Levitating Las Vegas

4




Elijah watched Rob pound on the bathroom door and listened to him shout, “Holly! Open up!” Elijah thought he should intervene. Holly might have burned him back in high school, but her bubbly laugh—not to mention her long legs and high heels—made his chest ache. He should step forward, stop his suddenly insane roommate from pounding on the door, and let her out of captivity in a civilized manner. Maybe he would even play the protective hero card and make sure her cell phone number hadn’t changed since ninth grade. He’d never dared text her since the night of his breakdown, but he still had her number saved in his phone.

However, he couldn’t intervene. He stood paralyzed with shock. Holly was in his brain. Not on his brain, in it. He’d missed a dose of Mentafixol the previous night for the first time ever. And he’d awakened in the middle of the night absolutely certain that he was experiencing Rob’s dreams from the bedroom next door. He’d known it wasn’t possible, but the vision had been so vivid that he’d rolled onto his stomach and put his chin on his hands like he was watching a movie on his cell phone as Rob dashed through a Chicago subway station to save innocent commuters from a terrorist’s bomb.

The dream had faded. Elijah had hoped that would be his only withdrawal symptom before he could locate more Mentafixol, and he’d finally made it back to sleep. But all day he’d felt flashes of other people’s emotions—not nearly as strong and clear as they’d been that fateful night in ninth grade when he’d first come down with MAD, but stronger and clearer by the hour.

And now, standing at the entrance to the hallway with Rob pounding on the bathroom door, Elijah was certain Holly had jumped out the window and run away across the yard.

“Holly!” Rob’s face turned a frightening red. Elijah had worried about other men who looked this way, guys losing at his mom’s casino table. Sometimes when his mom dealt to a man like this, Elijah sat down and played at the table for a few minutes, just to make sure the guy didn’t take his frustration out on his mom. Rob pounded harder on the door. Elijah would have been thankful Holly had escaped, except he knew his feeling that he could read people’s minds was only a delusion.

“Fuuuuck!” Rob roared, flattening his hand for one last slap on the door. He turned to Shane, who leaned against the wall with his arms folded. “Sligh. You call to her.”

“Why should I call to her?” Shane asked. “You think your date might be avoiding you because you suggested she was a prostitute? Nah, she’ll come around. Pound on the door some more. She seems to like that.”

Rob cursed at Shane, and the pounding on the door resumed as Elijah left the house. He glanced down the street. Only the streetlights stared patiently back at him through the still, hot night. No Holly. He knew his MAD caused delusions, but he couldn’t shake the certainty that she was gone.

He had to be sure. He stepped off the porch and crunched through the gravel to stand beneath the small square of light from the open window. She might still be in the bathroom, hiding from Rob. Or something could have happened to her. She might be unconscious with her shiny brown curls spilled across the tile floor.

He put both hands inside the window frame and, arms straining, pulled his whole weight up the stucco wall to peer through the tight opening. Now he could see into the bright, empty room, but not through the opaque shower curtain to the inside of the bathtub. The window frame scraped both his shoulders at once. He was too big to fit through, but he had to know. She might be in trouble. She might need him.

He eased one shoulder through, then the other. He had nothing to brace himself against while he pulled his legs through. How had Holly done this in reverse? Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she was still in the tub. He wiggled through the window, extending his hands, until he reached the toilet. He managed to break his fall that way. Picking himself up from the floor, he raked back the shower curtain.

Empty. Nothing but water gushing from the faucet and swirling down the drain.

He was relieved, and not. Relieved that she was okay, that she had left the house. Horrified that his instinct about her had been right. If he started to believe he could read minds, he was really crazy.

He turned off the tap. The relative silence was filled up again by Rob’s pounding. Elijah crossed the room to unlock and open the door.

Rob didn’t look surprised to see Elijah standing there instead of Holly. He looked furious, as if he’d expected Elijah all along.

This thought stuck in Elijah’s mind as something important, but of course he was no judge while he was going insane again. To cover for himself, he uttered the sort of joke he would have made if he still had all his marbles. “Abracadabra.”

“Where is she?” Rob shoved past Elijah into the room.

