To quell things, as usual, Captain Rick pulled out a twenty and signaled for another round, and as usual, that got the waitress’ attention. I had another deep rush of wanting, for Rick’s money, a few hands of blackjack, something to do with my hands. Another drink! Yes! Captain Rick shouted, and my desires were his desires. We were all smoking. That felt unquenchable too, the pulling on the cigarettes never going deep enough. I looked up and Bosscat had the waitress’s cape in his damp fist. She whined a little, and he let go. She wooshed off in a cloud of lingering mauve.

That was how it was back then, the feeling of wanting everything and getting only half. The spring outside and us, not even capable of getting her name– a simple name. Security breezed by us again. I smoked and drank and touched the piles. A good Protestant couple from a cold place took the table next to ours. They both sat too carefully in their chairs, staring at us, at the old-timers playing songs we couldn’t hear. Vegaboy bravely pushed on. He gathered his pay-outs and went to the cashier and returned with four dollars and seventy-five cents. Then we left. I touched the carpeted wall as I went by it, and it pushed back under my touch.

I don’t know how he did it, but she was there, outside waiting for us. This was his sideways luck in those days; seventy-three degrees outside, sunny and clear, and the ginger was impossibly with us, the natural ginger whose name was Trinity. Yes. We felt good, so good we grabbed her hand and pulled her down that bit of Freemont, laughing, the warm ground pulsing under us. Yes. All of us spinning with it— our perpetually brightening sky.

2.

Drugs kept us inside for two days— two days of watching Vegaboy with the ginger. Bosscat was hungry for her, but he would never cross Vegaboy. To get our minds off it, twice Captain Rick drove us over to Mariana’s, the immense Mexican groceria on the corner of Tropicana and Paradise. Mariana’s was the place with the cafeteria at the back, with comfortable orange booths where you could drink dollar-horchata and eat these sandwiches bathed in a tomato sauce called Tortas Ahogadas. Bosscat and I would stroll the aisles between pollo asado in the bag, spicy vinegar and family-sized cakes, picturing a chubbier Mexican life. It was gorgeous sunny vibrations in there. Then we’d order taquitos with sour cream and giant freaking tortas; drowning. I’d usually drink two huge glasses of orange soda. The second time we were there, a group of quinceñeras with greasy mouths gave Vegaboy the eyes from a booth on the other side of the cafeteria. One of them licked her lips for him. He was impossible like that.

The girls wanted drugs, so Vegaboy told them if they were planning a real fiesta we needed a piñata and one hundred firecrackers. The girls helped us choose the prettiest one, the unicorn in silver and blue. They led us to the back of the store by their ponytails. No se puede vivir sin amar, one of them told me, her breath hot in my ear. I remember— my tongue was burning from the peppers in the torta sauce. That was one thing I never lost, my ability to taste.

3.

So this all leads to how we ended up with the busload of amputees heading for Koreatown. We were having a kind of party; we had those firecrackers, three drop-dead chicanas, Trinity the ginger who hung off Vegaboy like a piece of thick jewelry, and a half-eaten cake mashed into a chaise lounge. We were out on Captain Rick’s patio on Golden Santa Drive. It was the middle of the afternoon but there were no neighbors left who would complain; the families on both sides had foreclosed. Rick had rescued an iguana from next door by smashing the kitchen glass after they’d been gone over a month. It was nearly dead but he and Vegaboy brought him to life with spiders they caught around Captain Rick’s pool. Now we were thinking of ways to sell the iguana.

We had also spent the morning looting a newly abandoned place on the other side of Golden Santa Drive and cooking more drugs in the lady’s abandoned kitchen. The fruit in her little glass bowl had withered to shells in the week she was gone. The wall still had a calendar, though it looked like somebody tried to rip up the tiles in the kitchen. The fridge was gone but not the stove. The utilities people still hadn’t turned off the gas either, which was a good stroke of sideways luck. The whole time we could have cooked the drugs down the road in Rick’s place but we never came to that.

Anyway, that afternoon, the drugs cooked and the chicanas wasted, a half- mangled piñata hanging by its throat from the pergola and the lot of us up to our knees in Captain Rick’s pool, that’s when Vegaboy got the call from Slots-a-Fun. She’d been working for the past few days, AWOL. She did that all the time, dropped Vegaboy for a week to go back to her job at the Cockpit, the airport lounge where the girls wore sixties stewardess outfits and go-go boots. That’s the way it went: she’d disappear and Vegaboy would pick up a new ginger like Trinity. Then she’d pop up somewhere and surprise us, her hair smelling washed and a new spangly halter top hanging off her bony shoulders, and suddenly, the girls would evaporate and we would all just dig on Slots-a-Fun bossing us around. This time, she wanted us down at the airport. Right away .

