Chris Abani - The Secret History of Las Vegas

And he knew her power, her raw power, when she got up from the table and came to him covered in the tinsel from the butterfly’s wings — iridescent and multicolored. Knew from the way she moaned when they made love later that night, from the way she got out of bed and ran into the cold kitchen to get something to eat because sex made her hungry. Knew from the way she bit into a pear and closed her eyes for a second as though tasting it for the first time. For him it was second-hand always, the facsimile of the experience.

That night passed in a blur of sex and sleep, and he woke to a proliferation of color and wings, and in that cold morning light irradiated with butterflies, he felt an ache unlike anything else before or after. He knew then as he watched her sleep that he would leave and never come back. If he stayed, his life would never be the same. The mystery of it, the danger of its change, also carried with it the terror of healing. He wasn’t ready for that. The ache he felt could never be filled, not by her, not by anybody. He knew enough to know that if he stayed, she would become the scab over a deeper wound that he would pick and pick until there was nothing. Before she woke, he left.

That day he went to Gogo’s and bought a beautiful men’s signet ring in silver with a Blue Mormon wing fragment in a clear mount. Beautiful, it was more than he could afford. When Gogo found out it was for a girl, she slipped it onto a silver chain.

For her neck, she said. Strange gift for a girl, but she will never forget it. Bound to make an impression, she added.

The next day in class, he sat next to her. She ignored him at first, but then he placed the unusual gift on top of her red Bible, blue on red, and she blushed and smiled, her hand coming to rest on it.

For me?

Yes.

Thank you, she said.

But before class was over, he left, and a week later he was on a plane to Holland on a government educational exchange program. While he was away, he found out through an old acquaintance that Jan and Eskia became an item, that they even dropped out of school to be together. He would not see Jan again until Vlakplaas.

The sunlight was filtered to a muted blue by the stained glass of the kitchen window. It was the only room in the house that had only one window — high up and small, like the opening in a monk’s cell.

Asia paused in front of the fridge, her reflection catching her by surprise. Long black hair, full lips still stained a little red from last night’s lipstick, a long lean neck, and a body taut from dancing. The pristine steel of the fridge door bothered her, and before she opened it to take out the eggs she made sure to smudge it a bit with her fingertips.

Normally Asia would be turning in after a long night. The only other time she was up this early was when she’d slept over with a client who’d paid for the whole night. Then she would wake and sneak off, unless of course there was breakfast. But everything was different when it came to Sunil. Even the money he still left in the Bible for her was now a mere formality for her. She took it and paid it into a bank account that she never touched. She only took it because it allowed her to maintain a certain distance to protect her heart. He’d called her late and asked her over, and even though he was a client she’d spent the night with, she was up making him breakfast. She never made breakfast for herself.

But there was something so ordinary and everyday about cooking for a loved one that left her breathless with anticipation. Coffee percolating in the pot, made from fresh, rough-ground beans and distilled water; toast burning slowly, held down twice in the toaster because he loved to scrape the burned crumbs off with a knife, the sound like metal on wood; and scrambled egg whites; and for her, a quartered grapefruit and green tea with honey.

It was like a curtain being pulled back on a magic show. The quotidian nature of other people’s lives was fascinating to her. She had grown up in the cold, crowded squash of Chicago and had loved nothing more than riding the train, staring into the lit windows of other people’s lives trying to read something about them from those brief glimpses. She came to believe that those lives were better than hers, the tease of those windows proof of the fact. Breakfast was just one of the ways she pursued the lives hidden from her.

And what might make a person desire another’s life so much? Someone perhaps whose real name was Adele Kaczynski, a biracial woman born on the east side who turned out darker than her white mother could live with, and was left on the steps of the Northwestern Teaching Hospital. Someone who had grown up on the South Side moving from foster home to foster home. Someone who fell in love with her last foster father and who began dancing in strip clubs at sixteen to pay for his drug habit and who finally left him and fled to Las Vegas to pursue her dream of becoming a real dancer. Someone who changed her name first to Egypt, then Nile, before deciding they were too common, finally settling on Asia; maybe that kind of person.

She had a couple of dance auditions in the afternoon for some new shows that would open in the New Year that she was excited about. It was tough competition, though, and with each year it got tougher as she got older and her competition grew younger, a ridiculous thing for a twenty-six-year-old to be worried about, but this was Vegas.

Landing a role in a show like Zumanity would mean she could give up prostitution. It was possible to make fifty, sometimes sixty thousand a year in a show like that, minus tips. Perhaps then she could give in to Sunil, give in to her own feelings. But until then, there was breakfast.

When she’d first shared her dream with Sunil, about dancing in a big show, he’d asked: Why not just dance in one of the strip clubs until then? That way you can give up prostitution. She’d never told him about her past, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Sunil’s impression of her was the only one she cared about, and the fact that he thought she was a prostitute through some thoughtless action on her part felt unbearable. She wanted to tell him all of this. Instead she’d said: What would we have if I weren’t a prostitute? And although she’d been happy to see the look of shame cross his face, she regretted saying it.

Today there would be no real fight, just the pretense of one, the kind that added to her fantasy of domestic ordinariness. Things like — I wish you’d take your head out of your paper and look at me once in a while. Or — Why do you always leave burned toast crumbs in the butter? Or — That’s way too much milk. You should watch your cholesterol. And he would reply in safe, predictable ways. That kind of fight turned her on and she would make sure she got one this morning.

Hey, he said, kissing her on the cheek before reaching for a cup and pouring some coffee — black, two Equals. The casual manner of that peck on her cheek turned her on, made her sticky and breathless. He sat at the table and turned on his Kindle to read the New York Times .

Sleep well, she asked, pouring the whipped egg whites into the melted butter in the pan.

Not really, he said, sipping loudly on the hot coffee. You?

I always sleep well when you hold me, she said. But the muttered words seemed stirred into the sizzling contents of the pan, drowned by the scraping of the plastic spatula on the Teflon.

He looked up briefly and then returned to the Times . The little electronic pad wasn’t the same as actual paper, but it was just as good in different ways.

Eat while it’s hot, she said. She put the eggs onto a plate, laid the toast next to it, and gave it to him.