Just Can't Help Believing, page 18
Reconnecting with the past has churned up Caleb’s emotions, just as it did when he used to spend days on end watching home movies of his wife Marie, young, fun and full of life. Watching those films would reopen the hole Marie’s death had ripped deep through his heart, leading to torrents of tears and ultimately proving too painful a routine to continue. Knowing he is listening to Marty Pollack on Allena’s recordings has made Caleb both elated and incensed ― in his mind he can still hear Marie’s horrifying screams on that fateful night back in October 1972.
Not that Marty sounds or, indeed, looks anything like he did back then. Caleb’s unerring gut instinct has enabled him to see past the phony British accent, and the rolls of flesh and facial surgery, used to birth the man the world knows as Cornelius. But has Pollack really gone to such lengths solely to evade Caleb’s wrath? There must be other reasons. Other ghosts that still haunt him.
With his mind occupied by the recordings he’s listening to, it’s no surprise that Caleb doesn’t see the dog shit on the pavement before stepping in it, or have any idea that he’s done so. So, as he makes his way back to Cindy, he stops every few steps, sniffs, and wonders where the hell the stench is coming from.
Yet when he cagily enters his room at The Cock & Bull after finding its front door ajar, the only thing Caleb smells is the unmistakable odour of cigar smoke. Had she not been gagged, Cindy would have been able to tell him exactly where that scent was coming from.
Caleb’s reactions remain sharp, but the fist he aims at Tony Capone’s face finds its path blocked by two guys he hadn’t seen until now. One has no neck, and the other no hair, but both are too big for him to take down.
They restrain Caleb and throw him onto a chair, pinning him there as Tony relights his cigar, sucking on it until he’s able to blow a smoke ring that slowly floats towards Caleb’s face.
“If you hurt so much as a single hair on her head, you will live just long enough to regret it,” Caleb warns, failing to free his arms from the grip of the two goons who both sniff and wonder if the old bloke they’re holding down has shat himself.
“A Yank!” Tony says. “Is this a holiday romance? He’s a bit old for you isn’t he, Cinderella? Well, Prince Charming, you’ll find that this is no fairy tale. There will be no grand ball nor palace for your princess, just a spunk-stained room in a boarded-up shit-hole, where she’ll be courted by men of all creeds and colours who’ll pay to do whatever they want to her.”
Cindy’s screams are stifled by her gag, but the desperate sound spurs Caleb into action. He frees an arm and rams an elbow into No Neck’s groin. Then, with the same arm recoiled, he launches a fist upwards into the face of No Hair. Free of their grip, Caleb hurls himself at Tony, only to impale himself on the precisely sharpened point of Tony’s blade. The realisation of having done so sees Caleb shocked into momentary stillness, just long enough for No Hair to crack the base of a bedside lamp over his head, knocking him first to his knees, then out cold to the floor.
Cindy’s muffled cries find no sympathetic ear.
* * *
Only fifty-seven minutes have elapsed of Nadine Hazell’s week of formal work experience placement from Hayesfield Girls’ School but she’s already in agreement with her mum, who told her as she left home this morning that school days were the best days of your life.
Nadine is supposed to be shadowing the senior stylist at hairdresser Toni & Guy, with best friend Michelle, but having initially accepted the pair of them, the salon manager called to say that for insurance reasons he could take only one. As he’d called Michelle with the news, it was she who gleefully took the spot.
That was last Thursday, leaving Nadine with only one day to arrange an alternative placement. Which was how she ended up at McBride Wyatt Solicitors, the company her mum is using to divorce her dad, where she is currently experiencing complete and utter boredom.
Mr McBride has asked Nadine to file all the papers littering his desk; and though she’s been doing so for nearly an hour, she still hasn’t filed enough of them to be able to see through to his desktop. No wonder her parents’ divorce is dragging on.
“What do you have there?” Mr McBride asks.
“Letters,” Nadine replies, holding them both out for him to see.
Mr McBride is squinting through his glasses at the letters but can’t read any of their details. “Who are they addressed to?”
