What Stays in Vegas (10 page)

“True, true.”  Chris nodded slowly.  “And if you hadn’t carried a tube of stain remover in your purse, you may have never ended up in Vegas at all.”

"Exactly.  And if Kendra's husband hadn’t left, she never would have missed her meeting with Rob, Rob never would have tore you a new one, and we may never have ended up hanging out at this arcade together like a couple of dorks.”  I kicked him gently under the bench.

"Now that would be a shame." 

We watched in silence as Splash Dad put his son in a headlock and administered one hell of a noogie. 

“I’m guessing that guy never thinks about these things,” said Chris.

“Good call.”

***

We made a stop at the arcade gift shop before returning to the office as we still had a few precious minutes left of our lunch hour.  We wound our way up and down the aisles laughing at the miscellaneous junk for sale.  You could pretty much slap a pair of googly eyes on anything and sell it in one of these places.  We had just finished giggling over a pink t-shirt emblazoned with several hundred kittens and, of course, the words ‘Las Vegas,’ when something caught my eye.

“Hey look at these,” I called to Chris, picking one up.  It was a small sculpture made from pieces of junk metal, nuts, bolts, and various other parts.  The one I had picked up looked like a dog with its head in a toilet.  “This is kind of cool, huh?”

“Not bad,” he said.  “You were an art major right?”

“Sure was,” I said.  “I used to make stuff like this.”  I turned the dog around in my hand, studying it.  It wasn’t anything that I couldn’t have made myself.  The tag told me it was made by a woman in Carson City who worked out of a studio in her home - and she was charging thirty-two dollars.  Boy was I jealous.

“So you don’t anymore?” asked Chris.  “Make stuff like that, I mean.” 

“Not really.  I have to concentrate on my
career
you know.”  I stuck my tongue out at him.  “Typing, filing.  Once you let creativity into the mix you’re just asking for trouble.”

“You should try to get back into it.  I tell you, the year and a half we spent running paintball was the best time I’ve had since college.”

“Well I haven’t totally given up on it.  I still make things out of office supplies sometimes.  Usually when I’m on hold with Jiggly Kitty tech support.”

“Office supplies?”

“That’s right.  I made the Eiffel Tower out of binder clips.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”  I put on a leopard print cowboy hat. “What do you think?”

“I think that hat has been on more heads than you realize.  What else have you made?”

I tossed him the hat and did a little skip down the next aisle.  “Uh, oh yeah.  Before I left I was starting to work on a diorama of
Dogs Playing Poker.
”

“Out of office supplies.”

“Yup.  It’s hard to find the right stuff though with stupid Margaret Sherman always nosing around when I’m in the supply closet.  What do you think of
this
?”  I put on a pair of battery operated sunglasses.  Red and blue lights chased each other around the frames, and Chris snapped a picture with his cell phone.  I smelled his cologne as he moved in close and plucked the sunglasses from my face. 

“I think,” he said, looking into my eyes, “you’re hiding a lot of talent from the world.”

***

I started sculpting as soon as we returned to the office.  With my door closed, a pack of sticky notes, a box of paperclips, some pushpins, and various other items I snagged out of the supply closet when Roberta had gone to the bathroom, I set to work.  At three-thirty I stood in Chris’s doorway and proudly presented him with a tiny air hockey table and two tiny players, all secured atop a green file folder.

“For you,” I said.  “It’s us.”

The look on his face when he saw my work was priceless.

“You weren’t kidding.”  He whistled.  “This is unbelievable.  I shall give this a place of honor.” 

Chris rolled his chair over to the windowsill and placed my sculpture in the center, reminding me of Nick on the day I left Massachusetts.  For the first time all day I felt a little sad.  Then Chris pulled a dog sculpture made out of nuts and bolts from beneath his desk - the one that he had probably purchased while I was in the gift shop's restroom - and my heart skipped a beat.

"I thought you could use this," he said with a wink.  "For inspiration." 

