Chris Abani - The Secret History of Las Vegas

Salazar laughed. If it’s any consolation, they took us all in, he said.

Agh, man, you have no idea how disappointing it is to want something since you were a child so much you begin to develop a nostalgia for it, even when you’ve never had it. And then to finally eat it, and it’s like a mouthful of rancid grease.

Easy there, Doctor. It’s just a cake.

But it wasn’t just a cake. Not to me.

What about the sea monkeys? Fare any better there?

Fuck no! Magical families of smiling creatures with nice faces and crowns that would perform underwater stunts for you and keep you entertained? A child’s best friend, instant pets, all that shit. I sent off for them but all I got was a tank of dead brine shrimp.

Salazar was laughing so hard his eyes were watering.

Well, at least mine were alive, he said. But I can see how disappointing it might have been if you were expecting literal miniature underwater monkeys. You know what, Doctor? I’m going to buy you real live sea monkeys when we get back to town. Hand me a Twinkie, will you?

Still daydreaming, Salazar asked Sunil.

They’d been driving for at least an hour in silence, punctuated only by the radio, which was on an easy rock station. It seemed to Sunil that he’d heard Boy George perform “Karma Chameleon” at least five times before Salazar shut the radio off to talk.

A little bit, Sunil said, sipping on some water.

We’ll be coming up to another town soon, Methuselah, I think. We can stop there for lunch and gas up again for the return trip. Apparently this town is farther out than you thought. Ghost towns, Salazar said, his tone dismissive. Can’t imagine why anyone would want to visit one, much less live out here in one.

It’s the desert, I think, Sunil said. You have to admit there’s something supernatural about it. For some people it’s like falling down the rabbit hole. Besides, ghost towns are perfect places to be invisible in America, drop off the grid, so to speak. You can squat in a ghost town for a very long time if it’s set back far enough from the road. You would have easy access to water, electricity, and good shade from the sun, and disguise from any overhead searches by plane or helicopter. I mean, there are roads, so you wouldn’t have to build any new infrastructure. Hell, there are even enough farms within a day’s hike to poach from.

A billboard flashed by announcing JESUS IS COMING. It wasn’t that there was a billboard in the middle of the desert announcing Jesus’s return that caught Sunil’s attention as much as the fact that someone had spray painted LOOK BUSY under it.

Strange name for a town, Salazar said, pointing to a sign by an exit.

Sunil read it: KING OF PRUSSIA. Again, it wasn’t the unusual name that surprised him as much as the fact that the exit looked blocked off with a sign that said NOT AN EXIT, and yet from where they were, it looked like a normal town spread out in desert-style adobe and wood-framed buildings. There was even an airstrip to one side of them.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live out here in a town like that, Salazar said.

This town, and many more like it, is part of something called the Nevada Test Site, Sunil said.

Where they exploded nuclear bombs back in the day?

Yes, but not just back in the day.

I’m forty and I have never seen the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion, so I would say yes, back in the day.

Of the fifteen hundred or so nuclear test explosions in Nevada, only three hundred were aboveground, so just because you’ve never seen one doesn’t mean there haven’t been any.

That’s some Mulder and Scully shit you got going on. I never pegged you for a conspiracy nut.

I won’t even dignify that with an answer.

In a couple of minutes the sign for Methuselah flashed by.

Well, here we are, Salazar said.

I for one would love to have a burger. Best thing about America is burgers and ketchup-soaked French fries and a cold drink, Sunil said.

Finally, something we can agree on.

They pulled into the lone gas station, one pump under an unsteady lean-to, and filled the tank. If there was an attendant, he was nowhere around.

Just off the road to their left was a paddock and couple of hungry horses standing listlessly around a trough full of rank water. One of the supports of the paddock was a bristlecone pine, all gnarled and twisted into a shape that belonged more in a nightmare than in the bright desert sun.

Odd tree, Salazar said, spitting.

Sunil wondered if that was some superstition or just bad manners.

It’s a bristlecone, he said. Oldest living organisms on the planet, I think. In fact, there is a bristlecone pine somewhere in Nevada that is perhaps the world’s oldest tree. It’s over five thousand years old.

No shit.

The tree was named Methuselah. I wonder if that’s what this town is named after. The location of the tree is a well-kept secret by the parks service, but maybe it’s around here somewhere.

What’s a Methuselah?

I figured you would know, being a Republican and quite possibly a hardline Christian.

Just tell me what the fuck it is, Salazar snapped.

It’s the name of the oldest man to have lived, at least according to the Bible, Sunil said.

Bible’s never wrong, Salazar said, walking over to the tree and peeing on it.

Is that some animal territory-marking ritual, Sunil asked.

Never seen a man pee on a tree before?

Sunil opened the door of the car and slid back in. There’s a bar-cum-diner over there called Cupid’s, he said. Let’s see if we can find a burger to fall in love with.

Salazar shook himself at the tree, inspected his work, and, satisfied, zipped up and returned to the car.

Eskia had been waiting two hours and was already irritated when Asia arrived at his hotel, a little breathless, at ten thirty.

Sorry, she said as he let her in. I had to be somewhere. As always she laid out the Bible. He hurriedly stuffed some bills into it and barely let her undress before taking her roughly, bending her over the edge of the bed. He came quickly and as she straightened her clothes, he said, I’m not done yet.

Multiple pops count as multiple visits, she said, pointing to the Bible and walking into the bathroom to freshen up.

He walked over to his wallet and grabbed some more bills, which he stuffed into the Bible. The first time he found the ritual cute, but now it angered him. He guessed that part of Sunil’s attraction to this woman had to do with that Bible. That Asia was, in a way, a surrogate Jan. Even the Bible, that little detail, Sunil hadn’t overlooked. It wasn’t red, but one can’t have everything, Eskia mused.

While she was gone, he thought about Jan. How brave, single-minded, and so stubbornly sure of her convictions she had been — enough to risk everything. Jan had turned away from her upbringing as a racist Afrikaner, from her training and job as a spy for the South African Security Services in deep cover in a liberal South African university, to become an informer for the ANC. Although Eskia wanted to believe it was Jan’s love for him that turned her, he knew it wasn’t. The tipping point came the day she opened her father’s Bible. Eskia was there, saw her turn pale and let the book fall to the ground. He bent to pick it up and saw that her father had crossed out the handwritten dedication from President Botha, scrawling in red capital letters across it, the word “LIAR.” He saw the look that crossed her face, as if her entire universe was folding in on itself. There was a long moment when neither of them moved or spoke. They barely breathed. And then he let her kiss him. And make love to him.