“One is for Caleb Jackson in somewhere called Remote in America; and the other is for Freddy Freeman in County Mayo, Ireland,” Nadine says, a reply that has Mr McBride repeating their names but coming up clueless.
He requests a closer look at the letters, removing his glasses, his thumb and forefinger pulling at his top lip as he racks his brain for an answer, which arrives only when Nadine sees there is another name and address written on the reverse side of each letter, that of their sender, Peter Hills.
“Peter!” exclaims Mr McBride. “Of course. He had these with him when I saw him here last, and I said I’d courier them with my own post to save him the cost. Could you arrange to do so today please, Nadine.”
“Sure,” Nadine says, eager to do anything but filing. “I’ll do it right now.”
* * *
The relentless call of a wood pigeon finally wakes me, taking me from my dream (where it first chirped up) into the grim reality of my hangover. The pigeon sounds like it’s perched on a nerve fibre in my brain. What could it possibly be calling for all this time? And if no other pigeon has answered, why does it continue to call out? Take the hint. Nobody, least of all me, wants to hear.
I turn to Amber for a comforting cuddle but find her side of the bed vacant, cold.
My mouth is as dry as an uncooked pot noodle, and when I gulp down the warm glass of water at the side of my bed it hydrates a hitherto dormant and impossibly loathsome taste. Like a pot noodle.
I throw on some clothes but not very accurately, so my T-shirt is inside out and Calvin Klein brands my backside as I stumble tentatively down the stairs, feeling every step reverberate tenfold against the inside of my skull.
The kitchen clock tells me it’s ten. Two hours after I was supposed to be interviewed live on Good Morning Britain for my thoughts on last night’s interview with Nina Tucker. Why didn’t Alexa sound her alarm as directed? Why didn’t Amber wake me before heading out? Maybe they both tried but were drowned out by the wood pigeon. And where actually is Amber?
I shower, dress, and swallow three paracetamols before hitting the road, aware that I shouldn’t be at the wheel with alcohol still sloshing round my system. Consequently, I’m driving so slowly that Miss Daisy, were she on my back seat, would be ordering me to speed the hell up.
My snail’s pace is not going down at all well with other drivers. One passes me after flashing his headlights and middle finger. The next one mouths something about my fondness for mothers. But it’s the man at the wheel of the car that’s now three feet from my bumper who’s making me laugh. I could have identified his luminous, rage-filled, apoplectic face from much further away, even without the enlarged photo of it plastered across the bonnet of his Roman FM car.
Simon Royce can’t pass me because of oncoming traffic, so he has taken instead to beating his steering wheel with his fists. I respond by easing off the accelerator. Weaving dangerously in and out of the lane while looking for a gap big enough to fit his giant face through, Royce sees his chance, accelerating swiftly, then deciding to slow for a second to bring his car level with mine.
He lowers his passenger-side window to get a clear look at me.
“It’s you!” he bellows angrily, his eyes bulging. “I ought to…”
Though I don’t hear what he ought to do, I’m sure it wasn’t to hit the oncoming police car.
As his face is engulfed in an airbag, I immediately put my foot to the floor.
* * *
“Where have you been?” asks Serena, head of marketing at Bath Time Inc., who arranged my appearance on Good Morning Britain. “Piers Morgan was really pissed!”
“That makes two of us,” I reply.
“I’m serious. He was proper angry when he called me off air. Said you were a ‘little twerp’.”
“I’ve been called worse already this morning.”
“I’ve also taken countless calls asking about your wife.”
“About Amber, why?”
“She’s an internet sensation. Everyone wants to know who the ‘phwoarmidable’ interviewer is, as The Sun asked online this morning. Probably best you don’t look at some of the memes of her that have gone viral, actually.”
I didn’t consider this kind of reaction. I call Amber but she doesn’t pick up. Where is she? Then I see a WhatsApp message from Heidi asking if she can meet me, as there’s something she thinks I need to know.
“Later,” I type back.
