“Wouldn’t it be funny if we got married?”
Daniel’s fingers drummed a nervous percussion on the steering wheel, a rhythm that had started miles ago and hadn’t stopped. The asphalt shimmered like black water under the desert sun as we crossed into Nevada.
“Yeah. It’d be fucking hilarious.”
“Mara, I’m serious.”
He said it like a dare, and for a second the air in the car changed, heat and silence crowding in.
Everything about this trip was built on the premise of not being serious. Spontaneity, reckless abandon, willful ignorance. Seriousness was the enemy of whatever we were doing here. It wasn’t in the script, and I refused to break character.
“It’d be seriously funny,” I conceded, shifting in my seat, the leather sticky against my thighs.
A text from Ryan popped up on the car’s display. Daniel pointed at it with his chin.
“Do you think they’d be mad?”
“Your friends?”
“Our friends,” he corrected.
I just smiled. Sloan and Ryan had already briefed me on their real concerns. No one was worried about a wedding.
Buffalo Bill’s announced itself long before we reached it, crowned with a massive neon buffalo in a light-up headdress. Our first stop. The hotel sat beneath the skeletal remains of a rollercoaster, rusted and sun-bitten, circling a riverbed littered with decomposing animatronic cowboys.
“Do you think they’ll let us ride it?” Daniel asked as we got out of the car.
Inside the Primm Valley casino, he bought cigarettes from the convenience store, practically skipping at the prospect of indoor smoking. He lit one for me and one for himself. Trees sprouted out of slot machines, and the grove sang with whirs and chimes.
“Babe,” he said, waving a crumpled twenty in my face, “let’s do an inaugural go.”
I rolled my eyes but watched him feed the hungry machine, watched the numbers spin. A few button pushes. Won twenty cents, lost a dollar. Some irritating beeps. Money gone.
“Too quick, barely counts,” he muttered. “One more. You got cash?”
“No, and I’m not your sugar mama.”
“I know.” He shrugged. “But we’re in Vegas, baby.”
“We’re forty miles south of Vegas, baby.”
We wandered through the false American frontier, lost in its manicured wilderness. Passed the same Wild West Denny’s three times, each loop a little more disorienting. The arcade was a ghost town, lit by the blue glow of claw machines full of unwinnable prizes, dusty Nintendo DSs from 2013.
Eventually, we found the main attraction: the Bonnie and Clyde Death Car. A bullet-riddled Ford, glass-encased like a holy relic. Real bullet holes pocked the steel panels; the windows shattered. Photos of their corpses on the autopsy table, young faces slack with death, Clyde’s torn shirt, faded blood, signed by his sister for authenticity.
“Holy shit. Bonnie was twenty-three.”
“She was my age?”
“Guess so.” He wrapped his arms around me, tobacco on his breath. “Would you go out like that with me?”
“I’d do anything for you.”
I wondered if I meant it.
#
The billboards shifted when we hit Las Vegas proper.
Smooth-skinned women with heaving silicone breasts beckoned from towering screens, promising something that only existed in the space between camera and billboard.
Lust itself, not objects of it.
Buffets rose in soft focus—mountains of shrimp and prime rib. Pornographic gluttony. Cars bigger and flashier than anyone needed. Pride with no pretense.
Some billboards had evolved beyond stillness: giant screens looping six-second clips—dancing girls, magicians, pocket aces falling onto green like a gauntlet thrown.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed. “So overstimulating. It’s like TikTok built a city.”
Daniel’s pupils dilated. “It’s sort of beautiful.”
“Eh. It caters to your monkey brain.”
“That’s what’s so beautiful about it,” he said, voice soft with reverence. “It’s honest. No tricks. Just pure id.”
We stowed his car in the Luxor parking lot and continued on foot. Every few feet, my suitcase wheel snagged on cracked asphalt toward the black pyramid ahead, a temple to excess.
“Fuck,” I gasped, covering my nose. Sulfur stung my throat. “Fire and brimstone. Do you think we just arrived in Hell?”
“Or Sodom and Gomorrah,” Daniel said.
The path to the front desk was a maze of temptations—restaurants, gaming tables, theaters—its layout deliberately confusing.
At check-in, the clerk handed us two keys and directions like riddles: “Right at Starbucks, follow signs to the gold elevator, South tower lobby, then another elevator—”
“Got it,” Daniel said, already walking the wrong way.
The room was fine. Stained carpet, clean sheets. Good enough.
We ate downstairs in the food court, surrounded by oversized everything—the portions, the drinks, the people consuming them.
