The Fall of Princes Page 9

  Freshly showered and shaved, coked up and wearing a sober blue suit, I showed up for dinner exactly at eight. Dinner was in the Frank Sinatra Room. Everybody else was there, a bottle of $250 Bordeaux uncorked on the table.

  It was a little spooky. There were big photographs of Frank and the boys all over the room. All of them are dead now, and even then they were pretty old. They were from another time, a time when Vegas was brand new, when nobody took a pickax to the bedside clock.

  “Welcome to the New Rat Pack,” said Fanelli as I sat down.

  “Frank Sinatra had all his suits made by the same tailor, and they were all lined in orange silk,” I said.

  “How do you know such an enormous number of useless things?” asked Fanelli.

  “Frank Sinatra’s tailor made me a suit, when I was in Los Angeles. Ugliest suit I ever had. Lined in orange silk.”

  Fanelli had had a good day. He’d checked in with a $100 chip in his pocket, left over from an earlier venture in Vegas. Without thinking, on his way to his room, he put the chip on thirty-two, his lucky number, at the first roulette table he passed.

  Thirty-two had come in, so he was up thirty-five hundred. He then pulled back, played the corners and the splits, and thirty-six had come in. He pulled back again, left two hundred on thirty-two, and, incredibly enough, thirty-two hit again. He walked away with almost twenty thousand before he put the key in his door. He was feeling expansive, and sentimental.

  So he spent three thousand dollars on three hookers, each one a different ethnic persuasion, none of them Caucasian. “I’ll have enough of white meat,” he said. “Very soon.”

  Arcane positions. Frothy sex in the overflowing Jacuzzi. He made it all sound hysterically fun, and he did look remarkably refreshed.

  The girls had stayed silent long enough for him to call Anthea to tell her how much he adored her. Fanelli felt it was the least he could do, and besides, he did, he really did adore her.

  Dinner, which was surprisingly good, was a fountain of expensive libation and unbridled hilarity. Everything seemed right. The company of my best friends, the pictures of Sinatra, the overpriced, overdressed food, the bored waiters who’d seen every kind of behavior man is capable of producing, no doubt, and carried on with a kind of faux hauteur that, in itself, added to the hilarity of it all.

  Talk of vintages and women and all the times we’d gotten wrecked together and done strange and funny things, and endless talk of money and how much of it there was to be had in the world. Just put a chip on your lucky number. Let the wheel roll. Like taking candy from a baby.

  We gave Fanelli his wedding present. We’d gotten a sterling cigar box at Tiffany’s, and had all our signatures engraved on it, and then filled it with Cuban cigars. It brought Fanelli to tears of deep and empathic sentimentality. There was a danger of losing the festivity of the moment, he was so moved, even though he knew Anthea would never let him smoke once they got married. She loathed it.

  Frank kept the ball rolling. Frank had awakened one morning not long before, still drunk, and he had had a big meeting early and he was rushing around getting dressed, when he suddenly realized he couldn’t remember how to tie a necktie. He kept trying in front of the bathroom mirror. Nothing.

  Luckily, Frank was the kind of guy who kept everything he’d ever owned, and he remembered that he had the card that came with his very first necktie, a card that had simple diagrams showing a thirteen-year-old boy how to tie a necktie, and he’d managed to find it, but he still couldn’t follow the diagram.

  So he’d just draped his best tie around his neck, gone downstairs to hail a cab, and was seated in the back reading the Journal when he caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. “My God,” he thought, thinking of other things, “I forgot to tie my necktie.” And he effortlessly reached up and tied a perfectly dimpled double Windsor without even looking. That’s the kind of guy Frank was. Never daunted in public. He walked into the meeting clean shaven, perfectly dressed, a true white-collar drunk, and he performed brilliantly, recommending all kinds of intricate maneuvers to a ski-binding manufacturer who was filthy rich and who started the meeting by looking at Frank and saying, “Young man. Do I look to you like the kind of man who pays taxes?”

  There were toasts, in which we wished Fanelli happy days and fair, despite his many, many former indiscretions, most of which were elaborately detailed.

