Fun with Idioms

Tara was packing.  She, like me, does her packing last minute–and preferably very late at night, before an early morning flight.  That way, we can maximize stress and crankiness before mainlining the stuff at the airport (sort of like taking a couple shots before the party, to ensure the good times).  But I wasn’t going on this trip.  

I lay on the bed with my fingers laced behind my neck, and watched as her open suitcase formed the base for a mountain of clothes, an undulating heap of sweaters and shirts and jeans.  I looked at the mountain of clothes growing out of that suitcase, and considered what it represented: a will, and an optimism, that I couldn’t fathom.  I, after all,  considered a suitcase full when clothing reached the lip.  Not Tara.  What a sad, fenced-in little world I lived in.

Tara was knocking around the room like a hummingbird at a feeder tasting, deciding which shoes should go and which should stay, how many socks would be needed, that sort of thing.  And I, when consulted, was offering my opinion, which was usually along the lines of, “You’re going to be gone for four days.”

Hey, maybe it was me.  Maybe it was the circumstance.  But somewhere, right around this point, she said it.  ”Oh,” she said (but she kind of grunted that part, so it was more like “Auughh,” which, now that I see it spelled out, is just what would have been in her speech bubble, if my life were a graphic novel) “everything is going to shit in a handbag.”

Silence fell over the proceedings.  Tara kept packing, opening and closing drawers, adding to Mt. Clothes.  Had I just heard what I thought I’d heard?

“What?”

“What?”

“What did you just say?”

“Everything is going to shit in a handbag!”  She was more emphatic the second time, as if she sensed what was coming.  I started to giggle.

“Really?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Don’t you mean hell in a hand basket?”

She cocked her head to one side, reinforcing the hummingbird image.  She knew then where I was going.  I saw her lips wrestling a grin.  ”No!” she told me.  ”I mean shit in a handbag.  That makes sense!”

I fell out.  I think I actually teared up.  ”No.  No it doesn’t,” I choked.

“Yes it does!” She threw some sweatpants at the mountain.  ”It means the same thing!”

“Hell in a hand basket means everything is falling apart.  Shit in a handbag is just gross.”  I could hardly speak.  And Tara’s stiff performance, barely covering her own snickers, made it even more hilarious.

“Well that’s stupid,” she said.  ”What does hell in a hand basket mean?  What does it mean?”  She was craned forward, the veins in her neck pulsing.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s an accepted idiom.  We all accept that it means the wheels are falling off.  But shit in a handbag…that’s just…really unfortunate.”  I’d really worked myself into a state, by this point.

“No,” Tara yelled, with this sort of mock outrage that she affects at times like these (and here–again, if my life were a graphic novel–the speech bubble would say “NNOOO!!!”)

For the rest of the night, even as we drifted off to sleep, I returned to that well, again and again.  ”Hey,” I’d say.  And then, whether she responded or nor not, I’d whisper, “How’s everything?  Going to shit in a handbag?”  

Because I am not just a husband.  I am a big brother.  And some things are hard wired.

Shit in a handbag.  Shit in a suitcase.  At last that would have referenced the problem.  As in, she clearly had too much of it in there.

Man.  Better than TV.

The Dumbest Night Ever

The plan was dubious from the beginning.  

Tara, after a full day of classes and teaching (which included a bear of a midterm exam) wanted to celebrate the start of Spring Break by going Salsa dancing with a classmate–and me.  But she wouldn’t be ready until about 10PM, which is approximately the time that she’s usually wriggling into her jammies.

I figured she’d flake.  Actually, I was counting on it.  Because then I wouldn’t have to go Salsa dancing (something I do not know how to do, and something that I suspect you don’t just toss into your itinerary one night, like beer drinking). But when I checked my phone that night, she hadn’t flaked.  She sounded chipper.  She’d willed herself into a peppy tizzy (she can do that).  She was ready.  The club was at 52nd street.