You got some girls there with ya? she asked Vegaboy, and we all heard her voice through his phone’s little speaker. Yeah, Bosscat yelled for him. Well… Bring em along, she said. The chicanas cheered from the far side of the pool. They were blaring boleros and feeding each other cake in big sugary mouthfuls. Captain Rick was sort of swaying between the two youngest ones, occasionally dipping his paw into the water to stroke their thighs or fish out chunks of soggy cake. You gonna make me wait all day? Slots-a-Fun called to us. Vegaboy finally shook Trinity from his neck. Naw naw! We’re coming sugar! I swear, I swear! I love ya! God Damn! The chicanas cried out; it sounded something like glee. Trinity kept staring at Vegaboy glassy-eyed. Bosscat cupped his hand around Trinity’s ass, but she didn’t notice. Then Slots-a-Fun snorted into her speaker: Yeah yeah baby. I love y’all real bad.

4.

That was the way it was those days— the car, the freeway, the exit, the airport, it all blurred under our big golden sun. The thing was, even after nearly five months on and off the drugs, I still had ideas. Out of no where, my brain would suddenly burst about the fucking buildings and the way they glinted, how that was calculated by some casino boss. Or about Trinity. Or that waitress. The bangs. The iguana. It was fucking staccato, but it still felt excellent, if a little edgy, to be high. My vision was clear but the places I moved through had a sort of drive-by effect, each casino floor a running movie set that shifted under my feet.

That afternoon, it was the 215 that moved under us, then the off-ramp with the barrage of billboards, then bingo: Passenger Pick-up. She was there all right, in the go-go get-up. Vegaboy bounded out to her like a collie, and we all waited inside Captain Rick’s Escalade, behind the safety of his limousine-tint. We were hiding from the parking attendants, fond of rapping their palms against our hood if we idled too long. There were seven of us in there, Me, Captain Rick and Trinity and Bosscat and the iguana, nuzzled in between a few of the chicanas, all of the girls getting cagey and freaked out by the lizard in the front seat. Then, from the sidewalk, Slots-a-Fun swept her arms around like on the Price is Right: behind her was a big old bus, idling, with a massive American flag decal across the side. It seemed normal, more sideways luck. Slots-a-Fun gestured to the bus. Inside, forty, maybe fifty war veteran gentlemen, most of whom I would learn were missing limbs, were sitting patiently and staring out the windows. She raised her penciled-on eyebrows at us.

We all got bursts of ideas then. The girls started singing boleros and Captain Rick pealed into a parking spot and Rick and I filed out of the doors with a quick workers’ way of walking, like we had a job to do and this was the beginning of our shift. They’re war vets, from the Korean War I guess. Heading to Koreatown— in LA, she said to us. And they lost their driver. Captain Rick nodded, and dutifully tucked in his shirt. And they want to have a fun time on the way, she said and smiled and waved at the boss amputee, who shook his stump of an arm Slots-a-Fun with a knowing grin. I nodded then too, and Vegaboy assured everyone that I could drive the Escalade, that I was not tripping that badly and I could do it, all the way to LA, no problem. The whole gang would make a party for the amputees and Captain Rick would drive the bus. I would pick them up in Koreatown. This was worth a very handsome ransom, Vegaboy assured us. This can be done.

The airport was lousy with cops and parking attendants; we were trying to look sober, a near impossible thing with the chicanas squeezed into the trunk of the Escalade, squealing like little pigs. Vegaboy calmly strolled to the back window and lifted the iguana from the lap of a grinning quinceñera. You girls ready to party? he winked at them. They burst into a storm of giggling. Then he jumped in shotgun and lit the pipe, right there, right in the parking lot, and he passed it to Trinity in the driver’s seat. We all had our turn— we all plied ourselves with new speed, our mouths puckered, the music blaring, and the trappings of the airport parking garage swirling around us. Then Trinity said, out of nowhere, like some sideways miracle brought to me by Vegaboy of the Desert: Ima ride in the Escalade with Jimmy here. The chicanas cooed like pigeons and Bosscat snarled and Trinity leaned into the back seat and pecked at my neck. I could have died right there.

Vegaboy and Bosscat and Captain Rick, they all took off with the chicanas shortly after that. Bosscat begrudgingly took the iguana, which looked dead to me. Slots- a-Fun scooted the girls up the stairs into the bus and Vegaboy grinned from the doorway like a devil with a new soul. That left me and Trinity in the Escalade, with the billboards and the clear sky and the hundreds of blooming yuccas and Joshua trees up and down the boulevard— all of it part of the running movie that moved around us. Trinity drove with purpose up along the off-ramp and onto the Interstate, our hearts soaring with sunny vibrations.

Then, a stab of white light, like a dick in the eye. I was curled up on a musty back seat; my own leg’s twitching must have woken me. First, I saw the dead iguana splayed out on the hatchback’s worn rug. In the front seat, I could make out the last chicana, her lips dry, cracked, tight against her teeth. She was breathing in shallow gulps but that didn’t stop Bosscat from rubbing his knuckles up and down her naked arm. I swallowed; my mouth was caustic and missing its first tooth, an incisor. The window was open a crack and I finally opened my other eye and lifted my head just enough— we were heading East, back to Vegas, and it was dawn, the sun rising big and glinty just over the dash. The noise of the engine was a real palpable thing grinding in my teeth. My ears throbbed but I was afraid to reach for them, afraid of blood or torn skin. I had a deep longing for more drugs. The chicana in shotgun was humming tunelessly. It was the most mournful thing I could have hoped for.