Ten Stories About Smoking by Stuart Evers Read Free Book Online Page B

which sounded like five dollar twenty. David fumbled with his wallet and
handed Li – if that’s who he was – a ten. The change was placed on the counter and the man went back to his television programme. David stood there for a moment, unsure what to
do. He had planned to ask for a taxi number, eat his makeshift breakfast and then get back to the hotel, change out of his suit, go down to the pool and swim, then shower and go to sleep in the
huge bed with the silky pillows. But for a moment that all seemed a preposterous idea. He picked up his coins, his bag of donuts and the root beer and left the shop, the door jingling like loose
change as he exited.
    Outside it was fully dark, the sky pricked with stars and spilled light from far-off casinos. David sat down at a concrete picnic table and tucked in to his donuts. They were slightly stale, the
glaze dry and powdery, and he ate them quickly without any real enjoyment. He cracked the seal on the root beer and took a long pull on it, the medicinal smell reminding him of the times he and
John used to hang around in the Newbury branch of McDonald’s, drinking root beer through plastic straws and talking about Susan Tucker, the sixth former who worked the Saturday shift.
    He lit a cigarette and looked up and down the road. There were no cars or people, no lights even. He kicked a stone with his boot and spat for no other reason than there was no one to see him do
it. Just as he did, the man from the shop came out, took a pack of Camels from his pocket and lit one.
    ‘Delphinium?’ he said.
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    The man gestured with his cigarette behind him.
    ‘You go Delphinium? Everyone come here, they all going. I can tell, you going Delphinium.’
    David didn’t know how to respond, but smiled a big dumb smile and hoped that would do. But the man from the shop then sidled up to David and tugged at his jacket sleeves. He had his
cigarette wedged into the corner of his mouth.
    ‘Look – Delphinium,’ he said, pointing to a cluster of lights in the distance. ‘Good casino, best in town.’
    The man looked around, his face confused and wrinkled. ‘Where’s car?’
    ‘I’m sorry?’ David said.
    ‘You no come in car?’
    ‘Oh, I see. No. I walked.’
    The man tugged on his sleeve once more and pointed to a thin fenced-in track. ‘Ten minutes. Fifteen most. I use for motorbike.’
    At the end of the pathway were the lights, and they were enticing. He squinted his eyes and the colours went to pixels. The man urged him forward and David started to walk rather slowly along
it. He wondered then whether this was entering into a trap. Whether he would be later bludgeoned or murdered, or robbed then raped. But he couldn’t go back, couldn’t now ask for the
taxi number or a ride back to the strip. It was the Delphinium or nothing. The man was waving him on, and David was smiling, feeling trapped even out in the open expanse of the desert.
    ‘Tell them Li sent you,’ the man said almost as an afterthought. David waved back, determined he would do no such thing. When he got to the Delphinium he would have a drink, a
cocktail of some kind, and then get the concierge to call him a taxi. He thought about that as he walked, the cocktail – a whiskey sour he was thinking, or maybe a Martini – and the
taxi, or perhaps a limo. Yes, he thought, a limousine; imagine the looks from the stag party as he tooted the horn, their blank faces as they wondered whether he’d won a million on the slots.
Yes, he thought, cocktails and limousines, home and bed.

    It took twenty minutes to arrive at the fifties-style facade of the Delphinium Casino and Hotel. It was brightly lit by two large searchlights and was swarming with people.
Uniformed valets whisked away broad-finned cars as doormen greeted their owners at the revolving doors. The people entering the casino were different from the kind he’d seen at the tables and
slots on the strip. They were smart, these