Vegas Part II:  The House Strikes Back

Or

“To the Luxor, Please.”

After David and Bryan left for the hotel room, the rest of us went back to the paigow poker table with Buzz, the dealer, whose wife was of ill repute, and could often be aptly compared to some of our poker hands; “Put the gentlemen on top, sir, that’s what she’d do-- Exact-a-mundo!”

David called my cell not too long after another round of drinks and said he required assistance with Bryan, who had been wheelchaired at the Excalibur and was making a mess of himself again.  I cashed out and went outside for a cab.  I got in the back of the car and said, and I quote, “To the Luxor, please!” Our room was at the Excalibur, of course, but it sounded like a good idea at the time.  I was up.

I’m not sure how I got to the third floor of the Luxor, because usually there’s a security guard that checks to see if you have a room key to keep people like myself out, but possibly my drunken flighty eyes were so convincing that he let me up for the pure love of misadventure.  I remember at one point I walked into the back of a kitchen and went down some hallways that looked like a hospital and ended up in a large banquet room with a bunch of very surprised maids.  These must be the ones cleaning up after Bryan, I thought.

I wandered about the halls and thought it was odd that there were no hotel rooms to be found.  Then David called again, and I asked him if our room was on the third floor.  It was, so I knew I was on the right track.  I walked in and out of rooms, closets, and stairwells, and went by those maids half a dozen times but found nothing but suspicious faces, incredulous looks, and a good discrete pee corner.

Then some synapse in my brain sobered up enough to put it all together: the absence of hotel rooms, the Egyptian art, the directions I had given to the cab driver… I realized that I was at the Luxor and David was at the Excalibur, and that I had had a good night.

I think you have to take a tram to get from the Luxor to the Excalibur, so I must have gone on that.  One thing I do remember is the moving sidewalks.  It was somewhere near 5 in the morning and nobody was running around from hotel to hotel like I was, so the moving sidewalks were completely devoid of traffic to slow me down. Running across those moving sidewalks all liquored up and on a mission, the world flying by me as I effortlessly ran the fastest sixty yards of my life must have been the closest I will ever come to PCP or time travel.  It is one of the hidden treasures of Las Vegas.

Once I got to the Excalibur, the struggle wasn’t over.  Our room was in Tower II, the tower you can’t find if you’re distracted by flashing or spinning things, or running at full speed concentrating on not spilling your “brownsies” ($1 chips).  The only way I ever found David and Tower II was by asking some hotel workers and maids if they had seen “a guy, looks kinda like me, really drunk, in a wheelchair…”

“Si, Si.  Ive seen your fren,’” they would say, and in broken Spanish try to explain which direction the wheelchair had gone and the sympathy (“lastima”) they felt for the poor “joven.” 

Finally I found David outside the elevators.  He told me the room number, but the hell if I’m going to remember that, not this close to solving this puzzle.  Once on the third floor I walked around looking for the right room.  I decided I would just pick the room that felt right and try it.  I picked the one where the door was slightly ajar, pushed it open and went in.  The room was completely dark but there was water running in the bathroom.  I knocked on the bathroom door and asked if Bryan was in there.  There was a muffled response that I took as an affirmative.  Great, he must be perfectly fine.  He’s with the water now, at least.

It was time for our little detective to get some shut eye, the case of the runaway wheelchair wrapped up nicely.  The four girls occupied all the beds, so I went over to the corner near the air conditioner, curled up and went to sleep on the floor.  The next thing I remember is waking up face to face with Big Brent. 

…

The girls were up and at ‘em at 10:00 that morning, turning on what must have been ever single light in that whole hotel room, and oh, did they ever talk!  I really don’t like being awake during the phase when my drunk turns into my hangover.  I get ornery.

I went back to sleep eventually, and then when we all woke up I made vodka and Red Bulls for everyone, which we called “stiffies.”  Then I would say something like, “Hey, David, did I give you a stiffy?”  Or, “I woke up with a huge stiffy in my hand!”  It was hilarious, trust me.

Next we got ready to go out, spilt booze all over some girls luggage, threw BBQ cheddar cheese-its all over the room, and listened to the Vonage commercial, which became our battle cry that night: “Whoo woo! Woo woo Woo!”

We got lunch at the food court and went on Dennis’ long, sobering march to the Venetian.  The low point of the whole trip came when Bryan and I were walking behind some mom pulling a suitcase up the strip with her teenage daughter.  Bryan commented that it was a large bag she was pulling, and the lady turned around, gave him a dirty look and pulled her daughter close. 

Things looked grim, but the night was far from over.  Stay tuned for the final installment in the series…