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CLUE NUMBER SIX (from Las vegas):


For the Hidden Journey:

The Hero is altruistic even when his/her altruism is unrewarded.


For the Puzzle:

Here is the sixth set of 5 letters of the puzzle/cryptogram:

a s a i i

To solve the puzzle, collect the other 13 parts and assemble them in order. This is part 6.

                                   


The Story:

All we wanted to do was gas the scene, have a few laughs watching people mainline greed, and stuff ourselves on the cheap grinds. Instead Alex immediately drops us into a nice squishy load of griff.

This is our first night, right? Our first night on the road, our first stop. We think we've got lots of money, plus I've got my $300 limit Mastercard, which makes me feel like King Tut. So we decide to stay at the Sands, which is like being beamed to another planet where every excess is considered normal. There's a fake volcano in front which blows up every hour, the whole lobby wall is an aquarium with tropical fish swimming around behind the busboys, and the first floor is a jungle, with palm trees and ferns and vines.

Then there's the people. It's rush hour on the Harbor Freeway without the cars. The place is jammed, even though we didn't get in until 10 at night. There's Asian groups, Hispanic families, Af-Am ladies dressed to the chin, fat white people, gay guys in tight shirts, brats hanging onto Mom, old folks in dayglo clothes, and icy bouncers dressed in blue suits looking bored and carrying walkie-talkies.

The hotel is famous for its white lions, which live behind a glass wall in this white palace with a big pool and a few palm trees. Everybody, including us, is goo-goo eyed, straining over some fat woman speaking a weird language who's hogging the front for a look at these white lions.

This idea comes to me and I tell Alex, "You know what would be strat? If a big crane came out every once in a while and grabbed one of the tourists and lifted them up and dropped them into the lion's palace. If they could climb this rope ladder, then they could get out. If they couldn't, they'd be Lion Friskies. It would be so Las Vegas."

Alex gives me a "You are weird" look, but I still think it would be great entertainment. It would make looking at the lions a lot more interesting, especially if they picked up the fat lady who's blocking our view. The audience could cheer the victim on, or if he was really ickabod, cheer the lions on.

The casino itself is this dark endless basement with flashing lights that disorient you and make you take your wallet out and remove the big bills and hand them to women in asshugging outfits who give you rolls of quarters out of trays they're carrying around. Then you belly up to one of ten thousand slot machines next to a zombie woman who's sold her soul to the devil for a jackpot of fifty dollars. She's just cranking away on the button because pulling the machine's arm gets tiring after about eight hours or so and she's already on the swing shift of her devil pact. The only thing that breaks her concentration is the jangle of your machine pumping out the quarters, and she gives you this look which says, "That should be my machine!," and if your jackpot was a good one and you get up to take a leak, she'll try to play both yours and hers.

(continued in Chapter Ten of I-State Lines)


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