. It was not for him to negotiate. She was proceeding at her own speed. He recalled being in his room, at the window, denouncing Las Vegas, and the phone ringing, and I’m downstairs. He had been summoned to this meeting. Something unsaid disturbed him.

“Give me a minute,” she said.

“I was just wondering,” he said.

“Try wait. I’m drinking my coffee.”

He leaned back as though she had scooped him with an uppercut.

“So what’s this I been hearing about one massage?” she finally said.

His dry mouth would not allow him to He, yet he tried, saying, “I don’t know what you mean. I was just upstairs getting ready to leave. I’ve got a flight back to Honolulu first thing tomorrow.”

“Nina said you hitting on her about one massage.”

“I was not hitting on her,” Wevill said. Some of the time he was just a civilian, but certain words, actionable language he heard with his attorney ears, set his attorney mind in motion.

“She say you was.”

Why, he wondered, was bad grammar so much more threatening than proper English?

“I mentioned that I was thinking of getting one, not that I expected her to give me one personally. I mean, my asking her there and then — that would be ridiculous.”

Saying this, denying what he had done, and trying to laugh, he understood his guilt and saw how foolish he had been.

The waitress returned and said, “Would you like me to tell you what’s on special today?”

Rita said “No!” with such ferocity the waitress stepped back and hurried away.

Wevill said, “Why did you react when I mentioned Ramon? Were you impressed?”

“I was trying not to laugh,” she said. “Ramon didn’t like you. One day he says, 'I dig holes for a living. I could dig one big enough for that bugger to fit in.’”

And still she was not through with him. Alert, despite her drunkenness, she said, “So when you go, Are you interested?’ you don’t mean Nina, you mean someone else?”

It was diabolical how her drunken alertness made her more intimidating than a trial lawyer, for her pounce and probity were unexpected. She was a deadly combination of gruffness and barely articulate intelligence.

“Try give me some kine answer.”

He felt old and weak and breathless and whatever was the opposite of desire — fear more than repulsion — and all this had destroyed his will. He was trapped like a felon on a plastic cushion in the Cactus Flower Terrace. He could now understand a mumbling and terrified man being cross-examined on a witness stand. He was defeated. He was dreadfully embarrassed by what he had attempted, and the attempt was an act. The words she had quoted were almost verbatim. He could not deny saying them.

“I’m sorry. I made a mistake. An inexcusable error of judgment.”

“She just a kid, Nina.”

Rita was right. He had taken advantage of the girl, yet everything he had experienced in this loud hellish-hot city proved that he was weak. Sitting here he felt powerless, his head bowed under the scolding.

“You coulda asked me first,” she said, swallowing coffee.

This was ambiguous to him. She might have been saying, “You could have asked me instead of Nina,” or, seeking permission, “You could have asked me if you wanted Nina.”

“What would you have said if I had asked?”

“I woulda said,” she murmured, drinking from the cup, “I woulda said, 'Try explain.'”

“I admit it was a mistake,” he said.

“So you don't want nothing?”

Her staring, her scolding, forced him to be particular, and to endure the final humiliation in order to clear himself, he said, “Yes. I wanted a massage.”

She would not accept this. She said, “You don't mean massage when you say massage.”

He just closed his eyes and prayed for someone to yell “Fire!” or for a fight to start or an earthquake to hit and topple the whole miserable city.

Rita said, “Okay, pay the bill. Let's go.”

He left money on the table — too much, so that they could leave swiftly — and in the lobby he said, “Where?”

She said in a gummy way, phlegm clotted in her throat, “You know where.”

He did not desire this unstable, unfamiliar woman, not even in the irrational way of lust. He was never at his best in the afternoon in any case. He would have preferred a meal or a drink at dusk, a prologue, a beginning, a middle. This was all end, not simply abrupt but cold captivity. In the elevator she stood apart but confident, less like a jailer than a kidnapper, and in his room he felt like a hostage. No, not at all like a hooker and a john.