Laying Over

Leaving Las Vegas....

A bumpy approach but a smooth landing--a good combination if you can get it. From the air, the Las Vegas Strip looks like any other city, just dry, more dusty. Fortunes won and lost down there. What happens here stays here if you believe the TV commercials. I wonder what has stayed and will remain for a long, long time. Thousands of stories in the Naked City, and where would we be without them?

The airport seems more like a casino than anything else, and I've got 4 shiny quarters in my pocket just ready to go--drop them in, press the button, watch the wheels spin. I figure my quarters will stay here, too. The woman behind me calls to cancel her facial scheduled for Monday. Maybe her face will stay here now. "I just want to come home," she says, then: "Yah, that sounds nice, but..." (That's not a typo: she says "yah" for "yeah.") The older woman next to me ends her phone call with "sorry we can't get there in time for the cocktail party. If we could've gotten a direct flight, we would've been there." She and her husband are trying to figure out how to program their cellphone, something I understand. The woman standing at the window is wearing a skirt that stops precisely mid-thigh, and she seems to be laughing with someone as she talks on her cellphone. "John Littleton" is paged to return to the security checkpoint to reclaim his property--what could that be, shoes? maybe a puppy in a box?

The men who now infiltrate the seats around me talk about buying real estate, and they use "dare" for "there," "dem" for "them"; they talk quickly and remind me of Midwesterners. Wait: I'm a Midwesterner and I don't talk like that. Maybe they're from the Other Midwest.

Time to find a slot machine--these guys talk to loudly and too fast for me.