At 10:30pm on a Tuesday, when you’re grumpy and tired and starving, the prospect of traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan feels like rowing to Australia in a canoe.  Getting north of 14th street feels like rowing to the moon.  I dug in my heels.  I would not go dancing, Salsa or any other kind.  And I wasn’t doing anything in any part of the city with “mid” or “upper” in the pre-fix.  Tara convinced me to meet her in Union Square.  She was tired anyway, she conceded.  We’d get a drink with her classmates, get a bite, head home. Easy.

It took me an hour to get to Union Square.  My stomach was filled with wolverines.  I didn’t know where I was meeting Tara.  Her phone rang and went to voice-mail three times, so I was feeling swell by the time she answered. They didn’t like the bar they were at.  Stupid people, poorly mixed drinks.  I joined them just in time to watch them pay their tab. We gathered outside the door and considered our options.

I was the only hungry person in the group, and my condition handicapped the rest of the team considerably.  Options were suggested and shot down because “Craig can’t eat there.”  I suggested grabbing a slice somewhere and then joining them.  They wouldn’t hear of it.     

So, we wandered down Irving, engaged in an old New York City game: 60 billion fucking bars, and somehow, there’s nowhere to go.  We ducked into a couple places, ducked back out.  Kitchen closed.  Too busy.  Too dead.  Finally we spied a cool joint, and were so excited to learn they were still serving, we grabbed a table without first looking at the menu.  And I regretted that oversight mightily after I heard myself, a exhausted man out of options, order a $24 mac & cheese.  Tara called for a $12 beer.  We’d found the only no-name restaurant in Manhattan with steeper prices than Craftsteak.

I grumbled quietly.  But Tara’s friend Michael–God bless him–had bigger balls than I.  ”Screw it,” Michael said. “Let’s bounce.”  Everyone stared at him; my miserly heart swelled to have a champion.  

“Yeah,” I said.

Michael was off the stool like he’d been waiting for permission.  ”Cancel everything,” he announced–loud enough, I suspected, for the chef in the kitchen to hear.  ”We’re not going to stay.  Medical emergency.”  And then he was gone, leaving the rest of us to gather our things and sheepishly file out, bobbing and seasick in the wake of his magnificent–and magnificently rude–pronouncement.  Tara left a guilty ten dollar bill on the table.

We’d avoided the $24 mac & cheese, but were back to our original dilemma: where to go.  More ideas were kicked around, and then kicked to the curb.  It was almost midnight.  And things were, admittedly, not looking good.  But I sort of sealed the deal when I realized something: I’d left my hat back there, with my unclaimed mac & cheese.

And that was pretty much it.  Whatever will the group had mustered to make an evening together just evaporated.  Tara and I fetched my hat, and went for that slice of pizza that I’d been asking for since 11:00.  Autumn went dancing. Michael and his lady (we heard, via text message) went back to the first bar–the one everyone had hated, had been so quick to leave when I’d arrived.

I bit into my slice.  Tara’s eyes started closing.  ”I put on make-up and everything,” she said.  ”I never even had one drink.”

“Me neither,” I said.  We caught a cab.  Tara was asleep before we hit the bridge.

I added it all up in my head.  $10 for the privilege of leaving after ordering, couple bucks for a disgusting piece of late night NYC pizza, $15 cab fair, an hour and 1/2 of my life.  All to come back to the place I’d left, the place I hadn’t wanted to leave in the first place: home.  There are virtues of staying put, you see.  And the bar you’re in has one big advantage over any in your imagination: your butt is in a seat.  The next drink is an order away.

Sometimes too, refusing an invitation is a gift, not a slight.  It’s taken me some time to figure that out–that sometimes, the nicest thing I can do for my wife is to let her have a ball, go dancing, do it up.  Without me. 

Or fart around all night looking for a better bar.  She can do that without me too.

Naked Pictures Gets Famous

It’s all about the links these days, which is fine with me.  Pasting a link is easier than writing an entry.  Here, msnbc.com does my job for me with a story about people who blog their relationships, featuring–you guessed it–this very blog.  An interesting story that helps get the word out about something that’s only previously been discussed here: Tara’s peeing-with-the-door-open habit.  I guess you could say I scooped msnbc on that one.

Here’s the story.

