Gifts from Vegas

a commemorative pot on the porch in Vegas

One of the more surreal aspects of recent history is the fact that I first experienced the chest congestion that led to the diagnosis while out in Las Vegas. I spent 12 days out there in the desert, first in the city and then on vacation in Death Valley with Steve. The purpose was to get away and do some writing and hiking.

I stayed at an air bnb in Vegas, a woman’s home, let’s call her Vic. She was a native of Las Vegas and one of the most full-blown characters I’ve ever met (and I’ve known some real characters). I can hardly even write about her or the stories she told me.

She was a court reporter, which led to disabling pain in her back and shoulders (aggravated by serious scoliosis that had her in a brace for years of adolescence). She was suffering a flare up while I was there. This meant she spent a lot of time in bed. It was cold outside and got colder. At first she went out on her patio several times a day in a tattered thrift store fur coat to smoke. Then she gradually gave in and smoked in her room with the window open. The smoke irritated my sinuses and my chest congestion– what turned out to be the cancer symptom. I checked out two nights early and moved to a hotel.

Two nights before I left, we sat in her living room and swapped stories. It was about a 10 to 1 ratio, with her telling the 10. She was a natural storyteller, and her stories were lurid and shocking. And funny.

Vic had been married five times. First, at seventeen, to a Vegas casino mobster. “Trying to get my father’s attention,” she said. That ended shortly after the robbery at gunpoint by a known killer, when she lay on the floor and stripped off her jewels and cried at losing the jewelry.

The second husband was a Japanese classical musician. They had a daughter who was troubled. Then Vic married an African American man, (“Still trying to get daddy’s attention”), but when she decided she needed to go back to Vegas from Sacramento, back to her racist family, she left him behind.

Then came the lawyer. Somehow they managed to adopt a child– and I seriously think I got this story right– who was the grandchild of Benny Binion, the infamous casino owner and mob boss. The girl was the child of Binion’s son and the son’s heroin-addicted girlfriend. She came to Victoria through her work as a court reporter. The lawyer didn’t take to the child, and they divorced. She raised her girls and her fifth husband’s two boys together, until that ended, too.

One of her stories, featuring a Minnesotan boyfriend in Colorado, could have come right out of a Quentin Tarantino film. More than one story, actually. And when, out with her on the patio while she smoked, she said the worst moment was when she discovered, and inadvertently revealed, her beloved step-mother’s secret,  that she was “a Bulgarian dwarf,” I knew that we were headed into David Lynch territory as well.

“I was not expecting that,” I said to her.

“My father likes them short and dark,” she said. Victoria, she was short and dark, a tiny woman with large breasts. She knew her dad, despite her trouble keeping his attention.

After that night, she was bereft that I was leaving. We had such a good time. She was also, I’m sure, worried I’d give her a bad online review for the smoking. But my room had stayed mostly smoke-free and was comfortable– and god knows, she needed the business she got and the site was accurate.
When I left she gave me a present. A purple, extremely soft throw. A blanket. In the card she wrote this heartbreaking line: “I’m sorry that my brokenness has made you uncomfortable [sick].” The throw has been on my reading/writing chair. I use that crazy blanket all the time.

Then, with the host with the most out in Death Valley, I got another gift. Justin, the owner and operator of The Second Wind campground/resort where we stayed, was more suited to hosting guests than anyone I’ve ever met. The guy should be running an artist’s colony like Yaddo or MacDowell. He’s a natural, and every guest is an amazing, special person. He managed to be both welcoming and also not pushy or insistent on socializing. His place, with a natural hot spring tub he also managed brilliantly, was a real oasis.

He helped us find interesting places in the area and gave us the best quirky historical guidebooks. Justin suffered from a genetic degenerative bone disease. He took over the place when his father died, and he credited “the waters” for his ability to walk– even cured his limp. His father had been a sailor, a survivor of a shipwreck who never went on any body of water again after that– and instead built a dock, a lighthouse with a working light, and a stranded shell of a boat, in the desert on the edge of a large mineral flat. Justin has kept his father’s vast “installations” of found objects as well.

There was an issue with our septic in the motor home, which didn’t surprise or put me out a bit (there was a full bathroom not far away in the tub room). He felt so bad about it, though, that at the end of our stay he left me a sizable container of green bentonite clay. You can dig it right there on the property– one of three places in the world!

And so, I’ve also been having these bentonite clay masks since I’ve been back. Just mix with water (no metal instruments!) and apply. They are glorious. It reminds me of soaking in the tub to soothe my surprisingly-still-congested-although-my-cold-was-gone chest. Those soaks had me thinking about healing before I knew how much of it I needed.

And I can taste the sweetness of the grapefruit from his tree in Palm Springs, which he gave us for breakfast. And I can touch, as in a dream, the strange beauty of humans and landscape in that arid, impossible place.