THE LOBSTERS IN LAS VEGAS

A plague of crickets or an endless game of Yahtzee. Neon rainstorms and rat-pack martinis. Tin-foil hats and moon landings. She knows the game: you pays your money and you takes your choice. Enchiladas at Binion’s or veal Marsala at the Sands, a trapeze act overhead or Elvis at the wedding chapel, find the way to San Jose or just walk on by. The sun blooms like a nuclear blast. Someone draws up a plan for Paris. When the old hotels implode, such elegant debris, so many skeletons and shot glasses. The concrete billowing and glittering. For years a sky full of Liberace. For years a cart of dim sum rolling past. She sits beside the dancing fountain and says: it’s all a ghost town now. Heat shimmers as the Eiffel Tower leans in. She finds lobsters in a faux waterfall, in aquamarine pools of vodka, huddled on linen tablecloths waving feelers. Could anything be more alien to this world? She selects a queen from New Zealand and wonders about Trini Lopez, thinks about Caliban with his Sony Trinitron, feels exiled and washed up, like Paul Anka in a mezzanine lounge bar, singing to the drunks. She says Hunter Thompson was right, pulls meat out of the claw and dunks it in butter, flicks the brilliant shell with a fingernail, listens to it ring.