He finds an empty bench between two coin-operated telescopes and sits down and tries to think. Out of habit he wonders where Stanley is, but he knows now that that’s the wrong question, has been the wrong question all along. Better to ask why he’s been so hard to find—or even better, why Damon wants so badly to find him. If Veronica is telling the truth, and Curtis thinks she is, then the number of likely answers to that last question are relatively few, and Curtis doesn’t like the looks of any of them.
He keeps getting distracted by the city, by landmarks translating out of the grid. From this height, the cleared lot where the Desert Inn used to be gaps like a knocked-out tooth. He spots his hotel where the Strip bends due south, its belltower a pale finger laid across Caesars’ brilliant readerboard. Flying in Thursday morning, Curtis was able to catch glimpses of the Luxor, New York, Mandalay Bay, but he couldn’t make out much on the north end; the drop was too quick.
Curtis hadn’t been on a plane since they medevaced him home from Germany a year and a half ago; he was too doped up on Demerol then to register much. For the flight to Vegas Damon had booked him an aisle seat on the 757’s port side, but Curtis checked in early enough to swap it for a starboard window. As the plane gathered altitude in its wide takeoff loop he looked down on acres of cranberry bogs in the woods southeast of Evesham, pools of spilt mercury ricocheting the sunrise, as if the earth were bursting with inner fire. Alone in his seat, watching the continent scroll below, a cool thrill stole over him, a calm like nothing he’d known in years—and it didn’t go away when the plane touched down. The whole time he’s been out here he’s felt like this: alert but detached, not quite involved or implicated, like he’s watching everything through a screen from a tremendous distance. It’s not a bad feeling, but he’s starting to mistrust it.
The night sky is busy with helicopters, mostly charter flights buzzing the glowing corridor from here to McCarran. One flies low to the south-west, an LVMPD chopper, and Curtis watches it aim a searchlight into Naked City, the residential blocks between here and Sahara Ave, at a spot where the blue-and-red pulses of police cruisers have congregated. The old neighborhood buildings multiply and divide the swirling lights like a kaleidoscope, and the noise of the sirens is muted by distance and thick glass. Curtis checks his watch, then heads below into the lounge and orders himself an Irish coffee, watching the restaurant, one deck lower, rotate glacially while the bartender pours the Bushmills. On the little stage, a jazz trio is playing Jobim to the disinterested room: “Inútil Paisagem,” the singer’s clear and icy delivery closer to Gilberto than Wanda Sá. She talks to the bassist and the piano player with shifts of her weight, small movements of her hands. The three of them seem content to be ignored.
Curtis snags a small table on the lounge’s southern side and looks down at the Strip as he waits for Kagami, sometimes redirecting his focus to his own dim reflection. Remembering things about Damon: stories he’s heard, and told, and retold. Seeing shadows in them that he’d always ignored. The time Damon commandeered a brand-new Z3 from some Simi Valley fucknut—just took the keys right out of the guy’s hand—so he could use it to pick up a girl he’d met at Mandalay Bay. Or the time he roped Curtis into running interference on the MPs at Twentynine Palms while he smuggled some shitbird PFC offbase in a laundry truck. Or the time he backed down a halfdozen goat-ropers in the parking lot of a Waynesville bar, M9 pressed against a lean cowboy cheek, the skin around the barrel making a livid ring, and Damon stone-cold sober. Curtis feels like he’s been working a crossword puzzle, staring at it for days, and he’s just now seeing that the first words he filled in were all wrong. Or it’s more like one of those pictures that were popular maybe ten years ago, the ones that were 3-D if you focused your eyes just right, a bunch of random dots if you didn’t. Curtis feels like he’s still not focusing right. He never could get those damn pictures to work for him, he recalls. And now, of course, he never will.
Kagami’s image pops up in the window: a dark shape full of stars where it blocks the overhead light. The lenses of his spectacles are twinned quartermoons hung in the black. Curtis turns, offers his hand. Thanks for agreeing to meet, Walter, he says.
No sweat, kid. You’re not putting me out. I just got done with an appointment down the hall. Hope you haven’t been waiting long.
Just enjoying the view.
Kagami eases into a chair. He seems distracted, like he’d rather not be here. Curtis almost doesn’t recognize him. His jacket and tie are gone, replaced by a purple-and-blue patterned sweater; he’s removed his jewelry aside from a gold wedding band. Curtis thinks of his own ring, locked in the safe, and moves his left hand into his lap.
Meeting on a Sunday night, huh? Curtis says. You closing a big deal?
Kagami smiles. This wasn’t business, he says. I was just socializing. Making some plans for next weekend.
What are you planning to do?