The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations by Paul Carr Read Free Book Online Page A

brief—romantic encounters with her, any odd sexual tension was long consigned to the past, allowing her to become an honorary guy for the purposes of wing-manship. Girls, we discovered, are less likely to be wary of men who are out with female friends.
    Still, tempting as it was to join the two of them in Vegas, there was still no way I was “in.” The whole point of my grand experiment in nomadic living was not to spend any more money than I would in London, both in terms of accommodation and also general cost of living. Assuming I managed to stick to that budget, I’d easily be able to
pay my way with regular freelance gigs. I really couldn’t justify any additional expenditure—including a flight to Vegas—this early in the trip, unless I could find some way of offsetting it against a saving somewhere else.
    Three percent battery.
    I closed Michael’s email. He’d have to have fun without me. And that’s when I noticed a third email. A one-line message, sent via Facebook, from Michelle: “Hey—come to Vegas—I’ve got a room . We’ll share . —Michelle xoxoxo . ”
    Two percent battery.
    A free room for two nights: that would certainly go some way to offsetting the cost of the flight. But there were other considerations too, surely. I mean, I couldn’t just abandon my meticulously detailed travel plans on a whim and fly off to party in Vegas. That would be …
    One percent …
    What’s the word?

Chapter 300
    Beer and Togas in Las Vegas
    R idiculous.
    “Fifty-seven men are in court today in Saudi Arabia, arrested on charges of ‘public flirting’ in shopping malls around Mecca.”
    The Fox News anchor tried to sound fair and balanced as he read the report, bless him. But it was a ridiculous story, and one that illustrated the gaping chasm—the gulf, even—between Western attitudes and those in the Middle East.
    The arrest of fifty-seven people wasn’t funny—not really—but hearing about it on an enormous flat screen television in Michelle’s room at the Excalibur Hotel, Las Vegas, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. All of the oil money in Saudi Arabia couldn’t afford to build enough prisons to house all of the flirters—and drinkers, and gamblers—in this place.
    A mecca of decadence and depravity, where even the check-in desks have gambling terminals built into them and drunken women on bachelorette weekends line every corridor, clutching two-foot tall plastic cups of alcoholic slush. Any one of the tiara-wearing, screeching, near-topless harpies I’d run into between reception and the fourth floor of the hotel would have eaten a Saudi flirter for breakfast.
    The hotel itself was shaped like a piece of knock-off Disney merchandise. It was supposed to conjure up images of Camelot castle—all red and blue turrets and plastic knights holding injection-molded swords—and yet, for all the millions they’d obviously spent on branding the place as “the Excalibur,” they apparently hadn’t thought to spend $20 on a book about King Arthur’s legend. The hotel’s main restaurant was called “the Sherwood Forest” and the gift shop sold Robin Hood hats.

    I should make clear at this point, that, even after receiving Michelle’s message back in New York, I was still planning to phone the Hotel QT and check in for the rest of the month. Really I was.
    Then I’d decided to have just one more beer—for the road—and, while the bartender was pouring, I’d used the web browser on my BlackBerry to check the cost of flights to Vegas. JetBlue Airways was offering a special last-minute deal: a return flight for $120.
    That meant if I shared Michelle’s hotel room I could fly to Vegas, stay for two days and then fly back to New York and still be under budget. If anything, it was fiscally irresponsible not to go. Four-beer logic.

301
    My flight landed at a little after 1 a.m. Pacific Time—4 a.m. New York time—and I took a cab straight to the Excalibur, where Michelle was