Leaving Las Vegas Read Online Free PDF Page B

to think anymore. I mean, what exactly is happening in this city? You can’t walk down the Strip without seeing those filthy newspapers, you know the ones with those naked girls all over them. The casinos are all showing those topless shows, those French shows. Everyone is drinking on the street. Reverend Phil, you talk about God but where is he? These people are all tourists. What’s your name, dear. Jo. Well, Jo, sister—and isn’t that a lovely name that Jesus gave to you, Jo—You know that Jesus is everywhere. We need to remember that the only way to fight the evil is to lose it from your mind, Jo. Look away from that devil. Look away from that pornographer. Look away from that robber. Look away from that murderer. The Lord will deal with them. Have faith, Jo, that they will be swept from this city. The drunk, the prostitute, the will not, live not suicides, will be swept away from our clean floor and into the pit to burn. Then you, Jo, and I and our sisters and brothers will walk again without the tainted presence of those that embrace the evil. Yes, Reverend, I know, but I don’t understand. You don’t understand, Jo. You don’t have to. That’s his glory. It’s good or bad, us or them, black or white. Believe or burn, Jo. These books are written by the righteous. Do not dare to question that which can never need correction. This ark is long afloat, Jo. Come aboard and be safe. It takes no thinking. Pause not, and give only faith! Thank you, Jo, and God bless you…”
    “What happened to your face?” asks the driver.
    “My husband beats me,” she lies, “but it’s not really his fault. He just doesn’t know any better. We love each other, so I stick around. Anyway, it’s the only game in town.”
    “That’s a shame, sister. You should lose that bum. Pretty girl like you could have any guy she wanted,” he says.
    She doesn’t answer and they drive the rest of the way to the Tropicana easily, listening to easy-listening country-rock gospel songs.
    Arriving there, she pays the driver and approaches the multitudinous glass doors which serve as an effective barrier against only the hot desert itself, and nothing else. Penetration of the first bank lands her in a half-ass air lock, in which she hears the muffled bells and buzzers from an army of gaming machines along with the faint remnants of the sound of traffic on the street, all led by the uneven thuw-wumping beat of the rotating revolving doors. Here the air has no temperature, or every temperature. So pausing only briefly to acclimate herself, she pushes onward through the second bank of doors and enters the casino proper, where it’s always really loud.
    She heads for the bar, choosing the side that gives her a spectators’ view of the tables and machines. Waiting for the bartender, savoring the delicious complimentary goldfish-shaped crackers—so generously provided by this and many other attentive establishments throughout Las Vegas—she spots a well-appointed drunk at one of the blackjack tables who seems to be attracting some attention.
    The fiftyish man is gaudily adorned with gold in every conservatively customary place on his person. He has that air of one who has and will spend too much of the evening teetering on the edge of consciousness but never quite passing out, and it is obvious that, in the morning, it will take the waxing collection of no-carbon-required markers, being generated even now by the floorman and initialed by both the dealer and the player, to help build a picture for his no longer self-sufficient memory. The nervous manner of the casino staff that is present indicates that this is a player with both the means and the inclination to lose a lot of money—a lot more money—tonight, here. The man ismaking barely intelligible bets of five hundred to two thousand dollars each on two simultaneously played hands, and losing almost all of them before he has even signed the markers for chips lost two bets ago. The floorman