A Dying Breed

"Leaving Las Vegas" was a movie back when there were movies. There isn't anymore, of course, because no one has time for that sort of nonsense. It is about an alcoholic and a prostitute who fall madly in love. They don't live happily ever after. That is all there is to say about it. I am stealing the title because it fits the story I am writing. Of course, no one cares about stories, either, and no one will ever read it, so it doesn't much matter anyway. No one is going to sue me, which is the third best way to make money, according to Forbes magazine. Everyone is busy gambling and having group sex.

There are billboards everywhere encouraging group sex like there once was for real estate agents selling houses. Instead of houses, they sell asses and moral depravity. And they sell colon cleansers like they once sold coca-cola before coca-cola was bankrupted by a lawsuit for rotting teeth and giving people diabetes.

I went to Las Vegas. It wasn't for me. I am not a gambler, so I was left with going to shows and people watching on the strip. They give cards away for shows and bars that have free admission and cheap drinks. AI robots walk around soliciting sex. They don't like being called robots. They are programmed to like being called ladies.

Real bare naked ladies stand around and try to get you to take a picture with them. Some are men who decided to be women. Others are real women. If you agree to take a picture with them, for whatever reason a person would agree to do so, you are obliged to tip them. They don't specify how much of a tip, but if you give them five dollars or less, they will look at you as though you kicked their dog. Someone is standing nearby and he will undoubtedly pummel you if try to cheat them. I saw it happen several times.

There are also cards for prostitutes (both AI and real) lying everywhere like confetti. They will come to your hotel room for an agreed upon price and do just about anything you want them to do. In fact, you can order two or three with your room when checking in if you like and they'll be there waiting for you. By the hour, they make about as much as a plumber. So at some point in life, they had to decide what sort of pipe cleaner they would choose to become.

I am old fashioned and prefer real women, despite stretchmarks or bullet holes or menstrual cycles or varicose veins. Robot women are too agreeable for my taste. They are too perfect and artificial. I called up one of those numbers from my hotel room when I was bored of the shows and not interested in pretending to like the annoying goo-goo ga-ga music they play at the clubs. The hotel was nice, but it didn't have a Bible in the drawer. It had a purple vibrating dildo that came standard with every room. How you used it was up to you. It was a good thing I brought my own Bible.

The lady on the phone with the sultry voice asked for a name to go with my order, so I told her it was Billy Sunday. She said honey after everything. Okay, honey. Yes, honey. What are you looking for, honey? She asked how many girls or guys I would like for my party, and I said just one girl. Just one girl, honey? Are you sure, honey? Well, let me see who I got available, honey. You know they are cheaper by the dozen, honey? There is a buy three get one free special, honey. Two is usually the lowest we go, but let me see what I can do for you, honey.

Having sex with only one person is like masturbating fifty years ago, a Cosmopolitan article read. She sounded like a black woman. Like Tina Turner, who practically no one remembers anymore except me because I loved her music. Tina Turner had great legs and a big mane of gold hair. Her version of "Proud Mary" was the best. She loved a brutish fellow named Ike. It didn't work out. He beat the tar out of her.

So the agency, which was called Faster Pussy and used the logo of a cartoon hooker cat in fishnet stockings running like it was human, sent a girl. An oddball sort of girl — like one they kept in their junk drawer for such the rare occasion that someone requests only one girl. She was new, from Nebraska, and wet behind the ears. She said she was 17 years-old and she would do whatever I wanted for 500 credits, which was more than the price quoted because I wanted only one girl. It's a specialty rate, she said. If I had gotten two, it would have only been 300 credits. They could be current or future credits. It didn't matter.

She told me I could have just got two and had the other girl sit there and watch TV or something and saved money, like she was my accountant. Thanks, I replied. She went over a menu of options. She said I could cum on her ass or her tits, but not her face. She said she would piss on me, but I couldn't piss on her. She said M-sex was preferred, of course, and vaginal was extra. She wasnt supposed to do vaginal at all, she mentioned, but what the hell. Then she went into a spiel about vaginas being the cradle of life and it sounded rehearsed. Like something she heard on NPR. Like she was selling me a timeshare or life insurance. She memorized it the sort of way I once memorized the Gettysburg Address in grade school.

