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Viva Las Vegas

Penn Stewart

    Shelly and John were eloping. It was the middle of the summer and they decided to take a weekend trip down to Las Vegas and get married. There would be no whining bridesmaids, no drunken best man, no expensive photographer or caterer, and best of all, no cranky in-laws. She wanted to think that is was all John’s idea, but she wouldn’t have agreed if there hadn’t been some kind of allure. They had been living together in Tulsa for two years, just playing house. It had gotten to the point where she wondered if the relationship was too safe. There was no real commitment, only a lease to a one-bedroom apartment bound them together.
    “We can go Route 66 all the way. We don’t need a map,” John said.
    And without really even thinking about it, she heard herself say yes.

    They had been on the road for fifteen hours, with John doing most of the driving. Shelly dozed off and on, but she felt an uneasiness inside her that made her jolt awake several times. She kept expecting something to happen, but every time she woke up everything was fine. Reluctantly, she let her eyes close. And then she awoke because things were too quiet. They were at a gas station. John was inside talking to the clerk. The glow of the fluorescent lights splashed out onto the pavement around the little store. Beer, Milk, Ice, was printed in big red block letters across the top of the store. She could see him gesturing and pointing, and then the clerk pointing in the opposite direction. John nodded, took a sip of his soda and then pointed again. She could see a rack sitting on the counter top that looked like it contained maps. Shelly wondered what it was about men and directions.
    There was a sudden clunk from the back of the car. The hose from the gas pump disappeared behind the driver’s side rear fender. She turned and saw John holding up both his hands in front of him with palms together, and then his right hand moved up and away like he was talking about a fork in the road. He wiggled his right, and then said something. And then he wiggled his left. The clerk nodded. John and the clerk both looked out at the car. Shelly closed her eyes. She didn’t know why; it was instinct.
    A moment later she heard the nozzle taken out of the back of the car and the clank of it being replaced on the pump. The door creaked and he sat down. Shelly lazily opened her eyes. “Where are we? She asked.
    “200 miles from Vegas.” He took a long drink of his soda and then started the car.
    “Do you want me to drive?”
    “I’m good,” he said.
    He put the car in drive and turned on the headlights. The little oasis of light shrunk behind them as they headed into the night. John looked over at her and smiled. She yawned.
    “Stop that,” he said.
    “Sorry,” she said.
    The hum of the road made Shelly’s eyelids heavy, and she began to doze again. Something inside her said she should be more excited about eloping. Wasn’t this supposed to be romantic? Even if it was just a weekend jaunt to Las Vegas, she was getting married. She thought about the glitz of the city: neon, clanging slot machines, a pyramids and the Eifel Tower in the middle of a desert. But the drone of the road won her tired mind over. The thoughts about what was to come slipped away as though they were tethered by a thin string that slipped through her hand. Sleep wrapped her in its arms and dragged her down.

    John wanted to arrive in Vegas while Shelly was sleeping. He wanted to nudge her awake as they approached the strip and the huge, gaudy Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign. He imagined that she would stretch her arms over her head and give him a smile. In that smile he would see their future. She’d move over and lay her head on his shoulder as they drove down the strip, looking for wedding chapels. He wondered if she’d go for the one with the Elvis impersonator or if she’d want to do a drive-up window ceremony. Afterwards, he saw them driving to The Palms or The Sands. He wondered if The Sands was still standing. Something in the back of his mind recalled it being imploded. A controlled demolition, was a phrase that seemed to float into his head. Anyway, even if The Sands was no more, he wanted some place with lots of kitsch: palm trees and neon, round beds that rotate slowly under a mirrored ceiling in a gilded red velvet honeymoon suite.