  Fanelli stood up and simply said that, after this weekend, as soon as the plane touched down in New York, the Fanelli as we knew him was dead forever, and he would see us at the office and treat us all as the sources of some of the happiest times of his life, but that the life that had been so happy was now a thing of the past. He actually got misty-eyed. He actually said, “I love you guys,” which everybody had been hoping he’d avoid, but nevertheless, we were all moved nearly to tears, and we embraced Fanelli and then he paid for dinner in cash, leaving a tip that caused the waiters to view Fanelli in a whole new light, and then we went to see Diana Ross in the Colosseum, the Big Room.

  It was kind of a homosexual thing to do, and we sat in our red velvet banquette realizing that we looked like a bunch of gay guys from the Midwest come to worship at the feet of the Diva. Many, many cocktails were served and consumed in absolute silence as we stared at this creature, this remarkable thing that was called Diana Ross. And I’m telling you, that woman could sing, I don’t care how mean she was to the other girls or how she let them go on welfare while she stood in front of an adoring audience in a red sequined dress and a coat made out of white feathers.

  “I bet she gives great head,” said Frank, and Trotmeier answered, “She must never eat anything, to stay so skinny.”

  Fanelli said, “I feel like I’m turning a little bit gay, just watching her.” He had a weird fetish, Fanelli. He carried with him, everywhere he went, a four-inch stuffed bear, a model of one of the characters on Sesame Street, Fozzie Bear. Fozzie had been to Europe, Grand Cayman, around the globe, and Fanelli had photographed him in all these exotic locations, and kept an album of Fozzie’s travels. Fozzie at the Eiffel Tower. Fozzie at the Kremlin. He had photographed every one of his friends with Fozzie, and gave Fozzie a birthday party every year, with a Fozzie cake and everything. He gave a Fozzie to every woman he slept with, after taking a photograph of the girl and the bear.

  Bears make money, said Fanelli. Bears also get laid.

  Now Fozzie sat with a bottle of Cristal ringside at Caesar’s palace, the bright light from the stage illuminating his green hat, as he watched one of the greatest entertainers ever.

  After the show, Fanelli was determined to get a picture of Fozzie and the Diva herself. He somehow wangled his way backstage and, confronted by her enormous security team, told them he was Arne Næss, her Swedish billionaire boyfriend whom she married the next year, and he actually made his way into Diana’s dressing room, and took the picture. She thought the whole thing was charming and couldn’t have been nicer about it. She laughed with delight, showing her millions of gleaming teeth. It was the victory of his and Fozzie’s career.

  After the Diana adventure, we went our separate ways, our pockets filled with cash, each one just waiting for the adrenaline to kick in and take over everything, every desire, every dream, every tic of our overwrought nervous systems. Just for the spin of a wheel. Just for the slap of a card on the green felt table. Just for the roll of the dice. Just like Monday morning at the office. Except it was one o’clock in the morning in Vegas. But it was exactly the same.

  I lost a thousand playing blackjack, too taken with the dealer, who was really hot in her dealer’s getup, to pay much attention to the cards.

  I put a hundred on thirty-two at roulette, just for Fanelli, and lost.

  Then I saw this kind of woebegone craps table that looked like it needed a little love. There were only about six people at the table, all clearly losers. I thought, OK, guys, step aside and let the big dog eat.

  I stepped up to the table and took a place next to t
he croupier. I cashed in five hundred. I lost four hundred in two minutes. Then the dice came to me, and everything clicked on. Cowboy up, I thought.

  I threw the dice. Six. I started throwing and betting and pushing and I could do no wrong. Every throw was exactly the number I needed. I could envision the numbers before the dice landed.

  I was playing the odds. Six came up. I threw for a new number. Seven. I threw again. Five. I kept throwing and the crowd at the table began to grow. The pile of chips in front of me was growing, so I began betting more recklessly.

  I turned to tip the croupier. “Just put fifty on the come line for me, kid. That’ll be enough.”

  I did it, and from then on, the croupier and I were in it together. I would bet for me, and he would tell me what to do with his chips. This never happens in Vegas, where the croupiers are supposed to be absolutely silent. He started giving me advice on how to improve my odds.

  Cocktails began to appear on the table in front of me. I must have told one of the toga-clad girls what I was drinking, but I have no recollection of it. They just started appearing. And more people came, and there was a buzz, a heat that began to swell into an inferno.