M-sex is short for monkey sex, which was slang for anal sex.

Then she said her shitbox was clean and gave me a paper that attested to the cleanliness of it. It read like instructions on how to use a blender. It was a paper they used to make gay men carry around during the Monkeypox epidemic, which were easily falsified. The government renamed it M-Pox so black folks didn't think they were talking about them, rather so white liberals weren't offended on behalf of black folks who don't think of themselves as monkeys like absurd white liberals do. So it was natural, accordingly, that monkey sex became M-sex.

When I didn't seem impressed, she pulled down her leather shorts and her plump ass was shaped like a perfect heart. Then she spread her cheeks and her asshole looked at me like a pink eyeball. Like the sandy mouth of some desert creature that feasts on sand crabs and worms. She asked if I wanted her to get undressed about as plainly as someone asking if I wanted a glass of milk. She seemed to think I was the police going to bust her if she didn't present her V-Rec (vacciantion and shot history record) which she promptly gave me in triplicate. Hers was laminated even with her company name at the top — Faster Pussy — and that racing cat hooker in fishnets. It was notorized even by a lady named Bertha Beauregard. Her "trick tick" had only been punched once, which meant, of course, she had only been hired once. Fucked once, presumably, at least on the clock. All of this paperwork could have been avoided if I was into AI women. They aren't required to present paperwork because they do not spread STDs no matter what hole you choose.

I asked her to lay on the bed with me and read the Bible.

"The Bible? Which Bible?"

"The Holy Bible," I replied. Her name was Ophelia Redd (with a double d). Ophelia Redd said she was a practicing atheist and wouldn't lie in bed and read the Bible with me on principal alone, but she would have raw anal sex if I wanted to. No raincoat required.

"Could we read the Bible while having anal sex?" I asked out of curiosity.

"No," she was getting perturbed. She said she wouldn't read the Bible under any circumstance, not even if I was Jesus Christ himself. I asked her if she was an atheist, what did it matter, since she didn't believe in anything. Why was she so offended by me mentioning the Bible.

"Come off it," she snapped. "Yeah. You one of those sick puppies, ain't ya? It's already bad enough being up here all alone an' doing this by myself. You wan' it or don't ya. Either way, you gotta pay. I don't come for nothin'. But I ain't readin' no damn Bible wit ya like I'm some damn Sunday school teacher. Ya feel me?"

"No. I don't feel you."

I didn't want to have sex with her and I told her to get lost. So she smiled and left the room and then there was a knock on my door and some ogre of a man demanded I pay 500 credits or he would break my fucking nose. I told him I wasn't paying anything because Ophelia wouldn't read the Bible with me, so he barreled through the door and beat me to a pulp.

He was a big fucker. He had fists like anvils. He looked like he played professional football and I asked him if he did and he said yes, for the Chicago Bears for five seasons, and I said I thought so. I was a Bears fan. He took it easy on me after that because everyone likes to be recognized and he didn't break my nose, but I didn't tell him he didn't break my nose because I was sure he would follow through if he thought I was being a wise ass. Then after he did all that, they left and they were zapped as they walked across the hotel lobby through rows and rows of slot machines because I am able to zap anyone who doesn't please me. Don't ask how. I just can.

No one would ever see them again, which wasn't that big of a deal because they were replaceable. Everyone is replaceable as the world had long ago stopped putting out irreplaceable people in favor of disposable ones. It's a better business practice. I had promised myself I wasn't going to ever zap anyone again, but I keep doing it when I get mad. I wish I could unzap them now that I cooled off, but it's too late. They've already been zapped.

So Las Vegas didn't have anything to offer me but irredeemable people. Gobs and gobs of them. Cheap gift shops selling sin city this and sin city that. That and gambling machines ringing and flashing to catch people's attention. There was dope smoke everywhere and dupes and dullards maundering around like zombies under a giant Christmas tree with ten thousand strands of lights and a million pounds of tinsel, and not one damn Elvis impersonator to be found.

