The Balcony

For a late summer night, the Strip is surprisingly quiet. The Strip is never quiet by most any one's standards, but when you've wasted a third of your weekends out here for almost half a decade, you get a sense of when things are, relatively, busy. The sidewalks, as far as your vision stretches, are only loosely speckled with visitors instead of the typical throngs of exhausted gamblers and clubgoers. The emptiness is especially unjustified as the night is, in a word, beautiful. The often oppressive Vegas heat is tempered by a strangely lively wind, and the breeze keeps the eighty-five degree heat feeling about fifteen degrees more gentle.

Despite the late hour, your watch tells you it's ten to three, the sky is still that odd, dark- chocolate color only seen out here in late summer. The sky is cloudless but there's not a star in sight. Light pollution. The reflection of Vegas' millions of lights bouncing off of the sky's canopy masks the weak glimmer of the stars. Oddly paradoxical that being on the most illuminated piece of Earth restricts your visibility. Then again, fuck the stars. They'll be there long after both you and the Strip are dead and gone.

Your mind wanders like it does tonight due to a lot of things, most significantly of all, loneliness. Your friends have found girls and left over an hour ago. You, however, are still here by yourself, with no real hope of that changing anytime soon.

Out on the balcony, insulated by the glass doors, the blast of the club is muffled, but faintly present. You're exhausted. Not just physically. Emotionally. Fuck, spiritually. Last night was the same club. Same balcony. Same time. Again, alone, by yourself. Well, almost.

That night your friends had again already found companionship. Your exodus from the club out onto the balcony on that night was motivated by the slender silhouette of a young, dark haired girl. From beyond the glass doors, you watched her lean care-free over the balcony blowing smoke gently into the soft, warm night air. Her chocolate hair vanished into the sky behind her. Her brown summer dress flirted with the wind around her ankles. You paused, hand on the door handle, throat suddenly parched, and despite racing through a million variant introductions, decided to cleverly approach with "Hi." You never even got that far though.

As you pulled the door open, she flicked her cigarette over the railing. The illuminated end cut the night sky in its descent streaking the dark like a car's taillight in a shaky photo. "Thanks" as she passed through the door you held open. Her face was gentle. Dark, doe eyes and soft features. She was gone before you knew it. Stared through you like you were hardly there. Moved through you as if she was a ghost.

Perhaps she was. She didn't fit out here. She was beautiful before she was sexy. A contradiction in Vegas where you're aroused before you're attracted.

You came out here stupidly hoping for another chance at that moment. Last time the balcony was empty apart from her. Tonight it's empty apart from you. The breeze is the same, as is the sky, but they provide little consolation. It's beautiful out. The night. The lights. It's oddly moving.

The Bellagio fountain is visible in the distance. The seemingly naive dancing water moves quickly from playful to increasingly sexual as the show progresses. The sexuality embitters you slightly and you shift your gaze towards the northern end of the strip.

You think about the girl and wish, though knowing absolutely nothing about her, she was out here with you. Not because you long for it to lead to some exotic Vegas tryst, but because the moment out here, the night, the lights, they all mean nothing when you're out here by yourself. The pursuit of love, at least partially, isn't attraction, isn't sex, isn't family, isn't any of those things. It's shared experience. It's about having someone who can identify with you when you label a moment, a point of time, a place, an event, whatever, as meaningful.

You fish a lone cigarette and a book of matches out of your loose khakis back pocket. You stand where your ghost stood leaning over the balcony and wonder what she was gazing out at. The wind kisses your face and you carefully strike your match in the shelter of your hands and succeed in quickly lighting the cigarette before the breeze has a go at your flame. The newborn flame atop the match wiggles and flickers in the breeze but doesn't extinguish. Resilient. You watch it tranquilly for a few seconds. Then, like Lawrence, you callously pinch the flame with your thumb and index finger, savoring the brief shock of pain before tossing the deceased match over the railing.

Your ghost from last night appears beside you. You're startled but offer no reaction. The balcony is large. Forty feet long but she positions herself immediately next to you. Maybe she wants company. Maybe she wants her territory back. She's in a white sundress more appropriate for a daytime society event than partying at a nightclub. She conjures a cigarette to her fingertips.

She turns to you without smiling, and without any emotion, "Light?"

"No." You turn away from her as quickly as she blew past you yesterday. You add, "Sorry."

"C'mon," solemnly and incredulously.

"I was saying 'no' just gaying you but I actually've got nothing. This is my last."

She finally smiles. "Give it up, then."

"No fucking way." You follow with a long drag mocking her. You're painfully aware that you're playing the same games you always play.

"Cheerful bastard." The smile's gone, replaced with what looks like actual anger, and she spins around to head inside.

You keep smoking. As she starts to open the door to head back inside, you toss the book of matches you've had in your palm the whole time to her. She surprisingly and adeptly catches the booklet. She comes back to the ledge leaving the door half open. Not smiling.

The music blasts out the half open doorway.

I can introduce you to your maker
Bring you closer to nature
Ashes after they cremate you bastards
Hope you been readin' your psalms and chapters

She leans her elbows on the railing as she lights her cigarette, saying nothing to you. She wears a plain, red silk bracelet on her right wrist. Her right forearm is tattooed with two small Japanese characters. Shi and Ai. Death and Love.

You had wished that she was out here with you just minutes ago, but now you'd rather just be alone. Normally you'd comment on the tattoos. It'd earn you huge points. But as you gaze out into the night, you visualize where that path might go, her possible reactions, your responsible responses, how the night might go, how the morning might go, how the flight back to your real life might go. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. That's the problem. You spin around and head to the door.