Shane eyed Elijah, blond eyebrows raised in question.

Elijah shook his head no: Holly wasn’t inside.

Shane called to Rob, “Your little magician vanished into thin air.”

Shane and Elijah jumped out of the way as Rob stormed out of the bathroom and down the hall. His bedroom door slammed.

Elijah turned to Shane and lowered his voice. “Why do we room with him?”

“I’ve been asking myself that question all week,” Shane said. “You’re the one who took us both in.”

True. Shane had moved in a year ago and had rapidly become Elijah’s closest friend. Rob had moved in a week ago and had seemed normal, too, at first. It was only in the last fifteen minutes that he’d topped Elijah’s shit list. “You don’t think he’ll hunt Holly down or something, do you?” Elijah asked.

“Nah,” Shane said. “Or if he does, she’s safe. She lives with Kaylee Michaels. She probably called Kaylee to come pick her up. Nobody messes with the head of security at the casino.”

Elijah didn’t ask Shane how he knew Holly lived with Kaylee. Kaylee had been on Shane’s mind since he and Elijah had gotten home from work, to the point that Elijah would get the hots for her too if he wasn’t careful. Shane was whipped.

Shane crossed the living room and flopped on the chair, pulling his guitar into his lap. Over quiet chords, he asked, “You and Holly have met before?”

Elijah headed back to the kitchen to check the Tuna Helper simmering on the stove, and to make one last search for a stray Mentafixol that he might have misplaced over the four years he’d lived there, back when each pill wasn’t as precious to him as the gold it was made to look like. He knew some pills had gone missing over the years. He specifically remembered dropping one between the seat and the console of his mom’s Camry when he was in high school. If he’d known then that the pill would be worth so much to him now, he never would have let her trade that car in.

He opened a drawer and poked around between the spoons. “I asked Holly out in ninth grade,” he said without looking up. “Her parents thought I wasn’t good enough for her. Her dad told me to stay away from her. He even got Mr. Diamond involved to make me feel as low on the food chain as possible. I got called to his office.” And then I had a mental meltdown and punched Holly’s dad in the eye! He left this part out.

The guitar chords stopped. Shane exclaimed, “Ouch!”

“Yeah.” Elijah sighed. “That was a long time ago.” At least, it had seemed like a long time ago until Holly showed up at his door with Rob, of all people. Every pang of longing he’d felt for her throughout high school had come back to knock the breath out of him when he touched her hand.

He’d lost his breath again when she stomped into the bathroom. That’s when he’d sensed what was going through her mind. She felt vulnerable as a victim of MAD, and her parents seemed keen on pairing her off with a man like Rob who would take care of her, but damned if she was going to put up with the kind of treatment two-faced Rob had been giving her tonight. All these thoughts had rushed at Elijah in a wave: she had MAD just like him and four doses of Mentafixol left. Then she would refill her prescription—or she assumed she would, anyway—at the same casino pharmacy where his own pills had gone missing.

“Elijah,” Shane called. “You look like shit. Are you getting worse?”

Elijah’s mom had conditioned him over the years not to reveal his illness to anyone lest he get fired and she get fired and he suffer the hardscrabble life she had suffered at the Res, etc., etc. He was still hiding it from Rob.

But that morning, Shane had noticed something was wrong after Elijah couldn’t refill his prescription. Elijah had finally admitted he had a mental illness—though he didn’t reveal the scary specifics of imagined mind reading. Shane had cracked only a few jokes about living with a maniac for the past year.

Elijah resumed searching the kitchen drawer for a stray pill. If he did find one, likely it would be coated with a mix of tequila and Tabasco and dirt, a victim of four years in a house with college students. That was okay. He would swallow it without even scrubbing it first. “Yeah, you could say I’m getting worse.”

“Do you want me to make dinner tonight?”

Elijah let a bitter puff of laughter escape. He and Shane and Rob worked second shift, which moved their bedtimes and mealtimes a few hours later. Normally Elijah didn’t mind making Tuna Helper for the three of them at 11 p.m. He was used to cooking dinner for himself because his mom had always worked at night when he was a kid.