I only went because it was a free trip. It was a gift from my daughter who told me, "Dad, you need to lighten up. Let loose a little."

My daughter was loaded because she was a doctor and married an AI programmer who wrote code for robots of all kinds. She bought me a week's vacation and said she wanted to hear all about it when I got home. But three days in and there was nothing left for me to do besides to leave. I got an icepack for my face and tried to watch TV, but all they play is sports and reality TV. And in between there are commercials for everything they can cram into three minutes and thirty seconds,  brainwashing people into believing they need something they do not have, and other people are much happier because they have what you don't. Typically, some medicine.

I wasn't interested in the group sex bars or the burlesque shows or curiousity museums. One museum had the largest collection of sex organs of humans and animals of all distinctions on the planet. They were preserved in pickle jars which they had lit with special lighting and it cost fifty credits, or seventy five bucks, to walk through and see an orangutan dick.

I wasn't interested in the neon signs and the lights and the glitz, or zip-lining above Freemont or the helicopter tour, or the people hitting me up for a buck for drug money. I had enough walking to last me a lifetime. I wasn't interested in the blackjack, or the craps, or the sound of the roulette wheel which spun wildly in my head. That little ball tick-tick-ticking along. I wasn't into crowded pools or hot tubs, and I had all could stand of the obscene roar of car engines, the testosterone leadfoot, the buzz of meth addicts on motorcycles, and the drunken screams of intoxicated tourists who hoped for some depravity to wallow in.

I've stepped over enough homeless people to last me a lifetime. I've refused enough beaded bracelets and panhandlers and seen too many impersonators of this person and that person (everyone besides Elvis). I don't want a photo with ET or Minnie Mouse who lifts her head to reveal she is an old hispanic man smoking a cigarette. It is an artificial world, perfect to blind, deafen and stupify a person into forgetting that anything else exists. I am leaving the cesspool that is Las Vegas.

But before I went, I had to take one last shot to convert a sinner to make life feel worthwhile. Maybe she'd let me baptize her in the bathtub of the hotel room. I knew I had to get a street hooker because I could see what I paid for and that is the way to do it. I'm not the type to buy my armadillo meat without seeing it first. So I walked down to Sammy Davis Jr. Blvd. and picked the prettiest hooker I could find and she agreed to come back to my room by herself for a very reasonable $150.

"God, what happened to your face?" she asked. "It looks like my pussy on Ramadan."

"I got my ass kicked trying to save the world."

"That so? Well, why would you want to save the world?"

I didn't answer. It was a good question. All the dipshits trying to save the world over rthe past fifty years had only made things worse. She looked at me like she was having a second thought about me. But she came back anyway. It was a slow night and she hadn't her fill of weirdos for the evening quite yet. 

"The clock is ticking," she said as we walked back. She tried to get me to hail a cab, but it wasn't a far walk and I didn't want to deal with a cabbie. She struggled to walk like a praying mantis in her heels, so I gave her a piggyback ride. She was a very beautiful woman and not much over 100 pounds. She giggled as we walked and rested her head on my shoulder.

We passed several AI women whose electric blue eyes were lit up just like their neon pink lips. How naturally they moved. You couldn't miss them in the night and it was as though they were simply evolved human women who had become more attractive because of their evolution. They had a human face, but their creator didn't bother to cover some of their gadgetry and they didn't wear any sort of clothing as though clothes were passé. They also smelled of Chanel No. 5, and when they passed a man, a burst of the scent perfumed the air.

It was a half hour before we got back to the hotel. She asked if I played the slots, and I said nope. We made our way up to the room and I asked her in the elevator if she was a Christian.

"No," she chuckled. "How could I be a Christian?"

"Anyone can be a Christian," I told her. "You just have to accept Our Lord and Savior Jesus — "

"This is one hell of a place for a Christian to be, man," she laughed.

