Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

But on that March night of twelve years ago plus change, be it boy or girl or flipper baby, he'd been sure that the coming child — yes, the very same one who was writhing now at having to hear all this, you, you little pain in the ass —surely was some sort of blessing. A blessed infant coming from some blessed place.

Even now telling the story made him more sure of it.

And what Lincoln did not say — what his wife did not now or ever correct him on — was that Lorraine had been in labor for only two hours.

He did not report that he'd missed the page from the hospital. That he had not been on hand for the birth — the breech birth.

Not while Lorraine was cut open. Not while his baby was unwrapped from its umbilical cord, forcibly removed from his momma's womb.

The fact is, he'd heard the news with his wife resting in hospital room seven. A glossed-over, secondhand version, accentuated by Jamaican lilts whose loveliness he still vividly heard: Don't feel bad. The childe jes coulden’ wait to come into the world.

Newell Ewing would never know about these details. In the same way Lincoln never arrived at the blessed event itself, revisionist history would drop his absence from the story. Instead, what finally was mentioned, the last word in this little tale, was a postscript, a vow made when he had snuck away from his sleeping wife and their room of bounty, and had stood in front of the baby nursery's glass wall. I will never be able to do enough for my child.

The sound of a noisy engine pulling up to the driveway and idling. A wheezing horn. Newell could not move fast enough, shooting to his feet, extending his palm.

3.1

The neon. The halogen. The viscous liquid light. Thousands of millions of watts, flowing through letters of looping cursive and semi-cursive, filling then emptying, then starting over again. Waves of electricity, emanating from pop art façades, actually transforming the nature of the atmosphere, creating a mutation of night, a night that is not night— daytime at night. The twenty-four-hour bacchanal. The party without limits. The crown jewel of a country that has institutionalized indulgence. Vegas on Saturday night.

Nothing matches the spectacle of the four-point-six-mile stretch known as the Las Vegas Strip. Here, some thirty-five gaming resorts are gathered, each boasting more hotel suites than can be found in the countries formerly known as the Soviet Union. They operate like autonomous empires, each one packed with restaurants ranging from five-star gourmet to quickie snack bars, with walk-through shopping malls where high-end couture is as plentiful as suburbia's favorite brands, with amusement centers for the kiddies, thumping nightspots catering to those inclined to shake what their mommas gave them, and sports books whose giant-screen televisions and information boards rival the Pentagon's war room. This is only the beginning. Every amenity the mind, on a whim, might invent, is available. Every offering that might keep someone from heading into another resort.

Business may have been slumping that year with terrorism threats, a free-falling economy, and airline bankruptcies combining to drive most hotels’ weekday occupancy rates to dangerously low levels. But on weekends, the city still overflowed as in the boom times, with occupancy rates spiking to above 90 percent. On Saturday nights, the price of a hotel room more than doubled. The cheapest blackjack tables were bumped from a two-dollar minimum bet to twenty. If you wanted to see Bill Cosby at Caesars, Bob Dylan at the Mandalay Bay, or Nudes on Ice at the Union Plaza, tickets were not only twice as expensive, brokers would tell you, but also twice as difficult to get. Everything cost more on Saturday night. On Saturday night everything was worth more. On Saturday night more was at stake, for players as well as the people serving them. Thus, the guy in the chef's hat at the buffet was more than happy to slice you an end cut. The bathroom attendants lowered their heads an extra subservient notch while offering selections of cologne.

Five out of ten livelihoods in Clark County depended on keeping visitors happy, and four of the other five were indirectly dependent. Which meant that at approximately nine thirty-five P.M. on the Saturday night of the second week of August, the blackjack dealer did not so much as raise his eyebrow at the prematurely balding guy who strained at the confines of a shiny lamé shirt (if the dealer had to guess, he'd say the shirt had been purchased especially for this trip). It meant that the dealer retained his poker face as this guy was dealt four consecutive hands of thirteen or fourteen; and that when this poor schlep, as per the instructions of his Get Rich Quick Players Guide, hit on the first three hands, and each time received a face card, he received the dealer's sympathies. It meant that during the fourth hand, when this guy stared at his cards, let out a deep breath, took off his thick black eyeglasses, and rubbed at his temples, when he said, Okay, I'm good, hold, and promptly watched what should have been his seven go to the next player, the dealer did not laugh out loud. And, too, it meant that when Bing Beiderbixxe, angry and dejected and more than a little abashed, left the casino, and asked the valet parking guy about the nearest strip club, he was not met with any sort of judgment. Just a sly smile, the wink of the complicit.

But remember, it's also Saturday night for residents of Las Vegas. And while a great many of the locals are busy dealing the wrong cards to the right people, there remain a large number of folks whose weekdays have been spent performing such tasks. When Saturday hits, these people are more than ready to let loose. Top tier pop acts perform at the university basketball arena. The city also is home to minor league teams in hockey, arena football, and baseball, as well as professional drag and stock-car racing tracks. Don't forget the drama companies, repertory ballet, the museums (art, natural, and regional history), or the zoo. All have their merits. Yet like the infamous founder of the Hair Club for Men, who on late-night commercials happily proclaimed himself to be not only the president of his club, but also a client, a great number of the people who live and work in Las Vegas are most captivated not by zoos and ballet, but by games of chance. On weekends, they leave the Strip to tourists, downtown to the unfortunates. The action heats up along the city's perimeter, adjacent to its many suburbs, inside the many casinos that specifically cater to locals, places like Sam's Town and the Palace Station, warehouse-size halls whose hotel rooms usually sell because the Strip has been overbooked. Here, the vibe is tangibly different from on the Strip: all the overblown pretenses and fantasies have been stripped away. Frequent-player slot clubs provide senior citizens with rebates at area grocery stores, and pick-the-parlay football contests require a Nevada driver's license to enter. Money still flows through the casinos; there's still enough energy in the air to rival any big-name joint, but out here the energy is shaded with blue-collar pragmatism. Career dealers and waitresses occupy untold seats around blackjack tables. Logrolling is constant, as is the business of watching, and washing, backs. You never know, the guy you broke in dealing poker with ten years ago could show up as a pit boss; the husband of your former secretary might end up a head waiter.

Lincoln Ewing happily thanked his old buddy with an arm around the shoulder and a twenty-dollar bill folded inside a handshake. A chair was pulled out for Lorraine. For more than a moment she allowed herself to be charmed by the dark and intimate table in the restaurant's far corner. Her husband's charisma impacted her as it had in the old days, his seemingly endless connections reminded her just how likeable he could be. Instead of checking her watch, she reached across the candlelit table, placed her hand atop his. The wine steward would be around shortly.