"You're something else, you know that?" I said.  I took the little dog out of his hands and smiled the whole way back to my office. 

Sophisticated slutty.
  I stood in Kendra's doorway twirling my hair and turning the words over in my head.  My mind ran through all of the outfits that I had brought from home, and they all seemed so lame.  I mean, I could definitely pull off slutty if I mixed the right pieces together, but sophisticated?  Not a chance.

"Tessa?  You okay?" asked Kendra, snapping me back to reality. 

“Exactly how hot are we talking?” I asked.  I suddenly remembered what Chris had told me about phony girls and thousand dollar shoes and boob jobs.  Did he really say boob jobs?  I glanced down at my chest and panic started to set in again.  "Are you sure you want to hang out with me tonight?"

I had assumed that Kendra had loads of rich and exciting girlfriends who she hung out with, so when I found myself invited to accompany her to one of the newest clubs on The Strip, I was more than a little surprised.

“Of course I want to go with
you
, silly, who else?”  She effortlessly swished her hair up into a clip and I wondered what on earth somebody like Kendra wanted with somebody like me.   Little, old, secretarial me.

Just as I was surprised to find myself being flown to Vegas after merely helping her remove a stain from her dress, I was equally surprised to find myself suddenly elevated from the position of assistant to the position of somebody worth hanging out with.  But this was the new Kendra, the one who returned to the office.  She was truly a changed woman.  No longer depressed and moping, she was full of life and spirit, ready to head out on the town and revel in the fact that she was once again a single woman.  I was not quite sure how that change had happened, but as I'd yet to experience much of Vegas nightlife, I was too excited to care.

There was just one minor catch.  In order to actually get into this club, we had to look really good.  Not trashy, as Kendra explained it, but "sophisticated slutty."  Being a hot girl is a sure ticket into the Vegas club scene, and I did not want to let Kendra down.

Kendra must have finally noticed the worried look forming on my face because she suggested that we go shopping during lunch, and I eagerly accepted. 

We drove to shops at The Venetian where Kendra marched me straight into several of her favorite stores.  These were the types of stores I would never dream of going into by myself - where there are four racks of clothing and the employees stand at the entrance judging your worth.  But it was different walking in with Kendra.  Some of the employees knew her by name, and instead of looking at me like I was a hillbilly, they assumed that I belonged.

“I don’t know if I can afford this stuff, Ken,” I whispered, getting nervous when I spotted the price tag on a mini-skirt.  I would have to work ten hours to pay for that thing.  No, I take that back, I would have to work ten hours just to pay for the front half of that thing.  If I felt like walking around bare-assed tonight we'd be in business.

“Oh don’t worry about money,” said Kendra, holding a purple sequined tube top up against me.  Almost everything in the store was purple.  “I’m the one dragging you out tonight, I’ll take care of your outfit.”

As much as I didn’t want to let her buy me any more stuff, there were so many beautiful things in the store that I figured I would let it slide this one last time.  The clerk eagerly brought several items to the dressing room for me, and I got the distinct impressions that we were the only customers she’d seen all day.   I cringed at the price tag on the mini dress I was slipping into, and prayed that nothing ripped as I zipped up. 

All concerns about money disappeared when I saw the person looking back at me from the mirror.  She was nobody I had ever met before - she was rich, she was glowing, she was ready to mingle with celebrities!  I had to have it.  Kendra and the store clerk both gasped when I stepped out of the dressing room.  This dress had "sophisticated slutty" and Tessa Golden written all over it.

“We’ll take it,” said Kendra nodding approvingly.  “Now we just need to get you some stilettos.”

The fact that I was going to be seen in public in a dress that short barely had time to sink in, and now we were talking about stilettos?

“Do they sell mace in this mall?”  I asked, only half joking.  I went back into the dressing room and reluctantly took off my heavenly new dress.

Kendra just laughed. 

“Don’t worry, you’ll blend right in.”

***

And blend in I did.   We stood in line outside the club with at least a hundred other girls dressed just like us, or worse.   The amount of skin was shocking and I elbowed Kendra every six seconds.

