Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

2.3

With stiff knees and sore behinds, Kenny and his aunt would disembark from the third bus of their journey, getting out where Main met Fremont. “Howdy, partner. Welcome to downtown Las Vegas,” always greeted them, booming through an overhead speaker system in a folksy western accent, the message delivered courtesy of the Pioneer Club, and its large mechanical figure, Vegas Vic. Vic wore a cowboy hat and a smile. His right eye winked suggestively and his mechanical arm waved visitors inside.

Kenny's aunt knew better than to take the bait. Tucking her black pleather purse underneath her armpit, she'd wrap a meaty hand around Kenny's wrist as if she were holding a twig. Her sweatpants rubbing together at the thighs, she'd start down the gulch, leading the eight-year-old boy she called her little trooper underneath the first in a row of metallic awnings, rows of bulbs showering warm light onto the pedestrians. From inside each darkened open-air entrance, cool winds hummed.

Past the Pioneer Club and Slots-O-Fun, too, she and Kenny ignored the costumed barkers who promised a free spin at the fortune wheel. They did not comment on the early-morning tourists who wandered, gape-eyed, half in the bag, holding Bloody Marys. Past Sassy Sally's now, and the Four Queens. Even the Horseshoe, host of the famed World Series of Poker. Finally they'd arrive outside the small one-story storefront, where at least two or three other people lingered, hands deep in their pockets.

If Kenny had to pee, his aunt would say he should go now, around the side.

In the large window that Kenny's aunt claimed bullets could not shatter, an aged man ignored the stares from outside and continued with his business, deliberately setting up the displays, cracking open small black boxes to reveal bracelets and rings that glittered against dusty velvet. This man, whom Kenny's aunt called the Jew, had a thick, pale face, blotched with red veins and dominated by a bulbous nose. His barrel of a belly stretched the polka dots of his wide-collared/rayon shirts. Making his way from the window, his attention would turn to a warden's ring of keys.

Once the gauntlet of locks was run and the store was open, Kenny's aunt would compete for a place in line at the front counter, where all serious business was conducted. The boy's minute attention span would launch Kenny in the opposite direction, heading down the line of showcases, scanning walls yellowed with age, inhaling mothballed air. Kenny was too small to peer over the glass countertops, but he could still take in plenty: rope chains with glittering diamond pendants that spelled out the names of Arab sheiks; racing silks and rider's goggles from Del Mar and Hollywood Park; cigar boxes overflowing with war medals and fancy Confederate ribbons.

Sometimes, when the store was empty, if Kenny was on his best behavior, the Jew might emerge from the back room with his tray of glass eyes. Other times he made a silver dollar stick to his forehead, shot nickels from his nose and ears, or stacked eight quarters on the back of his spotted hand, and then, whipping his wrist, caught them. Kenny's favorite was when those marvelously large hands blurred, crossing and re-crossing. Follow me closely, the Jew growled, his hard consonants stressed and overpronounced. Where's the quarter, come on. You sure?

More often, the Jew had to deal with the foot traffic of tourists, gawkers who wanted to see this ring, asked for prices on cameras they didn't know how to use. The high roller on a hot streak who'd come to get his Rolex out of hock; the same high roller, head low, bringing back the watch. One time a smelly recluse opened a briefcase, revealing gemstones of such quality that the Jew kicked everyone out, locked the store, and engaged in private negotiations. Usually, though, it was weekend warriors on the other end of a sleepless binge. Men who'd emptied their wallets and cashed in their plane tickets, and were in need of enough money to get back to the tables. Standing in line they yawned, wiped red eyes, nursed hangovers.

Behind the counter, the Jew would take out a magnifying glass. Examine a thin band.

“I paid two thousand dollars for that,” its owner would volunteer.

“The gold isn't a great weight.”

“Two thousand dollars I paid.”

“Maybe. But the weight isn't there. And see this — the diamond, it's more than a little yellow.”

“ Ten years ago I bought that ring.”

“I can give you four hundred.”

The guy's face would flush. For a moment, it would look like he might weep.

“Please, man. Have a heart.”

“Maybe you should go around the corner.”

“It's her engagement ring. ”

“They'll take care of you around the corner.”

“MOTHERFUCKING KIKE.”

Even as an eight-year-old, Kenny was no stranger to epithets, late-night screams filtering in through the cheap stucco of his bedroom walls, his mother complaining that if his dad would quit drinking for a month, maybe he could hold down a job, his father answering that if she'd stop blowing his money at roulette, maybe he'd have a reason to quit drinking. Inside the pawn shop, however, there were no sheets to hide beneath, no darkened closet to disappear into, only his aunt's ripe body, her ratty sweatpants, and these provided little camouflage. It never failed, though: the shouting would subside, the offended man would storm out. While the air might remain charged, the threat of violence would disperse slowly, like a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Approaching the counter, his aunt would say the rent was late. Or it was the electric bill this time. Maybe she just didn't know anymore. She mixed familiarity with a tired resignation, and the Jew usually responded in kind, for Kenny's aunt had been coming to him for years, pawning her mother's communion ring, sometimes her grandmother's pearl broach and, also, when she was in dire straits, a small golden locket that she kept wrapped in the Sunday funnies. The loan amounts had long been set, and if Kenny's aunt needed an extra month to redeem her goods, it was understood this wouldn't be a problem. Placing the bills on the counter one by one, the Jew would explain the vagaries of compound interest. He'd put each item inside a manila envelope specifically designed to hold jewelry and/or folded money. Examining Kenny's aunt, he'd wink suggestively. “You here to stay? Just to play?”

“Stop it. What I really need to do is quit playing the slots. Otherwise I'm gonna end up a bum.”

They made this journey— their adventure, his aunt called it — visiting downtown, Vegas Vic, and Fremont Street each month, sometimes more often, their bus route and routine holding true whether auntie picked up Kenny to give his parents some quality alone time, or because she felt a child should not be in the middle of a war zone. Through the stints Kenny's father did in rehab and the times he stumbled back down the proverbial twelve steps; through his mother's attempts at night school and then her stops on Las Vegas's cocktail waitress circuit, and also the times she got really, really sad and cried all night and ended up getting high for a week and shacking up with some guy she barely knew. Through each of his parents’ trial separations, and every aborted reconciliation; through back-to-school shopping excursions spent among the sale racks at the outlet mall, and Christmas gifts from his aunt that Kenny recognized as coming from the pawn shop (an outdated Nintendo system whose right controller didn't work; knockoff brand CD players that fizzed out after a month); through Kenny's emerging awareness of his own pubescence, and that stunning first discovery of Dad's stash of explicit magazines. Through all the fare increases and missed transfers and convoluted detours, without fail and despite occasional interruptions of prosperity. Each trip took them beyond the unofficial demarcation point where the world famous Las Vegas Strip ended and Las Vegas Boulevard picked back up. Beyond the juncture where the gleaming hotels were replaced by an expanse of sky. Through the cheers of the paying multitudes and then those pitiless implosions, as each ancient hotel on the Strip became one with the true sands and dunes of the desert. From the viewpoint of unforgiving seats, through the darkened windows of public transportation, Kenny and his aunt made their trips, watching as each new generation of hotel and casino resorts slowly reconfigured the city's skyline — towers sculpted to appear as structural interpretations of department store birthday cakes, towers created as pop art oddities and streamlined glass palaces, the world famous Strip stretching even farther southward along its axis, moving farther away from downtown.