However, amid the torture of going crazy, cooking was the furthest thing from his mind. Shane watching the Tuna Helper on the stove would not alleviate the delusion that Elijah could read people’s minds. But Shane was only trying to help. Elijah could sense that from across the room by reading his mind. Jesus!

“No thanks,” Elijah said. “I’ll do it, unless you’re afraid I might stab somebody with my serving fork. Besides, it’s mostly made.” He slammed the drawer shut and opened the next one, which was full of knives. There was no reason he would have dropped one of his pills in the knife drawer during the past four years. He dumped the knives onto the counter anyway with a metallic crash and gingerly scooted them around, looking for his gold pill.

He jumped. As several knives flew through the air and clattered onto the counter, he realized what had startled him. His phone was ringing in his back pocket.

Shane was thinking he should take Elijah to the emergency room.

“Don’t you dare!” Elijah yelled over his ringing phone.

Shane looked up at Elijah in surprise.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Elijah cringed. He’d just admitted his delusion to Shane. Maybe it would pass for a figure of speech. “I have a doctor. I’ve been diagnosed. All I need is my medicine. If you take me to the hospital, they’re liable to lock me up in a mental institution.”

Shane was thinking that might be for the best.

Elijah didn’t answer this time. Repeated verbal protestations of his friend’s imagined thoughts would only land him in the loony bin sooner. He pulled his phone from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and clicked it on. “Hi, Mom. How’s Key West?”

“Don’t you hi Mom me,” she growled. “You were at the casino pharmacy tonight.”

“I was,” he acknowledged.

“And at noon,” she said. “And this morning. And last night. You’ve been in there so many times that they just called me on vacation to ask me if you’re having a flare-up.”

“Of course I’m having a flare-up.” Suddenly self-conscious, he glanced down the hall to make sure Rob’s bedroom door was still shut. He lowered his voice. “The pharmacy’s out of my medicine. They’re expecting a shipment.”

“Then you just pipe down and wait for the shipment,” his mom seethed. “Let them call you when it comes in. Pitching fits all over the casino won’t get it there any faster.”

“I haven’t been pitching fits all over the—” He stopped when Shane’s eyebrows went up. Elijah had raised his voice again.

“You can’t let the whole casino know you have MAD,” his mom insisted. “What are you trying to do, get me fired and get yourself trapped at the Res? I struggled to get out of the Res. You never lived there. You don’t know how good you have it. Blah blah blah Res blah blah blah.”

As always, Elijah tuned out when his mom brought up the reservation. He was so ignorant of the customs of her Native American family that these threats never had the effect he thought his mom intended. But they’d certainly had the effect of driving him out of her house the second he graduated from high school four years ago.

“Res Res Res blah blah blah,” she went on. “And can’t I leave town for a vacation without you stirring up trouble?”

Elijah did feel bad about this. It was unfortunate his medicine had gone missing during his mom’s trip, and worse that the pharmacy had disturbed her. But his MAD was hereditary, and if his mom didn’t want a crazy son, she shouldn’t have hooked up with his crazy dad. Instead of mentioning this, he repeated, “How’s Key West?” in a level tone, hoping she’d hear that she was the one who sounded like a nutcase in comparison.

She giggled. “What happens in the Keys stays in the Keys.”

“Great!” he said. “I look forward to not hearing about it when you get back.”

“Okay, honey.” Her tone softened. “I didn’t mean to be sharp with you. Are you going to make it?”

“Sure,” he lied. “My Mentafixol will probably be at the pharmacy tomorrow. I can survive until then.”

He and his mom exchanged a few more words, but he’d stopped paying attention. Shane was fingering the opening of the Frank Sinatra song “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” on his guitar, gazing at Elijah.

Elijah had the strangest sensation of standing in the kitchen, listening to his mom on the phone, smelling the Tuna Helper begin to scorch, and seeing himself in Shane’s mind at the same time. He watched himself in his UNLV LACROSSE T-shirt, phone to his ear, in the middle of a kitchen that hadn’t been remodeled since the house was built in 1970. Nothing unusual about this scene, except that Elijah was reading Shane’s mind to witness it.