  There were guys who followed my every move, with stacks of black chips, betting five hundred dollars on me, and I was in tune, in perfect sync with the rhythm of the table. I was always one step ahead of fate.

  After twenty minutes, there were probably fifty people at the table. Fanelli stopped by. I didn’t even see him. Frank stepped up and played along. I didn’t know he was there, even though he was gigantic. There was nothing in the world except me and the dice and the long stretch of green baize, sprinkled with numbers and spaces and littered with money.

  They changed croupiers, trying to throw me off. They brought more cocktails. A tall, lanky whore in a sparkly dress came and stood next to me, her thigh touching mine as I leaned forward to toss the dice. I just wasn’t interested.

  I rolled for forty-five minutes. I went through three croupiers, until the original croupier came back. I was betting for two again, and nothing went wrong for a long, long time.

  When I crapped out, after forty-five minutes, the table applauded. There were nine gin and tonics lined up in front of me.

  The croupier turned to me. “Here’s what you do now, kid. Let two people roll. If you don’t win, pick up your chips and walk away from the table. You’ve had a good night. Walk away from it.”

  Pigs lose everything.

  The next roller was a small Asian man. He looked like loss in a size-36 suit. I lost five hundred. The dice moved into the hands of a man who looked like John Carradine in one of his wilder roles—a Mormon preacher gone berserk. He threw once. I lost.

  “That’s it for you, kid,” the croupier said, and I gathered up my chips, turned to tip him a hundred.

  “Trust me, kid. You’ve done enough for me. Just say good night.” When I left the table, you could see the high rollers gathering up their chips, moving on, knowing that things like this don’t happen very often, hardly ever, and that this table was in for a long, cold spell.

  I turned to the dark-haired hooker standing next to me. “Room 1812. Fantasy Tower. Ten minutes.”

  I picked up my chips, and stuffed them in every pocket. The Italians say never put anything in the pocket of your suit, it’ll blow the line. I made an exception.

  I took three gin and tonics, and went to cash out. I had made $32,000.

  In fifteen minutes I was naked on the maroon bed with the hooker who turned out to be named Arrielle. She spelled it for me. Yeah, I thought. And I’m Billy Champagne. I’ve got $32,000 in cash and I can be anybody I want.

  I don’t love having sex with hookers. They don’t like to kiss, for one thing. Their breasts are beyond fake. There’s something listless about it, knowing that one of you is bored out of her mind, staring at her reflection in the mirror over our heads and going over her list of errands for the next day. But I gave her oral sex, which I was a whiz at, never a false step, and she seemed to like that. She scratched at my back with her long, black nails.

  You can make love to a hooker in less time than it takes to listen to a Top 40 song. When it was done, I gave her two thousand dollars, and she absolutely loved that part. Now she could go home for the rest of the night.

  At the door, she turned to me, still lying naked on the bed. She wagged her finger at me and winked, “Some lucky girl . . .” was all she said, and then she was gone.

  I took a bath. It took twenty minutes to fill the goddamned thing, but I did it, dragging on cigarettes and drinking gin and tonic.

  The water calmed me down. It soothed my heart. You could have done laps in the pool. It was the perfect end to a lovely night.

  I lay down on the covers, smoking a last cigarette and finishing the cocktails. I caught sight of myself in the mirror above me, lying damp and naked on the velvet. I was suddenly in love with myself.

  There was no trace left of the boy I had been. I was a fully formed man with a perfect body. I could see the thick veins on my biceps, my washboard stomach, my thighs, my crotch, my wet hair cut at an ungodly cost every three weeks by a small British man named Benjamin Moss who came to my loft, and I adored myself, and I was as fine at that moment as I would ever be. My parents, far away, would be shocked and appalled. My mother, if she knew the course of this evening’s events, would come and get me and take me home and make me behave.

  The sun was just coming up and the room turned all rosy and romantic, garish as it was. I fell asleep without even getting under the covers, with the last wisp of cigarette smoke hanging in the air and thirty thousand dollars of house money on the bedside table, right next to the pickaxed alarm clock. I love this town, I thought.

