The Museum of Intangible Things (16 page)

We drive another twenty miles, until it’s safe to pull over at a diner called the Jackelope. The jackelope is a mythical creature in these parts. Part jackrabbit, part antelope; a taxidermist creates it by putting some horns on the rabbit. Since taxidermy seems to be a theme of this adventure, I think it’s a good omen, and we choose it as a place to stop and regroup. I even wonder if Zoe stopped here as well. I get a weird tingly Spidey sense that she has been here before us.

The gift shop is cluttered with western crapola, but luckily they do have a 1998 road atlas for sale. I buy it with the last roll of nickels I have in my pocket, and I open it up in the diner, where I order an egg-white omelet with mushrooms and a short stack of blueberry pancakes.

Danny stares as I put the meal away, with some slow, methodical shoveling of my fork.

“It’s been a while since I’ve eaten,” I explain with my mouth full. “Zoe isn’t really motivated by food these days.”

“I love a girl with a big appetite,” he says.

“Well, that’s good for the both of us. Here,” I say and I hold out a bite of pancake for him.

I look at the Wyoming page of my atlas and measure out the miles between us and Las Vegas with the bent-up part of my forefinger between the second and third knuckle.

“What are you doing?” Danny asks.

“Measuring. The distance between your second and third knuckle is approximately an inch, and it’s thirty miles per inch on this map.”

“Everyone’s forefinger is the same size between the second and third knuckle?”

“Approximately. We have an inborn uniform standard of measurement.”

“Is that how they discovered the ‘inch’?”

“Maybe. And then a ‘foot’ must be the average length of a person’s real foot.”

Speaking of feet, Danny has taken off his shoes under the table, and he is slowly sliding his foot up and down my calf beneath my pant leg.

“Um,” I say, trying to ignore him. “Can you ask them if they have the Weather Channel on that TV?”

He politely summons our waitress and asks her to turn on the Weather Channel while I map out the quickest route to Vegas. We basically have to shoot diagonally across the entire state of Utah. And part of it is through the Rockies, so we’ll need to make sure it’s not snowing. I hear it’s suicide to drive through the Rockies in a snowstorm. People have been buried alive in their cars and forced to eat their pets or their belts. Maybe that’s an urban legend, but I don’t want to take the chance.

When the weather map comes up on the TV screen, it thankfully shows no storms through Utah, but the weathercaster, a woman in a red dress with a matching long red jacket, points to Vegas and warns about a weather “event” containing unusual amounts of lightning moving from west to east across the southwest United States. “We don’t know yet what to call it,” she says. “We’re waiting for it to take shape and define itself, but for now, we’ve issued a general storm warning for all of Clark County, Nevada.”

Danny has somehow worked his sock-covered foot all the way up to my seat between my legs, and I’m massaging it underneath the tablecloth.

“Danny!” I say, coming to my senses.

“Let’s go to the bathroom,” he says, pointing his head in that direction.

“Together? That’s too advanced,” I joke. “I’m new at all this, remember?”

“Okay,” he says, nudging me once more with the foot.

“Plus we have to get there,” I say, pointing to the lightning-covered map, “before that storm does. I’m afraid of what she might do.”

“How far is it according to your knuckle?” he asks.

“At least twenty more knuckles. If we don’t hit traffic or weather or whatever.”

“How bad could traffic be in Utah?” he asks. “Do Mormons even drive? Or do they do the thing with the horse and buggy like the Amish?”

“They drive, you idiot. And you totally just jinxed us about the traffic.”

We pay the bill and buy a jackelope to give to Zoe when we find her. Danny has brought all of his ice cream man money with him, and he’s burning through it pretty quickly. It kills me thinking of the big box of coins sitting on the floor of the LeMans. I hope the cops have saved it for evidence and haven’t pilfered it to do loads and loads of their laundry.

We leave without visiting the bathroom together, but in five miles Danny finds a deserted rest area, where he parks behind a tree and I climb on top of him in the driver’s seat.

“Okay, that’s it!” I say when we are done. “We need to focus on Zoe. No more of this until you bring me Zoe,” I joke.

“I know you’re new to all this, but you should never use sex as a bargaining tool,” he says jokingly.

“I’m using it as a reward.”

“I guess that’s okay then,” he says.