Talking to his mom and watched closely by his best friend, Elijah had never felt so alone.



Holly dove through the open door of the limo and yelled, “Go!” as if Rob were in hot pursuit. She braced herself against the seat, anticipating that the limo would screech into motion. Any second now.

The limo stayed put. Kaylee, on the backward seat facing Holly, typed on a laptop balanced across her knees. Though it was 11 p.m., she still wore the stylish dark suit she’d slipped on early that morning before leaving their apartment for work, just a shadow of cleavage peeking from beneath her gold silk blouse. Even her white-blond hair maintained its stylish fringe. With a calm glance up at Holly, she reached over to tug the heavy door shut, then knocked behind her on the glass pane separating them from the chauffeur. Obediently the limo eased down the street.

“So, did you make another date with Rob?” she asked.

With a sigh, Holly flopped over and stretched out on her seat. “Ha-ha. Do you think I overreacted?”

“What exactly did he do?”

Staring up at the dome light, and bracing herself again as the limo gently swayed around a corner, Holly recounted Rob’s quick descent into creepy.

“He did what?” Kaylee exclaimed when Holly got to the part where Rob shot a hole in the ceiling. “A trained cop made that mistake? Now I’m paranoid.” Kaylee pulled her own pistol from the holster on her hip, popped the clip out, and examined it with one eye shut.

“Put that thing away,” Holly said quickly. “It was an accident. He wasn’t violent, just rude. Jumping out the bathroom window probably wasn’t the best decision. I think I’m paranoid because of my . . . you know.”

Kaylee glanced around at the chauffeur behind glass, then asked softly, “MAD?”

Holly cringed at the acronym. Her mom had done an excellent job impressing upon her the absolute necessity of secrecy when it came to her mental illness. But as head of security at the casino, Kaylee knew anyway. The casino employed Holly and tolerated her, but they considered her a threat. Her parents had said they were letting her move into the apartment with Kaylee because Kaylee would protect her from fans, but Holly suspected it was really so Kaylee could keep tabs on her.

“Yeah,” Kaylee said thoughtfully, “I think you might overreact sometimes because you’re hyperaware of your own problem, and you’re terrified of what you might do if you got in a sticky situation.”

“I meant that maybe my Mentafixol doesn’t take care of all my symptoms.” Speaking of which, it was that time of night. Holly fished in her purse for the bottle of Mentafixol, shook a pill into her hand, and rattled the three pretty gold pills left in the bottle. She would need to get a refill from the casino pharmacy in a few days. Then she reached beneath her, opened the refrigerated compartment built into the base of the seat, and felt around for a bottle of water.

“I haven’t seen you staring holes in people like you were trying to lift them with your mind,” Kaylee pointed out. “So you’re probably okay.” Typing on her keyboard, she said, “Tell me about Rob’s cute roommates.”

Holly sat up on the seat, popped a Mentafixol onto her tongue, and chased it with water. The cold liquid shot down her esophagus and seemed to tear her body in two. She coughed, “One of them was Elijah Brown.”

“Elijah Brown!” Kaylee exclaimed, hands on her thighs, blue eyes wide.

“Yeah,” Holly said. Maybe her parents still didn’t want her to see him, and they’d conveyed this to the casino and Kaylee. Holly bridled at the thought that they were conspiring behind her back. “What’s wrong with Elijah Brown?”

“Nothing.” Kaylee put her hands up. “Isn’t he a carpenter for the casino? His mom is Jasmine, the head dealer? You said his name like he’s a movie star.”

Relieved that Kaylee hadn’t been given special instructions to keep her away from Elijah, Holly let herself smile in reverie. “I knew him in high school. He was adorable back then. But now.” She crossed her arms and rubbed her hands on her biceps. She wouldn’t be able to explain to Kaylee she was enthralled by more than Elijah’s muscles. It was the way those big muscles half hid beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt. It was the fact that they belonged to Elijah, who was sweet and funny and forbidden—at least, he had been forbidden, seven years ago. It was the fact that she associated him with a time in her life right before she was diagnosed with MAD, when she didn’t worry about her brain or her future, only her hair, and cute boys. What if Elijah didn’t think Holly was insane for jumping out his bathroom window, and she found a way to reconnect with him? She shivered with anticipated pleasure.

