Sam Leith - The Coincidence Engine

The meat came on lethally hot metal skillets. The tortillas came in a plastic simulacrum of a wicker basket, accompanied by a plastic simulacrum of a saucer containing a plastic simulacrum of grated cheese.

They bought long, bulbed plastic horns containing pre-mixed margaritas dispensed by a machine, which were only drinkable because they were so tooth-hurtingly cold that you couldn’t taste how sweet they were. They took the remains of them out onto the street and walked down the Strip.

When? Not now. Not now. Not now.

They continued to walk until their aimlessness started to become something palpable, an awkwardness between them.

Even ordinarily, Alex would be anxious in this situation. Nothing made him more anxious than the need or expectation of having fun. Vegas was a place devoted to the idea of fun. Everyone, everywhere you looked, was trying to have fun.

Alex had brought Carey here under the pretence of having fun. He worried he wasn’t having fun. He worried even more that Carey wasn’t having fun, or, at least, that whatever fun they were having – the food was OK, wasn’t it? They hadn’t lost all their money gambling – was deprived of sunlight and water by the enormous shadow of the fun they should have been having, by comparison with which their own meagre portion of fun was a wretched failure.

Oh God. What was he thinking of?

He looked over at Carey to see whether it looked like she was having fun. It was impossible to tell. She wasn’t hooting with laughter and throwing her head back. She was just sort of walking down the street looking at stuff. She had a drink in her hand, at least. Good.

Alex had finished his own drink. Ever since he had started worrying about the aimlessness – that is, he had an aim, obviously, but the more he wound up to it the less he was able to communicate with the outside world, and until he had done so his companion would be left with the overwhelming impression of aimlessness – he had been sucking away on his margarita so as to be doing something even if he wasn’t saying something.

It was a margarita in a brightly coloured plastic cup, a foot long. It said so on the side of the cup. Foot-long margarita. With a foot-long straw. That was fun, surely. That was drinks plus fun. Alex felt utterly adrift.

It was probably ages since he’d said anything. Had she noticed? Was she bored?

He knew he should say something. Say something. That was the thing. But the only thing he could think of to say was ‘Will you marry me?’ and even though that was the exact thing to say the moment was wrong. You couldn’t just come out of the blue with it, could you? Just abruptly? She’d think he was a loon. Or, worse, joking.

Here? Not here. Not in the street. Yes. Why not? In the street. This is your life. This is your life, going by, and you’re going to look back on this moment as the moment when you didn’t take the decision that would have made you happy for the rest of your days on earth. With this American girl you love wholeheartedly.

You know you love her wholeheartedly. You have said so to yourself, and had you a diary you would have written it in your diary. You cannot always, when called on, feel the love as a wave of emotion – not in the way you could when you watched her sleep, before you were a couple, or the way you can when she’s somewhere else and you miss her. But you know it’s there. It’s just – it’s something you take for granted. Something you’re so quietly sure of you barely examine it.

Action. For goodness’ sake. Action. That’s all. Just do it.

Alex thought about how he used to trick himself into jumping into swimming pools. You ran up to the edge promising yourself that this was just a practice run and that you were going to stop, and then when you got to the edge you simply kept running and took the view that you would apologise to yourself later for the white lie. Always, a great body-shocking spout of cold water to the chest and crotch, bubbles of air foaming up around the ears and neck, and limbs paddling at once, spastic with surprise.

‘Carey,’ said Alex. He looked past her shoulder. There was nobody there. The Strip was empty as far as the next corner and the sky above was a perspectiveless blue-black. It was warm, and away behind him he could hear the hiss and swish and flop of the fountains outside the Bellagio dancing their exhausted dance.

‘Mmm?’ Carey was distracted. She took another sip of her margarita and Alex admired with a little wave of desperation the way her cheek pulsed inwards as she drew on her orange straw.

Alex felt the ring, in its square box, digging against his hip. He was on the verge of action. He felt a little dizzy. He remembered that once he had tried the swimming-pool trick, a little drunk, in the shallow end of a pool with submerged steps. He had driven the little toe of his right foot into the corner of the lowest step, and gulped a lungful of water. Saul had pulled him out in time for him not to drown. For the next fortnight, his broken toe had been so painful that simply hopping downstairs on the other foot had, with every step, sent an inertial throb of blood into the digit that had caused him to gasp.

He went on, anyway.

‘You know what you said about the Elvis chapel?’ he said.

‘What Elvis chapel?’ said Carey, turning her eyes to his. She brought the straw back up to her lips and pursed them around it. She had a look of blank expectation. Alex looked at his feet.

‘Well,’ said Alex. ‘I wanted to say. Look.’

Alex thought of getting onto one knee, here on the pavement, but he knew in this instant – with the certainty that he knew he would never climb Kilimanjaro, or emerge victorious from a fist fight, or play a significant role in the history of the human race, or be unconditionally adored by beautiful teenage girls, and with the faint, humming sadness that accompanied those certainties – that getting down on one knee in public was something he did not have the ability to do.

‘Carey, what I’m trying to say is -’

And he could not meet her eye. And then he could. She was still holding her margarita, in its big pink plastic yard-of-ale tube, up in front of her chest. Her arms were slim and golden from the sun, and her big Dead Kennedys T-shirt was not quite formless enough to prevent the curve of her breasts from being visible.

She looked beautiful. Alex felt the moment freeze-framing into a memory. He felt as if he was looking back in time to this moment, from some point in the future. But he still didn’t know what happened next. Carey slurped her margarita.

Alex glanced nervously over her shoulder. The street was no longer empty. Three men in white suits, walking abreast, were waiting at the crosswalk ahead. Something familiar about them.

Alex put it aside, turned back to Carey, took a deep breath, closed his fist on the sharp-cornered parcel in his pocket, made himself look directly at her quizzical, almost slightly peevish face. A face saying: yup, what? Get on with it…

‘Carey. Love. Will you -’

Carey took another big slurp of her margarita. Evidently the last. The straw made a violently diarrhoeic noise in the crushed ice. Alex gave a nervous yip, and then barked with laughter. Carey looked baffled.

‘What’s funny?’

‘Just – the noise your thing made. It’s nothing. I don’t know. Silly mood, I guess. I’m just happy being here with you. Sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Are you OK?’ she said. ‘You’ve been acting a bit – just since we ate – a bit distant.’

‘Oh, no, no. Shall we walk? No, I’m fine. I was just thinking about. What do you want to do next?’

The white-suited men were getting closer. As they approached Alex could see what was familiar about them. They were Elvis. All three of them. One fat Elvis and two thin ones. The white suits were jumpsuits. The fat one, disconcertingly, had a star-spangled V-shape from shoulders to crotch. It was hard to tell how old they were, because they were wearing identical black wigs and identical fuzzy-felt sideburns and sunglasses the size of drinks coasters. But judging by the way they were walking they were epically drunk.