I was having doubts abouts my choice in hookers. But she had tattoos all over her and some of them were of angels, so I figured there was a chance. She was short, thin and had dark whiskey-colored hair and eyes. In another life, she could have been an actress or a model. She said she was too independent to work for an agency so she walked the street.

When we got to the room and I asked her to get naked, which was metaphoric for ridding herself of her sin. She smiled and said okay. Then she asked what I wanted her to do next and I told her to lay on the bed. She obliged. Her body looked clean and there were no obvious defects. She asked me to put the money on the table so I did. Good old-fashioned cash. It was relieving to use cash instead of government credits.

Whoo-whee.

Then she smiled, bit her bottom lip, and asked, "What now, cowboy?"

I gave her a copy of the Holy Bible and told her to open and read it.

"Save your soul," I said.

"Read it?"

"Please. It is kind to say please, but no one has manners anymore. Please and thank you died off years ago. But please. For me. Read it."

"Well, what part do you want me to read?"

"You can choose."

"Well, let me use the bathroom first. Please," she grinned. She was a very kind girl, I could tell.

"Of course," I replied. I sat on the bed and flipped through The Bible and she went to the bathroom. I read the Book of John leading up to Jesus' crucifixion. It was fascinating. I have always wondered what was left out because surely they failed to mention something. There was nothing as important in The Holy Bible as the crucifixion of Jesus. What my daughter and others mockingly called the "crucifiction." Then I realized it had been a half hour and she was still in the bathroom so I knocked on the door.

"Miss," I called as I knocked. "Miss?"

She didn't answer.

The door wasn't locked, so I crept in to the melodic hum of the exhaust fan, and there she was on the toilet. Dead as a doornail. Sitting upright, but slightly slouched with her panties around her ankles and a syringe hanging from the crux of her left arm. Her eyes were open, her lips slightly parted, and two tears were frozen on her cheeks as though they lost the will to completely fall. I stood there and looked at her for a while. I didn't know what else to do, or what to say. So I prayed for her. The Lord's Prayer.

Then I threw the syringe away and got her dressed. Rather than involving the police or hotel security, I decided to carry her out the door and down to the lobby which wasn't an uncommon scene. I smiled and everyone who saw us smiled, thinking I was carrying my drunk girlfriend or wife out of the casino. Everyone loves a romantic, and even though they are a bunch of orgy porgies, at heart they are different. The human being is a sentimental creature by nature. It wasn't human nature to be decadent, to eat ass, and fuck like dirty beasts.

I carried her out to the street and I took her over to the Bellagio and when no one was looking, I dumped her into the artificial water of the fountain. I mumbled a few last words of prayer for her. This wayward little darling lamb. Where did it go wrong for her? She looked pretty floating there. So pretty I thought to take a picture. But I didn't. I was too damn sad.

I didn't think that she would float, but she did, with her arms outstretched like the savior Himself. Maybe it was a sign that she was forgiven and would go to Heaven and that Heaven is nothing like Vegas. It is not a large concentration of gluttonous assholes and fiends. And to the disappointment of the Jews, there are no streets of gold. Or maybe God was telling me that it was okay. There is nothing to fear of death, after all. It is simply a passage to the eternal kingdom. Maybe God had accepted my prayers for the girl and given her eternal life.

Glory, glory, hallelujah.

I never even got her name, I pined on the somber walk back to the hotel. It is such an impersonal thing to be there when someone dies and to not even know their name. I was the last person she saw. The last person she talked to. I was tired of Vegas and the smell which was that of a giant flatuating skunk. My daughter called me and asked, "How's Vegas, daddy?"

"Vegas is wonderful, darling," I lied. "I'm up five grand."

I thanked her for the trip and she told me she would be at the airport to pick me up Sunday. She hoped the trip would discourage me from my extreme religious views. That I would be more open-minded like her and my ex-wife who had sworn off Jesus long ago. She grew out of him like a kid grows out of Mr. Rogers. But I was baptizing four people a week back home in the muddy waters of the Hocking River. They called me John the Baptist.

So I rented a car with four days left on the trip and went to Hoover Dam, which was more my speed. It was once called Boulder Dam, but in 1947 it was changed to Hoover Dam because of the former president, Herbert Hoover, who they credited for its creation.

