What Stays in Vegas (9 page)

A vision of myself, scraping ice from my windshield on a February morning, left me with such a stark comparison that I moved from the window, literally shaking my head to clear the image before it became unbearable.  I had gone into the kitchen to find some tea, not to wallow in self pity.  There was a woman upstairs in a much worse situation than myself, regardless of how much money she had, and I should be thankful that at least for the moment my life was good.

I made two cups of tea and brought them upstairs along with two boxes of Girl Scout Cookies that I spotted on the counter.  Kendra had made some progress while I was gone.  She had moved into an upright position and was no longer staring listlessly at the ceiling.

"For you," I said, placing the tea on her bedside table.  "And for us."  I shook the boxes of Girl Scout cookies and climbed back into bed next to her with a pile of napkins.  

I bit into a peanut butter patty and thought that maybe a change of subject might raise Kendra's spirits.  I asked her about the paintings that I had noticed in her office and over the fireplace.  She told me that against her parents wishes, she had been an art major during her freshman year of college.   Though being the only child of Sean Flamhauser, and future heir to the company, she gave in to the pressure after only one semester and switched to a major in civil engineering.  With all the talk from her friends and teachers about how difficult it might be to find a job after graduation, it seemed the only logical choice. 

College was also where she had met her husband Todd.  They were married shortly after graduation and moved to Las Vegas where her father set her up as Branch Manager.  Todd had been provided with a comfortable position as Director of Business Development, but as of this morning she believed he had abandoned his job along with his marriage. 

I told her that I too had been an art major, but saw it through to the end and had the dusty diploma hanging in my mom’s basement to prove it.  I told her about my love of turning what most people perceived as garbage into things of beauty.  And I told her, with sadness, that the only art I had created lately was made out of paperclips and pushpins.  She laughed and told me she had a nervous habit of folding origami paper cranes out of anything she could get her hands on.  She picked one of the tissues up off the bed.  It was hard to make out, but there it was, a wet, droopy pink crane. 

Despite her tangled hair and tear-streaked face, she looked happier when she talked about art than when she was all glammed up discussing business.  I no longer felt like I was alone in thinking that there was more to life than pushing paper.  If this rich, successful, woman was not even satisfied with the life she had chosen, then I, in my position as glorified slave, had every right to feel the same. 

At twelve-thirty Kendra silently stood up, walked over to a large bureau, and opened the bottom drawer.  She grabbed a stack of boxer shorts - apparently where Todd had gone he didn’t need underwear - and without a word, tossed them out the bedroom window.  At one o’clock we watched Days of our Lives, which turned out to be both of our favorite soaps, and ate ice cream straight from the carton.  At two o’clock we cut Todd out of several hundred photographs, and at three-thirty we took the pile of smiling Todd faces and burned them on the back porch. 

Years worth of female bonding was forged in a matter of hours.  It was four o’clock, and we were back in front of the television, when I decided that I had better return to the office to make sure that Chris and Dan hadn't set the building on fire.  I dreaded facing them. 

Kendra thanked me for staying with her and then apologized for being, as she put it, a blubbering ball of shit. 

“All in a day’s work,” I said, handing her the remote control.  “And the only ball of shit around here has his entire collection of underwear out on your front lawn.  Call me if you need anything okay?”

“Please come back after work,” she said.  She flipped through the channels and landed on a woman in short shorts and a flabby gut screaming about paternity tests.  “We’ll eat pizza and ice cream for dinner.” 

I assured her that I would come back, and then stepped outside into the late afternoon sun.  It felt like I had been away for days.  I plucked a pair of green boxer shorts off the antennae of my car, and headed back to work.

***

Chris and Dan looked like they had been through a war. 

“I kid you not, Rob told me, and I quote, ‘if any of you ever pull this kind of shit again, I will pull the entire Jiggly Kitty account and your company can burn in Hell’,” said Chris.  “ I swear to God he said that.  I feared for my life, Tessa.  Dan and I both did.”

“We were almost holding hands under the table,” said Dan.  “From the terror.”

“Aw, I’m sorry!  But I brought you a little something to help make up for it.”  Their faces lit up when I returned from my office with two large Starbucks iced coffees.  Bringing in coffee from the outside world is a huge deal to office workers - it's like smuggling drugs to a prisoner.

“You are the best secretary ever,” said Chris.  “Can we keep you?”

God was I relieved to hear him say those words. 

“I’d love to,” I said.  “But not if Rob Dorfman is going to be around here all the time.”

“Rob who?” asked Dan, taking a long sip of coffee and lounging back in his chair.

“That guy,” said Chris, stirring his coffee with a straw, “can go to
Hell.”

Dan rolled over to the television and popped in a video game.  “Come on Tessa, there’ll be no more work taking place in this office today.  Let’s see how you do with some Mortal Kombat.  Chris can play winner.” 

He handed me a controller and I settled into one of the video game chairs.  I wasn't particularly a fan of Mortal Kombat, but it had been an interesting day, and I was ready to fight.

- 10 -

I watched the white plastic disc sail past Chris’s hand and slide, with a satisfying clink, into the goal. 

“Score!”  I yelled.  Several fifth graders turned to watch my victory dance.

“You realize that I lose on purpose so you’ll continue to do that dance?”  asked Chris.  We pushed our paddles into the center of the table and headed toward the exit, casually bumping shoulders.

“I don’t believe you.  But it is an awesome dance and I wouldn’t blame you if you did.” 

Chris and I were at the arcade where we had been hanging out during our lunch hour for the past week.  It began the day after the Rob Dorfman meeting fiasco.  Dan had pretty much given up on life and called in sick, taking the day to recover in front of the television.  And Kendra, understandably, had decided to take the rest of the entire week off.  I called to check on her periodically throughout the morning, but by eleven-thirty she seemed to be on some sort of cleaning rampage and I decided to just let her be.  This left Chris and I alone in our corner of the office fielding phone calls and picking up the slack. 

