A Sunset for Zebras

The zebras are the ancestors of the zebras released from Hearst’s personal zoo. Katy explains this to me on the bus that takes us up the mountain to the castle. We’re doing a tour of the kitchen and the dining room and who knows what else? The museum at the bottom of the hill explains the life of the newspaper magnate in short bursts punctuated by black and white photos. I assume it will be hard to spot the zebras, because there are over a dozen grazing mere feet from the curved road. Katy gets excited the way that she did when we were children, and our father would take us to the zoo on his visitation weekends. I fantasize about taking a sip of the cocktail I stashed in my Stanley cup. Behind me, an older couple talks about how much fun they had in Vegas. The wife won. The husband won even more. Katy clears her throat.

A few hours later, the setting sun hits the De La Avenue Hotel on the less-populated side of the Strip. A man stumbles out of its lobby and asks the muscular gentleman working the door if he can call him a cab. The man’s son is still upstairs in the room that hasn’t been paid for playing with a cop car that has no one to chase. The boy was told to sit tight while his father went out looking for dinner, but he knows that he should put himself to bed if too much time goes by. The next day, the hotel’s staff will let themselves into the room and find the boy sleeping in the bathtub, because the bed smelled like beer and cloves.

When I meet the boy, I’ll ask him if he wants to go to the zoo, and he’ll shrug his reluctant acceptance. This will be his life with me until a suitable home is found. Outings and homework help and healthy snacks after school. I can be a good mother for a few months at a time, but I know anything beyond that will reveal me to be just as bad as the boy’s father if not worse. Katy will come by with bags of newly purchased books for the boy to read, and he’ll call her Auntie Katy, and I’ll have to correct him. He can only call her Katy. He can only call me by my name. At the zoo, we go to see the zebras, but we’re told one of them recently injured itself during a storm, and when the boy turns away, the zookeeper whispers to me that the zebra had to be put down. I asked what happened, and she said the sound of thunder caused the zebra to run into one of the walls of its enclosure. I remember that storm, but I don’t remember the thunder. I look at the enclosure and wonder if the zebra was simply looking for an excuse to liberate itself. The little boy asks to see the pandas next.

Katy takes the book out of her bag that she bought at the airport. She felt it was a stroke of good luck finding the book, because she had just gotten an email from her online book club letting her know the next selection, and there it was on the shelf. Newly released in paperback. It was a memoir all about an alcoholic whose father used to leave him in hotel rooms while he gambled. One day, his father didn’t return, and he was placed in a foster home where he was given the last name Gray. The home was run by a foster mother who also drank, and one day, on the way back from a trip to the zoo, she drove her car into a utility pole. Was it an accident? The boy didn’t think so. There wasn’t even any thunder.

What did thunder have to do with it?

I can’t see the zebras anymore. There are black clouds in the distance and Katy complains that if there’s a storm, we probably won’t get to see the famous pool. I tell her the pool isn’t on the tour anyway, because we opted to see the kitchen, and she tells me that the pool is included in every tour, and that she wanted to get a photo of herself in front of it. The man driving the shuttle tells us that every year, the employees of the castle get to swim in a pool as a special treat. I wonder if that’s what they get instead of holiday bonuses. The driver tells us that he doesn’t get to swim in the pool, because he’s not technically an employee of the castle, but of a separate company that’s hired out to run the shuttles. He doesn’t seem too broken up about it. Katy stares at the dark clouds belly dancing their way towards us as though she can will them away. I’ve seen her scare other, more ominous forces away from us. The couple behind us begin to bicker about who gambled more in Vegas. I can tell the husband is lying. I can always tell.

When we get to the castle, Katy is excited to find out that, as usual, she was right. The pool is available for us to look at and take photos of and we take plenty. All of them are of Katy standing in front of the pool, and I can envision the forthcoming captions.

Not coming home ;)

This is the good life

It’s the little things

In Vegas, the man is at the blackjack table and he’s sent his son home to Kentucky to live with his grandparents. He’s making good decisions now. Not at the table. At the table, he plays reckless. A zebra moves through the casino and the man assumes it’s some kind of publicity stunt. He sees the dealer reading a newspaper detailing the latest economic crash, and he shakes his head. Vegas isn’t what it used to be.

So few things are.