Chapter 6

The Nihilists

It was mainly curiosity that made me meekly follow Brad when he stomped off although I did not like Dolores’ attitude to his arrival; it seemed sensible to move the scene of the action away from her. It was a big moment for my captor, strutting across his local turf with his muscle men ensuring I kept the perfect distance behind him. I pondered over a description, finally settling for waddling; Brad with his padded bottom walked like a duck. I caught the eye of the guard on my left side, and he grinned at me as I mimicked Brad’s gait.

The foyer was not busy, but there must have been fifty people along the route of our march. The croupiers and security staff caught on to our silly walk and were having trouble hiding their grins; Brad, I am sure, thought they were smiling at him. I wondered briefly how my escorts would react if I stopped and screamed for help. Typical Briton I suppose, since I would have been more embarrassed by the attention that I would have attracted than Brad would have been. At his office, he strode in to settle behind his vast desk, leaving the rent-a-thugs to shuffle me through the door, where they abandoned me.

Brad had adopted a pose; his fingertips were together, elbows on the clear surface of the desk and he was silently contemplating me. Everything was borrowed from a primer on how to become master of a situation. I had a suspicion that he practiced before his bathroom mirror the look he was now giving me. I felt quite sorry for him, in a way. In the first place, I had watched Philip, one of the best manipulators, establish mastery, so I knew all the tricks. In the second place, and rather more pertinent, he had left himself without an exit strategy.

I looked around his office while he waited for the silence to unnerve me. He had not invited me to sit, which was an error since it gave me the freedom to move around the office looking at the photographs decorating the walls. They were all of Brad, some years younger, smiling in the company of equally happy men and women. I suppose they were famous guests of the hotel, stars of stage and screen, perhaps, or politicians. The message they conveyed to me was that Brad was bolstering a sagging ego.

I can only suppose that he would have crumbled if someone had accosted him by name, marched him across a public space and then stared silently at him across a formidable desk. He certainly seemed to expect that reaction from me. I was more interested in seeing what he would do when I did not collapse under the weight of his mastery. He had played every card in his hand, trusting that I would yield. I think my roaming around the room was unsettling him, since he waved me to the only chair on my side of the desk.

I had already noted that it used his final trick, being several inches lower than his own chair. I ignored the gesture, moving closer to the photographs to decipher the messages and signatures that adorned them. He finally told me to sit down but I smiled at him and made a non-comital sort of noise. He was becoming a little uneasy having lost the initiative by uttering the first words.

“You will leave Las Vegas tomorrow. No argument, no questions, you will quietly disappear.” He tried to sound menacing, but his nervousness made his voice a little high pitched. I really did not care for the town, so I told him with another smile that leaving was no problem.

“Maria will not be going with you. Her place is in Vegas, and we look after our own. You will leave without making any effort to contact her.” After her remarks to me this morning I had been considering doing just as he demanded, but I felt I owed her an explanation since we had bonded so well until she wanted me to change my character. “She’s a grown woman and can do as she pleases, so far as I’m concerned. She does have our car at the moment, and I assume she’ll return the keys.”

I was only thinking out loud about the worst-case scenario, but Brad obviously took my remarks as capitulation. In any event, he decided to push his luck. “I think the least you would do after she spent a week at your beck and call, is to give her the car.” That actually made a lot of sense. “You’re right, Brad. If she doesn’t want to come with me, she can keep the car. I just hope her Momma and sister understand that I can’t take them to El Paso if Maria is staying in Vegas. Still, that’s not your problem, is it Brad? They were so excited last night when they heard the news.”

I had given Brad all he had asked for, but he was drumming his fingers on his desk, clearly confused by my attitude. I imagine that he had already spoken to her, issuing an ultimatum, and Maria had warned him that I would put up a stern fight to keep her. I thought it was time I clarified the position. “I’ll let Maria know that you’re taking responsibility for her family. I don’t envy your task in controlling young Angelina – I thought yesterday she was going to hire a truck to load all the stuff she pinched from my hotel room.”