“Can I have ten minutes of your time, Jimmy?” Subash asks. “Amber said I should ask you.”
“Ask me about what?”
“About the tax.”
“Tax?”
“For the offshore dollar account the money has been paid into. I need to know how you want me to declare it.”
“Subash, I have a fearsome hangover and nothing you are saying is making sense to me. I need you to explain in layman’s terms, or simpler still, if possible.”
“Amber said you wanted the advertisers to pay in US dollars, into a US-based account that you had set up for tax reasons.”
I call Amber again. No answer.
“I don’t understand,” I say, but Subash can’t simplify it any further for me.
It’s when I’ve called Amber over and over without her picking up that I have no choice but to understand what Subash has said, his words drawing a veil of darkness over my eyes, stealing the air from my lungs faster than I can expel it, and sending my head spinning, round and round until I slam onto the floor. Hello darkness, my old friend.
24
It was fast approaching midnight in Las Vegas on the evening of November 5th, the night cooled to single digit Celsius by a determined wind. Dancing atop the bar inside Coyote Ugly in the New York, New York Hotel, temperatures were rising as Skylar Jones fixed her eyes on the prize, another lovestruck husband from a sour marriage who had returned for a second consecutive night, this time without his wife and wedding band, the circle of pale skin on his ring finger as obvious as his lustful gaze.
Most nights, Skylar takes home almost treble the tips of the other girls at Coyote Ugly, her heady beauty as obvious as the arrogance of these men who believe she’d have any interest in them beyond their dollars. But on nights like this, she also makes sure to take home a little memento from Tiffany.
Save for the palpable discomfort he appears to feel, trying to follow the rhythmic movement of her body, despite him being pressed against her, tonight’s guy is just like the others — middle-aged, misguided, easy prey.
Skylar’s performance is well honed. The tequila she pours liberally down their throats, and the suggestive manner in which she licks it from her lips when she feigns having a mouthful herself, is always enough to elicit a kiss which, however unpalatable, is Skylar’s concession to the then inevitable process.
On this particular night she has introduced herself as Amber, a name she decided on that afternoon having seen the actress Amber Heard on E!, the same source from which she gleaned the other names she has previously assumed for this role, such as Kim, Paris and Demi.
Skylar doesn’t operate alone. At a bar in the MGM Grand, her friend, part-time underwear model Jason, is tasked with plying Skylar’s target with enough alcohol to further scramble his senses. Doing so involves lining up shots of absinthe, for which Skylar’s substitute is a green vegetable juice.
It’s at this bar that Skylar writes down her pre-planned list of dares for the two of them to tick off before sunrise, which always includes getting hitched by Elvis.
That’s where another of Skylar’s friends, Bobby, takes over. He’s a seasoned Elvis impersonator who has the keys to The Little Chapel of Love and the job of officiating sham weddings, complete with a faked certificate of marriage. The only thing that’s real about the whole ceremony is the diamond rock that’s slipped onto Skylar’s finger, which she always ensures the guy buys from her friend Camila, at Tiffany, who refunds Skylar its cost in cash once she’s through with the sting.
Lastly, it’s the turn of Chip, valet at the Wynn, whose instructions are to sound the hotel’s fire alarm exactly eight minutes after Skylar shows him her sparkling ring when she returns to the hotel, arm in arm with the latest fool.
By the time Skylar returns to the room with a ready-made sob-story concerning a long and pained phone call with her mother (the one element of the ruse Skylar seldom has to fabricate), the guy has always passed out, drunk. That’s when she wakes him to ask about the wife he never mentioned — his wedding band squirrelled away in his wallet.
While the guy’s head is still spinning, Skylar’s offer of a quick annulment and her guaranteed silence so long as she gets to keep the ring meets no objection. The poor fool is out of there so fast he never realises he’s been duped.
At least, that’s what always happened before Skylar set her sights on scamming Jimmy O’Neill.
“So, you’re not married?” asked Skylar, disbelievingly.