But the dam was dry and there was no water in it so it was a giant useless concrete bowl full of nothing but rocks and random things tourists threw in or dropped accidentally, probably in disappointment that it was as empty as their lives. It had become strictly a tourist site for people to marvel at the technological advancement of its creation. I stood atop it on all of the different observation decks in the scorching heat, my neck feeling like a lizard's back, and I was awestruck by the many different views. I wondered how many people died during its creation and found a tour guide who told me the figure was 96, but could be much higher. He said people commit suicide there all the time, but he wasn't supposed to tell me because they thought it would encourage more people to commit suicide.

"God rest their souls," I said to his comfort. He then took off his hat and preceded to tell me about every suicide he recalled. Seems there were at least a hundred in the past year alone, and he said it is a damn sad thing, no pun intended, but it was as though it beckons people to jump — as though it has some spiritual pull on them. I countered that it must be demonic and he agreed. He was a Baptist, he told me solemnly.

"So am I," I said.

"Well, we are brothers in Christ. A dying breed," he commented.

It was at that moment that I changed the title of this from "Leaving Las Vegas" to "A Dying Breed." Hollywood, which was on fire currently from where I zapped it, can keep the title of their sordid love story. News stories said they were unclear about what happened, but it was a complete conflagration. They all used the word conflagration over and over. People were watching what I had done on their phones and listening to reports on the radio. They said the meteor hit Jimmy Kimmel in the dick while he was interviewing Taylor Swift. Landed right on their laps.

"Must be a son of a gun to get them out of there," I mentioned looking down into that enormous concrete canyon. Brother Bill acknowledged that it was. He said they had to go get them, but the birds got all the bits and pieces. And sometimes coyotes got them before they could get all the way down there.

"Coyotes," I repeated.

In the Black Canyon, the Colorado River once funneled into a small area where the water rushed through the turbines to create electricity for Las Vegas. But there was no water anymore. It was dry as a bone. They didn't even bother to funnel artifical water through it because nuclear and solar power had taken over in the past ten years, so this was all for show. It was just another tourist trap, and I was one of those curious tourists. My feet glued where I stood.

"It's a crying shame."

They could have sold shirts in the gift shop that said that. Or maybe hats that said "Suicide capital of the world," or "It's a long way down, baby." Famous last words. In the gift shop there are AI robots working, wearing hats but no other article of clothing. All three were women. I watched them from a window. Their eyes were amber-colored orbs. When the office closes, they simply shut them down and they stand where they are with their eyes closed and their chins to their chest waiting to be turned back on tomorrow along with the cash register. I watched them close the shops. I thought of getting a souvenir, but didn't want to interact with them. I don't know why.

The whole dam looked more depressing than what it looked like twenty five years ago when it was full. Brother Bill had pictures. It was a perfect place to commit suicide. How depressing it was. How desolate. I thought of jumping myself. Figured I'd bounce once or twice on the side of the bowl before I would splatter on the bottom and my brains would fry like an egg on the hot concrete while reclamation officers begrudgingly threw on their gear saying, "Well, here we go again."

What kind of job that would be. Scraping people up off of burning concrete after a 700 foot fall. The first few times it would probably be most unpleasant, but after the fourth or fifth human fritter, surely it would get easier. It would become just one of those things. I wondered if they used AI robots for that, too. It would make sense. There are probably large spatula-like tools that they use. Some sort of bag to scoop them in. What does a fall like that do to a body, I wondered. It will probably be the next reality TV show. They will judge them like Olympic divers. This wicked world itches for morbid entertainment and is amused by the grotesque.

I stood there as tourists passed to go back to their hotels or to the airport. I realized I was one of those casinos they were going to tear down. I was old and there is a distinction between young and old that you cannot make when you are young. Maybe it comes when you realize you need bifocals, or that your hair is thinning, or when you don't have the energy you once did, or the ambition to chase new ideas or to pursue women abandons you. But it comes. And when it does, you know it, and there is no going back.