Brad clearly felt that he was losing control of the conversation, because he decided to threaten me. “I ask the questions here! You shut your face or else. It’s only five miles to the desert in a closed van. A snap of my fingers and you could be taking a one-way trip.” He was on his feet now, his ample belly lapping over the edge of his desk while he shouted at me, his face suffused with anger; little drops of spittle caught the light of the overhead lamp. I suppose I should have been afraid, Dolores certainly feared this creature, but the whole situation was too artificial, too staged, to be taken seriously. Even his show of temper seemed rehearsed.

He was still haranguing me when the door opened to admit a distinguished looking older man who demanded to know if I was Andreas and what Brad had been threatening me with. Brad fell back into his chair as if he had been yanked by an invisible rope around his neck; his expression supported the impression that he was being strangled. “I was just explaining that he couldn’t take Maria out of Vegas, Mr. Naylor.” In response to a curt gesture from the newcomer’s thumb, Brad scuttled out closing the door behind him. “Dolores got in touch with Maria, and I came over as soon as I could,” the newcomer smiled at me, offering his hand.

“I take it you’re the insurance agent who picked Maria up in a limo when she began her career as an escort.” He laughed. “I think this is where I say that if I admit that I’ll have to kill you.”

“It did cross my mind that I had heard that before, like Brad’s remarks on the proximity of the desert around here to hide a body or ten. James Cagney or George Raft in one of those black and white gangster movies from the fifties, perhaps. It just didn’t seem to make sense to kill or maim somebody over the defection of one retired working girl. I’m more worried by the fear in Dolores eyes when Brad appeared; it can’t be in anyone’s interest to rule by terror. Is he the nephew of a big shot or have I watched too many movies?”

“Nothing so sinister. He’s a product of the Peterson Principle, having been promoted to a grade higher than he can handle. He was head receptionist for years and was held in high regard. These photographs,” he waved at the wall decorations, “represent genuine warm regard for a man doing his job well. His promotion was well deserved but proved to be a disaster. You’re not the first to point out his failings. Sometimes I long for the days when a word in someone’s ear would have made Brad disappear. Perhaps Sydney Greenstreet,” he laughed. “We’re all legit now, paying our taxes and cooperating with Federal agencies.

“Give me a minute Andreas to make a call and then I’d like you to join me for lunch.”

He used the intercom on Brad’s desk to summon Trudy, who led me to a private dining room where she asked for my impressions of Las Vegas, until Mr. Naylor breezed in ten minutes later. She was a pretty girl but asked questions like a pollster, keeping a straight face despite my attempts at humor. Naylor – call me Kurt – on the contrary, disguised shrewd enquiries under an affable manner.

“I have no right to ask, but what are your plans for Maria? We take seriously the idea of caring for our employees.”

“She’s a work in progress. Right now, she will become my personal assistant with responsibility for a budget of about a million annually.”

“The best I could offer her was a job as a barmaid but at a higher salary than the job merited.”

“That’s because you perceived her to be a fatally damaged hooker. I saw her with fresh eyes, and I think I’ve detected something you missed.”

“I always did think there was something special about her,” he mused. “You know she made money out of her horny classmates at school. That required imagination and skill. Perhaps I should try to keep her in Vegas.”

Kurt was affable and urbane, talking nostalgically about Vegas as a wide-open gangster town. Some of his one-liners were memorable. ‘The Godfathers have moved out of the rackets – there’s more money in politics.’ ‘You used to tremble when a known hitman crossed the lobby, but now its forensic accountants that get that reaction.’ In between the anecdotes, he probed my relationship with Maria.

He had a way of nodding as if he accepted some statement of mine but then returning to the same subject from a slightly different angle a few minutes later. I gave him an edited version of Maria’s epiphany when she rescued me after she discovered her uncle was a crook. Kurt spent a lot of time on questions of family. He probed my behavior towards Mark and Penny, expressing his pleasure that I was reconciled with them. He knew the story of Maria’s brother, killed in prison, accepting my determination to care for her remaining family as right and proper.

