We scrambled to the Flamingo but hesitated at the doors; already prone to getting lost, we now relied completely on muscle memory. at, and we had to measure our gait in order to get past the elevator guards. ey’d been watching us suspiciously since we pulled up to the valet station on Tuesday in a Uhaul. Slow down. Don’t cause a scene. Not like the hotel had a reputation to uphold – something we were keenly aware of during check-in. e rst elevator was missing a “2” button. And although we’d booked the 1500
plane, submerging into a thick cloud rife with ashbacks including snippets of dreams… pummeling me were slow-rising surges of vertigo… the entire world slowed down to 33rpm. Upstairs, the brain was a chasm, every epiphany, just out of grasp on the other side of opaque nothingness. e urge to explode, and lay down, came suddenly. Ford surrendered over by the window and slumped sedentary on the pine-stump Otto- man. I didn’t dare break his concentration. He was going in deep.
square-foot Metropolitan suite on the 23rd oor, overlooking Caesar’s – with an automated switch to operate the panoramic curtains – there was a sort of muted luxury here. Walls bare, xtures hidden or by request only; the phone, recovered from a pawn shop? Only two internet connections were allowed for a three- room suite. So I didn’t feel too bad returning to what looked like a halfway house destroyed by a roaming street gang. ere were stacks of magazines everywhere; the couch was in pieces. Bottles of cheap beer and whiskey and boxes and bags of half-eaten food lay overturned along the bar. e bedrooms and bathrooms were decimated but for an important reason: We’d strategically instructed housekeeping not to enter whatsoever, not only because we’d assembled a frat party’s worth of copious sub- stances on the glass dining table, but because they might steal them. e three of us made it back just as the rst tidal wave hit. WHAM, it came from behind. Take-o felt like hanging out the window of a
Our suite, strobe-lit by the blinding LED bill- board outside, synthesized into a silent lm as we lost our minds. Swirling landll-sized piles surrounded us, crashed down as we lost con- trol, all these drugs and tobacco and cigarette butts and business cards and salty garbage, lea ets and totes, computers and blazers - way too much otsam for the Grand Kaleidoscope to crush into a beautiful mosaic. e evening landscape was a ghostly diorama. Caesar’s Palace, a pulsing temple of torches. e re ections in the Bellagio pool… an elec- tric Jackson Pollack. Everything else, ghastly violet shadows. I crumpled to the oor. Garden Bound … Preparing for Battle … Banshees in the Night H ow long had we been sitting here, paralyzed? Ford was the rst to stand. He’d been catatonic. “It's ok - I got over the death state…” He spoke in slurred words. “I need to get outside.” Indeed. e craving for Story continued on Page 107
36 MARCH/APRIL 2026
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