The King of Video Poker by Paolo Iacovelli

Author:Paolo Iacovelli
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: CLASH Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART III

PART III

I’m at The Ogden in downtown Vegas, a one-bedroom apartment I booked through Airbnb with a balcony overlooking Life is Beautiful. I stare out the sliding glass doors, and with the low buildings scattered around and the Stratosphere erected against mountains near the horizon and the bleached sky, the view looks like artifice, a video game. And I’m expecting to witness a car chase or a building implode, something transgressive, a consequential product of the city without consequences.

I wonder how many bodies are being buried out in the surrounding desert, how many young, bright-eyed girls are being drugged in motel rooms by Elvis impersonators, how many overweight men are being urinated on by escorts in presidential suites, how many addicts just bet away their child’s college fund on red, how many gaming commissioners are turning their heads the other way, how many headline-worthy stories will never make the front page. This one will.

No Limits

I can see the festival in the distance, a crowd of approximately 45,000 people exactly 466 yards away. I take out the guns from my black suitcases and duffel bags and clip them into the tripods and adjust the scopes. I bring them out onto the balcony and scan the streets below, hot and empty in the glare. The big red neon shoe suspended over Fremont Street. Warehouses and parking lots. There is no music coming from the festival, they must be between sets. As I wait for the noise to come back, I picture blood, guts, bone fragments, brain matter. And even though I haven’t fired the first shot, I can already hear spent shells smacking against the floor. I notice a lizard on the railing. My face burns from the heat.

I walk inside and drink a glass of room-temperature water to cool down, put a Pop-Tart into the toaster for later. Loud chants start up again by the festival grounds. I step back out on the balcony, make sure the coast is clear, no police cars patrolling the streets below, no helicopters soaring overhead. For a moment, I think the chants are for me. Thousands of people cheering me on and I welcome it. The palm trees stand tall and still and near. Through the scope, everything looks painfully clear. The aim is directed at the center of the crowd, a deluge of bullets. My finger on the trigger. I press halfway down. Ding. The Pop-Tart pops.

I’m driving through the deserted streets on my way to the freeway and I don’t hear any sirens and I keep glancing at the rearview mirror, waiting to see police cars tailing behind or SWAT helicopters hovering above, but the road is empty and quiet, and I’m respecting the speed limit, and I can’t help but wonder how different things would be right now if the sun’s glare didn’t cause me to need a glass of water, if the Pop-Tart didn’t jolt me out of it. And as I take a right turn onto the freeway, I

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