Levitating Las Vegas

3




“I majored in entertainment engineering and design at UNLV,” Holly explained, “because I’ve always known I would take over the family business someday. That’s why I started working as my dad’s assistant when I was fourteen. But I thought someday was in the distant future. Then last week, out of the blue, my dad informs me that he’s going to teach me everything he knows!”

“Really?” Rob asked, keeping his eyes on the road as he made a turn in his cop car.

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I’m so excited! But it’s been a week since he suggested it, and he hasn’t said another word about it.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Rob asked, easing his cop car to a stop at a red light. He blinked himself out of his reverie.

Holly bit her lip in annoyance, tasted lipstick, and immediately ran her tongue across her teeth to scrub the lipstick off, like a well-trained showgirl. What exactly did Rob mean by what? What, he hadn’t heard her last sentence over the noise of night traffic, or what, he hadn’t been listening to anything she’d said since he picked her up? If they’d been together awhile, she would have ribbed him about this: You never listen to me. But she’d known him only a week, and she couldn’t hold his attention on this, their first date. They were in trouble already.

Her vexation melted away as he glanced at her from across the seat with guileless brown eyes that sagged a bit at the corners. He’d worked all day, he’d had to wait until her parents’ show ended at 10 p.m. to take her out—and then she hit on the real problem.

“I’ll bet you worked that suicide today, didn’t you?” she asked. “That girl who jumped off the Hoover Dam?”

He turned forward. The traffic light reflected red in his eyes. For a split second, he was a handsome demon.

“F*ck this,” he grunted. He reached between them to flick a switch on the dashboard. The police siren wailed to life, startling Holly. Blue lights from his cop car leaked down the roof and spilled across the windshield. The cars in the middle of the intersection paused, then inched backward to make room for him. He stomped the gas and sped through the traffic light. Half a block down, he reached to the dashboard again to flick off the siren.

He put his hand on the knee of Holly’s jeans as if he’d done nothing unusual, which . . . maybe he hadn’t. Maybe all cops used their sirens and risked causing an accident just because they didn’t want to wait at a light.

“Sorry I stopped listening and drifted off like that,” he said. “I need to leave work at work. What were you saying?”

Holly sighed. Rob wasn’t going to share secret cop info with her. Since she’d seen the suicide reported on TV that morning, she’d replayed it over and over in her mind: how empty and awful that twenty-year-old girl must have felt to take her own life. But how cool, actually, to do it in such a dramatic way. If you were going to do it, you might as well do it right. That girl must have stood on the brink of the dam, the vast expanse of concrete below her and the Colorado River snaking darkly away like drying blood, the red canyon all around her, the blue sky above, and thought: Now, once, I am powerful, and let go.

Of course, that was just Holly being all mental adolescent dysfunctiony. If Rob didn’t want to talk about the state of the body, Holly shouldn’t ask. With effort she dragged her mind back to her small-scale problem and repeated a short version of her story. “My dad promised he’d clue me in on all the family secrets, but it’s been a week, with no clueage.”

“Clueage?” Rob’s dark brows knit. “I don’t think that’s a word.”

“Really?” she asked. No shit, Sherlock, she thought. She’d hoped that after seven years of hardly dating at all, she would be swept away by Rob, but she kept getting hints that she wouldn’t be. He didn’t understand when she was kidding—which was bad, because she was usually kidding.

“Have you bugged your dad about it?” Rob asked.

“No. He has this big stunt coming up next Tuesday. You probably saw the posters advertising it when you were at the casino last week. An impossible feat of physical stamina. He’s going to stand on a one-foot-square platform a hundred feet above the back lot of the casino for twelve hours. Not as long as David Blaine, because my dad likes his beauty sleep at night. To make up for that, the platform’s smaller than Blaine’s, and my dad won’t have ‘those pansy safety cables,’ as he calls them. Anyway, he says he wants to concentrate on training for that stunt and get it out of the way, and then he’ll teach me how he does it.”

“What’s the prob?” Rob asked. “You think he’ll splat on the pavement and take his secrets to the grave with him?”