The more you talk the more you irkin us
The more you gonna need memorial services
The Black Albums second verse is like
Devil's Pie please save some dessert for us

"What's your deal?" She says it angrily but the tone carries equal weight curiosity. Not that she's begging you to stay. She looks like she'd much prefer to be left on the balcony alone. She tilts her head back, arching her shoulders, and blows a perfect smoke ring into the summer night. It floats through the air with amazing clarity. The dry summer heat, perhaps. She's turned away and focused her gaze south down the Strip, but the ring hangs above her like a crooked halo. A smokey, morbid, crooked halo.

You pause, hand on the sliding door, and realize you're still holding your half finished cigarette. You see yourself, the fiery glow of the cigarette, and the reflection of the strip gazing back at you. There's nothing in the club for you. Heading back to your room alone is too depressing. You're young. In Vegas. You're supposed to be living your life, enjoying your youth, and all that other bullshit. You shut the door and turn back to the balcony.

You give her an answer. It's not one of those answers you mean to give. You never really mentally got past the decision to open your mouth -- the words just found themselves. "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here."

She looks at you with the sympathy and naivete of someone much younger, and much cleaner than the denizens of this part of the world. Her face shifts to the expression of a poker player trying to get a read. You turn away and blankly stare into the night.

She gently flicks a bundle of ash off the end of her shorter and shorter cigarette. Matter of factly, "I saw you come out here last night."

Normally you're mind would be racing for an excuse, a story, an anecdote. "Yeah. I don't know, I like it out here."

"Me too." She says it with sincerity, but coldly. She gazes back down towards the south end of the Strip. There isn't anything specific to see. Some people don't see the beauty in Vegas. The architecture is nothing special. The decor is, at times, magnificent, but just as frequently gaudy or rundown. It's not what you see, but what you're looking at. A golden, glowing kingdom, built in isolation from the world, constructed in the middle of the desert. When archaeologists thousands of years in the future discover Vegas, what will they think?

The fountain show at the Bellagio starts up again -- she quickly turns away.

Your cigarette is but a few breaths away from its last. You sigh, "It's kind of too much sometimes, isn't it?"

"The fountain?" You nod and she continues. "Yeah. I can never watch it." She says it as if the inability to watch the fountain was a great tragedy. She can't be older than twenty two or twenty three, but she speaks with a weathered boredom, revealing very obviously that she's spent a lot of time out here. "I'm Aya."

You introduce yourself. Neither of you smile. You don't shake hands. Your cigarette gives out first and finds itself, still smoldering, flung apathetically from upon high. Hers follows soon after meeting the same inevitable end.

You ask the question you know you shouldn't. But, you want to know, "Why are you out here?"

"I told you I liked it."

"You're not a local, are you?"

"No," she pauses for a while. "I live in DC. Just finished school there actually."

"GW?"

She shakes her head. "Georgetown." She quickly turns the conversation around. You talk about where you're from and what you like. You talk about DC together. Your favorite places. Her favorite places. Some of them are shared. Tenpenh. Teaism. Motoko. Eighteenth Street Lounge. The indie movie theatre at Dupont. You talk and talk and talk. You argue, joke, and laugh about everything and nothing. Well, not quite.

You talk about your friends. War stories and stupid misadventures. She doesn't.

The club is technically closed. It's way past four and sunrise is imminent. The sky is a million colors. Beige and gray, yellow and blue. The giant, red glow of the sun at sunrise isn't yet present, but is just minutes away. The silence has returned between the two of you, but it's not awkward. You both came out here to be alone and you've managed to do a good job of being alone together. Nothing more.

And yet, you know you won't be able to just let it go like that. You'll return home and think of her, dream of her. Her form, her voice, her solitude. You tell her, genuinely, "Thanks for staying out here with me."

"Feeling better?"

"Yes and no. When I go back home, this will be but a dream."

"That's Vegas. That never changes."

You wait a long time to reply. You weren't conjuring an appropriate response, but just enjoying the commonality in how the two of you think and feel. Without meaning to, you reply, "Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, today, you."

She laughs. She shifts her weight on the railing and spins around so that she leans back against her elbows and now faces the interior of the club. The inside is empty and the pounding bass is asleep. "I've read that." She seems particularly amused. "You've got it backwards though. I'm the girl in the dress."

"From the future?"

She smiles, but it hollows out quickly and she turns to face the sunrise while fidgeting with the silk bracelet on her wrist. Her eyes are teared as she stares out at the sky's transformation. You guiltily look away from her and watch the giant, red orb creep above the horizon. You wonder if the sudden spark of emotion in her is a product of the moment or something else. It doesn't bother you. You give her time.

She doesn't wait long to say something. Her voice cracks and strains as she does. "I come out here because I have to. I can't be in there. I can't." She pauses and turns away from you before continuing. "I haven't been out here, Vegas, for two years. My sister is getting married and this is her weekend to celebrate. I --" She turns back to you and looks hard at you for a reaction. Your face wears empathy but also confusion.

She removes the bracelet from her wrist and balls up the silk in her fist. She looks at the floor and says, face obscured, "I don't have a future." She puts the balled up silk into your hand and apparates off the balcony back through the doors into the club before you can respond.

You unravel the silk and stare back into the sunrise. Time passes and the sun sits comfortably along the horizon. When the realization finally comes, it's accompanied by tears and nausea. You stare at the rising sun until your eyes burn, and you continue to stare. Your problems, your priorities, your life. All seem so small, so far away. Eventually, after you've raced from despair to anger and back to despair again, you slump down on the balcony, turn away from the sky, and sit, back against the ledge, staring back at the door into the club.

The doorway frames your ghost. You've no idea how long she's stood there. She stands, glowing in the day's fresh light, with an expression of guilt tinged sadness. She mouths, "I'm sorry," but no sound comes out. She steps through the doorway back out onto the balcony, her long dress again flirting with her ankles, and she solemnly and silently sits down beside you.