Swimming with Bridgeport Girls by Anthony Tambakis

Author:Anthony Tambakis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

YOU LIE BING BULI

June 4

Today he came trudging through the woods with a flashlight like a crazy person. If I were a gun nut, I probably would have shot him. He wanted to tell me about a friend of his who had fallen out of a tree when he was a kid. This after that insanity last week with the newspaper article. Do I have him arrested? Do I move into the city? What?

I GOT IN A CAB outside the MGM and rolled off down Vegas Boulevard, a Grand duffel bag holding more than $200,000 on my lap, the remnants of what was left in the safe. I had thought about tossing it all on a hand of blackjack before I left, but Mota was serious about calling the police, and what did it matter, anyway? While I wasn’t really thinking about anything other than the news about L and Boyd, I’d eventually need money to survive, because there was little to no chance that I’d turn myself in at any point. I mean, no matter what mental state I was in, I just wasn’t the kind of person who would surrender to authorities and take his punishment. I certainly didn’t think I belonged in jail, though there’s no way that fate could have been worse than the one I’d just suffered.

The cabdriver was from somewhere in the Middle East. He wore a turban. Normally I would have asked him about that, since wearing a turban post-9/11 can’t be comfortable, socially speaking, but what did I care about that? Why should I give a shit about his problems? Did he care about mine?

The TV screen in the back of the cab played an ad for some movie in which Liam Neeson played the father we all wished we had. I pawed at the screen until the sound finally muted.

“The movies—they all are the same now, my friend,” the driver said. “Boom boom boom.”

I gazed blankly out the window. Lights. Cars. People. Pointless bullshit piled onto pointless bullshit. Boom boom boom was right.

“He is a fine actor,” he continued. “A learned man. I do not like this Charles Bronson nonsense he does now. It is insubstantial. The man played Oskar Schindler, for heaven’s sake.”

I thought of a story I’d heard about Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson. She’d fallen while learning how to ski on a bunny slope in Canada. She’d thought it was nothing. A pedestrian thump on the noodle. A handful of hours later, she was dead. L had cried about it for days. She had met her in New York once.

“You must honor your talent,” the taxi driver said. “Talent is a gift from God. What you do with it, that is your gift back to God.”

I ignored him. Thought of the Professor. The pie case. The ruination of the world. The hopelessness of it all. All around us, horns blared. People stood three deep, watching the fountains dance in front of the Bellagio. Jesus Christ—they were watching fucking water. It was so depressing.

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