On the way back, Daniel veered toward an ATM. I almost stopped him but didn’t. My stomach dropped when the machine spat out a thousand dollars in crisp hundreds.
“Oh. I thought we said we weren’t gambling.”
“Look at this place.” His eyes glittered like slot machines. “Even Sloan and Ryan would understand if we do one hand of each.”
“Each of what?”
“The big ones. Blackjack, craps, and roulette.”
I chewed my bottom lip. “No poker?”
“No poker,” he promised.
At the blackjack table, the dealer’s face was desert leather—lipstick settling into creases. “ID check,” she barked at me.
Daniel’s first hand vanished: two hundred dollars gone before I could breathe. Craps made even less sense, the table loud and carnivorous. Each time I looked down, there were fewer chips.
At roulette, the same ID check, the same scrutiny.
Out of the corner of his mouth: “Do I look that old?”
“Yes. You look thirty-two,” I murmured. “A very hot thirty-two.”
He bet across the board—black, first dozen, second dozen.
The wheel spun.
Twenty-four. Black twenty-four. The dealer’s marker landed with a dull click.
“Holy shit,” Daniel gasped. “We’re even.”
“Great, even is good.” I smiled, rubbing his arm. “Let’s be done, too.”
But he was already stacking again.
“Dan,” I said, tugging his sleeve. “I’m so tired. It’s almost two.”
“Last one,” he promised.
I didn’t watch this time. I watched a gaggle of women stumble past in dresses slit to the bone. Reflexively, I checked my own waist, like my body might’ve expanded when I wasn’t looking.
“No. I’m going up now. You can stay if you want.”
“Okay, okay—no, wait.” He surrendered, standing. We cashed out what was left and took the gold elevator.
I texted the group chat that we’d made it, gambled a little, going to bed.
Sloan: What the fuck. R u serious.
Me: At least it’s not poker! This isn’t like before. It’s Vegas. A little bit doesn’t count.
Sloan: Ok. So now you’re done. No more.
Fuck her, I thought, the anger already hollow. She was looking out for him, but she didn’t even like me. Told Daniel I was “too nice for him.” Clearly, I wasn’t too nice to be his babysitter.
She was wrong, anyway. I was pretty fucking far from nice.
Breathing in his fancy shampoo, I slept pressed against his back, arms locked around his fleshy middle. A human leash.
#
“We just have to make it to the Sphere by, like, seven. Six-thirty for Shakedown Street.”
As we got further from the Luxor, people looked more recreational, less desperate. The meat wasn’t falling off their bones anymore; they looked almost human again.
On our odyssey across the Strip, we ducked into every casino we passed: the medieval castle, pirate ships, pretend Greenwich Village, a sexy circus, the Trevi fountain.
Under the downsized Eiffel Tower, Daniel spun me under his arm and kissed me.
“Welcome to the city of love,” he murmured against my lips.
“Wow, honey,” I said, hand on his chest. “Never thought you’d take me to Paris.”
“If we win big, I’ll take you anywhere.”
Hand in hand, strolling beneath the Parisian streetlamps, he sighed, “I love it here. We should do this more often.”
“It’s enchanting, in its own awful way,” I said, dragging him past the poker rooms, his neck craning for a glimpse.
At the Flamingo, a pack of actual flamingos moved gracefully inside a small, pink-lit enclosure.
“You know why it’s called the Flamingo?” Daniel asked. He liked to explain things. I liked to let him.
“Why’s that, Danny boy?”
“The guy who owned it named it for his mistress. She had long legs and a pink pussy.”
“Ew.” I choked on a laugh. “On second thought, that’s kind of romantic. Maybe.”
“I’d do that for you,” he said, arm snaking around my waist.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I’d name a casino the Mauva Mara. Or the Dusty Rose.” He pinched my hip. “Curviest casino on the Strip.”
I clamped my hand over his mouth to stop the flood of architectural plans. His tongue darted against my palm.
“Ew, ew! You vulgar man.”
But I kissed him anyway, right on the wounded look he gave me. “I really do love you.”
He looked down with eyes gone unfocused and fragile, like a frosted windowpane. “I love you more.”
He was probably right. He’d started as less than a suitor, more a research subject. I had a habit of wanting to unzip people, see what was underneath. My method worked best in sweaty sheets. Bare skin, soft parts exposed, guard down. Daniel was no exception. With little prodding, he’d bled stories onto my chest: addict parents, misdemeanors, a decade of sobriety. A litany of past mistakes—but at least he knew they were mistakes.
