Levitating Las Vegas (6 page)

Rob dropped Holly’s hand and reached for his belt. She thought at first he would unbutton his pants and make some ungodly lewd gesture—he was acting so strange, she wouldn’t put anything past him at this point—but no, he unbuckled his holster and hung it on a coat rack beside the door, next to another laden holster. He took out his pistol and released the cartridge of bullets. “Shane Sligh, Holly Starr.” He managed to make this simple introduction sound ironic.

“Pleasure,” Shane said, taking her hand.

Holly grinned. Word around the female half of the casino was that Shane was a charming ladies’ man with old-fashioned manners to match his Rat Pack tux and his Southern drawl.

With the gun in one hand and the cartridge in the other, Rob looked straight at Holly. “Holly Starr, Dangermouse.”

Holly registered Rob’s nickname for Elijah only in passing. Her brain didn’t process it fully while her body was busy reacting to Elijah’s proximity. Her heart thumped wildly. She extended her hand and looked up at him.

His eyes were even greener than she remembered, a bright contrast to his tanned face and red shirt. As she watched, his pupils dilated, black obliterating the green. His hot fingers slid against hers and his hand found her hand.
This
was what she’d wished for in a man.

“We’ve met,” he said. The low notes of his voice traveled through his body, through his hand, and into hers. Then he let her hand go.

She wasn’t sure where to focus her eyes now. She couldn’t continue to stare moonily at Elijah. But she was afraid if she looked at Rob, she’d give away that her target for the night had shifted.

BANG
. The gun fired. Everyone but Rob jumped.

Before the rush of adrenaline even hit Holly, Rob was saying in a strangely calm tone, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to do that.” He peered up at the white dust falling from the hole in the plaster ceiling.

“Jesus Christ, Rob!” Shane shouted. “That’s one way to check for a bullet in the chamber.”

“Sorry!” Rob repeated in an exasperated tone, as if Shane had a lot of nerve.

“I wonder if the damage deposit covers that,” Elijah murmured, gazing up at the hole. He put one hand on Holly’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Holly nodded, hands over her ears.

And then, as if Rob and/or the owner of the second gun hanging from the coat rack were forever accidentally peppering the ceiling with bullets, Shane changed the subject. “Holly, Peter Starr is your dad, right? I work in the same casino with you. I’ve never caught your dad’s act, but I’ve seen you around, and I recognize you from the—”

“—billboard over Interstate 15,” Holly finished for him. She laughed. “I guess the signage is working, because everybody knows me.”

As Rob reholstered the gun, he chuckled. “That’s not what I heard before I asked you out.”

Holly blinked at Rob, reviewing what he’d said, making sure she’d heard him correctly. Was he saying nobody knew her in a biblical sense, implying he understood she was a virgin? She was getting used to his sexually charged comments. But he hadn’t yet uttered anything this boorish in front of other people. In front of Elijah. She couldn’t bear to look in Elijah’s direction. She wished she could disappear.

“So, you assist your dad,” Shane prompted her, ignoring Rob. She was growing very fond of Shane. “Can you do any magic yourself?”

“Her dad’s the magician,” Rob said. “Holly can’t do shit.”

“Rob!” Shane exclaimed.

Holly glanced down at Rob’s hands balling into fists. She was glad he’d taken his gun off.

“Of course she can do magic,” Elijah spoke up. He glanced sideways at Holly.

Holly smiled. “Hold my purse.” She meant this command for any of the three men, but it was Elijah who moved first with his hands out. Whenever her dad had to hold her mom’s purse for a minute while they were out shopping, he grumbled that this was a sign a man truly loved a woman. Holly kept her face neutral as she handed the purse over.

She displayed both sides of her empty hands, splaying her fingers to show she concealed nothing between them. Then she produced a slip of flash paper and a box of matches from her bra. Parlor tricks were all about misdirection, and she’d found through experience that she would always be ahead of her dad, at least in that regard, because she could store small items in her bosom. Indeed, when she slipped a ten-dollar bill from the matchbox into her palm, she could tell it went undetected. The men continued to stare at her chest—until she lit a match.

“I’m allergic to smoke,” Shane said.

“He’s kidding,” Elijah told Holly. “He has a job playing guitar in a bar.”

“Where else am I going to get a job playing guitar?” Shane asked.