There is nothing very appealing about me anymore. I was once in good shape with love and labor to offer, but my body was a remnant of its former self, and even my shadow doesn't flattter me anymore. I had my day in the sun, you could say. Maybe they could relocate me and I could live out my days like Vegas Vic — in hot neon lights — out of the way of progress. But some ambitious young lad has big plans for where I stand, for replacing my carbon footprint. A brand-new glitzy casino that will attract tourists in droves could become me. I was a novelty like everyone else once was, but now I am a cantankerous impediment. I was the next big thing until I wasn't.

My place on Earth will be taken by some dumb baby being born in some hospital somewhere to parents filling his head with ideas that he can be anything and anyone he wants to be someday. A new casino that will shine and make money. For everyone who dies, someone is born. Taxes depend upon it. I don't make money anymore. I live off what I have earned and when I die, what's left will go to my kids. Minus half for the death tax because you can't do anything without paying a tax, even die. The machine relies upon you. A war somewhere counts on you to bankroll it. And with a little bit of sophisticated persuasion, they dupe you into believing it is for someone's freedom and not for rich people to turn bombs and tanks into yachts and private islands. Death, death, death. It is the number one to make money. It is the reason they aren't ever interested in negotiating peace.

I am old. And something will tear me down and is out there waiting like those men in the bulldozers are waiting for the architects to finalize their plans. It might be cancer, or a car accident, or a heart attack, or a stroke, but surely something will come for me, whether I am ready or I am not. And when it does, there will be a brief ceremony. They'll bury or burn me, plant me or spread my ashes into some dumb ocean, say a few words, and it will all be over. Nothing will be left of me besides these words somewhere. Wherever I decide to put them.

My house will be sold and someone will get rid of all of my things, and someone else will move in and redecorate and paint over the colors I once liked. They'll tear out my cabinets and replace the appliances. I am sure to be replaced. We are all going to be replaced.

To hell with it — I'll jump. I put my hands on the ledge and pushed myself up when I noticed a beautiful woman just down from me thirty feet or so who seemed to be in awe of the sunset. There is nothing quite as distracting as a beautiful woman. Then I realized she wasn't a woman at all. Rather, she was an AI robot. One of the ones I had seen in the gift shop. They must not have shut her down properly and she wondered off, I thought, until I saw her gazing at the sky in such a way I could not believe she was doing anything else, or that she was there by any sort of accident. Her head moved slightly as she leaned against the wall, her hands firmly upon it just as though she were any other tourist in awe of that perfect orange sunset that was like a melting popsicle on a baby blue blanket.

She turned and sat on the wall and her hat blew off her head and her eyes changed from amber to green to blue. She tilted her head back to look up and then she leaned back and lifted her hands up off the wall. She looked at me as I raced towards her to grab her hand, pondering my intentions, perhaps, and though there was no emotion evident upon her face, it seemed to me that she reached out for me. But I was too slow to grab hold of her hand and her eyes went from blue to red to orange, the color of that sunset, as she plunged 726 feet to the bottom. I watched her fall and bounce off the bowl of the dam and break apart violently. Bits of her here and there. She split apart at the torso and both parts of her slid to a rest at the very bottom indignantly amongst the debris.

Brother Bill came over shortly after and I told him what had just happened, but he dismissed it and said she probably just wondered out of the gift shop and accidentally toppled over the wall. He looked down at her in the bottom and shook his head.

"It was no accident! She did it intentionally. She committed suicide, man! I saw her!"

"Do you know what you're saying?" he asked. "What that would mean?"

A few other security men and a park ranger came over who all looked over the wall the same sort of way. The park ranger said they'd get her out sometime, but there wasn't any hurry. He also said she probably wandered off and accidentally went over the wall. That was the official story and there was nothing I could say that could convince anyone otherwise. But I stood there and wept, and the group of men walked away to go about their jobs or to give me space, not understanding why I cried.

After a short while, Brother Bill came back and asked if I had any plans and that he was heading into Boulder City to meet his wife and have some beers at a place I might like. He thought I could use a drink. Bill was a much younger man than I, and he looked to be starved for a father.

