March 2011

Before I even got in the taxi I asked the driver if he knew where the Liberace Museum was.

“Of course,” he assured me.

So I hopped in the back, the Luxor doorman slammed shut the door and then…nothing. We just sat there with the engine idling.

“So where we going?” asked my driver.

“Uhm…the Liberace Museum?”

“You know it’s closed, right?”

What? They closed the Liberace Museum? When did this happen?

“Last year sometime. I forget actually. But it’s been awhile.”

Jesus Christ. What’s this town coming to? There was a time—not that long ago—when the Liberace Museum was the third biggest attraction in Nevada behind the casinos themselves and Hoover Dam. Sure, it was in a tacky strip mall 10 miles out of town in a hard to locate neighborhood (which is why I’d asked my driver if he knew where it was; the last time I was there, about 10 years ago, my taxi driver got lost). And I suppose that most of his fans are dying off like veterans from the Greatest Generation. Still. What a shock.

Just as my dad loved Frank Sinatra, my mom adored Liberace. His amusing kitschyness was oddly comforting to her (perhaps not surprising for a woman who collected hand-blown glass clowns and troll dolls). His TV show, which ran in the 50s, was her favorite program. I remember feeling stunned when I first visited the museum and saw the ghostly black and white images from that series flickering across an old TV that looked very much like the one we had. You could also check out his bejeweled cars, pianos, and sequined tennis shoes. But it was the clips from the TV shows—foolish bits with Jack Benny, making jokes with his brother George—that evoked those evenings when my father, who thought Liberace was disgusting, would go off bowling, leaving me and Mom and Liberace—the dog, not the pianist—to our own little version of ‘50s dinner theatre: Swanson’s instant dinners served on a metal tray and a strange little man in a sequined tuxedo jacket playing Cole Porter.

And now it’s gone. What a pity.

I am holding up the line at MORE The Buffet at Luxor (what a perfect name for a buffet restaurant) trying to decide whether to go for the $19.99 all-you-can-eat dinner or the $29.99 “All You Can Eat All Day Pass.” Not that I’m going to have more than one meal here, but the deal is that if you buy the all day pass you can also get unlimited wine for $10 more. So the question is whether the extra $20 is worth it.

“How much is a glass of wine?” I ask the cashier.

“I don’t know, hon. I don’t drink.”

How could anybody work in a casino and not drink?

In the end I cheap out and go for the basic $19.99 pig-out minus the wine pass. My server, Jose C., assures me that “the drink lady” will be by in a minute. Meanwhile, I get a tiny little salad from the 30-foot-long salad bar. In front of me is an elderly woman whose plate holds two large, doughy rolls in addition to a mound of gooey potato salad and a bowl of Tang-colored Jello. It’s all I can do to not scream at her and tell her to put the rolls down. “Don’t you know that’s what they want you to eat?” I feel like shouting at her. “You’re going to get all bloated from the rolls and you won’t have room for the fried chicken for godsakes!”

Back at my table, I push around my little salad of romaine lettuce and pickled beets with bleu cheese dressing, waiting until I can catch Jose C.’s eye. He comes over looking sheepish. “No drink lady?” he says. No drink lady, I tell him.

He frowns and hustles off, the white bus towel slapping back and forth from his apron string in the back like a pony’s tail. A few minutes later Bea, the drink lady, comes by pushing a cart like an airline attendant. I order a little airline bottle of Vendange with its twist top that costs me $10, with tip, and I realize I should have gone for the “All You Can Eat All Day Pass” and paid the extra $10 for unlimited wine. Damn.

After I get my wine, I get in line for the buffet and fill my plate with three thick slices of roast beef (with horseradish sauce), kung pao chicken, two tamales, a slab of salmon, and two lamb chops. For veggies I get a pile of mashed potatoes with gravy.

As I sit there eating my meal, I watch as a bearish young man wearing a Yankees cap sits down next to me. He has two plates. On one is a large slice of lemon meringue pie (All air, pal!) and on the other are two ground beef tacos. Amazingly, he shovels down the lemon meringue pie first.

“What’s wrong with these people?” I think to myself as I desperately wave my hand in the air to signal Bea to come over with the drink cart.

I slept in late on Sunday before dragging myself down to New York-New York so I could read the Sunday NY Times and sip a latte in the pretend Greenwich Village. There was a parking meter—reading EXPIRED—next to my sidewalk table and the mailbox on the corner was spray painted with graffiti. Steam leaked from a manhole cover. For a moment I forgot where I was and actually considered grabbing a hazelnut biscotti at Dean & Deluca.

When I was done with the paper, I cut through Coney Island, avoiding the urge to try and flip a ring over a Pepsi bottle, and headed for the Manhattan Express Roller Coaster. But it was closed “Due to High Winds,” according to the sign, though I felt nary a gust crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. Just as well. At $14 a pop it seems a bit pricey for a carnival ride (although a Scream Pass, for $25 lets you ride it all day; then again, who would want to ride a roller coaster in Vegas all day?).

Saturday afternoon I made my way down The Strip to the Stratosphere where posters just inside the bridge to the casino give you “A Warm Slot Welcome.” I’ve been feeling just a touch on the moody side so I took the elevator to the Top of the World Lounge (imagine!) and ordered a glass of wine from my waitress, Selena, and watched as the sun slowly set over the mountains to the West.

Sipped my wine, listened to “The Magical Mystery Tour” playing over the sound system, and looked down The Strip as smoke rose up into the darkening sky from the pirate show at Treasure Island. Farther down was the narrow top of the Eiffel Tower, the spires of the Chrysler Building, and the black peak of a pyramid. My wine glass shuddered, the red wine rippling as if from an earthquake, as a roller coaster circled the bar overhead.

My mind was having trouble putting all these disparate visuals and sounds into a semblance of order: pirate fights, Paris, ancient Egypt, 60s music, the desert, a thundering roller coaster, Sinatra, red mountains, my father.

I ordered another glass of wine from Selena, a tall, stately blond who tells me she is a student at UNLV and wants to go to law school.

“Selena,” I said, “I feel like this building is slowly going around and around.”

“It is,” she said. “It rotates.”

“That’s good to know. Because I was starting to feel a little bit like Nicolas Cage in that movie.”

“What movie?”

“Leaving Las Vegas.”

“Never heard of it,” she said.

“You never heard of Leaving Las Vegas?”

She shook her long blond hair. “How old are you?”

“Just turned 23.”

I try and remember when that movie came out. Was it ten years ago? No, had to be longer than that. Maybe 15 years ago. Or longer. Jesus. Selena was just a kid. Why would she have seen a movie about a man who decides to commit suicide by slowly drinking himself to death?

“You look a lot like Elisabeth Shue,” I said.

“Yeah? Who’s that?”

“Nobody. It doesn’t matter.”

“You want another glass of wine?”

“Sure. Why not? What else am I going to do?”

The last of the light disappeared from the sky as all up and down The Strip the neon lights lit up the city, the Top of the World Lounge slowly spun in a circle, and a coaster up above me thundered about like angry angels.