    Shelly opened her eyes. The sun was piercing through the windshield. The glare made her wince. She felt like she was perspiring and reached over to turn on the AC, but it just blew hot, dusty air.
    “I tried that already,” John said. “Of all the times for the AC to go out, huh?”
    Shelly’s mouth was dry and pasty from sleep. She looked around for something to rinse her mouth out. All she saw was the empty soda bottle on the floorboard from the night before.
    “We got anything to drink?” She asked, knowing the answer.
    John shook his head. She knew she should have said something when they were stopped at the little store. Her mother hated that she was passive. “You’re like a doormat,” she said.
     “You’re right, Mom.”
    Her mother sighed. “See?”
     But it was hard for her to change. She preferred to accept things as they were and then gripe about them later. She dug in her purse and found a little travel-size tube of Crest and put a dab on her forefinger and rubbed her teeth. The paste felt like grit in her mouth. She waited for some saliva to form, but her mouth stayed dry. She gave up and rolled down the window to spit but a blast of hot air made her swallow out of shock.
    “Goddamn it’s hot,” she said. But John just stared straight ahead, nervously glancing down at the instrument panel.
    “Are you okay?”
    “Yeah. Just want to get there. You know?”
    “Do you want me to drive?
    John shook his head.
    “How much farther to Vegas?
    “We’ll be there soon.”
    “You’d think there would be more cars on the road. Are we still on 66?”
    “The clerk at the store told me that 66 doesn’t actually go through Vegas.”
     “Where are we?”
    “About a half hour out.”
    Yucca plants, tumbleweeds, and distant mountains filled the landscape. The skinny two-lane road stretched out in front of them, shimmering in the distance.
    “Come on,” John muttered.
    The engine began to make a knocking sound, like there were steel ball bearings in the pistons. Shelly leaned over and saw the temperature gauge obscuring the letter H. Droplets of water began to hit the windshield. They left a chalky trail on the glass as they disappeared on their way toward the roof. The car started to slow down, even though John’s foot was pushing down on the gas pedal. Steam poured from under the hood and then the engine died. The hissing of steam got louder as the tires on the pavement slowed. The empty road ahead of them stretched to the horizon.
    “Come on, goddamnit.” John pounded on the steering wheel. He turned the ignition and the starter whined to life. The engine caught and then there was a loud metallic thump and the car filled with a heavy blue smoke.
    They coughed and waved their arms at the smoke like it was a bad dream. John pulled the car to the side of the road and flung his door open and was out before it came to a stop.
    Shelly stumbled out and fell onto the gravel shoulder.
    “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” He yelled as he kicked the car. Steam hissed out from under the hood. Oily smoke came from under the front fenders, totally obscuring the wheels.
    The suddenness and the oily smoke left her breathless. She forced herself to cough, to jump start the breathing process. At that moment she remembered a time when she was on a bus in Tulsa, heading to school. An old Black woman with wide white eyes full of panic was wheezing, hands at her chest like they wanted to rip through the flesh and pull out whatever part was causing the problem. It was an asthma attack. The paramedics had come and rushed her off to the hospital. The memory turned some crank deep inside her and she inhaled, the process began again. And as her chest heaved with each breath she recalled how everyone who had been on the bus stood around afterwards, uncertain if it was okay to resume their lives. Somewhere in the back of Shelly’s mind she also seemed to remember reading that the woman had died.
    Shelly sat up, dusting the sand from her jeans. John was holding his foot and cursing. The air was so hot. She finally caught her breath well enough and stood up, and felt a little dizzy. She walked over to John.
    “Are you okay?” She asked
    “Fine. Just fucking fine.”
    She looked at his side of the car and saw three large dents, the first in the back door and the other two in the rear fender. John sat on the dirt shoulder holding his leg.
    “So where are we?”
    John looked at her. “Where are we? We’re in the fucking desert.” He picked up a handful of dirt and flung it. Shelly dodged the cloud of dust and pebbles.
    “See that? It’s fucking desert. Shit!”
    Shelly waited for him to calm down. Sometimes his temper scared her, but he had never raised a hand to her. She walked over to the car, opened the back door, and found her overnight bag. She started going through it, leaving underwear and a pair of slacks on the dusty road. She put on white sun visor and rooted for something else. She reached back and pulled her hair up into a ponytail. A moment later she found the bottle of sunscreen that she had imagined using at the hotel pool. She squirt the sunscreen into her palms and slathered it on her arms and neck.