Jimmy’s stuttered response exceeded the length of Skylar’s short temper, seeing her lash out angrily at his face, sending Jimmy to the floor and Skylar anywhere but near him.
* * *
At the same time Skylar was dancing her way into Jimmy O’Neill’s affections, across Sin City at a high rollers’ lounge in Caesars Palace (the Romans in Vegas not being big on apostrophe use), Cornelius was sat on the seat he had occupied for the past three nights, not that it had dealt him much luck.
The dealer was new to the table and Cornelius was slightly up against the house — a rare situation for him. On his first night he’d handed over close on $3 million and a similar amount the next. But the following night he’d pulled back nearly a third of it, and that move in the right direction had fuelled his confidence. He ordered a Coke, knowing he needed to keep a clear head when trying to count cards, and just as the waitress smiled and turned away, he reached out to tap her shoulder, asking her to add a steak sandwich to his order.
The game was blackjack and, as always, Cornelius was betting big. Laid out before him were five racks of chips, coloured and valued differently — from the stars and stripes at $5,000, to yellow, orange and grey discs at $100,000 each. It was those chips Cornelius had most of.
Having won four hands running, he let his fingers slip further down the colourful stack before placing his next bet. And with his hand dealt and showing twenty, added two further chips to raise his stake to $800,000. The dealer took a hit on fifteen and drew a six, bringing an end to Cornelius’s streak of good fortune and sending him off on one of abject misfortune.
The lowest the dealer drew over the course of the next six hands was nineteen, and on that occasion it was enough to beat Cornelius’s eighteen. Very soon after, Cornelius had not only returned to the house the money he’d won the previous night, but he’d thrown in another million. He’d have done well to call it a night at that point, but panic had taken hold of him and he was no longer counting cards, only the number of chips left racked.
The dealer continued to pull the twenties and followed them up with a string of blackjacks that forced Cornelius to curse loudly and the pit boss to look his way when he passed.
He sighed, loosened the top two buttons of his black shirt, and barked an order for another steak sandwich when a waitress walked briskly past. By the time it arrived he’d lost more hands than he’d won and was laying even bigger bets. He was thinking he’d soon hit on a run like the one he’d enjoyed the previous night, and with a bigger stake on the table he would claw back his money almost as quickly as he’d lost it. But nothing that was happening backed up this belief. He took a hit on seventeen and was dealt a three; the dealer hit four extra cards for a twenty-one. He turned two picture cards straight off; the dealer turned blackjack on him. And when he finally turned a blackjack of his own, the dealer responded with one, too.
Before long he’d lost the lot, all the money Mr Marks had given him to grease the palms of corrupt officials. And to make matters worse, the pickles from his second steak sandwich were starting to repeat on him.
* * *
With her head full of thoughts about what to do next, Skylar wandered directionless under the bright blue Vegas sky, which is why her autopilot took over, and she found herself approaching the entrance to Coyote Ugly.
It was the eye-popping ginger Afro of YouTuber Trent Magray that Skylar had to thank for shocking her aware, just in time to notice Archie, the guy she’d swapped fake vows with earlier that week. He was on the floor, being beaten up by his wife, who once through with him got up to tell Magray and his forty million followers how her scumbag husband had bought a Tiffany wedding ring for a bitch from Coyote Ugly named Paris, who her rotten husband would reclaim the rock from — if he knew what was good for him.
Sadly for Archie, Skylar had already visited Camila at Tiffany to exchange the ring for a fistful of dollars and was not minded to hang around.
Rather, she sought refuge in the Marcus Aurelius Villa at Caesars, where Cornelius was sat staring at some tropical fish in a tank, fearful Mr Marks might soon make him sleep with their cousins.
Though the sleep would be welcome — Cornelius hadn’t had a wink of it — his most pressing concern was to answer the ringing doorbell, expecting to be met by two dozen fried chicken wings, a turkey club, and a 140z grilled NY strip served with a loaded baked potato.
“You look terrible,” Skylar said, kissing Cornelius’s cheek as she breezed past him. “Rough night?”