By noontime Chris declared that the only way to take his stress level down a notch would be with a game of air hockey.  It took a good ten minutes before I realized he was serious, but when I did, I happily tagged along.   Our business attire made us stick out like sore thumbs among the tourists and grade school children, but it also added to the silliness.  I ended up having more fun than I’d had in a long time, and we have been going back ever since.  We liked to laugh about the fact that people like Roberta, who saw us leave for lunch together everyday, probably thought we were having some kind of torrid affair.

We ordered two slices of pizza from the outdoor vendor, and took a seat on our favorite bench which overlooked the bumper boats.  Making fun of passengers on the bumper boats was quickly becoming our favorite past time.

“Look at that kid,” said Chris pointing to a boy, around twelve, who was making his boat repeatedly spin in circles.  “He thinks he’s the first one to figure out how to do that.”

I laughed and pointed to the same kid's dad who was reaching into the water and splashing strangers in the face.  “I would punch that guy if he splashed me.”  

“He’s gonna get kicked out by bumper boat security," said Chris.  "I can’t wait.”  Sure enough, a pimply sixteen year old blew a whistle and Splash Dad was ordered out of the pool.  His son looked humiliated.

“Look, now his kid’s ramming the
hell out of that other kid because he’s angry at his dad,” said Chris.  “We could do a case study on this family.”

“A case study?”
“I minored in psychology.”

“You should write a research paper,” I said.  “And maybe you could also answer the question of why that guy over there is wearing green socks with sandals and black shorts.” 

“That one's simple.  He’s not concerned with fashion.  He put those socks on because he needed something to cover his feet.  And he put the sandals on because they’re comfortable.”

“And the shorts?” I asked.

“It’s hot outside and those keep him cool.  A guy like that doesn’t think about color coordination or style, he thinks about putting clothes on his body for utilitarian purposes only.”

“But how gross," I said.  "His socks are all wet.”

“Tessa, the guy is hanging out by himself at the bumper boats.
 
Do you think he cares if his socks are wet?  He’s in his own little world, and he’s probably much happier than the rest of us materialistic jerks.”

“Are you materialistic?” I asked, looking up at him with a serious face.  “You don’t seem that way to me.”

“Maybe not with brand name clothes, but come on, look at my office.  And what do I do all day?  I help some sociopath make money off of his strip joints.  This entire city is the most materialistic piece of work on the planet.  You go out on a Friday night around here and it’s nothing but fake girls in thousand dollar shoes latching on to whoever has the most money, and lining up for the most exclusive clubs they can pay their way into.”

“Geez," I said.  "I was kind of hoping to hit up some clubs one of these weekends, but maybe I'd better go shoe shopping first.  You know, if I want to catch a man.”

“Your shoes are perfect,” said Chris, playfully stepping on my foot.  I cringed as I noticed the scuff marks all over the toes.  How the heck old were these things?

  “You don’t want to be like those girls anyway," he said.  He reached down and brushed some pizza crumbs off my leg.  “They don’t have any interest in air hockey.”

I smiled up at him, and then looked quickly back down at my pizza.  Perhaps it was the Las Vegas sun, but my face suddenly felt very warm.  I stared at Splash Dad as he kicked angrily at the bushes by the bumper boat waiting area.  A woman wearing a lot of gold jewelry hurried over to comfort him.  Splash Mom, I assumed.

“So,” I said, changing the subject, “not that I don’t enjoy it, but we always seem to be making fun of other people or talking about work.  I still don’t know very much about you.  There’s got to be more to you than just designer of strip club parking lots and air hockey phenomenon, no?”

“Well, when you put it that way, could there possibly be
anything more?”

I giggled.  “Let me rephrase that.  Once we get past all the glamour, there must be something that brought you to this point in your life.  I can tell you quite simply that I was born and raised in Massachusetts, have hated the snow ever since I got too old to play in it, and have a very real fear of dying an administrative assistant.  Now you go.”

“First of all, you’re never too old to play in the snow,” said Chris.

“Tell me,” I said, “have you ever had to scrape ice off your windshield before leaving for work on a ten degree February morning?”

“No, but once when I was six we took a ski trip to Colorado and I think my parents had to brush some snow off the car,”  said Chris.  “But, you know, I was all snug in the back seat with the heat on.”

“Exactly.  I don’t want to hear about snow from you, Mr. I Live In The Desert.”

“Touché.  But I haven’t always lived in the desert.  I grew up in San Diego and went to UCLA for  my engineering degree.  Right before graduation my roommates and I decided that before we sold our souls to the corporate world we wanted to do something for ourselves.  So we moved to Vegas and tried our hand at amateur pornography.”

I wish I could have seen the look on my face, because Chris only lasted about three seconds before he broke out laughing.

“I’m just kidding!  Believe it or not we opened a paintball field, but it tanked. I don’t think any of us had the drive or the experience to make it a success.  But we had fun while it lasted.”

We watched as Splash Dad made it loudly known to everybody who passed him that he would never frequent these bumper boats again. 

“Do you still talk to the other guys?” I asked.

“I do.  Randy is still my roommate.  The other guy, Ryan, met a producer of Cirque du Soleil when we were out at the bars one night.  He ended up marrying the girl and now he travels the world.  Every few months I get a postcard from some new country that he’s in.”

“Well there you go,” I said.  “Every decision you make, no matter how insignificant it seems, can change the direction of your entire life.  I mean, what if he hadn't gone out that night?  He'd probably still be here like the rest of us corporate chumps."