This hadn’t occurred to her. True, her mom wasn’t as limber as she used to be, but Holly hadn’t ever thought her parents could be seriously hurt during their act full of knives and flames, because they’d never gotten hurt. She stared at Rob in distaste, talking herself down, telling herself that what he’d said wasn’t crass. She’d been the one to bring up her parents.

“No,” she said. “I just think it’s bullshit. I love my dad, but let’s get real. I’ve lived with him all my life. I’ve seen what goes on. He doesn’t train for stunts, unless you count sitting on the couch watching sports and eating fried pork skins as training. The way he eats, it’s a wonder he doesn’t weigh six hundred pounds. And I think next Tuesday, when his ‘training’ ”—she made finger quotes—“is over and it’s time for him to teach me what he knows, he’ll give me another excuse not to.”

“Why would he do that?”

She frowned. “I just graduated from college. They let me move into my friend Kaylee’s apartment a year ago, but gosh, she’s head of security at the casino. What could be safer? I wonder whether my parents have made me this promise of magic as a ruse to keep me close and obedient.”

“And you want to be disobedient?” Rob’s thumb moved on her knee, sending a jolt of awareness up her leg. She’d forgotten his hand was there.

She ached to explain the real problem: that she had a mental illness. But of course this would scare away a potential boyfriend. Besides, it was hard to feel close to him when he turned everything into a sex joke. Not that she didn’t want sex. She did, when she found herself in a real relationship.

Which explained why a girl made to work as a bikini-clad Las Vegas showgirl at fourteen was still a virgin at twenty-one. Many times she’d contemplated a one-night stand, just to see what it was like. The thing was, she wanted it to be with a dashingly handsome man who didn’t know who she was. Everyone knew who she was, courtesy of the billboard over Interstate 15.

Then, last week, Holly had met Rob. He was good-looking in a clean-cut, self-satisfied, frat boy way. He’d just moved to Vegas from Chicago. Now he was gainfully employed as a Clark County Sheriff’s deputy. So he was taking her on this date in his cop car because he was too cheap to buy his own civilian vehicle. So what? Nobody was perfect. She had a mental illness.

Therefore, she was able to overlook his latest sex joke. She even allowed his hand to remain on her knee as she explained, “I just want to be a magician. My dad hasn’t told me how he pulls off his impossible feats of physical stamina, but I’m brainstorming for something cool I could do for my debut. Walk a tightrope across the canyon at Hoover Dam?”

“Hoover Dam is a high national-security risk,” Rob said sternly. “That’s why they built the bypass bridge. It would be impossible for you to get a permit.”

Holly didn’t like being told her idea was impossible. Who did he think he was, the police?

Wait a minute.

Best to change the subject. “So, where are we going?” she asked brightly. Last week at the casino, he’d promised he would feed her. She didn’t forget promises about food. She’d been hoping for a late dinner at a nice restaurant—perhaps too much to ask on a rookie cop’s salary, but didn’t men spring for first dates? Broaching the subject might prove awkward, but Holly would be glad to go Dutch or to treat Rob, especially when food was involved. Her mom would die if she caught wind that Holly had ordered dessert. At least Holly could enjoy a salad and the atmosphere of the fine restaurant and feel like an adult, maybe even save this date from sliding any further downhill. They’d entered a residential neighborhood, though. Most restaurants were in the opposite direction.

“Home sweet home.” He parked behind a way-cool early 1960s muscle car in the driveway of a one-story orange stucco house, landscaped with gravel and cacti, average Vegas living. It was impressive that he’d been able to buy this at twenty-two years old. Maybe the muscle car was his, too.

“Is this all yours?” she asked.

“No, I rent it with a couple of roommates.” He got out of the car and slammed the door.

She watched him as he rounded the car. He was so handsome, with his dark hair short and perfectly styled. She found it a bit weird that he carried a piece while off duty, and that he kept it in a holster at his hip where everybody could see it. But that was probably an overcautious cop habit. She was being too critical. If she’d dated more, she would have seen what a catch he was. He had a logical reason for taking her back to the rented house he shared three ways without making the least effort to impress her first. She smiled brilliantly up at him as he opened the passenger door and held out his hand to her.

When she stood, he didn’t let go of her hand. He held it as they walked up the sidewalk to the house. And just as this was making her uncomfortable enough to pull away, she caught a whiff of alcohol.