    John sat there watching her deliberate moves, his big toe throbbed. He wanted to take his shoe off and see what kind of damage his fit had caused but was afraid that if he saw it, he wouldn’t be able to walk on it. And walking was the only way they were going to get anywhere.
    “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said.
    Shelly didn’t turn around.
    “Hey, Shel. Look, I’m sorry. I was just mad. You know? That guy at the station said this would shave an hour off our time. I just wanted to get to Vegas. You know? And this shit happened.”
    They had been on the couch watching TV a week ago when one of those Vegas commercials came on; he thought, what the hell.
    “Hey,” he said. “Let’s go get married in Vegas.” He could’ve said, Let’s go gambling, Let’s go get drunk, or Let’s go and have crazy sex like we did when we first met. But the M-word rolled off his lips. And then she said yes. That was when the thought of being married hit him. He loved Shelly, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready to settle down. It all seemed so permanent.
    There was a smirk on her face. “What’s so funny?”
    Shelly turned and looked at him. “This. This whole idea of running off to Vegas to get married. You know maybe there’s a reason why most places make you wait a few days.”
    “Are you saying to don’t want to get married now?”
    “Right now, I’d be happy just to have a bottle of water. I think getting married is pretty low on the priority list. Don’t you?”
    She was right. The important thing was to get out of the desert. But with the pain in his big toe, he didn’t know how far he would be able to walk.
    “So how far back did you turn off the main road?”
    “I don’t know. 30 minutes, or so.”
    “Let’s assume the guy at the station knew what he was talking about, and that you turned down the right road, how much farther are we away from Vegas?”
    “I’d say maybe half an hour. That is if we were driving,” he said.
    “So we might have 30 miles of desert in front of us, and another 30 behind us.”
    She was making him feel stupid and he was about to go off on her again when he saw her sit down and put on fresh white socks and her tennis shoes. She looked up the road, and then back down the way they had come. Without a word she walked back the way they had come.
    John stumbled to his feet. “Hey, wait up.”
    Shelly didn’t look back, but she did lessen her pace, just a bit. John hobbled up next to her, doing his best not to put any weight on his big toe.
    “I think we’re closer to Vegas than to the turn off,” he said.
    Shelly didn’t answer; she just kept on walking.
    “Shel?”
    “Are you sure we’re headed in the right direction?” She asked without breaking her stride.
    “Pretty sure.”
    She didn’t stop.

    It was one week since John had asked her to marry him. No ring, just an impulsive moment. There was a little voice in her head that told her it wasn’t a good idea. She had always envisioned a big, traditional wedding. But there was something exciting about the spontaneity of John’s idea. Something made her say yes. They had decided the day before yesterday and they were on the road to Vegas the following morning. Before they left, she called home. She wanted to talk to her mother, but she was out and it was her father who answered the phone. His voice was scratchy, as if he had just woken up.
    “Well, if that’s what you want,” he said.
    Shelly wanted to tell him how much she loved John, and how this just seemed like the right thing to do, but all she could think of was her father, probably still in his pajamas, holding the phone with one hand and looking down at the nails on his other hand. Whenever he disapproved of something he always found his fingernails interesting. He wasn’t the type for pejorative lectures; his silences were critical enough. Finally he broke the silence.
    “Just remember, for better or worse, baby girl.”
     “Tell mom I love her,” she said.
    “Will do,” he said.
    There was a click and he was gone. Shelly held the phone in her hand a moment, looking at it, trying to see her father at the other end. She wondered what he was doing right now. Was he crying? Was he just going about his normal morning routine? She thought that she probably would have felt better if he had gotten angry with her. Shelly never saw him mad. It was always her mother that told her how hurt or angry he was. Just once she wanted to strike a nerve and get a visceral reaction out of him. But if running away and getting married in Vegas—Sin City—didn’t get a rise out of him, it seemed that nothing ever would.