I grew to like him, although I was conscious throughout the meal that I had to carefully consider every word I uttered. We were pondering on desserts when he surprised me. “I miss family,” he sighed. “When I came here straight out of law school, I had a stark choice between my career and a mate. I knew in high school that I was homosexual but in those days the bosses would not have trusted me if they had suspected it. For almost forty years I’ve been seen around town with the prettiest girls on my arm – I’ve even tried bedding some of them. I’ve been called a lecher, even a pedophile but no one has ever guessed that I’m an old poof,” he sighed. “Not that it matters now, with Gay Pride in the driving seat.”

There was silence between us for some time. I was astonished that he had dropped his guard to offer this hostage to fortune. I could only guess that he was so close to retirement that he no longer cared if his secret was revealed. Presumably, the old canard about gay men being promiscuous made senior executives uneasy about loyalty to the company. Still wary of disclosing too much, Kurt’s confession prompted me to open up about Phil.

“You say that Las Vegas is run nowadays like a Sunday school, Kurt. Can I ask you where I would go if I wanted to launder money, let’s say?” He laughed: “The brief answer is don’t do it, my friend.” The waitress left a pot of coffee on a heated pad and left us alone, while I told Kurt everything that had happened since my arrival in El Paso that had made me uneasy about Phil.

I laid out the whole history of my relationship with my former boss, his encouragement of my knack for finding unusual answers to engineering questions. I described the system of rewards for my inventions, orchestrated by Phil. Kurt asked intelligent questions, finally concluding that the symbiotic relationship between Phil and me was a success, even if it was a legal nightmare. He agreed with the barrister Larry had consulted that the only way to move forward was for me to resign from EI.

“You’re an unusual man, friend Andreas,” he chortled. “You let your employer look after your assets for quarter of a century and then hand them over to a Las Vegas croupier when he retires. By rights you should be broke or in goal but here you sit, relaxed and happy with an annual income of a million bucks. With your luck I should get you banned from every gaming room on the Strip!”

“I’ve more important things to worry about than money, Kurt. I know Phil has taken more than his fair share of my earnings, but it was with my connivance, and I like the man. He enjoys pitting his wits against adversaries, sailing very close to the edge of legality more than once in the time I’ve known him. I’ve watched him through some tricky negotiations in the past twenty-five years, but I’ve never seen him so distraught as he was in the few days I spent with him in El Paso.”

Kurt asked me for my worst-case scenario; I thought for several minutes. “I’m worried that he has done a deal with the drug barons in Ciudad Juarez. I’m afraid he will end up in a US Federal prison or in the concrete foundations of a new bridge somewhere in Mexico.”

“Leave it with me for a month and in the meantime don’t sign anything that Phil hands you, not even the check for dinner.”

He laughed when I admitted that I had signed up as associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso. “The Indiana Jones of the engineering faculty,” he laughed, as we exited the dining room and shook hands.

“Can I tell Dolores that she doesn’t need to worry about Brad anymore?” I asked as we parted. Kurt grinned. “He’s packing for a move to Atlantic City where he will be working for my equivalent. She’s a ball-breaker and she knows all about Brad’s little peccadillos.”

It was now mid-afternoon of my second full day in Las Vegas, and I had not yet seen a crap table or roulette wheel except when I was crossing the salon under escort. I was standing in the foyer debating with myself whether I should choose the casino or the pool when for the second time, I was hailed by name and enveloped in voluptuous and sweet-smelling femininity. It was Consuela, a much more complex guest than Dolores. She likes me, but Connie has expressed a desire to take me to bed, a thoroughly bad idea since my mate is her sister. It is particularly awkward meeting Connie now in the light of the disagreement that caused Maria to stomp out of our room before breakfast.

“How did you like your first meeting with Momma Grizzly in a rage?” were Connie’s first words after she had explored my tonsils yet again. “Maria always goes totally crazy on the first day of the curse. She thinks she might have scared you off.” I did not tell Connie how close I had been to setting off for the hills, contenting myself with asking where Maria was. “She’s having a large gin at the bar before going up to the room to face you.”

