Prologue: Tiffany at the Sahara
Rendall, a British boxing and gambling journalist, begins his journalistic journey through boxing with the cryptic words, "It was a few hours after Frank Bruno attacked me at Betty Boop's Bar in the lobby of the MGM Grand that I decided to get out of boxing." He continues even more cryptically with references to the "listing white Plymouth" he is driving and to "Holmes's falling body." Either intrigued or befuddled, the reader takes a journey in the prologue to the Sahara and, accidentally, to Tiffany.
We imagine Rendall, the narrator and subject, walking from the MGM Grand. He tells us it's late and that he is trying to maneuver the listing car "away from Caesar's Palace," indicating that he had gone elsewhere (to Caesar's) from the MGM following the earlier misadventure and epiphany. He had come to Las Vegas to see the Holmes versus McCall boxing match. Rendall marks the time for us by saying the fight was "all ready over" (you have to be quick to keep up with his switches through time) before telling us that he had left the fight while it was still in its twelfth round. It seems the crowd was against Holmes, but "he was too cagey."
Now Rendall is limping his listing Plymouth to a "crossroads where he can go left to the Sahara," in all but derelict Downtown Las Vegas, or right "up the Strip to the Alladin." He notices a pattern of traffic flowing "right to left." He decides to "go with the flow" and heads left to the Sahara. Rendall takes a few stream-of-consciousness digressions, first declaring that "payday" or not, he is getting out of boxing. He wonders why Holmes, at age forty-six and reportedly wealthy, is still fighting. He bemoans the Plymouth's condition again while telling himself it is a "bad line of memory."
And then there was the Plymouth. Such a nice car when I hired it. White and shining, four good wheels. But this is a bad line of memory...
His second digression is to reminisce over the past of the Sahara Casino, a quiet by-way of a casino that once hosted the greats, like Dean Martin, but now hosted senior citizens looking for a little quiet gambling action, located in "Downtown Vegas," which was "about to be torn down."
[It was] the sort of disappearing place Hollywood directors kept filming as if Vegas was still like that, when it wasn't.
Rendall digresses a third time with thoughts of how the Sahara could become his new Aladdin, a place to be a "secret place" in Vegas, since the Aladdin was getting a make-over with the suites being turned into three separate guest rooms. Then recalling his thoughts, he berates himself for thinking about a new Aladdin when he has determined to leave boxing and Las Vegas.
He digresses in stream-of-consciousness once again to the Friendship Inn and Roy, "[s]uch a sweet guy," whom he had gotten caught up in the Frank Bruno incident (which is still vaguely mysterious to us). We learn they were planning a Mike Tyson TV documentary that Rendall would write; he would "put it together." Frank Warren was to make the connection for them with Tyson, but Warren showed up unexpectedly at the MGM with Frank Bruno, whose trademark bright blue suit seemed threatening even at a distance. Rendall describes Roy's face as he looked on at what happened, wanting to help but unable to: Roy said, "I have never been involved in anything remotely like this in my entire career in television."
Then Rendall's thoughts jump to Steve (another random name we can't identify) who pretended not to know Rendall "when Bruno made his move," even though Rendall had done business favors for Steve. Whenever his wandering thoughts hit upon something unpleasant, he regulates his thoughts away from a "bad line of memory" by saying "Forget it," and "Don't even think about it." Steve had been with him, laughing, "the night before" when he drove the Plymouth the wrong way into "Bally's car park," triggering the security spikes, which harpooned the tires (so that's why the rented Plymouth lists).
Rendall finally arrives at the Sahara. As he turns in, his headlights flash on a high-heeled girl crossing his path; she was "about twenty-one years old, black, wearing a bikini top and bright pink lipstick." When he enters from the "moonless, wet night," he is surprised to see a packed house with "muscular men and women whooping and shouting." After asking, he is told the "LAPD convention" booked the casino. He sat down in one of the two empty seats at the bar, and Tiffany, the "girl from outside," immediately sat at the other. Their conversation revolved around her interest in two hundred dollars, although he does tell her some boxing stories, adding "the Frank Bruno incident at the end." When she learns that the "people here tonight" are the "LAPD convention," she about flies out the door, her "Fuzzy Navel" cocktail still in hand.
Rendall's digressions begin again, triggered by the absence of a clock in the casino; casinos don't have clocks. He laments his lost ten years, dreams of a rest in the country, gazing "sleepily at the green and blue horizon," as all washes away. His daydream of the country, helped along by his own Fuzzy Navel, washes in with the room:
[It was] ebbing away, their whole world receding like a spinning globe. ... [It] hurtled, close-up glimpses writhing and rearing up for an instant, ... rattling voices, in snap-shots of doomed dances, to snatches of mournful tunes. And then it was gone.
He leaves the Sahara, puts his Fuzzy Navel down by the Plymouth, turns and sees Tiffany, still clutching her drink, walking in her high heels toward the Strip and other casinos.
No comments:
Post a Comment