Back outside we lose eighty bucks at roulette and then it’s onward and upward, which means the elevator and the 14th floor, her arm draped over my shoulder as she struggles with the room key. You’re my best friend, she whispers, then sings, “oh, you make me live,” from that Queen song I’ve heard at every wedding I’ve ever attended, even my own, when my real best friend was back in New Jersey while Kristin and I made legal our mistake. Inside the room I sit on the bed and reassemble my head while Amy disappears into the bathroom, the room dark but the curtains pulled back, the lights of Vegas reflected in the solid glass, the room bathed in neon as fireworks appear in the sky, streaks of red and gold, green bursts and plumes of smoke and Amy steps out into the room wearing nothing but her skin.
We stand by the window, Amy wrapped in a blanket as we watch the fountains across the street begin their synchronized dance to the feint sounds of Rachmaninov. I undress and join her in the blanket, our hands finding the places we’ve always longed for as we meet in a deep kiss. I love you, she whispers, and I feel like I’m glowing. I could light the city with my skin. I love you, too, always have, I say, touching her beautiful face, my hand caressing her lovely hair, and I think this is it.
But five minutes later we are side by side in bed, staring at the ceiling, thoroughly chaste, and why does this surprise me after all these years? Everyone always assumed…but my virginity held strong until the ridiculous age of 25, another playwright, Jessica Thatcher, is my shocked and disappointed first, and growing up Amy always said someday but what does that mean when you’re in your thirties lying in bed in a Vegas hotel? This is our thing: we’re the lovers who’ve never made love, and in the darkened room on the 14th floor of a fake Eiffel Tower, while I think of all the different ways I want to touch her, Amy turns her back and whispers goodnight, and for once it’s not me who’s falling asleep.
. . . . .
“That’s a new one,” Kelly said. “You’ve never slept with your eyes open before.”
“What? Oh …” I said, snapping out of it. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay. Imagining a threesome can be distracting.”
“Will you stop that, please? I know this trip was a bad idea, but once we’re back home, I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
“I’m a big girl. You don’t owe me anything. We’ll see what happens, right? If we’re meant to be together, we’ll get through it and this will be one of those trips we argue over and then laugh about when we’re old. And if we’re meant to fall apart it would have happened anyway, right?”
“I don’t want it to fall apart.”
“The better answer is, you don’t know what you want,” Kelly said, then kissed my cheek and started running down the boardwalk, spinning around and jogging backward, waving me to catch her.
Fifty yards ahead she stopped outside a brightened door, the entrance to Toby’s Rock Lobster, a music shop that sold CDs and vintage vinyl, instruments, too, guitars mostly, though once there’d been a tuba in the front window for seven years before someone finally bought it. Over the door hung a cartoon lobster with the name Toby printed across its body, a drumstick clutched in each of its cartoon claws. Kelly stood by the long window, peeking through the glass until I reached her, out of breath and spent.
“I was thinking …” she said. “Since I’m being so open-minded about this whole weird arrangement, it would be nice if you bought me a present.” She pointed toward a guitar hanging in the window, an acoustic model with a mahogany neck. “I’d buy it myself but being out of work and all…I’ll pay you back if I ever get a job.”
She gave me a cute smile, and that was enough.
Inside the shop, an old Black Sabbath song groaned through the speakers as Father Toby, the owner, stood by the register studying a chessboard set up on the counter. I’d known Toby since childhood. He was in his mid-sixties, a chubby guy with a shaved head and a neat Van Dyke, John Lennon glasses and a black T-shirt. Around his neck was a minister’s white collar, allegedly the real thing. In the 80s he’d been a Catholic priest, but as Toby told it, one night he saw U2 on their Rattle and Hum tour and during “Bullet the Blue Sky” had experienced a second calling—by the end of the month he’d left the church and started his own band, a power trio called Easter Egg Salad. People who remembered them said they were pretty good, a decent cover band with some catchy originals, but after a few years on the bar band circuit Toby shut it down and set up shop on the Boardwalk. Supposedly he was still an ordained priest, never having been officially ex-communicated, and rumor had it that
