Las Vegas city limits—casinos on the horizon. The strip and then the hotel room. Snorting lines off the TV top. Drinking tequila and smoking speed, sitting on the bed laughing. Joey lying in the bathtub with one of the beds’ yellow coverlets over him talking to Maggie for hours while she sits on the counter, swinging her crossed legs. Intense talks. Talks about everything. Family, death, marriage, birth, sickness, work, divorce, money. Serious, hard, sad, slow-building, then the funniest thing in the world, the kind of joke you’d never get in a sitcom or a movie. Black sky outside with stars. Headlights blur in neon tube streaks seen from the overpass. The sun rising over the desert. Cars jiggle fast-forwarding in traffic on the freeway exit. Hotel doors open and shut. Bodies flood into casinos and then gush back out again, and two days are gone, a hot afternoon in the hotel room.”

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