Tapped Out by Matthew Polly

Author:Matthew Polly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

Since the time of Bugsy Siegel, Las Vegas’s success has been a tribute to the power of hydroelectric engineering and human vice. But after decades of doubling down, the city was busted. In the summer of 2009, it had the highest bankruptcy and unemployment rate in the country. The Strip was dotted with the steel-girder skeletons and empty cranes of abandoned construction sites. The style-challenged crowds of tourists were sparser and moved more slowly than in my previous visits. When I squinted from the sun’s glare, it looked like the zombie apocalypse: The neon lights still flickered, but only the dead were walking.

I kept getting lost. The city had expanded so rapidly that my two-year-old Garmin GPS was hopelessly out-of-date. As I drove beyond the Strip, I noticed more payday loan outlets than banks and more adult superstores than bookstores. If drama geeks move to New York and homecoming queens to L.A., then Vegas is the destination for high school sluts.

On the radio, the most popular song was 3OH!3’s “Don’t Trust Me”—“Shush girl, shut your lips / Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips.” And the ads alternated between those offering legal help with foreclosures and those offering the opportunity to snap up devalued property.

Vegas is best enjoyed in short bursts, an extended weekend at most. Any longer and this scientifically designed honey trap will kidnap your soul and demand your entire bank account as ransom. If I was going to survive eight weeks, I had to live as far from the Strip as possible.

Using Craigslist, I rented a cheap room on the edge of town. The house was a Spanish colonial McMansion located in one of the many recent Vegas developments in which all the houses are nearly identical Spanish colonial McMansions.

The landlady, Carla, had gray-streaked hair and was missing her two front teeth, giving her the appearance of a benevolent witch. She owned several similar houses in the neighborhood, which I assume she had intended to flip but was forced by the crash to convert into flophouse rentals. My fellow travelers were five other dudes who were living in the various rooms on the first and second floors. Carla told me she could rent out only to guys because my next-bedroom neighbor, a ’roided-up meathead, seduced all the women. When he heard this, he chuckled, “What can I say? The strippers like me.” On many nights he brought one home and proved his point.

It was going to be a long two months.

It took me several weeks to figure out Carla’s other occupation. When I’d come back in the evenings, I’d often find younger women pouring out their problems to her as she seemed to be playing a game of solitaire. It struck me as a rude way to hold a conversation.

When I mentioned this to Em, she explained, “Um, Matt, she’s using tarot cards.”

“Maybe I should have her read my fortune,” I said, “to find out if I win my fight.”

“Never trust a psychic who waited too long to sell her real estate holdings.

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