With him, the sorrow was right at the surface. That’s what made him different. His sadness wasn’t buried; it gleamed like broken glass. I wanted to keep it safe. I wanted to see what would happen if I didn’t. So maybe I loved him more after all.
“Then prove it, gamblin’ man.” I smiled. “Put your money where your mouth is. Build that casino.”
“I’ll do you one better,” he said. “I’ll marry you.”
“Shut up.” I snorted. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.”
“Well, if I meant it,” his fingers traced my jaw, “would you?”
“My answer would be the wrong one. Because I would say yes.”
“Then I have an idea.” He was already leading me back inside the Flamingo, through corridors that seemed to stretch forever, until another roulette table appeared.
“What if it’s not up to us?” he said. “Pick a number. If it hits, we find a chapel.”
“You’re such a freak.” The grin came easy, but underneath it an insane logic seized me. The wheel was steady. The numbers more honest than I was. Chance could keep my hands clean.
“Maybe. But you’re the freak who moved into my apartment two months after I met you.”
“Can’t argue with that.” I glanced at my dress. “And I’m already wearing white.”
“Serendipity! Thirty-eight to one. I like those odds.”
“Fuck it.” I shrugged. “Seventeen. For the day we met.”
“Beautiful! Trop belle!”
“We’re not in Paris anymore.”
One ID check later, he pushed all his remaining cash onto seventeen.
The dealer released the ball. The wheel spun.
Slow motion.
I thought of the debt we would share. My mother, apoplectic. She’d married a sober man, too, and hers didn’t stay that way.
Did I care? Maybe. But honestly, I’d rather have a fucked-up Daniel than a perfect anyone else. We were the same, inside, where it counts. I was just a better liar. I couldn’t run from a shared soul.
It would be stupid. It could be beautiful. And maybe I’d have a fantastic story — a divorcée by twenty-five.
Either way, we were kidding, weren’t we?
The ball landed on eight.
We laughed it off.
We were kidding.
#
The Dead played for what felt like forever. Daniel sang every word, soft and slurred, weeping at the ones that meant something to him.
I ran my hand beneath his shirt, tracing slow figure-eights across his back. I joined in when I knew the lyrics—songs my dad used to play in the car—and folded into myself during the ones I didn’t.
By the end, my throat was raw from desert air, my legs heavy as if they belonged to someone else, someone embalmed, maybe. The concert high dissolved, leaving only me, limp and too tired to lie about it on the long walk back to the Luxor.
“I think you need to get drunk,” Daniel said. “Let me buy you one of those stupidly huge slushy drinks.”
“I don’t want to drink. I want to go home.”
“You’d look so funny holding one. It’d be half your height.”
“Pretty sure I saw a literal child holding one earlier.”
“Come on, just one.”
“Daniel, quit it. I don’t want to drink. I am not your goddamn drinking proxy.”
His hands rose, palms out. “Jesus. I didn’t mean it like that. Just thought it’d be fun.”
I reached for his hand, which barely moved in mine. “I know,” I said. “I’m just tired. Really tired.” I checked my phone. “We walked twelve miles today. I need a bed.”
“Sure thing, Miss Mara,” he said softly, kissing my temple. “I’ll rub your feet when we get back.”
Two more miles. A spiral through the Luxor. The gold elevator. Finally, the room.
I peeled off the day in the shower and collapsed into bed, still damp.
When I woke in the middle of the night, my arm reached for him.
Cold sheets. Empty space.
Bathroom: nothing. His things were still here—the luggage, the shirts I’d packed, the sunscreen I’d bullied him into using. But his phone was gone. His wallet. Room key. Gone.
I debated texting Sloan and Ryan, the overzealous sobriety guardians.
Instead, I set my phone on the nightstand and stared at the ceiling, heart racing.
The highlight reel unspooled: home games with his art-world friends; casino dates that turned into marathons; phone angled away, offshore sites, credit lines; “just one more all-in to get even.”
Affection as distraction. Bad news followed by good-morning kisses.
Minutes or hours later, he crept back in. Quiet. He stripped off his clothes, reeking of tobacco.
I kept my eyes shut, breath steady like a child faking sleep.
He slid into bed behind me, arms a cage.
He whispered, “I love you so much, Mara. I don’t ever want to lose you. I can’t.”
Silence.
“Please don’t leave me. Please don’t ever leave me.”
Maybe it was lucky we didn’t hit the seventeen.
A wife wouldn’t have a choice.
#
I didn’t say anything when we woke up with checkout looming.
Didn’t say anything at the landmark Starbucks, ordering breakfast with sleep-sticky eyes.
Didn’t say anything as we navigated the casino’s exit maze or climbed into the car.