Holly crossed her eyes at them. There would be very little smoke. She touched the fire to the flash paper, which flamed large enough to make even Rob step back in surprise. The flash paper had burned away, but it seemed to Holly’s audience to have turned into the ten-dollar bill, which she now unrolled from her palm.

Shrugging the strap of her purse onto his shoulder, Elijah beamed and clapped for her.

“Wow, is that a real ten?” Shane reached out to finger the money.

“You’re supposed to use a hundred so it will look more impressive,” Holly said, “but I went shopping with Kaylee Michaels. Aren’t these cute?” She pulled up her jeans leg and showed them her new shoes.

“They’re adorable!” Elijah exclaimed.

“Thank you! I got them at—” When she realized he was poking fun at her, she shoved him playfully in the chest.

Both of them laughed.

Then both of them self-consciously half looked toward Rob and stopped laughing. Elijah handed her purse back.

Shane filled the silence. “Could you come live with us? If you did that trick a few times a week, we’d have satellite TV paid for.”

Rob asked her matter-of-factly, “You like performing for my roommates? You like turning tricks for my friends?”

She frowned at Rob. Because her job required her to dress provocatively, and had required this of her since she was a high school freshman, she was particularly annoyed by prostitute jokes.

She reminded herself that her parents loved Rob. They’d talked with him for only five minutes last week, but he’d won them over in that short space. They were impressed that he was older than her and employed as a sheriff’s deputy. They viewed him as strong and stable, someone who could take care of her if her MAD flared up.

But maybe she didn’t need a man to take care of her. Mentafixol controlled her MAD. And she’d rather go crazy than be stuck with this prick. If she stayed with him for another second she might just slap him, MAD or no MAD. “Excuse me,” she said icily, turning for the hallway, where she assumed she’d find a bathroom. There she could collect herself and figure out what to do.

As she turned, she glimpsed Elijah’s face. Just for a second. She was too furious and embarrassed to pause and examine his expression. But in that moment, his look wasn’t one of anger at Rob or sympathy for her. It was astonishment, as if he’d suddenly realized something about her that he hadn’t known before.

“Smooth, Rob,” she heard Shane say behind her.

Then came Rob’s footsteps. “Holly. Why are you shy all of a sudden? You don’t have to be in the same room with my friends to perform for them. They just have to be able to—”

At the sound of him gaining on her, she skittered into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

“—hear you,” Rob called through the door.

Holly crossed to the far end of the narrow room, sat on the closed toilet, and pulled her phone from her purse.

Rob tried the knob, then pounded on the door. “Holly. Come here. Come here and open the door.”

“I need some privacy,” she muttered.

“Are you getting ready?” he asked in a hopeful tone.

“Yeah.” She reached over to turn on the water in the bathtub. Yeah, she was freshening up for sex with him. Being called a whore in front of her high school crush turned her
on
. She texted Kaylee.

Rob is being weird/threatening/drunk. Can u come get me? Near the Strip, street with huge doughnut sign on corner, cop car in driveway. Or is my MAD acting up?

While waiting for the response, she had the foresight to turn off the volume on her phone so it wouldn’t make the sound of Tinker Bell’s magic wand when Kaylee replied.

It’s not ur MAD. That guy’s spooky. I’ll be there in a sec with the goons.

Holly sighed her relief. She was saved. Then she frowned at the phone and typed with her thumbs:

When u met him last week u said u liked him!!!

And got this reply:

That’s what’s spooky. I don’t like anybody.

True. Kaylee was suspicious of everyone. But spooky or not, Rob hadn’t done anything to deserve Kaylee’s squad of burly, suit-clad security guards breaking up his housekeeping. And she wasn’t sure what would happen to Elijah and Shane in the fray. She texted Kaylee back.

Well don’t come inside. Let me see if I can get outside to u. He has 2 cute roommates and the goons r not surgical.

Holly slipped her phone back into her purse. The tub still gushed, which would mask any noise she made in her great escape. She stood on the toilet, unlocked the tiny window, and slowly, carefully, silently slid it open. Then she folded her body through the dark space. Another girl the same size might have doubted she could get through, but Holly had been taught by the best. She landed on her high heels on the gravel outside, purse in tow, and tiptoed toward headlights approaching up the street.

Her parents would have been so proud.

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.