In other news, I’m growing a mustache.  A handlebar-type deal.  Tara says it’s prickly.  And she looks at me sideways a lot and says, “I don’t know about that one.”  She’s right.  I look like a dick.  But I’m growing it.  Because.  Because she has to love me anyway.  It’s a love dare, I guess you could say.  Love the cookie duster.  Yeah.  I dare you.

Surviving Groomzilla Video

Hey there  – just a quick blog-ette to bring you a video starring me.  I did a video interview about my book for the relationship-centric website Your Tango, and the video went live today.  Here it is on You Tube.  Track it down at yourtango.com for a bonus: a juicy excerpt from the book.

Yes.  But why does my face look so crooked? And this actor, by the way, should have shaved.  Today’s groomzilla would never rock the Miami Vice on his wedding day.  Lazy actors.

What You Got Me Into

Last night, stupefied by food and wine, marooned on the sofa, we were talking about music.  It was the sort of conversation had more frequently, and with more fervor, in college, punctuated by a lot of getting up, going over to the stereo and saying “you gotta hear this.”  The computer stands in for the stereo now, and the music feeds nostalgia, not a search for identity (or chicks), but it’s the same impulse.  Anyway, Tara got on a Fleetwood Mac kick.  Never one of my favorites, Fleedwood Mac, but it was fun to watch Tara so enlivened by those sentimental chords, Stevie’s wispy vocals.  “When did you get into Fleetwood Mac?” I asked.

“Hmm,” she said, when she could pull herself away from the tune.  “I think Scott was a fan.  He got me into them.”  Scott was an old boyfriend.  “He also got me into…who’s that guy from the soundtrack for the movie where Sean Penn plays the retarded guy?”

I’d heard Tara tell this story before, so it wasn’t as impressive as it might have otherwise been when I nailed the answer on my first try. “Rufus Wainwright?”

“Yeah!”

I thought about this for a second.  “What did I get you into?”

“Oh, lots of stuff,” Tara said.  “Ryan Adams, first of all.”  Felt good about that one.  “Wilco.”  Also cool.  “Lots of the oldies you like.  Al Green.”  She didn’t mention Springsteen or Johnny Cash, unless she meant to lump them in with “oldies”– although, if she did intend that, it was probably best I didn’t know about it.  Still, it was a nice answer.  But then I caught my breath.  ‘Cause I saw her next question approaching like the edge of a cliff from a side car cut loose from a speeding motorcycle.

“What did I get you into?” she asked, and blinked her big eyes.  In my side car, the world dropped away, the cliff edge behind.

“I like a lot of your stuff,” I said, a naked stall.  And I tilted my head back and looked at the ceiling.  “I like…”

There was a long pause.  And I suppose I could have just thrown out some bands that Tara likes, saved the day.  Thing was, I really was convinced that I picked up plenty from her songbook, and I was baffled that none of those names would come to me now, as I plummeted, conversation-wise, to a rocky, splatty fate (If I can squeeze one more use out of that cliff/side car metaphor).

“Dido,” I finally said.  “I like Dido.  I’ll listen to those albums when I write.”  And that was a true, if sort of uninspiring answer.  And it stuck out there like a roach on a wedding cake when I couldn’t muster anything to couple it with.  And if my wife were less easy going, less distract-able, I feel certain I’d have spent the night backpedaling, possibly giving conciliatory back rubs.  But she had already moved on: Sarah was playing.

But it got me thinking.  It’s a very real part of what we bring to each other in a relationship, and what we take away.  Our music, our literature, our movies.  We endure our partner’s passions, and sometimes we take them up, and add them to our own, converted, enriched.  Changed.  And when enough time passes, it’s easy to forget when, or how, that book, the album, became yours, that it wasn’t always yours.  So, with more time to reflect, and by way of an apology that wasn’t asked for but that I feel inclined to give, here are some things I got from Tara:

Eddie Brickell

Cat Power

The Shins

The Flaming Lips

12 Stories, by JD Salinger

Ragtime, by EL Doctorow

Ft. Greene, Brooklyn

Basil Hayden bourbon

Finally, two that never took:

Liz Phair

Bjork.  Sorry.

