Sunday, February 23, 2014

EPISODE 26


There is sometimes a moment when you first regain consciousness when you can feel that you don’t know where you are.  It lasts maybe a second or two, but the uneasiness of the experience tends to elasticize time, making it feel as though you are going through several stages.  First, the darkness obscures what may actually be the familiar surroundings of your own bedroom.  You might look at a bedside lamp and be unable to interpret what you are seeing.  Once that mystery has been solved and you come to understand that the lamp is indeed not the forehead of a large dog, you scan the room, looking for familiar outlines, your mind groping to recall what your room looks like and comparing it to the objects that come into view.  Eventually, you are able to determine that you  (a) are safe at home or (b) that have no idea where the hell you are.  On that morning, my experience fell solidly in the latter category.

I vaguely remembered arriving at the MGM only a few hours earlier and was able to judge that I might well be in said establishment, somewhere.  I got out of bed and wandered through a partly opened door into the bathroom, which was enormous.  It featured a stand-up shower, whirlpool bath, twin sinks and an obscene amount of marble tiling.  Once I finished my business there, I groggily worked my way to what looked like a second doorway, at the far side of the bathroom.  I was in no way prepared for what I saw next.

The room on the other side of the door was enormous.  The entire far wall was glass and it offered a panoramic view of the desert and the edge of the airport.  Off to the right, the twin towers of New York, New York and Excalibur loomed.  There was an opulent living room setup that featured a sectional sofa, 5 easy chairs and a dining room set that seated 6 people.  There was a full wet bar along the interior wall, opposite the windows.  A massive flat screen television adorned the wall across from the sectional.  I staggered across the carpet and noticed another door at the end of the room.  I opened it and found a mirror image bedroom/bathroom suite to the one I had just exited.  I turned back to survey my domain.

“You could play football in here,” I mumbled as I took in the enormity of the space.  Obviously the management of the hotel had either been more than just a little bit sorry for the incident at the blackjack table or they had confused me for the last of the Great White Whales.  Either way, this looked to be a more than suitable place to spend the rest of my trip. The fact that I was now not going to have to share a room at the Monte Carlo with another SlipNot salesman was a huge relief.  SlipNot, in their never-ending quest to make a dime stretch like a dollar believed strongly that bunking up improved the bottom line.  I couldn’t argue with that, but if your “roomie” was into staying up late or getting up early, this could really cramp your style.  My problem was that I usually did both, which tended to piss off the various salespeople with whom I’d traveled.  Allan was the sole exception to this rule, as he tended to need less sleep than any other human I’d ever met.  He could, however, fall asleep on an airplane during takeoff; something I eventually learned how to do myself.  That is a useful trick that all experienced business travelers must master, if they expect to avoid cracking up.

But on this trip, I had the biggest and baddest single room in town. It was still too early to do anything, so I went to the bar, prepared a glass of ice water and turned on that monstrous TV screen, looking for the scores to the previous day’s baseball playoff games.  The Cardinals had lost Game 3 of their series against the Astros 5-2, cutting St. Louis’ lead to 2 games to 1.  I listened as the announcer recapped what had been a well-pitched game by former Red Sox ace, Roger Clemens and then waited in dread for the American League score.

People from outside of New England sometimes have a hard time understanding just how painful the many, many years that the Boston Red Sox traditionally fought their way up the standings in the American League, only to (a) get into the World Series and have it all slip away or, (b) have the New York Yankees thump them before the Series was due to begin.  I suppose Chicago Cubs fans get it to some degree, but then they never had to cope with the same sinister force snatching victory from them at the last minute, seemingly every damned season.  Arguably they could claim though that the entire Universe was in on the plot to deny them a championship and they might have a good point at that.  Still, the awful domination by the Yankees has colored the distress that Red Sox fans have traditionally suffered like few other life experiences.

It was then with a very familiar sense of pain that I listened as ESPN ran through the highlights of the disastrous 19-8 loss that had been inflicted on the Sox during the previous afternoon at Fenway Park.  I lay down on the couch and stared at the screen as it showed me the Yankee rally in the 4th inning that began with Gary Sheffield hitting a 3-run homer and that was later capped by Ruben Sierra’s 2-run triple.  That had made the score 11-6 and things went rapidly downhill from there.  Sometime during the replay of the seemingly endless 7th inning, I dozed off, thereby saving me from having to endure further details of the massacre.


The next installment will be posted on March 4.
If you'd like to read the book today, GO HERE.

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