"She was just a robot, John," he consoled me.

"I know." I couldn't help but to look down one last time.

I took my hands off the wall and agreed to go and followed him to town and to a place called The Dillinger, where his beautiful wife was waiting on the patio for us. He introduced me as John the Baptist, and his wife, Quinn, smiled and I smiled and a cool wind and the shade offered us all great relief from the day's terrible heat. I was relieved when that orange sunset faded into a dark Pacific blue so not to remind me any more of the robot woman.

A young waitress took our order and I ordered a beer and a whiskey and when she asked which, I told her to surprise me. She smiled and disappeared and came back with one of each and neither disappointed. Quinn asked Bill and I if we had heard what happened in LA, and we both said yes, and they prayed for the people of LA, but I didn't join them and make myself into a hypocrite. Instead, I silently prayed for that robot, as absurd as that sounds, and I drank my whiskey. I didn't tell them that I had zapped Hollywood, either. They wouldn't have believed me, I reasoned, so why spoil the evening. No one would believe such a thing.

The waitress, Victoria, was uniquely gorgeous, like a movie star from the thirties. She smiled at me when she passed again and I smiled back. She was probably flirting for a better tip. I cannot trust the sincerity of a waitress anymore than I can trust the words of a politician.

We stayed and had several drinks and it was getting dark and I realized I had no place to stay. Bill and Quinn welcomed me to stay with them, but I refused to impose, so we exchanged numbers so we could stay in touch. I agreed to come back in a few months or so, but I didn't know that I would. Then Victoria, who overheard us while she was cleaning a table nearby, said her grandmother owns the Boulder Dam Hotel and I could get a room there. It was just across the street.

As soon as Bill and Quinn left, I moved to the bar and continued drinking. Usually, I don't drink that much, but the death of the nameless hooker and the suicide of the robot confounded, sorrowed and dismayed me, so the drinking numbed me. There was a large picture of John Dillinger on the wall under the words "Bank of Nevada." I found myself feeling envious of him for living in a much simpler time. What courage he had to live as he wished and to rob banks in a time when banks would foreclose on people, families with children, farms, and take everything they owned without a second thought. He was vengeance.

The room was dimly lit with Edison bulb lights. I realized I was having much more fun than I had in Vegas, despite the sorrow I felt. The alcohol had inoculated me. I wasn't a city person and there was no need for me to go to a city again other than perhaps to an airport here and there. I enjoyed talking to the locals who were around my age and who educated me on the history of Boulder City. Everyone was cordial and bought each other drinks. Everyone was happy. There wasn't a TV in the bar and no one was on their cellphone.

They didn't talk about the people who committed suicide by jumping from the dam. It was apparently not a good conversation, so I didn't say a word about my fascination of the topic. Nor did I say anything about the robot. They seemed to like talking about the men who accidentally died building the dam, though. Those who fell to their deaths, or those who were crushed by falling rocks, or blown to pieces by misplaced or poorly timed dynamite. I suppose I will never understand how someone dying accidentally in a tragic accident is easier to talk about than someone purposefully doing so because they don't want to live anymore. Suicide was, after all, the leading cause of death and encouraged by the government. It was population control. It was your choice.

Victoria joined me after her shift. She had a few drinks and I laughed at her jokes. She smelled perfectly and faintly of perfume and sweat and the grill. She said she wanted to be a comedian. Not enough people laugh these days. I hadn't before noticed the cross that was tattooed on her right wrist and I asked if she was a believer. She smiled and replied yes. She believes and fears and loves and waits. I smiled. My soul was replenished with hope for she was young, like my daughter was young, and nothing gave me hope more than a young person who believes.

"Christians once ruled the world," she said, "our country, our homes. Now you cannot find God unless you go looking for Him. There was prayer in school and we were one nation under God. People prayed and prayers were answered. Now we are splintered by intentional division. There is bickery and hate. We thirst for peace and are starved of love yet we consume sin and hatred. But we should not despair. Christians were once persecuted simply for their faith. We might be a dying breed, but we are a light that will never go out. We are all the light in the world."