As we walked, arm in arm through the foyer, Connie told me how concerned she had been when Dolores reported that I had been marched away by Brad. They had spent some time searching for me, looking in the gambling and dining rooms as well as at the pool. Her eyebrows rose in surprise when I admitted that I had been in a private dining room with Kurt Naylor. “Who are you really, Andreas? Does my sister know about you and Naylor?”

By the time we got to the bar, Maria had gone, and the barmaid made a throat-cutting gesture, grinning at me. It took some moments to convince Connie that she could not referee the upcoming bout with her sister in my hotel room. I finally persuaded her to find Dolores to give her the good news that Brad was on his way to Atlantic City. She still looked a bit shocked at my friendship with Kurt.

Maria was in the bathroom when I closed the door of the room behind me. She exited wearing a bathrobe, looking hesitant and unsure of herself. Unsure whether to throw her arms around me or punch my jaw, I shouldn’t wonder. “My head gets full of rage on the first day of my period. It’s hormones and I can’t help it. I didn’t mean what I said – I don’t even remember what I did say. Can you forgive me?”

“No!” I let the silence develop. “Is this the first time the rage has overwhelmed you? No, it’s not. You’ve already said that it’s the same every month.” She was pleading with me that it was hormonal and beyond her control. “Rubbish! And I say that for two reasons. In the first place you gave me no warning, so I had to deal with your problem totally unprepared. More importantly you should lock yourself away when you know it’s going to happen. Why should the rest of us have to put up with your crazy hormones? We’ve got hormonal troubles of our own.”

“But if you care for someone...” she began before I interrupted her. “And if you cared for someone you wouldn’t burden them every month.” She had thrown herself on the bed and was weeping inconsolably. I sat beside her putting my hands in her hair to massage her scalp. “Are you leaving me, Andreas?”

“Hell no! I’ve invested hours in getting to know you. Do you really think I’m going to throw all that away just when we’re getting past the worst?” She snuggled in, falling asleep within minutes; I must have dozed off, since for the second time that day I was awakened by the shower running. She came into the room dressed only in sensible panties but without the toothbrush baton. “I only wanted to make things better for you, Honey. I love you just as you are, but I hate to see other people underestimate you.”

“I was so afraid that you were going to be like Susan. She picked me because, presumably, she loved me, but then she began to reform me into someone else. I went along with it for years until I discovered that she hated the person she had created. At which point, she gave up and found an alternative in Dan. I hoped you understood.”

“I do understand. You are my Herminius, remember. It was silly of me to want other people to see what I had seen in you. I do know why you pretend to be submissive, but I wish you didn’t have to do it.”

The few days with Phil have shaken me. I thought he knew me so well after quarter of a century that he must have penetrated my disguise. It was disturbing to find that he expected me to roll over and do just what he wanted without question. I had let things go too far and I had been rethinking my strategy in the last couple of days.

“I’ll do a deal with you,” I told Maria, looking into her eyes. “I’ll stop being a doormat that everyone wipes their feet on. I need to be unobtrusive, unremarkable so that people will relax and say things they don’t intend to since it’s only old Andrew, and he doesn’t count. In future, I’ll be a tapestry, forgotten on the wall but safely out of reach of muddy boots. What do you think?”

She was giggling. “My lover, the mural. It has a kind of ring to it. I think I like it. Perhaps we can get a diorama of you and Horatius holding the bridge.”

“While we’re on the subject of imperfections, I want you to change.” She began to tell me that she knew she was full of faults, but I kissed her into silence. “I understand why you’re indifferent to men pawing you, but it makes it hard for me to caress you. You love it when I stroke your head, but I’m conflicted about touching your conventional erogenous zones. When other guys touch your breasts, you switch off, treating them as a sort of minor bother like a fly landing on you.”

“It’s just different with you, Honey. I watched a program that said the brain was the most important sex organ in the human body. I knew by fourteen how to switch off my response to groping hands. It truly does nothing for me when Phil tweaks my nipple or caresses my thigh. When I’m with you everything matters; we walk arm in arm, and I turn so the side of my breast touches your arm and I get tingles up my spine.”