Don’t panic, she told herself. It was 10:30 p.m. He’d worked a suicide that day. It made sense for him to have had a drink before he picked her up. It also made sense for him to hold her hand. They were on a date. He had no idea he was turning her off.

She swung his hand to lighten the mood. “What will we do while we’re here?” she asked hopefully. She could picture a few dates in Rob’s rented home that wouldn’t be so bad. He might want to show her his favorite movie ever. He might cook her his mom’s famous lasagna. Holly could even eat it. Her stomach rumbled at the thought that they were out of the public eye and her mom would never find out what she put in her mouth.

He stopped on the threshold, brushed his thumb across her lips, and crooned, “That depends on you.”

Holly’s throat closed up—not as completely as it had in her imagination during her mental breakdown seven years before, but enough that she touched her collarbone with her fingertips. Though his words weren’t sexual, his tone dripped innuendo. He was moving so fast it made her anxious. As he opened the door and stepped inside, drawing her by the hand, she tripped over the threshold. She caught herself, but her heels clacked ungracefully on the floor inside.

At the noise, two men glanced up from opposite ends of the open room. In the living area sat Shane Sligh, whom Holly knew by sight. He played guitar for his dad’s Frank Sinatra tribute band in the Peacock Room at the casino. He usually looked the part, too, in a fitted black tux, with his hair slicked down in a retro do. She almost didn’t recognize him now that he’d washed the gel out of his hair. She hadn’t realized he was blond. From a threadbare chair, he eyed her over the neck of his electric guitar, but his fingers never stopped flying over the silent fret board.

In the kitchen stood Elijah Brown.

She blinked, thinking she must be wrong. She’d had sex on the brain, and now she’d mistaken Rob’s roommate for her first crush, to whom she’d hardly spoken since she bailed on the ninth-grade prom. He simply looked a lot like Elijah at this distance, peering at her between the top and bottom rows of kitchen cabinets—hair in messy brown waves like a movie star caught on his day off, intense green eyes, lean body in a T-shirt and jeans.

Then he shifted forward, hanging on to the knobs of the cabinets above. His red T-shirt was partly obstructed by the dish towel over his shoulder, but she thought it read UNLV LACROSSE. Where his sleeves ended, his strong triceps moved underneath his taut skin. It was him all right, and hotter than ever.

“Mom, I’m home!” Rob called with a smirk. “What’s for dinner?”

“Tuna Helper,” Elijah said, looking at Holly.

On the drive over, Rob had made sex jokes and touched her knee, and none of that had elicited a reaction approaching the warm jolt she felt when Elijah Brown called her Tuna Helper. The rush of electricity was followed by a slower flow of emotions: Familiarity. Happiness at seeing a friendly face from high school. Sorrow for the missed opportunity of the ninth-grade prom. Anger at her parents for controlling her life. Curiosity about the coincidence that her ex-crush was her current date’s roommate.

“Mmmmm. Too bad we won’t join you.” Rob dragged Holly toward a hallway that she assumed led to his bedroom. She hung back while trying to look like she wasn’t. There was no way to extricate herself from this accelerating situation with Rob and simultaneously save face in front of Elijah.

Not that she had much face to save with him. She only waved to him each night when she passed him in the underground corridors for employees at the casino. He’d graduated from college with her last week. She’d spotted him when he walked across the stage with the Bs, looking perversely sexy in his black cap and gown. She hadn’t approached him because her parents had been in the audience.

But even if she thought there was nothing between her and Elijah anymore, maybe he disagreed. He came around the counter, wiping his hands on the towel, just as Shane jumped up from the couch and said, “Rob, aren’t you going to introduce us to your girlfriend?”

Rob glared at Shane, his eyes looking as devilish as they had in the car with the red traffic light reflecting in them.

Unphased by Rob’s expression, Shane raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Holly watched this macho drama unfold. But her attention was on Elijah, who stood not a foot from her. Goose bumps rose on her skin as if her body longed to jump that gap between them.

