Elin Hilderbrand - 28 Summers

He doesn’t know the first thing about gambling and he’s worried about making an ass of himself if he sits down to blackjack or tries to throw craps. The slots don’t interest him in the slightest. What did Kwasi say? The roulette wheel.

It’s as easy as placing the chip on a number, right? He watches the ball drop and wheel spin three times—twenty-three, four, thirty-five. What number should he pick? He thinks about Mallory’s birthday, March 11, but he’s never been with her on her birthday or, per their arrangement, even called her on it.

He chooses nine for their month, September; he sets his chip down on the red nine and thinks, All or nothing. It was free money, anyway.

And guess what.

Nine wins.

It wins.

Jake lets out a whoop as his one chip turns into a pile of chips. That was incredible, right? Ha! His very first try, he won!

“I won!” he says to the woman next to him. She’s older, smoking a cigarillo. Her lipstick has bled into the lines around her mouth. “And that was the first time I ever gambled!”

(The woman’s name is Glynnis. She wants to tell this kid that beginner’s luck isn’t just a Santa Claus myth. It’s more predictable than death.) “Do yourself a favor,” she says. “Cash out.”

But Jake doesn’t cash out. Instead, he takes half his chips and places them on five, for May, which is the month of Ursula’s birth, and twenty, which is the day.

The number that wins is, again, nine.

Jake blinks. Nine again? His money is swept away.

Glynnis exhales a stream of cigarillo smoke and says, “This town runs on fools like you.”

It has taken Jake less than five minutes to experience the highs and lows that Vegas has to offer. He returns to the pay phone, tries Ursula’s cell again—voicemail. He supposes the natural next step is to go to the bar and wait. The Bellagio is actually quite lovely. There’s a Dale Chihuly glass ceiling, Fiori di Como, that he could be very happy staring at as he sips a bourbon.

But his present state of mind is one of exasperation. He came all the way here to see his wife and not only is she not answering her phone but she neglected to add his name to the room. Her consideration for him is nonexistent. It has always been nonexistent. Why has he tolerated it for so long?

Well, no matter now. He’s leaving. He’ll catch the redeye home.

But he can’t find the exit. He can’t even find the front desk to ask where the exit is. He must have made a wrong turn and now he has been engulfed by the casino proper—rows and rows of slot machines, acres of blackjack and Texas Hold’em and craps and the now-dreaded roulette wheels. There are cocktail waitresses wearing black satin bustiers gliding around like they’re on skates. Three of them ask what he’s drinking. He says he’s looking for the nearest exit and they turn and glide away.

I give up, Jake thinks. How about a bar, then, just a good old-fashioned bar? But in this part of the hotel, those seem to have disappeared as well.

Miraculously, he finds his way back to the main elevator bank and that’s it, he’s staying put. He pulls out his book, wondering exactly what Ursula thought he would like about this place.

“Jake?”

It’s his wife, standing before him, wearing a pale pink suit and nude patent-leather pumps. Her hair is down; it’s longer than he remembers, or maybe that’s because she blew it out today, and it’s parted on the side. She is so stunning that there can’t possibly be a man on this earth worthy of her, himself included.

“Hey,” he says. He stands to kiss her and tastes tequila on her lips. “Have you been…drinking?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Mark, Anders, and I went to Lily Bar after we finished today. It’s our Friday tradition.”

“So just now…you were at a bar? ” Jake says. “Having a drink with Mark and Anders when you knew my flight landed an hour ago? I’ve been sitting here waiting for you, Ursula, because you forgot to put my name on the room. I tried calling.”

“Yes,” she says. “I saw that.”

“If you saw that, why didn’t you answer?”

“I was finishing up my workweek,” Ursula says. “And I figured I’d see you in the room. I made us reservations at the Eiffel Tower for tonight.”

“I couldn’t get into the room,” Jake says. “Because you forgot to add my name.”

“I heard you, Jake,” she says. “I’m sorry but I’ve been busy. It’s not a big deal, is it? You survived, right?”

Her tone is chiding. She knows she was negligent but she wants him to shake it off, just as he’s shaken off all her self-absorption the past nineteen years.

“Not a big deal at all,” he says. “But, Ursula?”

“What?”

“I’m leaving,” he says. He hoists his bag over his shoulder and heads in what he now knows is the opposite direction of the infernal casino. In a few seconds, he sees the unmistakable beacon of natural light beckoning him like the entrance to the afterlife. He steps out the front door into the baking sun.

Back at the Las Vegas airport, Jake hears his name being called. It’s a man’s voice, not Ursula’s. Ursula has undoubtedly gone up to the room, poured herself a glass of wine, and drawn herself a bath, where she will wait for Jake to return.

But this time, Jake isn’t running back. Ursula can stay in Vegas the rest of her life if she wants. He’s going home.

“Jake! Jake McCloud!”

There’s a man slicing through the crowds of people who are trying to make their redeyes. It’s Cody Mattis, an acquaintance from DC, and Jake feels uneasy because he listened to Cody’s voice message weeks ago when he was sick but never got back to him.

Jake gives Cody his best effort under the circumstances. Hey, Cody, how you doing, what brings you to Sin City? The answer is a bachelor party, the Spearmint Rhino, never seen women like that before in my life, blah-blah-blah. Jake blocks this last part out. He doesn’t want to think about women.

“Sorry I never returned your call, man,” Jake says. “I’ve been busy…”

“Oh yeah? Did you find a job?”

“No, not yet, still looking.”

Cody hands Jake a business card. “You know I’m working as a lobbyist for the NRA, right? When I mentioned to my boss that you left PharmX, he basically issued me a mandate to bring you in for a meeting.”

“He did?” Jake says, taking the card. NRA—the National Rifle Association. “This is Charlton Heston’s gig, right?”

“Protecting the good old Second Amendment,” Cody says. “We’d love to have you on board.”

Jake must be angry, because for the entire six-hour flight back to Washington—out of spite, he upgraded himself to first class—he turns over the possibility of lobbying for the NRA in his mind.

“Protecting the good old Second Amendment”: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The amendment was ratified in 1791, back when a person might have had any number of reasons to own a gun. Now, however, with the new millennium on the horizon, Jake believes there are too many guns, and a lot of them are in the wrong hands.

But then Jake plays devil’s advocate. He spent enough time in Michigan growing up to know that a lot of good people, his friends’ fathers, for example, hunt, and they shouldn’t have a hard time getting rifles or ammunition, should they? And what about keeping a gun around for self-defense? If Jake were the one traveling for work all the time and Ursula were home in the apartment by herself, wouldn’t he want her to have a gun, just in case? Maybe, he thinks, although if she had a gun, she might be tempted to use it in a situation that didn’t warrant it, and if she used it, someone would get hurt or maybe even die.