The Coffee Maker

Our coffee maker has a crack in it – in the coffee pot itself, that is.  A thin, X-shaped fault line running from the handle up toward the lip.  It’s not surprising. The little dude cost all of about $14.99, and served up two cups of piping hot coffee every morning for the last three years.  Now, it’s cracked, and the crack is getting bigger, slowly, the way the lines on a forehead get deeper over time: imperceptibly, until it’s too late, and you’re old.  And we need a new one.  A new coffee maker, not new foreheads.

New foreheads are too expensive.  Coffee makers, I can swing.

The cracked coffee maker was assigned to me.  I know this, because one morning, as Tara was headed out the door, she said, “Honey, there’s a crack in the coffee pot.  We need a new one.”  That’s how I get assignments in my house: they are mentioned in my presence.  Still, I sat on the coffee maker job.  The cracked one still held coffee, didn’t it?  I could wait ’till it exploded in my hand.  Then we’d need a new coffee maker.

But this morning, we were in Lowe’s, thanks to a friend with a car.  And I thought to myself, “Hey, might as well pick up that coffee maker, since we are here, and since we don’t normally have access to cars, being subway-reliant Brooklyn-ites.”  Errands that would take you car-possessing people about 15-minutes can easily take me two hours, out here in walking train-taking country. I followed the giant sign banners to the coffee makers.  Tara was in the bathroom (see older posts on traveling with Tara, and you’ll know that this is not unusual).  And I picked out a coffee maker.  Not too big, not too expensive, with a timer (Tara likes the ones with timers).  Done.  Tara found me at the checkout.  “It’s white,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “The black one was bigger and ten bucks more.”

“But the old one is black.  And all our kitchen appliances are black.”

I didn’t mention our red blender.  I finished paying for the coffee maker.  “I don’t think it’s gonna matter.”

John, the friend with the car, said, “If you don’t like it, I’ll bring you back.”  I couldn’t imagine that would be necessary.

“It’s a coffee maker,” I said.

When we got home, Tara immediately opened the coffee maker, set it up on the kitchen counter, and stood back, appraising the coffee maker like an art dealer considering a sculpture.  I had never considered a coffee maker like a sculpture, and I guess I knew what was coming next.

“You don’t like it?” I said, demonstrating, once again, my mastery of the obvious.

“It’s so white,” she said.  I sighed more loudly than I needed to.  “Everything else is black, black, black.  It doesn’t go with anything.”

“It’s white!” I said.  “It’s not plaid, or purple!  White goes with anything!”  Now I was steamed–and I wasn’t even sure why.  Because my taste in coffee makers had been insulted?  Who cared?  Wasn’t that my whole premise, who cared? But suddenly I did care.  I went petty.  I mentioned the red blender, which I had kept to myself before, since I knew it would rankle.  Now, I wanted to rankle.  Rankling sounded good.  Then I remembered the toaster.  “Well, let me tell you, that white toaster makes my eyes bleed every time I walk in here.”

“It’s hidden,” Tara said.  “The coffee maker is right there, front and center.”

“Take it away,” I said.  “It burns!”

I boxed up the coffee maker and dropped it by the door (which is where it will stay until John can take us back to Lowe’s) and sighed a few more times.  Tara walked over.  “Thank you for buying a coffee maker.  I’m sorry I didn’t like it.”  Well, I didn’t answer.  All that, and civility too?  It was just too much.  I didn’t want to fight about coffee makers, but if I was going to fight about them, I was going to fight about them properly, with childlike outbursts and heavy sulks, not rational statements, not diplomacy.  I retreated from the front, and sat down at the computer.  Tara laid down for a nap.  And the coffee maker sat in its box in the hall, box lid parted like a mouth, looking, from the picture, well, pretty white for our kitchen.  Truth be told.  Blazing.                      