“Very,” he replied grumpily.
“Sounds like we were both dealt shitty hands.”
Although, upon hearing the scale of Cornelius’s shitty deal, Skylar, ever resourceful, knew her own hand had been suddenly strengthened.
Not that Marty sounds or, indeed, looks anything like he did back then. Caleb’s unerring gut instinct has enabled him to see past the phony British accent, and the rolls of flesh and facial surgery, used to birth the man the world knows as Cornelius. But has Pollack really gone to such lengths solely to evade Caleb’s wrath? There must be other reasons. Other ghosts that still haunt him.
With his mind occupied by the recordings he’s listening to, it’s no surprise that Caleb doesn’t see the dog shit on the pavement before stepping in it, or have any idea that he’s done so. So, as he makes his way back to Cindy, he stops every few steps, sniffs, and wonders where the hell the stench is coming from.
Yet when he cagily enters his room at The Cock & Bull after finding its front door ajar, the only thing Caleb smells is the unmistakable odour of cigar smoke. Had she not been gagged, Cindy would have been able to tell him exactly where that scent was coming from.
Caleb’s reactions remain sharp, but the fist he aims at Tony Capone’s face finds its path blocked by two guys he hadn’t seen until now. One has no neck, and the other no hair, but both are too big for him to take down.
They restrain Caleb and throw him onto a chair, pinning him there as Tony relights his cigar, sucking on it until he’s able to blow a smoke ring that slowly floats towards Caleb’s face.
“If you hurt so much as a single hair on her head, you will live just long enough to regret it,” Caleb warns, failing to free his arms from the grip of the two goons who both sniff and wonder if the old bloke they’re holding down has shat himself.
“A Yank!” Tony says. “Is this a holiday romance? He’s a bit old for you isn’t he, Cinderella? Well, Prince Charming, you’ll find that this is no fairy tale. There will be no grand ball nor palace for your princess, just a spunk-stained room in a boarded-up shit-hole, where she’ll be courted by men of all creeds and colours who’ll pay to do whatever they want to her.”
Cindy’s screams are stifled by her gag, but the desperate sound spurs Caleb into action. He frees an arm and rams an elbow into No Neck’s groin. Then, with the same arm recoiled, he launches a fist upwards into the face of No Hair. Free of their grip, Caleb hurls himself at Tony, only to impale himself on the precisely sharpened point of Tony’s blade. The realisation of having done so sees Caleb shocked into momentary stillness, just long enough for No Hair to crack the base of a bedside lamp over his head, knocking him first to his knees, then out cold to the floor.
Cindy’s muffled cries find no sympathetic ear.
* * *
Only fifty-seven minutes have elapsed of Nadine Hazell’s week of formal work experience placement from Hayesfield Girls’ School but she’s already in agreement with her mum, who told her as she left home this morning that school days were the best days of your life.
Nadine is supposed to be shadowing the senior stylist at hairdresser Toni & Guy, with best friend Michelle, but having initially accepted the pair of them, the salon manager called to say that for insurance reasons he could take only one. As he’d called Michelle with the news, it was she who gleefully took the spot.
That was last Thursday, leaving Nadine with only one day to arrange an alternative placement. Which was how she ended up at McBride Wyatt Solicitors, the company her mum is using to divorce her dad, where she is currently experiencing complete and utter boredom.
Mr McBride has asked Nadine to file all the papers littering his desk; and though she’s been doing so for nearly an hour, she still hasn’t filed enough of them to be able to see through to his desktop. No wonder her parents’ divorce is dragging on.
“What do you have there?” Mr McBride asks.
“Letters,” Nadine replies, holding them both out for him to see.
Mr McBride is squinting through his glasses at the letters but can’t read any of their details. “Who are they addressed to?”
“One is for Caleb Jackson in somewhere called Remote in America; and the other is for Freddy Freeman in County Mayo, Ireland,” Nadine says, a reply that has Mr McBride repeating their names but coming up clueless.