My silence wasn’t pointed. Just steady.
I kept turning it over in my mind, examining it like a cracked glass.
Daniel kept asking what was wrong.
I kept saying, “I’m tired.”
On the monotonous drive back, we came upon Zzyzx Road. We’d promised on the way in to stop there on the way out—sightseeing, detour, something offbeat to give the trip shape beyond Vegas debauchery.
The road was dusty and unkind. As Daniel drove, I read aloud from Wikipedia about the place: murder-suicides, cults, bodies facedown in the brush.
It ended in a parking lot. Far off, a crumbling building squatted.
“I really don’t feel like walking,” I said. “My feet are killing me. Can we skip it?”
Daniel didn’t push. He squeezed my foot where it rested on the dash. A gentlemanly retreat.
We passed old tires, an SUV with blacked-out windows parked askew. We slowed to gawk until something moved inside. Daniel hit the gas again.
The road forked, or pretended to. One path back to the freeway; one trailing into the desert, guided by phantom tire tracks.
Daniel grinned, mischievous. “Shall we off-road a bit?”
His front-wheel drive Mazda wasn’t built for it. We both knew that.
“Sure,” I said, because the twinkle in his eyes dropped straight through me and settled heavy in my pelvis. “Fuck it.”
He steered off the road. The car shuddered, engine whining like a wounded animal. He pressed the gas. The wheels churned. The car sank.
He looked at me, face blank, waiting for me to panic first.
He tried every gear. Forward, stuck. Reverse, stuck. Slowly drowning.
Finally he said, “The only thing that’s gonna decide whether we get out of here is if you freak out or not.”
Those words shot to my heart.
He knew how to make me brave.
I got out, barefoot on hot gravel, my flip-flops abandoned in the seat. I pushed the car with all my strength. Nothing.
Again. The tires spun. Still nothing.
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” I said, breath hitching.
“Fuck!” He slammed both palms on the wheel.
I pressed a hand to my chest, counting breaths like I could slow my heart. “What about a tow?”
He looked at me like I’d suggested amputation. “Are you kidding? It’d be thousands. I don’t have that kind of money. I have work tomorrow. We’re hours from home. From anything. And it’s about to get really, really hot.”
I thought of the SUV with the tinted windows. Knocking. Asking for help. Getting dragged inside. Becoming part of the Wikipedia page.
I dug gravel out from under the tires with my hands. Peeled the floor mats from under our feet and wedged them behind the front wheels.
Please, I thought. Please.
Daniel always said something about his AA philosophy: powerlessness as serenity. Surrender. It had sounded condescending when he said it, but it made sense now. You push, you bleed, and still it’s not up to you. Sometimes the only choice is to believe it might move anyway.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Go.”
He hit the gas. The tires screamed. Dust choked the air. The car inched back.
Again. Mat, push, spin. Mat, dig, push. Each time, a few more feet.
“Am I going to hit that rock if I go right now?” Daniel shouted.
“What rock?”
“The giant one right there! Jesus, Mara—am I going to hit it?”
A jagged boulder, half-buried in the dirt ramp back to the road. Almost impossible to miss.
I shrugged. “Maybe. But you don’t really have another option.”
He hit the rock.
The car groaned, perched atop it like a monument. The bumper sagged, scarred.
The Mazda could be Zzyzx Road’s new attraction: The Daniel and Mara Death Car Experience.
After a few stages of grief, he repositioned the car again, angling for one last try.
I dug the wheels out one more time. The mats were half-melted, streaked with rubber, but still worked. Barely.
Please, God. I don’t ask for much.
Blood welled in the heel of my hand. I plucked out a pebble like a thorn. Little stigmata.
The last push. The car jerked, rolled, then surged backward, around the rock, up the incline. He made it.
I followed, stumbling barefoot up the gravel, the soles of my feet raw and burning.
Thank you, I thought. Half-prayer, half-apology. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
In the car, Daniel said something triumphant I didn’t really hear.
I hugged my knees to my chest and cried, tears cutting clean tracks through the dirt on my face.
I’d thought I was still playing smart. A few chips here, a few chips there. Enough for a story. Enough to call myself the babysitter, the anthropologist, the one running the experiment.
But that was a lie. None of this was only his. Every hand he played, I played too.
This wasn’t just his gamble. It was mine.
I looked at the road, then at his dust-streaked face. My stomach twisted — not because I wanted out, but because I didn’t. Because I couldn’t.
“I love you,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “But I’m not coming back to Vegas. Not like this.”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t let go of my hand.
And I didn’t let go of his, either.