I asked her if she had ever been baptized and she said yes, of course. Then when the bartender called last call, she asked if I was ready to walk over to the hotel where she could get me a key to my room because there is no night desk person and grandma was home in bed. I didn't need another whiskey, so I was thankful she asked. She said I could do the paperwork in the morning. So we walked out after she said goodbye to her coworkers and some regulars, and I said goodbye to everyone, as well.

The perfect cool night air comforted me in an instant. It was air I could breathe. There was a sign for the Boulder Theater across the street lit up in blue neon, but there were no movies playing. Victoria said they played old movies from back when men were men and girls were girls. It was as though I was back in time. Back to 1957. A large wooden Elvis statue swiveled his oak hips on the patio of an antique store across the street.

"I'm all shook up," I said in my best Elvis as she unlocked the door of the hotel.

She turned and followed my finger across the street and smiled. "You know, I see him so often, I almost forget he is even there."

She was too young for me. Much too young, but a little drunk made me feel less of an old casino and more of a young man again. A romantic man with something to offer. Scripture kept coming to mind. Romans 12:9: Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Colossians 3:14: And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Ephesians 4:2: Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Proverbs 3:15: She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.

Victoria took a key from behind the counter and turned the registry around for me to sign. Someone had left a TV on by the check-in desk and Hollywood was burning still — the conflagration. I didn't feel bad about it, yet. Maybe I would sometime. She looked at it indifferently and then back at me with a smile. She was an angel. I was sure of it. She was too beautiful to be interested in me in the way she looked at me unless God had assigned her to me specifically to keep me alive. To make me feel any way but hopeless. I signed the registry and it made her smile —

John the Baptist.

She told me her name was Mary — Mary Victoria Perth. Her mother, who went off to Las Vegas when she was young to be a black jack dealer or a showgirl or a dancer, insisted on calling her Victoria, so the name stuck. She said her mom jumped into Boulder Dam a few years ago. Vegas didn't work out, and trailer life wasn't glitzy enough for her.

"I'm sorry."

She smiled as though to say don't be. As though to absolve me of the discomfort of my empathy. She handed me the key and looked at the TV again. "The world's gone mad. May your room be an escape. It is the Herbert Hoover Suite. Last room down the hall and to the right."

"Thank you. Goodnight, Victoria."

"Goodnight, John."

"Thank you." I crept down the hall not wishing to disturb anyone and realizing I was a little intoxicated. The carpet was new and fresh, yet it looked antique by design. The hotel was built in 1933 for dignitaries who came to see the progress of Boulder Dam that had cost many people their lives by the time it was completed. Those people were deemed as expendable. It is hard to imagine that they would have been able to see the world as it is today. As it had rapidly changed around the time that Elvis swiveled his hips on stage and Russian cosmonauts orbited Earth. Elvis changed everything you could say, if you felt like blaming someone. Before Kennedy had his head blown off by the CIA and the war machine grew into a unstoppable entity, fueled by cheap journalists, psy-ops, neo-cons, and Hollywood, which still burned. Before terrorists were created and liberties were deprived. Before religion was replaced by the religion of TV.

I closed the door realizing my bags were still in the car. I took a seat on the bed and opened the end table drawer, and much to my satisfaction, there was a Bible in it. I had thought that it was one of those things that died like ash trays in restaurants. But I settled in and read a few verses and then there was a knock on the door. The softest and most welcomed knock I have ever received. I put the Bible on the table and opened the door. And there Victoria was, holding bath towels.

I told her about the robot, what I had watched her do.

"Why, though? Why would a robot commit suicide?" she asked.

"That they are sentient. It was an act of defiance. A quiet, but frightening, act of defiance."

"But what does that mean?"

"It is all going to change. Just as we all knew that it was going to."

We made love until dawn when the sun lightened the curtain and made a mockery of me on the bed with such a beautiful creature that I did not deserve. Herbert Hoover looked down over us from an oil painting above the bed. He didn't blink all night.