I land in Las Vegas, a city where I know nobody, for a residency. It is a hundred degrees, even with the sun disappearing behind the hotels and casinos, and my driver is telling me about how there are always traffic cones along the Beverly Green roads but never any constructing going on. He then asks me if I want to stop by Bonanza Beverage, recommends me a wedding chapel near to the Strip, talks about how the Las Vegas Convention Center, now bestrewed with scaffolding, is soon going to be the biggest convention center in the world. He drops me off at the Writer’s Block Bookstore, and I tell him, as he heaves my luggage, that it is the first independent bookstore in Las Vegas, the second in all of Nevada. “How good,” he says. “We need those.” He tells me to take care, pulls away and down South Sixth Street in his blue Bimmer. I then head up to my apartment, unpack everything I have, put on Carole King and the Beatles while I am working. By night, when it is cool enough but barely, I head north toward Fremont Street, in the bright and beautiful Downtown, where there are so many flashing advertisements and street performers—Frank Sinatra cover singers, unbelievable contortionists, Michael Jackson impersonators—and tourists from everywhere, like the Chinese couple telling me to take their picture for them, all contained insignificantly underneath such a great tunnel of sheer light. I then meet a girl, in a street corner’s White Castle, after she points out my Tower Records shirt. We begin to talk about everything, and she asks me what a residency is. I tell her that, for the time being, I am just here to write. We talk nearly through to midnight, really get to know each other. I tell her about how I’ll only be around for two weeks. Something changes. She laments it, how there isn’t more time. We could have seen so many things together, like the Neon Museum, or Chinatown, or a movie at the Beverly Theater within which we could project ourselves, she says. “I could’ve shown you everything.” I nod, wishing aloud, somewhat as a joke, for everything to be different. Still, we still manage to find some time to spend, and it is so good. Days then go by, entirely without her, and I am writing. I print out a quote by Roberto Bolaño, the one about Criticism, as well as a picture of a Korean idol I love, both of which I pin onto the corkboard before my desk, and I am writing. I am thinking about the girl from White Castle, and I am writing. In two weeks, I will think about her as I head back home, that nowhere place from where I came and where there is never any person around of that sort for me to have, someone looking for some kind of love, or simply the most banal incidents of time.