  I knew that no dawn would ever rise again so beautifully, no matter what happened.

  Three hours later, the phone rang. It was Fanelli. “In two minutes, room service will be at your door with Bloody Marys, and I’ll be right with them. Get dressed.”

  A few minutes later I was at the door in my Paul Stuart boxers and there was Fanelli and, immediately after, a white-coated room service cutie with three Bloody Marys.

  “Wakey wakey eggs and bakey,” shouted Fanelli. “Isn’t this fun? Isn’t this just the most fun you’ve ever had?”

  He gave the girl twenty dollars for her trouble, and she left us alone to drink and tell the tales while I dressed. Fozzie had his own Bloody Mary, and Fanelli dutifully photographed it.

  Fanelli sat on the edge of the Jacuzzi. “This is the biggest ashtray I have ever seen in my life,” he said, flicking a cigar ash into it.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Who the hell cares? It’s time to go lie by the pool and get a little color in our pallid cheeks so Anthea won’t think I spent all my time getting blowjobs from black hookers, which actually is what I mostly did, except that I had time to win fifty thou and change at roulette. How’d you do?”

  “One white girl named Arrielle, working at being a hooker so she can pay for childcare for the twins. Thirty thousand. Craps.”

  “Not bad,” he shouted. “Not bad at all. Now let’s go have a big breakfast and then some sun. And then off to the airport. No more gambling. Know when to walk away, that’s the whole secret. Try it again, they get it all back and we don’t want that to happen now, do we?”

  “We do not, Fanelli,” I said. “We do not want that to happen.”

  We met Trotmeier and Frank, and sat at breakfast, placing the occasional bet with the strolling Keno girls, and we told the night again and again. Everybody had won money. Fanelli, of course, had won the most. I came in second, then Frank, then Trotmeier who had only won a puny six thousand dollars because he lacked the lightning rod that attracted the bolt from the blue, he always had, which is why he made the least of us at the office, although, by normal standards, he made plenty for somebody who was only twenty-nine years old. But cautious.

  I thought of Arrielle, sleeping at home. I thought of D
iana Ross, in a grand suite on a high floor. It always amazes me that people have sex, even desultory sex, and then go on with their lives, eating scrambled eggs, telling jokes, as though nothing had happened. It seems such a ravishing experience. Such a miracle. And I kept thinking of the sight of my own body in the circular mirror, a kind of sex all its own. And yet there I was, here were my friends, and last night was already past and gone forever, like a wisp of smoke in the dawn light.

  We lay by the pool, in our surfer shorts and our Oakleys. We dozed and drank cocktails and said very little. Then it was noon and time to pack and go.

  I threw my few things in a bag and took one last look at Room 1812, to remember every detail. I hadn’t even pulled back the covers on the bed.

  Fanelli threw a hundred on number thirty-two as we passed a table. He lost. “You see?” he said. “It heats up. It cools down. Let’s hit the road.”

  In the first-class cabin, we settled into our leather seats. The stewardess asked what we wanted to drink. “I don’t know,” said Frank. “Our bodies are wrecked but our minds want to boogie. What do you have for that?”

  She brought each of us three Remys.

  At the last minute, an airline attendant appeared at Fanelli’s seat. “Are you Mr. Fanelli?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You left this at the ticket counter,” she said, and handed him his battered briefcase.

  “Thank you,” said Fanelli, calm as a cuke, and then opened the briefcase. The fifty thousand was still there in cash. “Thank you very much,” peeling off a hundred and giving it to her.

  “You see,” he said. “I love this town.”

  The plane took off and headed east. This day, this particular perfection, would last forever. Nothing could touch it, the warmth and humor of my friends, the easy roll of the dice, the stack of cash, the beginning of my life as a man.

  It wasn’t true, of course. It didn’t last forever, or very long at all, really. Nothing does. I never saw Vegas again. I never rode in a white El Dorado with the top down. Two months later I was fired. Trotmeier burned out and became the tame manager of a branch bank somewhere. Frank was sitting at his desk on a beautiful September morning two months shy of his fortieth birthday and retirement, just waiting for his settlement package to kick in, just sitting in his office on the eighty-ninth floor, when the first plane hit.