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That's The Way Love Goes |
The Meeting
They roll passionately on the bedroom floor. They are both lost in the rapture of the moment, in the act at hand. Neither can believe this is happening; but it is, without a doubt, happening. It is, in a word, wonderful, and more glorious than any dream.
Las Vegas can be an exciting place especially to those who have never danced cheek-to-cheek with its dark lustful soul. It is many things to many people for many reasons; to some it is a Technicolor playground filled with endless neon-bathed wonder and to others a relentless raging inferno of forbidden temptation and despair. To him, it is just a weekend away from the normal tortures of life in Barstow, California. One month ago he and an old buddy had decided to meet there and like everything else in his life, all had gone according to plan. It had been a long time since he and his old high school pal had seen each other, seven years to be exact. Yes, everything had gone according to plan, almost.
As she leaves the casino after another long hard shift of dealing cards, she thinks to herself, "Tonight is the last night I'm working here." She hates working in casinos most of which are located in the gross bellies of nightmarishly egocentric architectural monstrosities whose outrageous room rates she could never hope to afford. She has come to loathe the seemingly endless wave of tourists who crash down over the Strip every single night; she hates their inflated egos, their low-budget tips, their disgusting backroom habits and humor, and most of all their puerile ability to blame her when they lose all their money at the table. She is a card dealer and although she thought she had prepared herself for the realities of living in the largest money-driven entertainment Mecca in the world, she had not, it seemed, prepared herself well enough.
It had been one year ago almost to the day that she had stepped off the Greyhound bus in Las Vegas, Nevada. It had been a long journey from Madisonville, Kentucky but she had made it. As she steps onto the escalator leading down to the south side exit she remembers her almost uncontrollable exhilaration at seeing, for the first time, what seemed like an endless carnival of lights that is, for better or worse, Las Vegas. For her, a wide-eyed Midwestern girl, it had been a once in a lifetime moment. That had been one year ago and now, as BB King soulfully wails in his legendary blues song, "The thrill is gone."
Now she is a dealer in a casino and now, once again, she hates her life. It’s two am, Friday morning when she walks through the revolving door exit of the hotel. As the warm desert wind kisses her sad and tired face she thinks, “It’s going to be a boring weekend.”
No one in Las Vegas noticed when on a warm Saturday evening at approximately seven pm a rather plain-featured young woman walking briskly down Flamingo Boulevard, not paying attention to anything in particular, bumped into two casually dressed well-groomed young men, apparently in deep discussion, walking in the opposite direction. No one in Las Vegas noticed when one of the young men instinctively reached out and touched her on the shoulder to keep her from stumbling. No one could tell that both of their hearts skipped a beat when their bodies made contact for the first time; certainly not the young man's companion.
They, however, noticed; the man and woman who met each other on that beautiful wonderful warm sweet Saturday Vegas evening. They would talk about it for many, many years to come for you see, "That's The Way Love Goes."
copyright 2005
Mark
Taylor |
