I am on a chaise lounge.

James is in the pool, waving his arms underwater in front of him, slow motion. He looks out to the brown desert behind a low stucco wall casing the pool. A fat kid in a Speedo cannonballs into the pool, sending a tidal splash at James that runs over his black sunglasses, washing over his hair.

--Fucking watch it, kid! James shakes his head and flicks his sunglasses around in the air, trying to whisk the specks of water splattered on them.

I smirk between sucks from my cigarette.

I watch him lift out of the crowded pool and walk gingerly over the cement, to me. His black swim trucks, the tuft of hair on the middle of his chest, all of it.

He picks his melted daiquiri from the small table between our chaises, then sits down, facing me. --Doll. You look hot.

I turn my head to face his, and smile. --Thanks baby. The same could be said about you.

--No, I meant that it looks like you're hot. Get me a cigarette, will you?

He plucks the cigarette from my mouth and uses it to light his.

--Are we gambling later?

--Si Seniorita. He says. --Rest now, play later.

James was my sister's boyfriend. Two years ago. I was finishing college. Laura had already quit her job and started dancing. They always stayed in suites at The Bellagio. They came out here quite a bit. One time, she told me, they had sex on a private Blackjack table.

Now, my sister is alone inside her apartment, waiting to pass away, sealed tight in some man's arms, pressed into the envelope of the night. James and I stretch under a rotted sun, while he oils my legs, smacks my ass, and buys me daiquiri's. I decide to wear an aqua dress and no panties tonight.

The cocktail waitress waltzes around our lounge chairs. She yells without much emotion, --Drinks, drinks, drinks. The ruffled pink fan over the bottom of her leotard stands stiff as she walks between chaises, over the wet cement, and among running children.

James smirks at the waitress then turns to me. --I'm over it, Doll. Lets go inside already.

We walk around the pool, and I think about how we must look to everyone. We are tan and lean and wearing thick black glasses and James' hand rests on my hip. I wear a black bikini and a low-slung blue sarong. James wears black board-shorts and flip-flops. We look cool. We carry large daiquiri cups half-full with bright pink slush as we stalk along the edges of overweight men paler than the moon, and groups of strippers in chaise lounges, desperately squeezing oil on their implants and lemon in their scorched-blonde hair.

We might pass for two people that are comfortable and happy, in this cold and stylish way. We might be the recipient of a nod from some star-struck girl stuck here from Nebraska with her parents, some girl wishing she had a boyfriend as cool as I, wishing that she could be as tan as me. The buoyant strippers might be jealous that my boyfriend has such a built chest, such an expensive watch.

The overweight men gawk at us. They are the fathers of fat children who squirm around and piss in the pool, sneaking sips of the passed-out mothers' drinks. These men take their dry hands and rub their tangled blonde beards and their genitals, taking pulls from the straw's of their casino-edition yard-tall daiquiri cups, taking us all in.

People might mistake us for a real couple as James kisses my cheek, waiting in front of the lobby elevator. I see our reflection in the shiny gold doors, sealed tight, waiting to whisk us to our floor. In the reflection I make our three identical girls standing behind us. Squinting, I can read the letters of their matching sweatshirts through the reflection. TRIPLETS USA! I turn my head sideways, glancing for a better look at this sad bunch wearing banana clips in their hair and these sweatshirts.

However, instead of getting a better look, James snaps my neck around to his lips, and starts loudly kissing me, open-mouthed and moaning. I look back at our reflection in the closed doors of the elevator. Neither James nor I had bothered to remove our sunglasses when we entered back into the hotel.

The mousy triplets and their pink sweatshirts come inside the elevator with us. James and I stand towards the back. As the elevator starts its ascent upwards, he cups my ass in his hand. I look ahead at the three girls. They smile at one another and crunch their crispy hair in their fingers. The one in the middle smacks bubblegum and looks up at the numbers blinking higher up as we ascend the hotel. I wonder how they can be so proud to look exactly like someone else. Onto the back of their sweatshirts, names are stenciled. Tiffany, Tracy, and Theresa.

James whispers to me, not as quiet as he should. --Who are these dorks? Total San Bernardino, right? He snickers, making the inside of my ear wet.

The girls exit on the twenty-third floor. They walk out into the hallway, their bleached bangs all vertical to their foreheads, their identical builds all taking the same bulky strides. Tiffany, Tracy, and Theresa.

We exit seven more floors above. I put a call into room service and James strips down for a shower. I hear the water splashing down the drain as I wait on hold.

--Where are you, Doll? James asks over the hush of the water.

--On the phone.

--Get your ass in here. I miss you.

I do as I'm told, smiling at his body behind the glass shower door.

When we turn the silver knob to off, I hear an insistent knock at the door and a man's voice calling out. --Room Service!

I grab a terry robe and leave James dripping off cold water in the shower.

While the young man at the door reveals a platter of Oysters and two filets, I finger the magnums of champagne. I ask the waiter if we might trouble him for salt and pepper. He reaches under the cloth shrouding the rolling table, presenting small glass dispensers. James starts whistling from behind the open bathroom door. He stops and peeks his head out through a crack in the door. --Make sure you get ketchup.