“Look at
her
!”  I whispered as a girl walked by in a dress that barely grazed the bottom of her  behind.  I looked around at the men, trying to figure out what was going through their minds.  The sad part is that most of them did not even seem phased, as if they were desensitized to seeing that amount of skin.  I guess they had to be, otherwise they would have a heart attack every time they turned around.  But it made me wonder what went on inside the clubs to keep them interested.  Before I had a chance to ponder it further, a bouncer motioned for Kendra and I to come to the front of the line.  Several girls gave us filthy looks.

“How are we doing tonight ladies?” asked the bouncer, checking our ID's.  “Right this way.”  He unlatched the red velvet rope and we rode up the escalator to the club entrance, looking down on the less fortunate people who, Kendra informed me, might be waiting there all night. 

As good as I looked, I take no credit whatsoever for our being chosen from the crowd.  Men who did not give a second look to the countless scantily clad women who walked by literally stopped mid-sentence when Kendra was in the area.  Thigh high white boots and a black mini-dress certainly contributed, but she would have done just as well in a potato sack. 

We hadn’t even made it across the room to the bar when two men practically got into a fist fight over who was going to buy us a drink.

“Boys, boys,” said Kendra, “we’ll be here all night, everybody will get their chance.”   We settled into a plush green couch overlooking the dance floor and toasted each other with our first round of drinks.  It’s not like I’ve never had a man buy me a drink before, but this was nuts.

“Let’s play a game,” shouted Kendra over the noise.  “It’s called Who Would You Do?  Heard of it?”

I laughed.  “Oh yes, it’s a classic!”

“Okay good, you go first!"

I told her that my number one pick would always and forever be Nick Trask.  Kendra did not know Nick, but I assured her of his do-ability.  She argued that I had to pick someone from the Las Vegas branch.  I really wanted to pick Chris, as he is cute in his own way, when his glasses slip down his nose while he leans over his desk, and the way he kind of stinks at air hockey.  But I did not want her to get the wrong idea about us, so instead I chose Dan. 

“Really?” asked Kendra.  “I would have guessed Chris.”

When Kendra chose Phil Baxter, the forty-something draftsman from the 30th floor who looks like he’s done a lot of drugs in his lifetime and smells of cigarettes and whiskey, I choked on my drink.  She couldn’t explain to me what it was about him, but ever since the day she denied his vacation request and he brazenly told her to go to Hell, she couldn’t keep her eyes off of him.  Phil was a bad boy with a steady job - the perfect compromise for the rich girl with a warped version of slumming. 

"You know," she said.  "I'm single now.  Maybe I should go for it and put the moves on ol' Phil."

"Phil's married," I said.  "Plus, there's a little thing called sexual harassment in the workplace, remember?"

"Blah blah blah!" she shouted over the music, making a pouty face.  "You'll never get anywhere in life with that attitude!"

Maybe she was right.  Maybe I was too worried about what was right and what was wrong.  Maybe I should just go for it once in a while.   Suddenly my cell phone felt as if it was burning a hole in my purse.  I took it out and stared at Nick's name in my list of Contacts while Kendra peered over my shoulder.  I was just about to text him something witty, something life-changing, when I could have sworn that Justin Timberlake walked in the main entrance.  By the time Kendra and I finished arguing over whether or not it was really him, we had drained our martinis and each done a shot of tequila.

My phone was long forgotten at the bottom of my purse as we headed onto the dance floor.  By that time I was sufficiently drunk enough to consider dancing, and the music was irresistible.  We pushed our way to the center, through the gyrating bodies, and found ourselves a few square feet to dance in.  In a matter of seconds we had attracted a swarm of heinous looking men approaching from all sides, acting as if it were purely coincidence that we were in the path of their sweaty, pulsating, loins.  One of them snuck up from behind and put his hand around my waist.  Kendra gently pulled me toward her and we inched away towards safer territory.