Rob dropped Holly’s hand and reached for his belt. She thought at first he would unbutton his pants and make some ungodly lewd gesture—he was acting so strange, she wouldn’t put anything past him at this point—but no, he unbuckled his holster and hung it on a coat rack beside the door, next to another laden holster. He took out his pistol and released the cartridge of bullets. “Shane Sligh, Holly Starr.” He managed to make this simple introduction sound ironic.

“Pleasure,” Shane said, taking her hand.

Holly grinned. Word around the female half of the casino was that Shane was a charming ladies’ man with old-fashioned manners to match his Rat Pack tux and his Southern drawl.

With the gun in one hand and the cartridge in the other, Rob looked straight at Holly. “Holly Starr, Dangermouse.”

Holly registered Rob’s nickname for Elijah only in passing. Her brain didn’t process it fully while her body was busy reacting to Elijah’s proximity. Her heart thumped wildly. She extended her hand and looked up at him.

His eyes were even greener than she remembered, a bright contrast to his tanned face and red shirt. As she watched, his pupils dilated, black obliterating the green. His hot fingers slid against hers and his hand found her hand. This was what she’d wished for in a man.

“We’ve met,” he said. The low notes of his voice traveled through his body, through his hand, and into hers. Then he let her hand go.

She wasn’t sure where to focus her eyes now. She couldn’t continue to stare moonily at Elijah. But she was afraid if she looked at Rob, she’d give away that her target for the night had shifted.

BANG. The gun fired. Everyone but Rob jumped.

Before the rush of adrenaline even hit Holly, Rob was saying in a strangely calm tone, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to do that.” He peered up at the white dust falling from the hole in the plaster ceiling.

“Jesus Christ, Rob!” Shane shouted. “That’s one way to check for a bullet in the chamber.”

“Sorry!” Rob repeated in an exasperated tone, as if Shane had a lot of nerve.

“I wonder if the damage deposit covers that,” Elijah murmured, gazing up at the hole. He put one hand on Holly’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Holly nodded, hands over her ears.

And then, as if Rob and/or the owner of the second gun hanging from the coat rack were forever accidentally peppering the ceiling with bullets, Shane changed the subject. “Holly, Peter Starr is your dad, right? I work in the same casino with you. I’ve never caught your dad’s act, but I’ve seen you around, and I recognize you from the—”

“—billboard over Interstate 15,” Holly finished for him. She laughed. “I guess the signage is working, because everybody knows me.”

As Rob reholstered the gun, he chuckled. “That’s not what I heard before I asked you out.”

Holly blinked at Rob, reviewing what he’d said, making sure she’d heard him correctly. Was he saying nobody knew her in a biblical sense, implying he understood she was a virgin? She was getting used to his sexually charged comments. But he hadn’t yet uttered anything this boorish in front of other people. In front of Elijah. She couldn’t bear to look in Elijah’s direction. She wished she could disappear.

“So, you assist your dad,” Shane prompted her, ignoring Rob. She was growing very fond of Shane. “Can you do any magic yourself?”

“Her dad’s the magician,” Rob said. “Holly can’t do shit.”

“Rob!” Shane exclaimed.

Holly glanced down at Rob’s hands balling into fists. She was glad he’d taken his gun off.

“Of course she can do magic,” Elijah spoke up. He glanced sideways at Holly.

Holly smiled. “Hold my purse.” She meant this command for any of the three men, but it was Elijah who moved first with his hands out. Whenever her dad had to hold her mom’s purse for a minute while they were out shopping, he grumbled that this was a sign a man truly loved a woman. Holly kept her face neutral as she handed the purse over.

She displayed both sides of her empty hands, splaying her fingers to show she concealed nothing between them. Then she produced a slip of flash paper and a box of matches from her bra. Parlor tricks were all about misdirection, and she’d found through experience that she would always be ahead of her dad, at least in that regard, because she could store small items in her bosom. Indeed, when she slipped a ten-dollar bill from the matchbox into her palm, she could tell it went undetected. The men continued to stare at her chest—until she lit a match.

“I’m allergic to smoke,” Shane said.

“He’s kidding,” Elijah told Holly. “He has a job playing guitar in a bar.”

“Where else am I going to get a job playing guitar?” Shane asked.