I am a Published Author

You know, I’m a published author now. I’ve been meaning to tell you that for a while. But I waited a bit, to let the change of lifestyle sink in, you know.  And I’d appreciate it if, when you’re reading the entries in this blog, you’d occasionally say to yourself, “This guy is a published author.” But not in a nasty way. I’d appreciate it if you said it to yourself in a purely admiring sort of way, if you could. You don’t even have to say it to yourself, you could think it, if that’s easier. You wouldn’t need to move your lips at all, which I do sometimes when I say things to myself, like “I am a big-shot published author,” which I did just now. You don’t have to add the “big-shot” part when you think it, though. Unless you feel it’s appropriate. Up to you. Also, it would be nice if you would clap your hands sometimes, spontaneously, as a little unconscious expression of how much you enjoyed a clever comment or witty turn of phrase.  That would be great.  Not just any old blog is tended by a published author, is all I’m saying.  And it might increase your appreciation of this blog to remember that, once in a while.  Does it make me special, being published?  Well, as my other published author compatriots would say, “be quiet, you small, unimportant person.  I am thinking profound thoughts for my next published work, which is called ‘Untitled’ right now, but will soon have a better title reflecting the profound things that will be contained inside its cover.”

I know life has changed for my wife  too.  Now, instead of coddling an unpublished bartending basket-case, she gets to coddle a published bartending basket case, which, as you can imagine, makes a big difference.  She leaves me little notes that say, “You’re a writer,” with a little smiley face drawn under the words.  She does that because we never talk to each other, with my bartending schedule.  And because I have a tendency to scream things like “I am not a writer, I am a jerkface idiot,” and “Fuck!”  Sometimes, I’ll throw a copy of my book across the room when I say it, to show my disdain for my lousy scribblings, and my ambitions to write something better.  Of course, that’s just a little theater for her benefit.  Now that I’m a published author, I have to carry around a certain amount of tortured artist sensibility.  It’s expected.  Fortunately, I’ve been practicing just that sort of unhelpful self-loathing for years, so I’m really good at it, now that it counts.  Tara understands that she lives with a creative published person, and that comes with sacrifices.  Like allowing me to pretend that hours spent in front of the computer, looking at the hair on my knuckles, is money in the bank.  Like stocking the kitchen with snacks for me to cram in my mouth when I can’t think of what sentence should come next, and most of all, by listening to me read first drafts of stories without falling asleep!!  That’s a double exclamation point, which I have never used before, and is not even remotely good grammar, so you know I must mean it!!  Tara, I hope you are reading this, because that sort of behavior really hurts published authors like me right in the tender, over-exposed, ego-swollen heart.  Even if you want to, you cannot fall asleep when I am reading you a story.  You can pinch yourself on your inner thigh, discreetly, but if you fall asleep, I am left adrift in a world without admirers, and that is a world that I cannot go back to, now that I am a published author.  Admirers, as everyone knows, are the only reason for creating art.  And money, since money can be used to buy admirers.  In conclusion, how dare you, Tara?  I have forgiven, but I will not forget.  That’s a lie.  I haven’t forgiven either.  That was a good story, not a falling asleep sort of story!

My sister, by the by, falls asleep during movies.  Any movie.  Doesn’t matter.  The lights dim, and blam.  Out like a light.  That’s why I don’t read her stories.  Pearls to swine, I say.

I hope, by sharing this painful annecdote from my life, you’ll see the importance of holding my blog in proper reverence.  I am a small, petty man, you see, and only constant adoration keeps me from suspecting that I might be a jerkface, and not a writer at all.  It’s a small price to pay for the ebulliant brilliance that I will offer up to the world, now that I’m a published author.  When I am not too busy tending bar, or channel surfing, or checking to see how much my gut sags if I don’t suck it in at all, but just let it go.  Which is an alarming amount, for a skinny man.  But I exist in the mind now.  Bodily vanities are beneath me.

As long you still admire it, that is.  This body that belongs to me, a published writer.  It’s better than a normal body.  Isn’t it?  I’d appreciate it if you thought that, too.  I don’t have time for any more insecurities.

Thanks for reading.  And liking and appreciating my work.  And not falling asleep.

