Augustus Caesar is coming up on Curtis’s right, his plaster gaze fixed on the Flamingo across the street. The old hotel seems demure in the light of day. Some of those neon tubes have hung there for thirty years. The feathered pastel frontispiece is shaded, cool and blank as the face of a sarcophagus. Curtis keeps walking.
He was sore yesterday after the long hump from Fremont, but today he feels good, glad to be on foot. The docs cleared him to drive over a year ago provided he’d install a collision alarm and some extra mirrors, but he hasn’t been behind the wheel since the crash. He’s not scared—a little nervous, maybe—and he could get comfortable again with some practice. He’s just not ready yet. What’s funny is that he hasn’t missed it. It’s been good, satisfying, to do without a car. His new slowness has shown him a hidden world he’d ignored, that he’s only now begun to discover. He’d never admit it, but he’s grateful for the enforced patience, the fresh awareness of distance and spaces between.
The Eiffel Tower pokes up from the middle of the next block, beyond the telescoping entrance to Bally’s. The last time Curtis came to town it was still brand new, and he and Damon and a bunch of other guys took cabs from the North Strip to check it out. Very weird place. Lots of fake trees and blurry Monet carpet, and everything smelled like baguettes. Standard-issue fake casino sky everywhere, even over the gaming floor: it felt strange to be gambling out in the open, even though it wasn’t really the open. They hit the bars and rode the elevator to the top of the tower, swaying on drunken legs, watching the Valley fill up with lights. The younger jarheads were horsing around, doing imitations of Pepe Le Pew. Damon was staring at the runty Arc de Triomphe down below. Napoleon, man! he kept saying. Fucking Napoleon!
Crossing Harmon now. New York ahead on the right. Stanley grew up in the shadow of those buildings: AT&T, Century, Chrysler, Seagram, Empire State. What does he think of when he sees them? What does he remember?
Passing this way on Friday Curtis met a bartender—a dayshifter about to clock out—who knew Stanley’s name right away, who’d seen him in the last week or so. Dayshift doesn’t start for another hour, but Curtis figures he can wait.
At the entrance, a close-up of a billowing flag is playing on the scaldingly bright LED readerboard, UNITED WE STAND overlaid in yellow, and Curtis wonders again what’s happening with the war. He makes his clockwise round of the gaming area—done up like Central Park, without the typical fake sky—and when he sees no familiar faces, he climbs the stairs to the mezzanine. He gets a couple of hotdogs from Nathan’s in the Coney Island Pavilion, eats one while listening to the shrieks and rattles of the rollercoaster overhead, and finishes the other afoot, strolling Bleecker and Hudson and Broadway, taking in the sight of fire escapes and steam-venting manholes and graffiti-tagged phonebooths and brownstones draped in ivy.
When he stops at the piano bar in Times Square, she’s there behind the counter: redheaded, matronly, maybe five years older than Curtis. In good shape. Talking to a couple of conventioneers in a rich Staten Island accent that probably landed her this job. She doesn’t recognize him when he sits down. Then she does. He’s close enough to see the dark flash of her expanding pupils: he’s come to the right place.
She’s smiling at him, putting down a napkin. Hey, pal, she says. How’s business?
Tough to say. It’s been a weird couple of days.
Tell me about it. What can I get you, hon?
Just an orange juice, please. You seen Stanley?
She stops, half-turned to the bar, looking away. No sign of him, she says. He’s been a popular boy this weekend.
I’m not the only one looking?
She laughs, shrugs. Like it’s a joke. Pours the juice.
Has Veronica been here?
She sets the plastic cup down, takes the ten from his fingers, moves toward the register. Doesn’t respond. She’s not smiling anymore.
What about a little guy with a gap between his front teeth? You seen anybody like that?
When she comes back she still has his ten, and she places it on the bar with a battered twenty on top of it. You loaned me a double the other day, she says. I’m paying you back. Thanks. Your drink’s on the house.
That twenty was a toke, not a loan.
I don’t mix ’em that good, bub.
She leans in close, looks him in the eye. If this was a movie, she says, I would take money from the whole bunch of you. Play you off each other and get rich doing it. But this ain’t no movie. I’m gonna say something, and then somebody’s gonna get hurt, and I don’t want that on my conscience. You seem like a nice guy, and I wanna keep thinking you’re a nice guy. So I’m not gonna talk to you about this anymore. Capice?
I’m not going to hurt anybody.
It ain’t you that I’m worried about doing the hurting.
She’s smiling again, somewhat sadly. No fear in her eyes, just concern. She’s been living out here a long time. Who’s been coming around? he asks.