Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

My idea was to get into the room, accept the booze and baggage delivery, then smoke my last big chunk of Singapore Grey while watching Walter Cronkite and waiting for my attorney to arrive. I needed this break, this moment of peace and refuge, before we did the Drug Conference. It was going to be quite a different thing from the Mint 400. That had been observer gig, but this one would need participation - and a special stance: At the Mint 400 we were dealing with anessentially simpatico crowd, and if our behavior was gross outrageous… well, it was only a matter of degree.this time our very presence would be an outrage. We be attending the conference under false pretenses and from the start, with a crowd that was convened for d purpose of putting people like us in jail. We were the Menace - not in disguise, but stone - obvious drug abusers, with a flagrantly cranked - up act that we intended to push all the way to the limit… not to prove any final, sociological point, and not even as a conscious mockery: It was mainly a matter of life - style, a sense of obligation and even duty. If the Pigs were gathering in Vegas for a top - level Drug Conference, we felt the drug culture should be represented.

Beyond that, I’d been out, of my head for so long now, that a gig like this seemed perfectly logical. Considering the circumstances, I felt totally meshed with my karma.

Or at least I was feeling this way until I got to the big grey door that opened into Mini - Suite 1150 in the Far Wing. I rammed my key into the knob - lock and swung the door open, thinking, “Ah, home at last!”… but the door hit something, which I recognized at once as a human form: a girl of indeterminate age with the face and form of a Pit Bull. She was wearing a shapeless blue smock and her eyes were angry…

Somehow I knew that I had the right room. I wanted to think otherwise, but the vibes were hopelessly right… and she seemed to know, too, because she made no move to stop me when I moved past her and into the suite. I tossed my leather satchel on one of the beds and looked around for what I knew I would see… my attorney… stark naked, standing in the bathroom door with a drug - addled grin on his face.

“You degenerate pig,” I muttered.

“It can’t be helped,” he said, nodding at the bulldog girl.

“This is Lucy.” He laughed distractedly. “You know - like Lucy in the sky with diamonds..

I nodded to Lucy, who was eyeing me with definite venom. I was clearly some kind of enemy, some ugly intrusion on her scene… and it was clear from the way she moved around the room, very quick and tense on her feet, that she was sizing me up. She was ready for violence,there was not much doubt about that. Even my attorney picked up on it.

“Lucy!” he snapped. “Lucy! Be cool, goddamnit! Remember what happened at the airport… no more of that, OK?” He smiled nervously at her. She had the look of a beast that had just been tossed into a sawdust pit to fight for its life…

“Lucy… this is my client; this is Mister Duke, the famous journalist. He’s pairing for this suite, Lucy. He’s on our side.”

She said nothing. I could see that she was not entirely in control of herself. Huge shoulders on the woman, and a chin like Oscar Bonavena. I sat down on the bed and casually reached into my satchel for the Mace can… and when I felt my tumb on the Shoot button I was tempted to jerk the thing out and soak her down on general principles, I desperately needed peace, rest, sanctuary. The last thing I wanted was a fight to the finish, in my own hotel room, with some kind of drug - crazed hormone monster.

My attorney seemed to understand this; he knew why my hand was in the satchel.

“No!” he shouted. “Not here! We’ll have to move out!”

I shrugged. He was twisted. I could see that. And so was Lucy. Her eyes were feverish and crazy. She was staring at me like I was something that would have to be rendered helpless before life could get back to whatever she considered normal.

My attorney idled over and put his arm around her shoulders. “Mister Duke is my friend,” he said gently. “He lovesartists. Let’s show him your paintings.”

For the first time, I noticed that the room was full of artwork - maybe forty or fifty portraits, some in oil, some charcoal, all more or less the same size and all the same face.

They were propped up on every flat surface. The face was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t get a fix on it. It was a girl with a mouth, a big nose and extremely glittering eyes - a demonically sensual face; the kind of overstated, embarrassingly dramatic renderings that you find in the bedrooms of young female art students who get hung up on horses.

‘Lucy paints portraits of Barbra Streisand,” my attorney explained. “She’s an artist up in Montana…“ He turned to the girl.

“What’s that town where you live?”

She stared at him, then at me, then back at my attorney again. Then

finally she said, “Kalispel. Way up north. I drew these from TV.”