    “Wait a sec. I need to get my hat.”
    Shelly stopped and he ran-hobbled back to the car and opened the trunk. He unzipped a side compartment of his golf bag and pulled out a crusty green cap. The brim was stained from sweat and the outer edges of the stains were lined with a fine line of salt. He knew Shelly hated the hat and had tried more than once to throw it away. He put the hat on and smiled at Shelly as he made his way back to her. He was slightly out of breath, but he still had a big grin on his face. He could see that she was looking at his hat, and there was something about her hating it that made him giggle inside, even out here in the desert.
     Shelly glared at him for a moment, her arms akimbo.
    There was as much heat coming up from the pavement as there was coming from her. John looked around for some high point, a place to get a longer view, but everything was flat.
    John saw Shelly lick her lips like she was getting ready to say something, but she shooke her head ever so slightly.
    They had lived together for two years, and he knew she was beginning to wonder where their arrangement was going. He had a found a piece of paper from a notepad that she had tried names out on: Mrs. John Davis, and then Mrs. Shelly Davis. They were written and then scratched out. He didn’t know if she had scratched them out because she didn’t like the sound or the look, or if she didn’t want him to see her doodling. But he had seen it. It was in the garbage, next to his hat. He wondered which was thrown away first.

    When Shelly saw John she tensed up. She wasn’t angry about the hat. It was just a stupid stained hat that needed to be thrown away. She was angry about the smirk on his face. He had gotten them lost in the desert and he hadn’t taken care of the car well enough to get them were they were going. She thought that if he couldn’t take care of a stupid car, how was he ever going to take care of a family. He looked like an overgrown kid with a shit-eating grin on his face, hobbling up the road. She wondered if he would ever catch up.
    “Okay, let’s go,” he said.
    Shelly stood still as he walked ahead of her. She wanted to kick him, or hit him with something. There weren’t any rocks around big enough to do any damage, and then she thought that she could go back to the car and get the tire iron. One good whack on his head would be enough she thought. She wanted to feel the weight of the steel in her hand, she could imagine the tire iron cracking his skull, the sound of bone being shattered. It would be slightly muffled because of the damn hat.
    “Com’on Shel. What are you waiting for?” He yelled, still smiling.
    “Fuck you!”
     She couldn’t believe that it came out of her mouth, but it felt good. She wanted to say it again and again. But she didn’t.
    John was nearly a hundred yards ahead of her. Sage bushes, Yucca plants, and cacti stretched in every direction, divided by a lonely ribbon of ancient asphalt. The road had been black at one point, but most of the tar had been worn away leaving sun bleached pebbles bubbling up to the surface. The centerline was yellow, but each line of paint had crackled under the relentless sun. A rich blue sky hung over them; in the distance three black shapes were flying in a lazy circle. John was still looking back her, waiting. It looked like he was trying to decide if he heard her correctly. Shelly licked her dry lips and thought once more about the tire iron, and then began to move down the road.

    “Look, I’m sorry about all this,” he said.
    She walked briskly right by him without a glance at him. He thought that maybe he shouldn’t have stopped and waited for her. His big toe was throbbing, and every step shot pain up his shin. He started walking, doing his best to keep up with Shelly.
    “Hey! I just wanted to get us to Vegas, you know. I wanted to wake you up as we passed the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign.” He gave extra emphasis to the word fabulous.
    Shelly just kept walking.
    “That clerk—”
    Shelly stopped and turned around. “Just shut up. Would you?”
    “I’m sorry...”
    Shelly started walking again. John stood there and watched her for a moment. And then she stopped again.
     He had a sinking feeling in his gut. Shelly was on the side of the road looking at an old metal sign.
    “What’s it say?”
    Shelly didn’t answer. She just kept looking at the sign, shaking her head. John finally reached her and turned to look at the sign.