He requests a closer look at the letters, removing his glasses, his thumb and forefinger pulling at his top lip as he racks his brain for an answer, which arrives only when Nadine sees there is another name and address written on the reverse side of each letter, that of their sender, Peter Hills.
“Peter!” exclaims Mr McBride. “Of course. He had these with him when I saw him here last, and I said I’d courier them with my own post to save him the cost. Could you arrange to do so today please, Nadine.”
“Sure,” Nadine says, eager to do anything but filing. “I’ll do it right now.”
* * *
The relentless call of a wood pigeon finally wakes me, taking me from my dream (where it first chirped up) into the grim reality of my hangover. The pigeon sounds like it’s perched on a nerve fibre in my brain. What could it possibly be calling for all this time? And if no other pigeon has answered, why does it continue to call out? Take the hint. Nobody, least of all me, wants to hear.
I turn to Amber for a comforting cuddle but find her side of the bed vacant, cold.
My mouth is as dry as an uncooked pot noodle, and when I gulp down the warm glass of water at the side of my bed it hydrates a hitherto dormant and impossibly loathsome taste. Like a pot noodle.
I throw on some clothes but not very accurately, so my T-shirt is inside out and Calvin Klein brands my backside as I stumble tentatively down the stairs, feeling every step reverberate tenfold against the inside of my skull.
The kitchen clock tells me it’s ten. Two hours after I was supposed to be interviewed live on Good Morning Britain for my thoughts on last night’s interview with Nina Tucker. Why didn’t Alexa sound her alarm as directed? Why didn’t Amber wake me before heading out? Maybe they both tried but were drowned out by the wood pigeon. And where actually is Amber?
I shower, dress, and swallow three paracetamols before hitting the road, aware that I shouldn’t be at the wheel with alcohol still sloshing round my system. Consequently, I’m driving so slowly that Miss Daisy, were she on my back seat, would be ordering me to speed the hell up.
My snail’s pace is not going down at all well with other drivers. One passes me after flashing his headlights and middle finger. The next one mouths something about my fondness for mothers. But it’s the man at the wheel of the car that’s now three feet from my bumper who’s making me laugh. I could have identified his luminous, rage-filled, apoplectic face from much further away, even without the enlarged photo of it plastered across the bonnet of his Roman FM car.
Simon Royce can’t pass me because of oncoming traffic, so he has taken instead to beating his steering wheel with his fists. I respond by easing off the accelerator. Weaving dangerously in and out of the lane while looking for a gap big enough to fit his giant face through, Royce sees his chance, accelerating swiftly, then deciding to slow for a second to bring his car level with mine.
He lowers his passenger-side window to get a clear look at me.
“It’s you!” he bellows angrily, his eyes bulging. “I ought to…”
Though I don’t hear what he ought to do, I’m sure it wasn’t to hit the oncoming police car.
As his face is engulfed in an airbag, I immediately put my foot to the floor.
* * *
“Where have you been?” asks Serena, head of marketing at Bath Time Inc., who arranged my appearance on Good Morning Britain. “Piers Morgan was really pissed!”
“That makes two of us,” I reply.
“I’m serious. He was proper angry when he called me off air. Said you were a ‘little twerp’.”
“I’ve been called worse already this morning.”
“I’ve also taken countless calls asking about your wife.”
“About Amber, why?”
“She’s an internet sensation. Everyone wants to know who the ‘phwoarmidable’ interviewer is, as The Sun asked online this morning. Probably best you don’t look at some of the memes of her that have gone viral, actually.”
I didn’t consider this kind of reaction. I call Amber but she doesn’t pick up. Where is she? Then I see a WhatsApp message from Heidi asking if she can meet me, as there’s something she thinks I need to know.
“Later,” I type back.
“Can I have ten minutes of your time, Jimmy?” Subash asks. “Amber said I should ask you.”
“Ask me about what?”
“About the tax.”
“Tax?”
“For the offshore dollar account the money has been paid into. I need to know how you want me to declare it.”
