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Las Vegas, Nevada: The Mirage
Ray stepped out of the heat of the early June afternoon into the sweet coolness of the Mirage’s air conditioned lobby and stopped for a moment to watch the tourists mill around while he considered his next move. All of a sudden he wasn’t so sure that this trip was such a good idea.
Sure, he had traded the utter boredom of the Peaceable Kingdom for the relative excitement of Las Vegas, but now that he was here, his pulses weren’t exactly pounding. Not yet, anyway. It all seemed... well... tawdry wasn’t a word he often used, but somehow it seemed appropriate. All around him middle-aged, middle class, Mid western tourists were avidly chasing excitement. Had he really joined their ranks?
What’s wrong with me? Ray thought. Am I actually developing some sense of values?
He’d started to notice some unsettling things lately. He’d been getting more tired than he’d ever been before. Pain lingered. It took longer to come back from injuries. Something that would have taken only a couple of hours to heal twenty years ago now took a day, sometimes longer. Everything seemed to hurt worse.
Not that I’m old, he told himself, but I do have a lot of mileage. Maybe the odometer is getting ready to turn over. Maybe it’s even running out. Nothing ever said that I could go on forever, my powers undiminished...
Ray’s uncharacteristic mood of introspection suddenly screeched to a halt as he noticed the woman approaching him from across the Mirage’s lobby. For the first time in a long time, he felt his pulse start to race. At least a little.
He wasn’t sure if she was beautiful, exactly. Her expression was far too gloomy, for one thing. Her features were bold rather than delicate, with a generous mouth, aquiline nose, and large eyes that looked haunted. By guilt, by melancholy, Ray couldn’t tell. Her skin was milk white, almost luminous in its pale perfection, contrasting vividly with her night black hair, which was thick and wavy and though bound in a heavy braid hanging down to the middle of her back seemed to be struggling to escape its bonds. Ray was not overly imaginative, but he could picture it blowing about her face in a gentle wind, or spilling in luxuriant waves over her pale-skinned shoulders.
She was wearing a black leather jumpsuit and black boots that came to her knees. She was built. Really built, with wide hips and large breasts confined as uneasily as her hair and long legs. Her leather jumpsuit clung tightly to her curves, as snug as a second skin.
She held an ice cream cone in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other, as well as the strap of a large duffel bag which she carried easily, without a sign of strain. She moved rapidly through the knots of tourists standing around the lobby. From time to time she looked up from the paper she was studying, but she was paying more attention to the ice cream cone than she was to her surroundings. She licked it rapidly, almost rapturously. She walked quickly.
She glanced up and their eyes suddenly met.
But it was too late.