“That good, huh?”

“Yeah.” Letting Kaylee get back to work, Holly stared out at the Strip. The signs blinked pink and green against the black sky. Neon lights reflected in the faces of the tourists, ecstatic with escape.

Since that day in ninth grade, Holly had felt like a small gray blob surrounded by this ecstasy and color. The very idea of getting together with Elijah had lit her up again. She should back away now, retreat into her blob, forget Elijah. But blue and purple lights chased each other in circles around the thought of Elijah like a beautiful promise, and she just couldn’t let that fantasy go.



Rob’s bedroom door burst open. He stomped into the living room.

“Find your magician waiting in your bed, Rob?” Shane asked.

“F*ck you, Sligh,” Rob shot back. “Mom, when’s dinner?” he called loudly, though Elijah stood only five feet from him, behind the kitchen counter. “Chop chop. I’m meeting my brothers for a drink. And go easy on the salt this time, would ya, Dangermouse?”

“Almost done.” Elijah tried to say it lightly rather than resentfully as he removed the lid from the skillet, stirred, and put the lid back on to simmer for another minute. He hated himself for seeming to kowtow to Rob. Fear of MAD made him overcompensate—especially now that it was breathing down his neck. The last thing he needed was for Rob, in law enforcement, and an a*shole as it turned out, to discover Elijah’s mental illness and his missing medication.

Rob stared at him through the steam with his fists on his hips, like a superhero there to save the day and protect Las Vegas from the psycho. He looked from Elijah to Shane and back to Elijah. “What happened?” he asked suspiciously.

“Nothing,” Elijah and Shane said in unison. Inside his mind, Elijah felt Shane wince, the mental equivalent of grunting doh!

Rob nodded to the counter. “What’s with all the knives?”

“They’re for the Tuna Helper,” Elijah said. “The formula’s changed. It’s not as helpful as it used to be.”

Rob stepped closer to Elijah and looked him straight in the eye. Of course Elijah was imagining his own mind-reading capabilities. But they seemed so real. And right now, he almost believed he was inside Rob’s mind as Rob positioned his forearm across Holly’s slender neck and bore his weight down on her throat. She put both hands around his arm and tried to push him away, but he was too strong and heavy. She gasped hoarsely.

Elijah blinked. He was out of Rob’s head again, staring into Rob’s brown eyes, and the hair on Elijah’s arms was standing on end. Had Rob already done this to Holly? Surely not—Elijah would have sensed her terror tonight. Was it something Rob planned to do in the future?

Swallowing with difficulty, Elijah raked the knives back into the drawer and opened a drawer full of scoops and outsized spoons.

“You searched that one already,” Shane called, eyes on his guitar strings.

Had he? Elijah glanced around at the kitchen. He knew he’d intended to search each drawer and cabinet because this was where he’d taken his pill every night he’d lived here. But MAD had him frazzled. It would be like him to search the same couple of drawers over and over while the pill waited undiscovered on the shelf above the sink.

Rob watched Elijah, but his thoughts weren’t on knives or spoons or even Tuna Helper. Inside his mind, he slapped Holly. Falling, she tried to regain her balance and flipped backward over a guardrail at Hoover Dam. Her body sailed downward, glittering and dark against the background of white concrete.

Elijah held on to the counter with both hands.

Without another word, Rob crossed the room, snagged his loaded holster from the coat rack, and slammed the front door behind him.

“Good riddance,” Shane said. “More Tuna Helper for us.” He paused. “Hey, man, you’re looking awfully white again. You okay?”

That’s when Elijah knew he had to get that Mentafixol, no matter what the price. It wasn’t just a matter of living free or being committed to a mental hospital anymore. It was a matter of life and death. He imagined Rob wanted to hurt Holly. In turn, Elijah wanted to hurt Rob. And if he didn’t get back on his medication soon, he just might do it.