“Subash, I have a fearsome hangover and nothing you are saying is making sense to me. I need you to explain in layman’s terms, or simpler still, if possible.”
“Amber said you wanted the advertisers to pay in US dollars, into a US-based account that you had set up for tax reasons.”
I call Amber again. No answer.
“I don’t understand,” I say, but Subash can’t simplify it any further for me.
It’s when I’ve called Amber over and over without her picking up that I have no choice but to understand what Subash has said, his words drawing a veil of darkness over my eyes, stealing the air from my lungs faster than I can expel it, and sending my head spinning, round and round until I slam onto the floor. Hello darkness, my old friend.
24
It was fast approaching midnight in Las Vegas on the evening of November 5th, the night cooled to single digit Celsius by a determined wind. Dancing atop the bar inside Coyote Ugly in the New York, New York Hotel, temperatures were rising as Skylar Jones fixed her eyes on the prize, another lovestruck husband from a sour marriage who had returned for a second consecutive night, this time without his wife and wedding band, the circle of pale skin on his ring finger as obvious as his lustful gaze.
Most nights, Skylar takes home almost treble the tips of the other girls at Coyote Ugly, her heady beauty as obvious as the arrogance of these men who believe she’d have any interest in them beyond their dollars. But on nights like this, she also makes sure to take home a little memento from Tiffany.
Save for the palpable discomfort he appears to feel, trying to follow the rhythmic movement of her body, despite him being pressed against her, tonight’s guy is just like the others — middle-aged, misguided, easy prey.
Skylar’s performance is well honed. The tequila she pours liberally down their throats, and the suggestive manner in which she licks it from her lips when she feigns having a mouthful herself, is always enough to elicit a kiss which, however unpalatable, is Skylar’s concession to the then inevitable process.
On this particular night she has introduced herself as Amber, a name she decided on that afternoon having seen the actress Amber Heard on E!, the same source from which she gleaned the other names she has previously assumed for this role, such as Kim, Paris and Demi.
Skylar doesn’t operate alone. At a bar in the MGM Grand, her friend, part-time underwear model Jason, is tasked with plying Skylar’s target with enough alcohol to further scramble his senses. Doing so involves lining up shots of absinthe, for which Skylar’s substitute is a green vegetable juice.
It’s at this bar that Skylar writes down her pre-planned list of dares for the two of them to tick off before sunrise, which always includes getting hitched by Elvis.
That’s where another of Skylar’s friends, Bobby, takes over. He’s a seasoned Elvis impersonator who has the keys to The Little Chapel of Love and the job of officiating sham weddings, complete with a faked certificate of marriage. The only thing that’s real about the whole ceremony is the diamond rock that’s slipped onto Skylar’s finger, which she always ensures the guy buys from her friend Camila, at Tiffany, who refunds Skylar its cost in cash once she’s through with the sting.
Lastly, it’s the turn of Chip, valet at the Wynn, whose instructions are to sound the hotel’s fire alarm exactly eight minutes after Skylar shows him her sparkling ring when she returns to the hotel, arm in arm with the latest fool.
By the time Skylar returns to the room with a ready-made sob-story concerning a long and pained phone call with her mother (the one element of the ruse Skylar seldom has to fabricate), the guy has always passed out, drunk. That’s when she wakes him to ask about the wife he never mentioned — his wedding band squirrelled away in his wallet.
While the guy’s head is still spinning, Skylar’s offer of a quick annulment and her guaranteed silence so long as she gets to keep the ring meets no objection. The poor fool is out of there so fast he never realises he’s been duped.
At least, that’s what always happened before Skylar set her sights on scamming Jimmy O’Neill.
“So, you’re not married?” asked Skylar, disbelievingly.
Jimmy’s stuttered response exceeded the length of Skylar’s short temper, seeing her lash out angrily at his face, sending Jimmy to the floor and Skylar anywhere but near him.
