People watched my marble-stiff arms and static-still face for a moment and dropped money into the hat.
Fifteen minutes of unblinking, immobile performance, a few stretches to work out the trembling kinks in my arms and legs that looked like the ballet I’d learned in high school, and then I struck another pose, rotating through positions like a ballet dancer at the barre.
Eyes raised to the heavens, eyes down demurely, arms spread wide in hope, hands clasping the dying flowers to my bosom, an arch in my back, a toe swept forward like I was walking down the aisle, I performed as a living statue in my wedding dress and became as unthinking and emotionless as stone.
In my mind, I was Lady Macbeth’s madness with blood on her hands, Hamlet mining the depths of his despair as he postulated whether he could breathe and stay alive or if he would cease to be, and King John losing his mind, screaming,Mad world! mad kings! mad composition!
What a bride was I, a beatific smile masked on my face, but madness within.
When I finally stepped down off my wobbly suitcase at midnight, foot-sore and muscle-cramped, a hundred dollars in small bills was tied into the crinolines of my skirt.
Not enough for a cheap motel, but enough to eat and put some gas in my car.
Enough to keep me going until the next night, when I would paint myself like a stone wall and perform “The Bride” all over again.
Because I didn’t know what else to do.
Every day, I just tried to survive that day and that night.
Survival was the only thing on my mind: getting enough money to eat, keeping myself safe, and maybe having enough money to sometimes sleep in a hotel room instead of in my car.
Anything can happen in Las Vegas: anything wonderful, anything crazy, or anything terrible.
If you’re not a tourist gambling at the casinos, you’re gambling with your life.
Three days later,hewalked into Billionaire Sanctuary, and our eyes met just before he opened the door.
And I stopped breathing.
CHAPTER 9
billionaire sanctuary
LEXI BYRNE
Three days.
For three days, I busked on the extra-wide sidewalk in front of the hoity-toitiest restaurants and shops, plus that one obsidian building with no sign except for tiny gold letters etched in all-caps on the glass above the door.
Billionaire Sanctuary
That place,Billionaire Sanctuary,was the most exclusive of them all.
Shiny onyx glass panes wrapped the whole building like it was a celebrity wearing sunglasses.
Splashing from behind tall smoked panels on the rooftop suggested a pool up there.
Rectangles emitting wan lights on the building’s sides looked like occupied hotel rooms on the five upper stories.
No one who was just strolling down the sidewalk got in. The locked door didn’t even unbolt with a thump for them.
At night, caravans of black cars or SUVs stopped in front ofBillionaire Sanctuary.
Men wearing sunglasses and boxy suits emerged from flanking vehicles. They scanned the area and then opened the center car’s rear door, where a person or a few people stepped out, didn’t look around, and headed directly toward the black-smoked glass door, which would open as they neared to admit them and, sometimes, one or two of the security people. The rest of the bodyguards swarmed back into the vehicles and drove away into Las Vegas.
Sometimes, an insanely expensive sports car with the profile of a slim wedge drove up, and the driver left it idling on the street as they went inside. A valet trotted out and drove the car away.
Twenty or more times a night, that happened on Wednesday and Thursday.