We get back on the road and drive through Utah, where everything is the Crayola crayon color Burnt Umber and the sky is Cornflower Blue. The rock formations and the crested buttes are absolutely fabulous.

“Erosion is my new favorite artist,” I say.

“Erosion rocks,” Danny says. “There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I haven’t perfected it yet.”

We’re both so unaccustomed to so much space. It’s liberating and intimidating, and it’s making us giddy. We feel overexposed. Compared to this place, our home seems like a little village in a train set. Everything at home is miniature and green and close together, which makes it seem quainter.

Nothing here is quaint
, I think, looking out the window.

I take a little nap, and then we switch, and I drive the rest of the way to Vegas while Danny sleeps.

Every once in a while, I glance over at his face. His five o’clock shadow is beginning to grow, but it grows in uniformly and just serves to shade and accent his best features. His chin is perfectly squarish. A chin is very important, I realize, in my very subjective estimation of masculine beauty. It has to be pronounced and squarish, but not so big that you can grab it like a handle. He has a perfect chin, and his hair is growing longer and curlier and blacker, less Brillo-y now that it’s long, and more inviting to the touch. I want to feel those curls wrapped around my fingers.

• • •

I wake Danny up when I get to the Strip because no one should miss their first ride into Vegas. Three in the morning is probably the perfect time to arrive here. The retro, iconic
WELCOME TO FABULOUS LAS VEGAS NEVADA
sign is lit up in its full glory—even though it’s a little-known fact that the Strip is actually located in a town called Paradise, Nevada, and not Las Vegas at all.

Everything is illuminated. Some big old grumpy father in the sky is looking down on Vegas and yelling, “Don’t forget to turn off the lights!” It makes sense that Zoe’s alien friends would meet her here, because it’s probably the only town that’s visible from space.

Billboards and marquees advertise comedy shows, washed-up vocalists, bands from the eighties, French circuses, wedding chapels, tattoo parlors . . . In the periphery, we can see mini landmarks from around the world. The Eiffel Tower, the pyramids, the Empire State Building, the Venice canals.

“This is quite the spectacle,” Danny says groggily.

“You said it,” I say, cruising at ten miles per hour in proper cruise position, with my forearm leaning against the open window of the pickup truck. Which—we found out after searching through the glove compartment—belongs to a man by the name of Samuel Rodriguez. We have every intention of returning his vehicle to him as soon as possible. Danny even wrote him a postcard from the Jackelope diner.

We search for Zoe.

The only way to distinguish the whores from the bachelorettes, bingeing on their last night of freedom, is that the whores can walk properly in their seven-inch Jimmy Choos. The others stumble around twisting their ankles, boobs falling out of their halter tops, lips stained red from too much cheap red wine. It’s ugly. Their drunken bridesmaids stumble after them, wearing some kind of uniform trinket on their heads. I didn’t realize until now that I had such strong feelings about bachelorette parties. They just represent everything that’s wrong with this country. The shameless exhibitionism, the complete inability to embrace moderation.

It’s because we’re sort of looking for Zoe that we keep finding more whores and bachelorettes. Maybe we wouldn’t notice them as much if we weren’t looking for a young woman.

We also notice the homeless kids. Vegas is a runaway mecca because it’s so easy to get lost here. Which is strange because these kids are not inconspicuous. They seem bent on attracting attention, actually, with their neon-colored hair and silver studs everywhere, begging passersby for $6.99 to take advantage of the cheap casino prime rib special. I stare at a doughy, green-haired white girl in a men’s vest. She’s slumped against a storefront playing some kind of game, trying to toss the coins she’s collected into a plastic cup. I try to imagine how different she must look from her yearbook photo.

“Look, the ‘World’s Biggest Gift Shop,’” I say, changing gears.

“Look, ‘Skintight 2000: A Spectacular Revue for Mature Audiences.’”

“That counts us out,” I say.

“You said it,” Danny replies, and then, “There!”

“Where?” I ask and I follow his pointing finger.

A young woman in silver lamé leggings, a purple leather studded halter that stops way before her belly, and six-inch hot-pink heels sits on the curb, with her perfect legs bent up on either side of her. She looks like David Bowie from
Ziggy Stardust
, but with a darker complexion and straight American teeth. She holds her silver head in her hands, and I’m praying she’s not looking into a pool of her own vomit.

