Await Your Reply: A Novel by Dan Chaon

Author:Dan Chaon [Chaon, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Psychological, Identity theft
ISBN: 9780345476029
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2009-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

And Ryan was certain he’d been caught. His hand went automatically to his pocket, where he had his stack of ATM cards. He rested his palm against his thigh, thinking again of the saphenous vein.

“Cards?” Ryan said weakly, and he tried to glance over his shoulder. If he dashed into the four lanes of Las Vegas Boulevard, what were the chances that he would be hit by a car? Fairly high, he guessed. He shook his head at the bald man, as if he didn’t understand. “I … I don’t have any cards,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You don’t understand?” the man said, and he laughed with good-natured surprise, a bit taken aback. “Cards!” he pronounced, slowly, and he gestured at Ryan’s hand. “Cards!”

“Cards!” the spike-haired man repeated, and he grinned, showing his gold-tipped front teeth. He held up a dozen or so of the cards from the escort services, fanned out like a hand of poker, a full house of Fantasie and Britt and Kamchana and Cheyenne and Natasha and Ebony.

And then Ryan realized what they were talking about. He glanced down at the stack of pictures he himself had collected as he walked down the strip. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, anyway, I …”

“Yes, yes!” said the bald one, and the men all burst into laughter again. “Cards! Beautiful girls, my main man!”

“Thirty-nine United State dollars! Incredible!” said the man in the golf cap, who had so far been only observing. And then he let out an extended comment in Russian, which was met with more hilarity. The man held out one of his own cards for Ryan to take, offering it.

“You like Natasha. Big titty Russian girl. Very nice.”

“Yes,” Ryan said, and nodded. “Yes, very nice,” he said, and he gazed down the block—Bally’s, Flamingo, Imperial Palace, Harrah’s, Casino Royale, the Venetian, the Palazzo—all the places he had been planning to visit, all the ATMs he still had to withdraw from before he came at last to the Riviera, where he would check in to the hotel under the name Tom Knott, a young accountant who was attending a convention.

“My name is Shurik,” said the bald Russian, and held out his hand to be shook.

“Vasya,” said the one with the spiked hair.

“Pavel,” said the one in the cap.

“Ryan,” Ryan said, and he felt his face growing hot almost immediately as he pressed palms with the three men, one after the other. It was the most basic mistake—his own real name, given thoughtlessly, and he felt more flustered than ever. Mr. J so good to find, he thought. Was it significant? Or not?

“Ryan, my main man,” said Shurik. “We come with us, yes? Together. Come. We find the best girls. Right?”

“Right,” Ryan said. And then, as the three of them parted for him, as they prepared to fall in behind him, following with their giant tulip cups and their cards and their hopeful, friendly expressions, he made an abrupt feint, a zigzag, pushing himself into the flow of tourists on the sidewalk.

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