An Evening's Entertainment

One of the perks of being a performer in Vegas, Rachel had always thought, was that it made you feel “in” whenever you went to other people’s shows, when you got to skip past the line at the theatre and get seated right away, and when you knew people onstage, and when you got to hang out with them afterward.

She was starstruck by her own career, sometimes. Still. That fact convinced her she still belonged here. It wasn’t time to get out yet.

For the show and the dancers she was watching at this moment, getting-out time was very near, though. Rachel sat in the cabaret of the Desert Oasis Hotel, site of celebrations and Vegas glories in the past but these days pretty tired and threadbare, and mostly empty. And condemned. The Oasis was slated to come down in less than a month. These dancers in front of her would be the last to ever grace its historic cabaret stage, where Deano and Frank had once sported, where the underage Liza used to sneak in while her mother played the main room, where girls and boys had sweated themselves into a stupor for the edification and enjoyment of uncounted slavering hordes over the years.

The thus accidentally historic production was called Sin-o-matic, and it attempted to resurrect the glory days of Vegas by saluting the glory days of Hollywood, only with lots fewer clothes and, to be honest, wit than any Classic Hollywood producer would have approved. So far, there’d been a silent movie number, a monster movie number, and a water ballet extravaganza that made use of an ancient, 18 inch-deep rain trough at the front of the stage. The trough hadn’t been opened for a generation, and, given the alkaline stench that filled the room when the dancers stepped in and paraded through it, Rachel wondered whether its water had been changed in that time. This might have been the same stuff seen by the Rat Pack, a truly icky thought.

The show was not exciting, but she knew most of the cast and had seen or worked with most of them in better productions, so she found herself thinking of those, and hearkening back to better times, and better evenings, as her current, younger coworkers hooted and hollered at the table around her and Sin-o-matic trudged through its final paces.

“That was great!” she crowed afterward to a girl named Charity. They’d learned a show in Paris together once, more than a decade ago. “Let me buy you a drink.”

“I’ll take that. And it’s a piece of crap,” Charity grimaced. “But it’s a paycheck, you know? Or it has been. I should be excited it’s ending. But it’s a job, right? I don’t know what I’m going to do next. How do you keep going? Don’t you ever get tired of the rat race?”

“You mean auditions?” Rachel waved at a bartender, who waved back but kept washing glasses. “We never used to have to wait for a drink, did we?” She forced a smile and Charity rolled her eyes.

“They suck here. Hey, butt-fuck!”

“Charity!”

“Oh, what’s anybody gonna do? Fire me? Get us some beers,” she directed the barman.

And when he had, and Rachel had paid, she joined Charity and the rest of her cast at the other end of the bar. Charity was, if she remembered rightly, almost, but not quite Rachel's age. The other dancers, all years younger and near the starts of their careers, were chattering about jobs in Japan, or discussing the relative merits of different cruise ship contracts. Or they asked her if she thought Honoré would be firing many people at Extrav!'s next contract change, opening up spots there.

She left while Charity was holding court with a tale of performing in a burning theatre – literally burning, with flames licking up from the basement – while the panicked French ballet mistress screamed at them to, “Go onstage, go onstage,” but their leading lady flung her tulle cape over her shoulder and drove home topless, on her scooter.

Rachel had been there. “Good times,” she muttered, starting her car.

Elsewhere on the Strip, Vegas' newest discoverer was continuing his explorations. The girls and the limo were long gone, and the visitor stood and considered what, in this world, passed for an institution.

The Olympus Hotel and Resort was the largest of the first wave of big luxury resorts. Thirty-five years later, that made it venerable. Originally, it, like all its competitors, had lain grandly back from the road, content to entrap from a distance, guarding its own few acres jealously, holding its visitors safely distant from its neighbors with a moat-like ring of empty desert. In recent years, all that had changed, and even the most mega of resorts had had to build out to the sidewalk, extending pseudopods like hungry amoebas to draw in the new species of tourist, who liked to hop from casino to casino, whose attention span could not be counted on to last past breakfast, and who demanded themes and outré décor and non-stop entertainment along with their coddling.

The Olympus, thus, now sported a brand new façade which towered over the sidewalk. Three stories of ersatz balustrades and stacked columns and indefensible arches added up to a temple for the biggest gods in the universe to fight over. Random, electronic harp notes fell softly through the air, managing to suggest that just inside the frosty, marble-tone doors were scores of scantily-clad slaves equipped with palm fronds and wine, eager to please each incoming tourist. The original front, lost now an eighth of a mile back and relegated to valet parking, had been low and concrete-cool in its understatement. This new face practically shouted its intentions to bilk you.

It moved, whirred, flashed, and gurgled. Archimedes at the height of his brilliance had certainly never dreamed of a construction like this, nor any of its neighbors. Just across the street, a hotel that looked like nothing so much as a steamship in drag sat cheek-by-jowl with a forty-story pinball machine about to flash tilt! In the other direction, the Taj Mahal elbowed aside Mount Fuji, which puffed out thinning, resentful smoke from its peak.

Everywhere, there were people coming and going, sorting through their money, confabbing about where to go next, how their chances looked, which casino might bring them luck or what they might do to hit the big jackpot.

And out front on the sidewalk in front of the Olympus, the town’s newest comer stood and looked the place over.

“This is good,” he said. And he stepped up to the doors. A statue of Athena towered over them, fire-eyed and looking ready to hurl her globe and scepter at any unworthy gamblers who dared approach.

“Hello, my dear. How are your sisters?” the man bobbed his head he passed under her sandals.

At Hotel Reception, the first clerk had proved unready to help him, but a few simple demands and a great wad of cash had produced a manager high enough in the pecking order to adjust rules as needed. Really, Vegas was living up to all his hopes for it.

“No luggage, sir?”

Smile. “Not yet.”

“May I have your name?”

A smile. A slightly raised eyebrow. Was this nacent hotel guest considering a “no” answer? What would have happened then?

But: “Zem. You can put me down as Zem. Z-E-M.”

“Mr. Zem, then. Thank you, sir. And will you want two keys?”

A flick from an eyebrow. “I’ll let you know.”

“Welcome to Olympus then, sir. The world capitol of luxury and indulgence.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Zem growled, and left again to explore more of this new Babylon beyond Babylon’s wildest dreams.

NEXT POST: TOO STRAIGHT TO BE CHIC (Friday 8/7)