“Zoe!” we both scream out the passenger-side window. I look for a place to pull over, and the closest thing is the beginning of the circular driveway of the Venetian, a monstrous resort that is almost the size of Venice itself. The tower is so big it looks like another wonder of the world, like the Hoover Dam or the Great Wall of China. It is definitely visible from space.

We clamber out of the vehicle and rush toward her.

“Zoe!” I say. “Thank god!”

“Guyz,” she says, looking up at us with red-rimmed eyes and severely dilated pupils. She stares at us blankly and seems confused about where she is and what she is doing here. She is trying to sit still but can’t help moving back and forth in a slow swaying motion.

“What are you doing?” I ask her.

“Jus takin a res,” she slurs, about to lie down on the sidewalk.

“No, Zoe. Not there.”

“Where can I take a res?” she asks.

“She’s drunk,” I say. “I’ve never seen her drunk.”

“No. Not drunk. Just in diabetic shock,” Zoe corrects me.

“You’re not a diabetic.”

“Okay,” she says, giggling, “then I’m drunk.”

“I’m not surprised. You haven’t been eating enough to tolerate any alcohol at all,” I say, sitting down next to her.

“Here,” Zoe says pointing emphatically to the ground, “in this place, there is alwaysz a party.”

“Do you know where ‘here’ is?” Danny asks.

“Of course. Las Vegas, Nevada. Oooo. Les get tattoooos.”

“No.”

“Yes. Tattoos. Now,” she says, pouting a little like a toddler. “Either we get tattoos, or you two,” she clumsily points at us, “get married.”

“No tattoos tonight. I’m putting my man-foot down,” Danny says.

“Man-foot.” Zoe laughs. “You have to be a man to have a man-foot. Are you going to let him talk to me like that?” she asks me.

Danny helps me hoist her to her feet, where she towers over both of us in the outrageous heels. Her belly is completely bare, and she has the corn-pollen pouch from Rosemarie slung across her body. It is bulging and heavily weighted with what’s left of her coins.

“I’m the tallest. I get to say what we do. Les get tattooz,” she says, spitting a little with the
t
’s.

“We are doing nothing until I get a shower,” I say.

“Yeah,” Zoe says, looking me over. “Good idea.”

“I don’t think we can afford this place, though,” Danny says, pointing at the Venetian.

“You’d be surprised,” I tell him. I’d rescued my father from enough Atlantic City casinos to know that hotel rooms here are cheap. They just lure you in, so you’ll blow your cash gambling. They could give hotel rooms away for free. It’s the gambling that sustains them.

We left the pickup truck running because we didn’t want to have to hot-wire it again to restart it. When we get to the car, with Zoe hobbling next to me, leaning on my shoulder, Danny and I both realize the same thing at the same time. We can’t valet park the Samuel Rodriguez pickup. What would we do when they ask for a key? So we try to find the only meter in Vegas and stumble upon it right across the street from the Venetian.

“See, we’re lucky already,” I say.

We walk back up the Venetian driveway, carrying nothing but the jackelope we bought for Zoe. I don’t know where she left the rest of her things—her big coat, her turtle backpack with the weather radio and Taser in it—and I don’t think she does either. I have a feeling she traded them for her current ensemble.

“They have Italy here,” Zoe slurs as she points to the network of turquoise chlorinated canals around the entrance. “I think they bought it.”

“Yes,” I say.
God, she’s losing brain cells quickly
, I think.

The inside is filled with Titianesque fresco paintings of Roman warriors and the backs of plump, naked ladies. It is so ornately decorated with golden architectural details, I don’t know where to look.

“It’z so opulent,” Zoe says.

“If by ‘opulent’ you mean ‘gaudy,’” Danny answers. His Jersey accent comes out a little on the word
gaudy
, and it gives me a little tingle.
He has taste
,
I think, which many people don’t realize is a different thing than having money.

“It looks like Donald Trump threw up in here,” I say. “And where is the front desk?”

The whole first floor is basically a shopping mall surrounding the indoor shallow pools, which I refuse to keep calling “canals.”

“I didn’t know Venice was a mall,” I joke. “Or that the canals were so blue.”

“Let’z go for a ride on the long boat thing.” Zoe points across the shallow pool to where the motorized gondolas are covered and parked for the evening.