* * *
At the same time Skylar was dancing her way into Jimmy O’Neill’s affections, across Sin City at a high rollers’ lounge in Caesars Palace (the Romans in Vegas not being big on apostrophe use), Cornelius was sat on the seat he had occupied for the past three nights, not that it had dealt him much luck.
The dealer was new to the table and Cornelius was slightly up against the house — a rare situation for him. On his first night he’d handed over close on $3 million and a similar amount the next. But the following night he’d pulled back nearly a third of it, and that move in the right direction had fuelled his confidence. He ordered a Coke, knowing he needed to keep a clear head when trying to count cards, and just as the waitress smiled and turned away, he reached out to tap her shoulder, asking her to add a steak sandwich to his order.
The game was blackjack and, as always, Cornelius was betting big. Laid out before him were five racks of chips, coloured and valued differently — from the stars and stripes at $5,000, to yellow, orange and grey discs at $100,000 each. It was those chips Cornelius had most of.
Having won four hands running, he let his fingers slip further down the colourful stack before placing his next bet. And with his hand dealt and showing twenty, added two further chips to raise his stake to $800,000. The dealer took a hit on fifteen and drew a six, bringing an end to Cornelius’s streak of good fortune and sending him off on one of abject misfortune.
The lowest the dealer drew over the course of the next six hands was nineteen, and on that occasion it was enough to beat Cornelius’s eighteen. Very soon after, Cornelius had not only returned to the house the money he’d won the previous night, but he’d thrown in another million. He’d have done well to call it a night at that point, but panic had taken hold of him and he was no longer counting cards, only the number of chips left racked.
The dealer continued to pull the twenties and followed them up with a string of blackjacks that forced Cornelius to curse loudly and the pit boss to look his way when he passed.
He sighed, loosened the top two buttons of his black shirt, and barked an order for another steak sandwich when a waitress walked briskly past. By the time it arrived he’d lost more hands than he’d won and was laying even bigger bets. He was thinking he’d soon hit on a run like the one he’d enjoyed the previous night, and with a bigger stake on the table he would claw back his money almost as quickly as he’d lost it. But nothing that was happening backed up this belief. He took a hit on seventeen and was dealt a three; the dealer hit four extra cards for a twenty-one. He turned two picture cards straight off; the dealer turned blackjack on him. And when he finally turned a blackjack of his own, the dealer responded with one, too.
Before long he’d lost the lot, all the money Mr Marks had given him to grease the palms of corrupt officials. And to make matters worse, the pickles from his second steak sandwich were starting to repeat on him.
* * *
With her head full of thoughts about what to do next, Skylar wandered directionless under the bright blue Vegas sky, which is why her autopilot took over, and she found herself approaching the entrance to Coyote Ugly.
It was the eye-popping ginger Afro of YouTuber Trent Magray that Skylar had to thank for shocking her aware, just in time to notice Archie, the guy she’d swapped fake vows with earlier that week. He was on the floor, being beaten up by his wife, who once through with him got up to tell Magray and his forty million followers how her scumbag husband had bought a Tiffany wedding ring for a bitch from Coyote Ugly named Paris, who her rotten husband would reclaim the rock from — if he knew what was good for him.
Sadly for Archie, Skylar had already visited Camila at Tiffany to exchange the ring for a fistful of dollars and was not minded to hang around.
Rather, she sought refuge in the Marcus Aurelius Villa at Caesars, where Cornelius was sat staring at some tropical fish in a tank, fearful Mr Marks might soon make him sleep with their cousins.
Though the sleep would be welcome — Cornelius hadn’t had a wink of it — his most pressing concern was to answer the ringing doorbell, expecting to be met by two dozen fried chicken wings, a turkey club, and a 140z grilled NY strip served with a loaded baked potato.
“You look terrible,” Skylar said, kissing Cornelius’s cheek as she breezed past him. “Rough night?”
“Very,” he replied grumpily.
“Sounds like we were both dealt shitty hands.”
Although, upon hearing the scale of Cornelius’s shitty deal, Skylar, ever resourceful, knew her own hand had been suddenly strengthened.