Yours in published words,

R. Craig Bridger (a name I’m thinking of using on future books.  Fancy, don’t you agree?  Booker Prize-esque).

Blog, I’m Sorry

Ah, hell.  Returning to a blog after a long, unexplained hiatus is like trying to come back to a lover, to smooth things over after a prolonged silence, only more publicly, and without the make-up sex.  I mean, what do you say?  Do you pretend nothing happened, make some coffee, and ask if there’s any of that hummus you like in the fridge?  Do you crawl in, avoid eye contact, and say, “I know I’m shit,” just to get the worst of it over with?  Do you come tripping with excuses, something like, “Blog, I’m so sorry.  Men’s Health magazine sent me to London for a big feature story and then the deadline was brutal and then–get this–the day I turned it in, they gave me two more stories for their food issue, small ones, but they required research and I had to interview this kind of famous guy for one of them, and I don’t want to name drop, it’s crass, but he was hard to get on the phone, you know, and meanwhile I was still juggling a full schedule at the bar, and it’s just been one thing after another.  But I thought about you every day.”  That’s probably what I’d try.  But I know the blog wouldn’t be satisfied with that, that the blog would probably say something snotty about my last entry being on January 26th.  And we’d both start raising our voices, trading jabs, until I’d be forced to blurt it out: “Blog, they pay me OK?  These magazines pay me for the words I write.  That’s right!  And I take that money!  I like it!”  Then, the blog would call me a prostitute.  And then I would cry.

So let’s not do that.  I’m sorry, I’m back, and there’s an end on’t.  Deal?

The First Day Back

The apartment is quiet again.  I can hear the clock, and the persistent drip in the sink.  I can hear the radiator clicking, and the sound of a women’s heels on the sidewalk, five stories below.  

The cats look at me  expectantly, and then with lazy, blinking eyes, when they realize that I’m not going to do anything interesting.  Marlowe kneads at my stomach, and lies down on my lap the way he likes to do, his black butt hanging over the laptop keyboard as I try to type.  It’s awkard as hell, but I am too much of a softie to shoo him away.

I listen to the radio, but eventually it’s too distracting, and I turn it off.  The gym, an improvised lunch, and the dishes are the highlights of my itinerary. Mostly, I stare at this very screen, trying to think of a story, and an angle for a story (it’s always the angles that trip me up), that a magazine might want to buy.  It’s not going well.  At 3:30, I crack open a beer, because, hey, that might help.  In this way, another day gets past me.

Tara is back in school.  She’s not here to chase the cats, pretending to be scared, screeching even as she does the chasing, to talk on the phone as if the phone were a bullhorn and she’s hoping to reach the person on the other end by volume alone, with no help from telephone wires, to bring me snacks, to make dinner, to ask me “How’s it going?” and to listen patiently to my exasperated rants, to give herself a Pilates work-outs on the living room rug. She’s back in class.  And so, the rest of us, we have our routines back too.

In a minute, this beer will be gone.  And I’ll have to decide what to do about that.  I can be more productive, see, with no distractions from my wife.  I can get lots accomplished, here in this empty apartment.  Maybe a nap first, and then: start that novel.  Big things ahead, I’m sure of it.

Vegas, Baby

Vegas.  Few proper nouns are as evocative as that.  Paris maybe.  Heaven. Nouns that come with an immediate, specific set of associations, even to those who’ve never visited the location represented by it.  The name becomes shorthand for the thing itself, infused with the essence of the thing, like a celebrity with one name.  Vegas is like that.  

In some ways, it’s the most American of cities: equal parts bluster, pornography, and giant tube of Cheez-Whiz.  Here is the real American dream: the jackpot.  The easy money.  The next bet.  All men are equal at the table.  Only, they’re not.  And the house will find a way to even the score.

My brother-in-law, Christopher, called me that morning, two days before Christmas.  ”We’re gonna go to Vegas for the night,” he said.  ”My brother and his friend too,” he told me.  ”You and Tara should come.”  Understand, my brother-in-law (and his family) live a different world than myself, specifically: they have money.  Real money.  And they know how to turn that money into more money.  My brother-in-law isn’t shaking martinis and writing stories for a living.  ”Mario (Christopher’s brother) has a friend, Brady,” Christopher said. “Brady is a whale.”  

I didn’t know what a whale was, but I figured he wasn’t telling me the guy was fat.  ”When Brady goes to Vegas, everything is picked up by the casino.  You won’t have to open your wallet.”  