“But why let them touch you at all? I like Caroline but I don’t touch her inappropriately. You permit touching almost as if Miguel and Philip have a right to molest you. You can say no.” There was a prolonged silence. Several times, Maria got up on her elbow ready to speak but subsided without uttering a word.

“You must think I’m an idiot. At school I allowed anyone to touch me if they had the cash; then when I became an escort, I had to accept a lot of inappropriate handling because I didn’t want to lose potential customers. It has become a habit to accept that I am not worth treating like a lady.”

“The fault dear Maria, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings, to paraphrase the Bard.”

I suppose I was still feeling a little angry at Maria for trying to change my character earlier, but it is really no excuse for what I said next. “By the way, it wasn’t Brad who paid you croupier’s wages, it was Kurt Naylor.”

It took some moments for her to process this information and I watched the emotions sweep across her face. First there was anger although whether at Brad or me I cannot be sure. The final expression was self-loathing. Coming after my lecture on letting men touch her inappropriately, she had realized, perhaps for the first time in her life, that she had no respect for her own body. Or rather, she treated it as an unimportant shell within which the real woman was concealed. I wanted to tell her that I understood, having hidden my own true nature for years, but I could not find words that did not sound patronizing, diminishing still further her fragile self-esteem.

Into the uneasy silence, the hotel telephone intruded. It was too shrill to be ignored, so I picked up the receiver to an excited Connie on the other end of the line. “What did big Sis say when you told her about Brad?” she bellowed. My mind was still on the devastation I had caused in Maria, I suppose: “I told her it was Kurt that gave her the extra salary.” Connie was silent and I could hear faint sounds of merriment in the background. “What’s it got to do with that old faggot?” I was trying to get Connie off the phone so I could get back to comforting Maria, when I realized what her sister had just said.

“Connie, did you say that Kurt Naylor is a homosexual? This is important.”

“Everyone knows that, Andreas. It’s supposed to be a big secret but everyone on the Strip has known it for years. Why does it matter? You don’t play for that team, do you?”

I put the receiver back without saying another word. Now it was my turn to begin with anger before finally settling on disgust with myself. The phone rang again, and I got off the bed to pull the jack from the wall, silencing the device. Maria was in the bathroom, sitting on the closed toilet with her head in her hands. She did not look up when I knelt at her feet, putting a hand on the outside of each of her shapely thighs.

“You think you’ve behaved foolishly, but I’ve fallen for the oldest con in the book, like a naïve schoolboy. Want to hear how stupid I really am?” She did not move but I swear that I could feel the atmosphere lightening in the little room. After what felt like hours, she took her hands from her face and placed them on top of mine, not gripping me but simply letting them lie where there where I could feel their warmth. The connection was as much emotional as physical.

“Kurt told me a dire secret that turned out to be no secret at all. Responding to his confidence, I spilled out all my worries about Phil. I confided in him and in return he told me nothing that isn’t known to every bum in Las Vegas. You can see now why I need you to manage my business affairs.”

She looked me in the eye for the first time since I entered the bathroom and gave me a wan smile. “I’m only your Personal Assistant, if you still want an idiot who let’s men take what liberties they want with her body.” Then she put her arms around my neck and sobbed. “I promise you that the real me is out of reach of everyone but you, Andreas.”

I was saved from a reply by a loud hammering on the hotel door. I went to answer it, leaving Maria standing before the vanity unit starting to repair the ravages of her weeping. Connie burst into the room, closely followed by Dolores. “Where’s my sister? What have you done with her, you bastard!” Maria appeared, smiling, from the bathroom fastening her bathrobe round her. “Hi girls. Nice of you to call – at least I think it nice.”

Dolores gave me a watery grin, but Connie punched me on the shoulder on her way to enfold her sister in an embrace. “I thought you’d attacked Andreas!” Connie was still talking vehemently. “Or that you had been attacked by him. Are you hiding bruises under that robe?” She was trying to open the bathrobe to check; I was dressed only in boxer shorts so one glance was enough to show that I had not suffered any injury. Dolores seemed to be making a more thorough inspection than was justified; I think Maria may have noticed. She reached into the bathroom to retrieve my bathrobe which she flung towards me.