The waiter is young, tall, and I can see him eyeing me, noticing my dripping hair soaking through the shoulders of the robe.

--I’ll just sign for it.

I want this man out of my room quite suddenly now. J

ames yells into the room for me. --C'mon Doll. Where's my little toy?

I scrawl a hurried signature and practically jab the waiter while returning his pen. I feel like he must know how wrong I am, always. Quite abruptly I feel like this waiter in his tuxedo must know how foolish I've been, and how careless everything is. As I close the door on his receding back, it strikes me. The waiter resembles a guy my sister brought home with her one weekend. A Joel or Jeff or someone. That guy was the spitting image. I wonder if it's the same person.

I return to the bathroom with two glasses of champagne. We're naked again, and we chime the thin glasses and within an hour I am drunk.

We lose it all at Craps. James doesn't seem to care and I vomit in the lobby trashcan as I steer myself towards the elevator.

But James wants to go to a club, so we get a limousine and take a drive I don't remember. We dance in the black basement of Baby's. I wring my body around James' more solid form, my hips thrash and James takes my hand and holds it high and I circle around and around and around him, faster and faster each tight rotation.

I vomit again, in the ladies room, and tell James about it, so he gives me a Valium and then I'm much better. I insist on a VIP booth, I plead with him not to make me dance any longer, and we order roasted corn cakes and two Pacifico's and we watch everyone around us sweating and banging and thrashing into each other.

He smiles broadly and I rub my fingers along his waist, resting my dizzy, confused head in his lap. James taps his foot to the beat of the music, and he watches every grouping of blonde that walks by our booth. He brushes hair away from my sticky forehead and says, --This is fun. We're totally going to come out here more often.

By four a.m. I am ready to sleep. He leads me outside by my elbow. I try to walk straight in my heels, having trouble. The bouncer lifts me underneath my arm, helping me navigate the stairs leading outside the club. We get into our car and I pass out on the long seat while James toys around with the stereo and tells the driver to make a stop at the video store.

Wheeling myself out of the limousine and through the maze of the hotel casino proves slightly easier. I have taken the stiletto sandals off and I hold them high by their straps in my upraised arm. With drunken insistence, I try to steer James over to the blackjack tables. I tell him I want to gamble. Now.

I stop and stand directly in front of the private gambling room. My legs feel skinny underneath the aqua dress, my thighs rub naked together. My bare feet are comfortable on the loudly patterned casino carpet. I try to stand straight and still.

--Oh Christ. Come on, Doll. I’m in no mood to blow through more money after Craps tonight.

I swear I can see Tiffany, Tracy, and Theresa in there. If nothing else, I see three sets of tall frizzed bangs held up with strong hairspray.

--Oh, James. I try to wink or smile, something sexy. Let's just take a look. I rub my thighs together and dangle my heels low by their long straps, clicking the heels against my knees.

--Ja-ames! I’m whining. I know I am. I’m trying to convince myself that this sloppy drunk girl will be attractive to a been-around-the-block man like James.

--Come on, Doll. Lets get the fuck out of here. You look like you’re going to puke again.

--But the blackjack tables. . .

James steers me through the bing-ing corridors of slot machines and the elderly women who perch on stools in front of them. Belligerent, I tell James that I want to stay downstairs and gamble.

--With what money, Doll? James laughs at me. You’re fucking broke.

--I thought you fucking liked blackjack! Don’t you? I want to play blackjack with you!

I hear this insistent ring! and bing!, a winner’s bell sirening through the lobby. It's a gray-haired woman at a machine near us. I see her jumping and the coins sliding like bullets from a machine gun from the bottom of the machine. An attendant is next to her, handing her boxes to hold all of the coins. She has won too many coins to fit into a plastic cup. The winning woman talks all of her excitement to the suited attendant, who stands there nodding politely, trying not to yawn.

I assume that James carries me to the elevators, because the next thing I know I am stretched on the tile floor of the bathroom. The lights are on and the toilet is swirling with beige vomit. James must have placed a towel over me. I wonder if we had sex. My head feels damp. Sweat, alcohol, water. I don’t know. I flush the brown junk down the toilet, rise up, drink handfuls of water from under the faucet, and crawl into bed next to James’ heavy sleeping body.

When we return home, he drives fast in his large car and I slump low in my straw hat.

He talks about secrets, and he tells me that there are others. But no one serious he stresses, and if I can't tell by this trip how much he really cares then maybe I have my own insecurities to deal with.

He talks about Laura and how she must have been so upset when I told her I was going to Vegas with him. And I tell him to never mention my sister’s name around me again.

He says he might have loved Laura once. I ask about me.

--What about you, Fox? You trying to tell me that you’re in love with me? Or that you want me to love you? James leans back in the high leather cocoon of the drivers seat. He continues, --You don’t love me, so why should I love you? We’ve never been about that anyways.

I suppose not, I tell myself. Over and over, along the slithering roads of the brown desert, I remind myself. We have not ever been about love.

--What are we about then, James?

James turns up the volume on the stereo, one of his loud tributes to punk.

--What was that, Doll? He leans over and squeezes my knee, --I like you. Don't sweat it. Just have fun.