Vegas Elvis

“Vodka and lime.” I said in response to his raised eyebrows.

“You playing?”

I said that I was and showed him a crisp ten-dollar bill, before feeding it into the slot to the left of my monitor and chose Three Card Poker.

He nodded and turned to reach for a bottle of Grey Goose amongst a vast, laberophile's display.

“Baby, are you English?” she asked sliding onto the bar stool to my left, as the vodka and citrus slid onto my cocktail napkin just as smoothly.

“I am.”

“Beer.” She said to anyone behind the bar and I noticed the ice-white pearl of a flickering tongue stud.

She smiled, and placed a diamante-clad mobile phone onto the bar, along with a blood-red clutch bag. Someone from behind the bar, who had heard when she'd ordered, placed a bottle of Cerveza del Pacifico in front of her.

Sipping from the brown glass bottle, she gestured with eyes that had the beginnings of a little death around them. She was teasing down the right hand side of her skintight black leggings, revealing a tattooed American hip in the process.

I followed the curve of the etched Koi, its filigree scales arcing across a taut midriff toward the indent of her pierced navel, where a collection of water lilies drifted on the surface of her skin.

“What do you want me to do with that?” I asked her, draining the last of the vodka.

She laughed like musical honey, throwing back her head to reveal the smooth arch of a caramel throat.

“I don't want you to do nothing with it. I just thought you might like to see it.”

And with that she slid off the stool, smiled and hip-swayed into the evening, clutching the bottle of Pacifico by its slender neck.

“Another one?”

I looked back over my shoulder to see the bar tender hovering the bottle of Grey Goose over a fresh glass that already had a foundation of crushed ice and a slake of lime in it.

I nodded and he poured, before placing another diamond of cocktail tissue on the bar before me. But this time it instantly soaked up the residue of my previous drink. The sparkle doesn't take long to dissolve and maybe all of this ends tonight anyway.

I fed another ten-dollar bill into the mouth of the automated screen and quickly lost it in five successive low roller bets, one after another.

I downed the vodka and lime in one, the crushed ice sliding forward like a citrus avalanche against my top lip, before swiveling on the bar stool to face the cavernous hotel. 

Then I eased myself off it and joined the flow of human traffic.