By ten, the temperature was already pushing ninety. The steam heat rippling off the road reached eye level and made crossing the street like going through a viscous-looking glass. Las Vegas isn’t a town well suited to ambling. It isn’t a town well suited to a pre-noon existence. At night, people are lured from the streets by a kaleidoscope of hypnotizing neon—and in the morning, the shops sleep as late as their customers. As I watched the ragtag remains of a bachelor party move toward me—a handful of men in disheveled sports jackets and ties struggling to walk in a straight line and negotiate the services of several hookers on the breakfast run—I came across what promised to be THE WORLD’S LARGEST GIFT SHOP: OVER 10,000 SOUVENIRS.”
Just outside the front door was a battered pay phone. I checked my watch. My parents would probably be home. I traced my fingers over the scratched receiver, remembering the river behind my childhood home. I used to count the days until it was cold enough for the water to freeze, allowing me to play on the river without having to swim. I remembered the sharp smell of the winter air, the sting of gusting snow, and the burn when my skin touched the ice. I remembered my parents supervising my uncoordinated skating sessions. I closed my eyes, recalling the uneven surface of the ice that tossed me from my skates and the low moans from deep within the frozen river as it expanded and moved.
This was the season, the slow march of early fall into winter, when I longed for time to accelerate, for the temperature to drop, and the water to freeze. I suddenly yearned for the unmanicured lawn of my parents’ backyard. I wanted my parents to tell me how wild they’d let the grass grow this year and how often the river had flooded the past spring. I wanted to know if they ever used the sinking picnic table. And I wanted to tell them about Toby. I wanted to be told that if this didn’t work out, I could come home.
I pressed my finger onto the phone’s chrome surface and watched my fingerprint cloud the greasy metal. It would be early afternoon. Midautumn. The phone rang. I wondered about how quiet the house had become with me and my brother gone. The fall river would be the only sound. I wondered if my parents avoided our rooms, or if they’d changed them into studies, guest rooms, or let them be as they’d always promised. The phone kept ringing. I imagined it echoing through the house, out the screen door that led to the porch. I imagined it being absorbed by the water-damaged curtains in our living room.
I didn’t think about what I would say if someone answered. I wasn’t sure how I’d explain my last three weeks. I was certain only that I’d tell them I’d be home as soon as it got cold. I would promise to stay through the winter. I would sleep in my old bedroom and be startled when the snow slid off the eaves. And I would bring Toby with me.
The phone rang several more times. I could no longer picture the late-summer tempo of my home—the slow creak of the porch swing, the tired rattle of the struggling refrigerator. The lazy trickle of the August river. My parents weren’t there. I hung up and entered the store.
What do you buy for the man who could, with the slightest movement of his hand, have almost anything? I wandered through multilevel displays of shot glasses, snow domes, and ashtrays. The souvenirs pledged a solidity they couldn’t provide. I discovered that the decorative ceramic bells airbrushed with pictures of the famous casinos had no clappers, the frosted champagne glasses lost their misty finish under the moisture of my fingers, and the ashtrays were made of tin that a cigar would melt. The shimmer and pageantry of the shop—its reduction of the Vegas experience into playing card coasters and poker chip chocolates—reminded me of the wedding chapel where I had pledged my future to a magician the evening before. Then the panic hit—a blow to the solar plexus that sent me tumbling into a rack of acrylic T-shirts. As I fell, I panicked hard about the small things bouncing around in the big picture. Was I going to live in a tract house on the outskirts of Vegas and turn orangey brown? Could I find a decent sunscreen in this sun-worshipping town? Was our marriage going to crumble like a miniature plaster casino or be stashed away and forgotten like the clapperless bells? Or would it hang on for years like the famous Las Vegas sign? Did the magician conjure me to his side? If so, how long would the trick work?
Usually textiles sing to me. Poly blends sound like synthesizers, while cottons are more like a big band orchestra. In the cluttered souvenir shop, all the materials—the plastics, rubber, plaster, and metals—were chanting and shouting, flooding my head with a frenzied orchestra. I gasped for air. To my surprise, I discovered that I was at the counter paying for a pair of frosted champagne glasses painted with the logo of the MGM Grand.
“Rough night?” the elderly cashier asked. She was wearing a straw sun hat and sunglasses, as if, even in the store’s artificially cooled interior, she was under threat from UV rays. “You looked a little unsteady
