While Drowning in the Desert

Chapter 1

A baby, I thought the next morning as I drove the Jeep down lonely Highway 93 toward Las Vegas. A baby, I thought, replaying the whole argument.

“We’re not even married yet,” I’d said to Karen as we sat on the edge of the hot tub.

“We will be in two months,” she answered.

We’d decided on an early-October wedding out at the ranch of our best friends, the Milkovskys.

I trotted out some old cliche I’d seen on a talk show. “But I thought we’d have some time together just as a couple before we brought a third person into it.”

“We’ve been living together for almost two years,” she reminded me. Then she got pissed off. “And how dare you speak of our baby as ‘a third person’?”

It had sounded so good on television, too.

“The damn thing’s not even born yet,” I muttered. Mistake.

“‘The damn thing’?! The ‘damn thing’?”

“You know what I meant.”

She looked at me accusingly. “You don’t want a baby.”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do,” I answered. “Just not right now.”

“When?”

“What, you want a date?”

“Yes, a date.”

I thought about it for a second, then said, “In two years.”

“Two years?!” she screeched. “Neal, I’ve been getting weepy over McDonald’s commercials!”

“Maybe it’s just one of those hormonal things,” I said.

That did it. She got up and stomped into the house before I could say, “And then maybe again it isn’t.”

So early the next morning when I said, “Karen, honey, I’m leaving,” she just said, “Good.”

“I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

“Yippee.”

“Uhh, can I bring you anything?”

“Sperm.”

Sperm, I thought as I reached Vegas’s northern burbs. I’ve become sperm. Sperm leads to babies. Which leads to diapers and rashes and colic and to a person, which was the scariest thing of all because a little person expects things from you. Daddy-type things.

The problem is, I have no experience with this stuff. No role model, as it were, my own father having been your classic anonymous sperm donor who knocked up my prostitute mother. No role model unless you count Joe Graham, the one-armed dwarf of a private eye who raised me, taught me a trade, and set me up with Friends of the Family.

A father.

I don’t know.

I was still thinking this over-and developing a wicked headache-when I gave the Jeep to the valets at the Mirage and found my way to the security desk in the basement.

“Hi,” I said to the thickly muscled, blue-blazered man behind the counter. I slid my wallet-open to show my driver’s license-over the counter. “I’m Neal Carey. I’m here to escort Mr. Silverstein home.”

“Natty Silver,” the guard said, chuckling.

“You know him?”

“You don’t?”

“Sorry.”

“Natty Silver!” the guard prompted. “One of the great burlesque top bananas. When that died he went stand-up. Worked this town when it was just the Flamingo. You probably saw him on Ed Sullivan.”

“That Natty Silver?!” I vaguely remembered the comic’s baggy checked pants and deadpan delivery. “‘Wherever you go, there you are,’ Natty Silver?”

“The one and only.”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“Ah, he did some more stand-up, a few shitty beach movies where the kids made fun of him. He faded. Christ, he must be, what, eighty-six, eight-seven?”

“Natty Silver,” I repeated.

“I’ll call up, let him know you’re coming,” the guard said.

Natty Silver, I thought. This might be kind of fun.

Uh-huh.

I rang the doorbell to room 5812.

“Who is it?” a voice asked from behind the door.

“Mr. Silverstein, it’s me. Neal Carey.”

“Am I expecting you?”

“Yes, you are.”

My head throbbed.

“Where are you from, Neal Carey?”

“Originally, New York.”

A long pause.

“City or state?” the voice asked.

Throb, throb, throb.

“City,” I answered.

Pause.

“East or West Side?”

“West.”

Another long pause, during which the throbbing turned to pounding.

“Mr. Silverstein?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?”

A trick question.

“Grant and Mrs. Grant,” I said. You have to get up pretty early in the afternoon to put one over on Neal Carey.

“What’s on the corner of Fifty-eighth and Amsterdam?” he asked.

“There is no corner of Fifty-eighth and Amsterdam.”

Who did he think he was playing with, a child? I thought with some annoyance. Of course, if I hadn’t been so annoyed, I might have asked myself the question: Why is Nathan Silverstein being so careful and what is he afraid of? But I was too concerned with my own state of mind to think of that. This is what happens when you tend to be as self-absorbed as I am.

The door opened a sliver. I saw a tiny face with big blue eyes peek out.

Great, I thought. My fiancee wants an insta-child and I end up babysitting Yoda.

“Hi,” I said.

Okay, okay. I never claimed to be a great wit.

“Hello yourself.”

“May I come in?”

“Why not?”

Nathan Silverstein was a small man with wispy white hair, a small beak of a nose, and skin as crinkled and tan as an old paper bag. He was wearing a white terrycloth robe with Mirage stenciled on it and a pair of cloth slippers.

“Say, didn’t I meet you in Cleveland once?” he asked me.

“I’ve never been to Cleveland.”

“Neither have I,” Silverstein said. “Must have been two other guys.”

Yeah, that’s me: straight man to the universe.

“You wouldn’t have any aspirin, would you?” I asked.