Ghost of a Chance

He knew the score. He had understanding of how people acted, on seeing what they'd do next in any given moment. This town was built on that, on him, wasn't it?

Well, at least it was built on Bugsy’s understanding, if not his. But Bugsy's ghost could surely still read the signs. He could certainly see when someone else was trying to move in. A new guy had come to his town, and the ghost had abandoned his desert watching place to check things out.

It didn’t do to leave your possessions to the whims of strangers. Bugsy had learned that early.

Now that he was in, though, and moving down the Strip for the first time in such a long time, the place itself was distracting him. The town had changed. The hotels were different. There were new ones, many more than in the old days, crowded cheek-by-jowl on both sides of the street. And even the old ones – Nero’s and the Galaxy and the Oasis and Olympus – had evolved and turned into something very different from what he’d known.

It looked like God had been twiddling the dial of a very big gumball machine somewhere up in Heaven. And what it had poured out, all the flashy, chintzy gewgaws for a penny apiece, had landed here. The ghost scoffed.

“You do not approve?” he heard.

He looked up. He’d reached the very end of the Strip, the southern reaches that had been way beyond the city limits in his day, and where empty lots could still be seen strewn with all the tumbleweeds that had gotten driven out of the rest of the street at his back.

Right in front of him, something ridiculous. He tilted his head back and stared up. How’d they even made this thing?

“What the hell are you?” he asked it.

Its human face got a faraway look, while its lion haunches seemed to settle in deeper to the ground. “I am made to gaze at the moon—” it began.

“Oh, save it. When do they open this place?”

“I believe tomorrow. All the world will be watching. There are television crews inside right now—”

“This is Vegas, kid. The world’s always watching. So whaddya know about this new guy?”

The Sphinx paused. “What new guy do you mean?”

The ghost rolled his black pits of eyes. “You’re even less in the know than I am, monster. You’re never gonna last long in this town that way.”

“Sphinx. I am not a monster.”

“Sure. Sphinx. Just what the town needed.”

“I believe I and my hotel will be a worthy addition—”

The ghost was already adjusting his hat, turning to go. “Sure, sure, kid,” he said over his shoulder. “But if you hear anything, lemme know, okay?” And just then, a gleaming gold limousine shot by heading back up the Strip, and the ghost caught on to a flicker, to a sprayed reflection of the sunshine dappling off it, and was gone.

***

“Sphinx.”

Sphinx looked up from his half doze in the sunlight. As afternoon wore on, he tended to get sleepy. The heat and light of the desert stole into him, the mystery of the night was gone, which meant nothing interesting was happening around him, not to mention that there was no moon to worship. Then the air seemed to weight him, and his thoughts got thicker, and everything went slower…

“Sphinx!”

The shout came from his mini-marsh, the tiny patch of reeds and water lying between him and the sidewalk, keeping the tourists slightly at bay.

But not keeping Venus at bay. “Sphinx!” she screamed. “Do you know that he’s come?”

Sphinx considered. He’d learned from his earlier visitor that not knowing things might appear bad. And then, too, his earlier visitor might be the “he” Venus was referring to, so to volunteer that they’d been speaking might only be an invitation to the goddess’ wrath. Not that she could do much, when it came right down to it, but her rants were long and gave him headaches.

“Uh, no,” he ventured.

“Well, of course not. How could you? I’m sure he wouldn’t ever come down here.” She pulled herself out of the marsh, mud clinging to her thighs and dripping down her ankles, and Sphinx marveled, again, how such things could look enticing on her when he knew on anyone else they’d simply be disgusting. She began the long, involved process of climbing up his front leg to his back, a spectacle which, if she’d made herself visible to the humans around, would no doubt have caused a 20 car pile-up and made every man within a mile pass out from sheer pleasure. “He’s the most arrogant, awful, rude, mean, stupid… I mean, back in Ancient times, he was always… well, some of those human women never knew what hit them, and they wouldn’t have been happy about it, I can tell you. He never even – ooh, Sphinx, this is hard work – he, he just…”

She had achieved her goal, and huffed herself down to dangle her legs over his shoulder and brush them vigorously, so that mud splattered indiscriminately, flecking his headpiece and left cheek. He saw one splat against his nose and caught himself from sighing. He and his original both had bad nose luck, it seemed.

“He’s awful. And he has no business here. This place is mine.” Her tone had changed. She wasn’t brushing off mud anymore. She’d climbed up and stood next to his headpiece, hands on hips and glaring hard. Sphinx couldn’t see her from his angle, but he could feel her anger. He stopped thinking about his nose and paid attention. “These people love me. They love me, not him,” she said. Sphinx suddenly thought of the phrase jealous deity. They were notoriously territorial, these immortals. He suddenly wondered just who she really was referring to. The “new guy” his ghostly visitor had wanted to know about, likely. Who was he? Where had he come from? Sphinx had never known Venus to so much as notice who came and went from the city. She barely noticed who came and went from her bed.

But she wasn’t finished. “Nobody loves him. They all just fear him, and that’s not the same thing. Nobody wants him. I’m the one they want. This is my city. I’m their goddess.” And she stood on Sphinx’s shoulder with her hands on her hips, staring out at the lower climes of the Strip as if she really were its chosen protector, the divinity of choice for all its inhabitants.

Sphinx spoke up carefully. “What are you going to do about him?” he asked.

She frowned harder. Ground her fists into her hips, slitted her eyes against the desert.

“I haven’t,” she declared in a steely tone, “decided that yet.”

NEXT POST: THE BIG KISS OFF (Monday 8/31)