Nellis Air Force Test Range
Department of Defense
No Trespassing


    “Shit,” John said.
    Shelly looked at him for a minute. “Yeah. Shit,” she said. “Let’s get going.
    “Hey, I’m really sorry. I—”
    “You’re such a fucking idiot. How did you not see that sign?”
    “I don‘t know.”
    Shelly turned her back on him and started walking again. John glanced a the sign once more and began to follow.
    “Well what does it mean then?” He asked. When the words let his mouth he instantly regretted the question.
    Shelly turned on him. “Think about it. We’re in the desert, in Nevada. What does the word ‘test range’ make you think of?” John couldn’t look her in the face. “I don’t know. Bombs?”
    “That’s right! This is where the military tests their bombs. Okay? You drove us into an atomic test site. You know mushroom clouds? Jesus Christ!”
    John looked out into the desert and scanned the sky. He looked back at Shelly as she walked down the middle of the road. He knew that the Air Force no longer tested nuclear weapons above ground, but he wasn’t going to point that out to Shelly. There was enough fallout already.
    She took long strides as she walked and stayed well ahead of John, but the distance didn’t seem to grow. He couldn’t tell exactly when she slacked off to keep from leaving him behind. His toe had gone numb, but the pain in his shin made each step a chore. He thought about Dr. Strangelove, that crazy movie with Slim Pickens riding an atomic bomb out of a plane, and all the mushroom clouds that they showed in the end. And while he remembered smiling at that scene, right now it didn’t seem all that funny.
    John wanted to think that this would eventually make an amusing anecdote, something told at a cocktail party twenty years from now. He could see Shelly hobbling along in a nice dress with a martini glass in her hand as she parodied him. She would smile about it and their friends would think that they had such a great relationship. They would be jealous because John and Shelly could laugh at the bad times. But that was down the road a ways. And at that moment John wasn’t even sure they would ever be on that road.
     He tried to smile, but it was more of a grimace. He was also worried what Shelly would think if she were to turn around and see him smiling, again. She’d probably lengthen her stride and leave him behind for buzzard bait.
    “Hey!” he said, “Do you think we can take a break?”
    At first it seemed Shelly didn’t hear him and kept walking.
    “Shel! Com’on. My foot’s killing me.”
    She stopped in the middle of the road with her arms on her hips. John made his way to her and said, “Just five minutes, okay?”
    Shelly didn’t want to answer. He knew what was going through her head. It was his fault that they were out here. It was his fault that he hurt his damn foot, and now it was his fault that they were going to have to spend even more time out in the desert.
    John looked at her. “Well?”
    Shelly looked at her wristwatch and said, “You got four and a half minutes left.”
    John gave her a hard look and then sat down in the middle of the road. The heat from the asphalt burned its way through his pants, but he couldn’t get up.

    Shelly stood looking up and then down the road. She had never wanted to see another human being so badly in her life. Even one of those truckers with the chrome silhouettes of reclining naked girls on his mud flaps would be all right. She would just jump into the truck and not even wave goodbye. Shelly thought about what her father had said on the phone: “For better or worse” echoed in her head. The road trip down here was good. They laughed, sang off-key together, totally ruining an Eric Clapton ballad. Was that it? Was that the only better they were ever going to have?
    “Okay,” she said, “Let’s get going.”
    John didn’t look like the rest had done any good. He put his hand up, silently asking for help. Shelly looked down at him, and for a moment she thought about walking away. Then off in the distance something caught her eye. Something was glimmering. She tried to make out what it was. It looked like just a pinpoint of light riding along the horizon. She didn’t say a word, just pointed. John looked and saw it, too. Maybe it was a patrol from the Air Force base, or maybe it was just someone else who was on vacation. But it was defiantly a vehicle that was reflecting the rays of the sun.
    Shelly looked at John’s foot and said, “Do you think you can make it?”
    “I don’t know. You could probably go faster without me.”
    She knew he was testing her, or at the very least tempting her, but she didn’t care.
    “You’re right,” she said. She looked around for some semblance of shade. A scrub oak, a putrid little tree was just off the road. She pointed to it and said, “There’s a little shade over there.”
    John looked over his shoulder at the overgrown tumble weed.
    “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said.
    “Okay, Mrs. John Davis. I’m holding you to that.”
    Shelly gave John a long look and helped him to his feet. He hobbled through the sandy dirt and plopped down on the soft earth next to the tree, and looked up at her. There was fear and doubt in his eyes, but he didn’t say a word. “Stay here,” she said.

    She bent over, removed his hat, and gave him a quick peck on the top of his head, just the way his mother used do it when she put him to bed. Shelly turned quickly and was back on the road heading away before he had a chance to ask a question. He lay back in the sandy earth. The sky was cloudless blue and he thought how beautiful it was. It was like a deep ocean, and he felt like he was floating over it. He began to imagine the embrace of the water, the swell of waves. Goosebumps covered his flesh as the coolness of the imagined water overtook the heat of his body.



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