Twenty minutes later I wake up next to a Dukes of Hazzard slot machine, two security guards shining flashlights in my face while Amy insists that I’m not drunk or on opioids it’s medical, dammit, “narcolepsy—just give him a break, okay?”
The guards look pissed but move on anyway, and Amy motor-mouths through a story about some obnoxious guy on her flight until I’m back on my feet. After thirty seconds of good to see you, blah-blah-blah, Amy says, “Okay, now that you’re awake and we’ve got that Christmas card crap out of the way, are we ready to have fun?”
It’s past midnight and I’m beat, but who goes to bed in Vegas? Amy hands me a Red Bull and a shot glass of vodka, not the best idea in the world but I drink it anyway, and then we’re out on the Strip, Amy electric and beautiful in her black skirt and red tank, wobbling on high heels I know she never wears, pointing up at the phony castle, the looming billboards with Carrot Top and Donnie and Marie and all those faces you wouldn’t pay a dime for back home but in Vegas it’s standing room only.
“I was thinking,” Amy says, which in the blur of street noise sounds like I was drinking or even I was sinking but no, that’s me, I’m the one who’s sinking, my career dead and buried, my marriage gone, my life measured out in pizza spoons, “…what if we pretended that we’re someone else, two people meeting in Vegas for the first time, I’ll be Rhonda or Lady Penelope and you can be Rick or Henry or the Duke of Cumberbatch …whatever. Just not Duck and Amy, okay?”
No, I think; I don’t want Rhonda or Lady Penelope; I want Amy Willingham of Holman Beach, New Jersey, but I learn to play along as we saunter down the Strip. A grey-haired woman in a sombrero hands me a baseball card with a topless stripper on it, a dude with a blank CD asks for ten bucks come on, man, support the arts! as the bachelorette party girls with their tiaras and feather-boas rush toward the open doors of a silver Town Car, Lady Penelope blowing them kisses and wishing them luck. She grabs my hand and pulls me through the air-conditioned rush of a casino entrance, past the shops filled with diamond necklaces and thousand-dollar handbags; we drink espresso, eat crepes, and converse in bad French accents, oui, mademoiselle, tu etes tres jolie, laughing at everything like kids again, and when was the last time I had this much fun any fun at all? We pay a hundred bucks for a gondola ride, take mime lessons from a street artist, and dance to a string quartet on the pedestrian bridge crossing the Strip. Inside every hotel there’s a wedding chapel, Amy pointing out the signs, saying “You and me—I wonder what that would be like.” I’m clueless on whether she means it.
We wind up at a Magic Shop, hey, there’s a show in five minutes, come on in, the clerk says, so we step behind the curtain for The Amazing Kid Charlemagne and find two empty seats in the front row. It’s a tiny theater, converted storage space a better description, but in Vegas everyone’s an aspiring performer, and Kid Charlemagne is good, card tricks and levitating bowling balls and how exactly did the sexy woman with the torn black stockings disappear inside the laundry bag?
“Volunteers, please,” the Kid says, and Amy pulls me toward the stage, a six-inch platform at the head of the room. “Let me guess …childhood sweethearts on a second honeymoon. Am I right?” the Kid asks, but how can you define Amy and me in a Yes or No? We are an essay question all the way, supporting paragraphs and footnotes required, though Amy says, “You got it, Kid! Childhood sweethearts,” which makes my knees weak, though maybe that’s just the stage lights and the crepes and the long hours of no sleep.
After a brief explanation and some cheesy patter, the Kid pulls a set of handcuffs from inside his black jacket and snaps one cuff around Amy’s wrist, the other cuff around mine. “These aren’t trick cuffs,” he says, “try to get out.” Amy and I play along and make of show of it, tugging and pulling, trying to break free. The handcuffs don’t yield.
“The only way out is to say the magic word,” he says, “but you don’t know what that word is, do you?”
“Abra-ca-dabra?” I say.
“Sha-zaam?” Amy offers.
“Not even close.” The Kid winks toward the audience. “Now remember everyone, these handcuffs have no key, and the only way out is to say the magic word …and they don’t know what it is. Should I tell them?”
There’s a smattering of restless applause as the Kid hams it up, Amy’s hair glistening under the lights, our wrists bound by metal cuffs and the foot-long chain between them. The Kid leans over, a hand on each of our shoulders and says, “Okay, childhood sweethearts, if you want to escape, all you need to say is …”
He says the word, but we can’t hear him, no one can over the sound of a giant gong—the house lights rise and music plays, an old-time carnival rag, as the Kid bows and says, “Sorry folks, time’s up, thanks for coming!” He bounds off-stage to laughter and applause, leaving us hand-cuffed and abandoned as