A chance to do Vegas in style–high roller style.  I hung up and told Tara to pack a bag.  She’d never been to Vegas before.  And she was excited.  ”But I don’t have anything to wear to Vegas!”  But there wasn’t time for any wardrobe dramas.  The private jet was waiting.  We had to get to the airport.

I don’t know if you’ve ever flown in a private jet, but I really can’t recommend it highly enough.  Forget lines, security checks, the 3-ounce rule, all that crap.  We rolled up, practically to the tarmac, grabbed our stuff, and met the whales.  Brady, in a camel coat and baseball cap, didn’t fit the stereotype.  No gold rings.  No chest hair on display.  But his wife, who might have done a turn as a Bond girl, stood next to a suitcase the size of a refrigerator.  For a moment, I thought it was a refrigerator.  Maybe we’d use it on the flight, you know, grab some Snapple out of there, some potato salad.  I am married to a lousy packer (Tara insists she needs “options”) but for a 24 hour trip, even I was impressed.  We handed everything, even the refrigerator, to some airport employees.  And  climbed into the jet.

Leather seats.  A bottle of Veuve Clicquot.  No middle seat.  It was my best trip to Vegas before I’d even arrived. Two limousines from the Wynn met us on the runway.  Tara and I felt like impostors.  My last limousine ride?  Senior Prom.

A convoy of Wynn employees greeted the limos in the driveway.  Whales like Brady have Casino Hosts who take care of them when they’re in town. Brady’s host was a tall, dark-suited dude named Poochie.  Spelled like Pucci (I saw it on his business card, one word, like Vegas itself), pronounced like Poochie. Yes. Pucci gathered me up in a hug before I could introduce myself.  I guess he could smell the poor stink on me; that was the last time he looked my way.

But Pucci was a good guy to know.  He set us up in a cavernous suite, with a connecting bedroom for me and Tara on one side, one for Christopher and my sister on the other.  The bathroom in our bedroom was larger than the living room in our Brooklyn apartment. Floor to ceiling windows.  The curtains ran on a motorized rod, controlled by a switch above the bed.  Mirrored ceiling in the suite.  Christopher shrugged.  ”It’s OK,” he said.  ”But when you stay with Brady, they really set you up.”  Brady and his wife, and the refrigerator (along with Christopher’s brother and his wife), were in a different, even more exclusive part of the hotel.  Which I couldn’t quite imagine.

In the end, a trip to Vegas is sort of like going home with the drunk girl from the club: you’re only there for one reason.  We met the group at a $100 minimum Blackjack table, where Brady and Mario were just killing time. Mario tossed Tara a $100 chip, which she quickly turned to $600.  She spent the rest of the trip arguing with herself over whether she should gamble again.  And if so, how much she should risk (the answer was yes, and $100 dollars, which disappeared in minutes at a $25 table the next day).

The whales had an exclusive party to attend. So our little foursome dined at SW, sent the bill to Pucci.  Saw Cirque Du Soleil’s Love.  Christopher was right.  I never opened my wallet, save for tips.  It was extraordinary.  

The next night, we attended the opening of Wynn Encore.  We glanced at the plebians lined up for blocks outside, laughed at them from behind the tinted windows of our black Rolls Royce as we glided past. I thought about all the times I’d seen limos in New York City, and I wondered how often they’d been transporting nobody special, just some numb nuts just like me, who knew somebody.  Who got to be a big shot for a day.

A lot, I figured.

When we were ready, the limos took us back to the runway, where the jet was waiting.  Tara came home with $5oo.  Christopher  won a couple thousand.  Mario was up big, but blew it all on Christmas gifts at designer shops in Caesar’s Palace. He told me that’s his Vegas strategy: take the money, go shopping.  That way, you can’t lose it at the tables.  Makes sense, I guess, even though the money is gone either way.

And Vegas? How did Vegas do, after showing us so much hospitality?  Vegas was looking out for herself, don’t worry.  Brady left $90,000 poorer.  And sometime in the night, somebody broke into our suite while we slept, stole Christopher’s Rolex, and my sister’s Cartier.  

Not a bad haul for a steak dinner and a free room.