Holly crossed her eyes at them. There would be very little smoke. She touched the fire to the flash paper, which flamed large enough to make even Rob step back in surprise. The flash paper had burned away, but it seemed to Holly’s audience to have turned into the ten-dollar bill, which she now unrolled from her palm.

Shrugging the strap of her purse onto his shoulder, Elijah beamed and clapped for her.

“Wow, is that a real ten?” Shane reached out to finger the money.

“You’re supposed to use a hundred so it will look more impressive,” Holly said, “but I went shopping with Kaylee Michaels. Aren’t these cute?” She pulled up her jeans leg and showed them her new shoes.

“They’re adorable!” Elijah exclaimed.

“Thank you! I got them at—” When she realized he was poking fun at her, she shoved him playfully in the chest.

Both of them laughed.

Then both of them self-consciously half looked toward Rob and stopped laughing. Elijah handed her purse back.

Shane filled the silence. “Could you come live with us? If you did that trick a few times a week, we’d have satellite TV paid for.”

Rob asked her matter-of-factly, “You like performing for my roommates? You like turning tricks for my friends?”

She frowned at Rob. Because her job required her to dress provocatively, and had required this of her since she was a high school freshman, she was particularly annoyed by prostitute jokes.

She reminded herself that her parents loved Rob. They’d talked with him for only five minutes last week, but he’d won them over in that short space. They were impressed that he was older than her and employed as a sheriff’s deputy. They viewed him as strong and stable, someone who could take care of her if her MAD flared up.

But maybe she didn’t need a man to take care of her. Mentafixol controlled her MAD. And she’d rather go crazy than be stuck with this prick. If she stayed with him for another second she might just slap him, MAD or no MAD. “Excuse me,” she said icily, turning for the hallway, where she assumed she’d find a bathroom. There she could collect herself and figure out what to do.

As she turned, she glimpsed Elijah’s face. Just for a second. She was too furious and embarrassed to pause and examine his expression. But in that moment, his look wasn’t one of anger at Rob or sympathy for her. It was astonishment, as if he’d suddenly realized something about her that he hadn’t known before.

“Smooth, Rob,” she heard Shane say behind her.

Then came Rob’s footsteps. “Holly. Why are you shy all of a sudden? You don’t have to be in the same room with my friends to perform for them. They just have to be able to—”

At the sound of him gaining on her, she skittered into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

“—hear you,” Rob called through the door.

Holly crossed to the far end of the narrow room, sat on the closed toilet, and pulled her phone from her purse.

Rob tried the knob, then pounded on the door. “Holly. Come here. Come here and open the door.”

“I need some privacy,” she muttered.

“Are you getting ready?” he asked in a hopeful tone.

“Yeah.” She reached over to turn on the water in the bathtub. Yeah, she was freshening up for sex with him. Being called a whore in front of her high school crush turned her on. She texted Kaylee.

Rob is being weird/threatening/drunk. Can u come get me? Near the Strip, street with huge doughnut sign on corner, cop car in driveway. Or is my MAD acting up?

While waiting for the response, she had the foresight to turn off the volume on her phone so it wouldn’t make the sound of Tinker Bell’s magic wand when Kaylee replied.

It’s not ur MAD. That guy’s spooky. I’ll be there in a sec with the goons.

Holly sighed her relief. She was saved. Then she frowned at the phone and typed with her thumbs:

When u met him last week u said u liked him!!!

And got this reply:

That’s what’s spooky. I don’t like anybody.

True. Kaylee was suspicious of everyone. But spooky or not, Rob hadn’t done anything to deserve Kaylee’s squad of burly, suit-clad security guards breaking up his housekeeping. And she wasn’t sure what would happen to Elijah and Shane in the fray. She texted Kaylee back.

Well don’t come inside. Let me see if I can get outside to u. He has 2 cute roommates and the goons r not surgical.

Holly slipped her phone back into her purse. The tub still gushed, which would mask any noise she made in her great escape. She stood on the toilet, unlocked the tiny window, and slowly, carefully, silently slid it open. Then she folded her body through the dark space. Another girl the same size might have doubted she could get through, but Holly had been taught by the best. She landed on her high heels on the gravel outside, purse in tow, and tiptoed toward headlights approaching up the street.

Her parents would have been so proud.