“Let’s keep moving,” said Walter.
But then the hollow dark of the desert was pierced, and colored light caught the undersides of the clouds. The boys stared ahead, rapt.
The van crept smoothly toward the emerging city’s glow. It was like the orange flare of a cigarette—crawling, twinkling, growing bright. Buildings rose out of it like a great lighted forest. Vehicles of all descriptions visible on the road again in the spilled light. Then they were flashing through it, and everyone was watching, even Ty.
“Listen. We got to get off for gas anyway,” Michael Wilson suggested, and Yeah, yeah, they all agreed.
So much light. Crossing, cross firing, leaving nothing empty, no shadows. Barely had the van cleared the ramp before a pyramid appeared. A grand white pyramid, razor-edged, spotlit. Everything dressed up: even the parking ramp had a fairy on it, or a genie.
“City of sin, my niggers,” drawled Michael Wilson, steering now with one hand.
He and Walter leaned out their windows, ogling, here and there letting out a holler. Evening, desert air. East sounded out the names as they passed: MGM. Aladdin. Bellagio. Flamingo. Treasure Island. Stardust. Riviera.
“Just like Disneyland, man,” Michael Wilson added.
Couples. Women in pairs or threes. Men in vast teams. Families fitted out with prizes and bags. Wandering blind, their shadows spilling out in eight directions, walking like nobody walked in The Boxes.
“?‘Biggest payouts on the strip,’?” Michael Wilson read with a growl.
“But every sign’s saying that,” replied Walter.
Abruptly Michael Wilson sat up and swung the van into a parking lot. Wasn’t any gas station here, East noted, but he let Michael snake the van back where low glaring lights caromed off tall buses and campers. A colonnaded canopy shone ahead, dancing in neon light. Michael aimed them that way.
“Michael,” East prodded. “Just getting gas, right?”
“Sure,” Michael Wilson said. They swooped in under the overhang to find one yellow rectangle outlined on the pavement just down from the door, a car just pulling out of it. Michael eased the van in there and parked it. Lights dancing in the wet of his eyes.
“You boys want to take a look?”
“Hell yes,” Walter said, already rolling out.
“Hey,” East insisted.
“Don’t worry, E,” Michael Wilson said. “I know you’re on tight. But you basic street Negroes don’t get to Vegas every day. We got to see this, man. Half a minute.”
A tall lady in a silver cocktail dress and heels wafted by, shiny. Then it was Ty, brushing past without a word. East reached in vain, but his brother was already out the sliding door. Damn.
So this is how Michael Wilson was going to do it. Sudden turns and promises.
To his left, a line of columns and potted palms. Lights moving on everything. They riled East, set his mind jumping. To the right, Ty wandered on the pavement, skinny, behind him a long row of golden doors. East clutched at his red blanket unhappily.
“Come on, Easy. It can’t be that bad,” Michael Wilson crooned. “If you scared, later I’ll have fat boy read you a story.”
—
The black carpet seemed limitless. Patterned neon curlicues forever, up steps, down ramps, no ceiling above, just the blinking lights on a thousand machines with their nonstop ringing jangle. The din was aggravating. East had seen a casino on TV—that gave no hint of how it would be, like a factory, a city, clanging, clanging, bells that weren’t real, that couldn’t be stilled, from distances that weren’t real either. Clanging that didn’t matter, signaled nothing, just made up the air of the place. Everything clanging.
Just the banks and banks of lighted boxes, and placed before each one, a person, rapturously lit.
Signs on the pillars warned, NO PERSONS UNDER THE AGE OF 18! But nobody was stepping after them: the doormen, the head-nodding security with ear coils, the waitresses with drinks in monogrammed glasses, the burly Mexican women wheelchairing old folks with oxygen tanks. Nobody accused Ty. No one watched with a purpose.
These people looked drugged, East thought, or lost.
He straightened his shirt and made to catch up. Michael Wilson was monologuing: Yeah, yeah, I’m a show you what’s tight. Headed for something. Then at the end of a long, littered aisle, they came upon a clearing and a low, carpeted mesa—three shallow steps up. Glowing green tables in formation, ringed by white people. Michael Wilson took the steps at a trot, and the boys flocked along.
East hung back, parked himself on a column. Tried to see, not to be seen. He watched people eyeing the boys as Walter and Ty milled behind Michael’s shoulder, peering down at the green felt.