"You should have seen her."
Dan looks up from the typewriter he'd dragged from his tiny bedroom to the still tiny kitchen table to see his sister standing there, her eyes wide with excitement, gesturing wildly.
"I took a break and saw some of her show, and oh, her singing, it was amazing. Then she came through the casino afterward..."
It's early, 7 am and Dan isn't interested in his star-obsessed sister blather on about the latest rich and famous person to blow through the Stardust casino. He wishes he'd made another pot of coffee since the one he's been working on is almost gone. He wishes Jenny would shut up and go to sleep, crashing after her night shift working the tables. Instead she continues to babble on about things Dan doesn't care about.
"She had the most amazing pearls on and her hair, oh her hair was beautiful, and she smelled so good, and when I smiled at her I think she smiled back. She stayed in the casino for a while, at Mr. Archibald's private table, and he's sooooo dreamy, I wonder if I could get a serving job, then I could serve their drinks...can you imagine all the people I could meet?"
Jenny takes a breath, which briefly stops the verbal onslaught, plops herself down in the wobbly chair across from Dan and rests her chin on her hands. "Blair Waldorf," she sighs, looking ridiculous and moonstruck. "I was just feet away from Blair Waldorf.
She's wearing the standard casino uniform, white button-up shirt, black skirt, black nylons, comfortable black shoes. Her hair is up in a plain ponytail and she looks every bit the 21 year old she is except her eyes look tired around the edges. Night shift working the tables is taking its toll on Jenny. Dan's not sure this life is good for his little sister.
They've been in Vegas for six months and Dan still hasn't gotten used to the heat or the dryness or the constant activity. He hates the lights flashing all night and all day, hates the excess. He misses Brooklyn and his dad and New York in general. But Jenny wanted to come out, heard you can make good money, heard you can see movies stars and famous people, and Dan didn't want her to go alone. He told her he can write from anywhere, packed his bags and went west with her. They found a small, somewhat quiet apartment filled with mostly immigrant families off the strip and Jenny found a job working at the Stardust.
"I know you hate this place."
Dan looks up from his typewriter to find Jenny gazing at him, her chin still resting on her hands, her eyes a little sad.
"I don't entirely dislike it." Dan says, shrugging a little, not wanting to worry his sister or to make her feel guilty for dragging him out here. There are some good things if you look for them. You can drive out of the city, away from the neon glow that dominates the horizon, the landscape stretches on forever, and you can see the stars like you never could in Brooklyn. He does that some nights when Jenny is working and the apartment is quiet. He ends up on a bluff, fueled on coffee, characters and plot spinning his head, sitting in their old beat up car, the heat making the cracked vinyl seats stick to his legs, staring out into the darkness of the desert at night, making notes in his notebooks.
"Come work with me, make some fast money, get a couple months of rent real quick. Then you can sit around for a few months, work on that book..."
Dan arches his eyebrows in Jenny's direction. She's suggested this before and knows his answer. Dan wants nothing to do with that world; the gambling and drinking and whoring that keeps the wheels of Las Vegas turning. He doesn't want to be the hired help to the rich and famous, or watch people gamble away their life savings. He just wants to write, so he finds work doing freelance journalism, writing articles about local dog shows, girls in pigtails winning spelling bees, the occasional act of heroism. It's enough to keep groceries in the fridge, to keep gas in their car.
"Jenny..." he says in a low, chiding voice, telling her he doesn't want to hear this again.
"We could fly dad out."
Rufus is still in Brooklyn, playing in a local band that backs up local singers, scraping by like they always do. Dan misses him, tries to get enough money for a weekly phone call.
"No." Dan says with no uncertainty. "I don't care how easy the money is Jenny, I still have to wake up the next morning and live with myself, and you know that I can't do that."
"Ugh," Jenny signs, blowing a stray hair off her forehead in the process. "Such a judgemental prick sometimes, brother-o-mine."
Dan shrugs. He has principles. He crumples up the first draft of the latest article he's working on and tosses it playfully in Jenny's direction.
"Go to bed." Dan says. Jenny smiles at him and starts to get up from the chair she's been perched in. She heads toward her bedroom leaving Dan alone again with his coffee and typewriter.
"Hey," Jenny says, turning around with a big grin on her face. "You should try to interview Blair Waldorf. I bet that would bring in a big chunk of change. She's all the rage lately and I've heard she doesn't give many interviews."
Dan laughs.
"What would I ask her? How does it feel to be rich? Why don't you do something good with all your money? What about the civil rights movement? What's your favorite lipstick color?"
Jenny rolls her eyes.
"I'm just saying it would bring in more money than all these pithy human interest pieces you've been writing. And maybe I could come along and meet her?"
"Go to sleep, sis." Dan says, rolling his eyes back at her. Jenny giggles and prances down the hallway and Dan hears her slam her bedroom door shut. He won't see her until she emerges in the late afternoon to find he has dinner on the table waiting for her then she'll head out for another night at the casino. They've fallen into this pattern, Dan working furiously on his typewriter, Jenny working and sleeping, Dan cooking, like some old married couple. It might seem boring and domestic, but they also know that in this the strange hinterlands that are Las Vegas, all they really have is each other.
Dan returns to staring at his typewriter. He's working on a story about a local woman's prize winning poodle. She's the wife of the guy who owns a car company that caters to the rich and famous who come to Vegas to attend ritzy parties. Her poodles are huge with puffy pom pom heads dyed purple and she kisses them and talks to them in baby talk. Her fingers drip with diamonds and Dan thinks about how just a few of her rings could feed a family of four for a year. Dan worked hard to keep his face neutral during the interview, trying not to roll his eyes, biting his tongue and not asking her how she felt about the cold war or malnutrition in the inner city. He nodded politely when she listed in detail each dog's diet. Jenny might be right. Trying to get a bigger story might be worth not having to do these local interest pieces. Dan had met no one in Las Vegas he didn't find to be somewhere on the scale of moral decrepitude, and in his mind the purple poodle lady is no different than the spoiled brat diva currently headlining at the Stardust, so why not make some money?
He types a few words but Jenny's words keep rolling around in his head.
You should try to interview Blair Waldorf.
Dan knows nothing about Blair Waldorf. Well, nothing beyond what is written about her in the gossip magazines that Jenny leaves lying around their dingy apartment, the ones he only picks up out of sheer boredom from time to time. She is 24, from New York like him, but the other New York. The rich and privileged New York, where girls and boys go to boarding schools and come home for holidays, dads go to work with three martini lunches and moms survive on valium. He'd seen them at home when he wandered onto the Upper East Side, walking down the street with their arms full of shopping bags, ducking into limos, gossiping about who was going to the next party. He finds these people to be annoying and shallow and not part of his world.
He knows she's pretty. That's one thing he's made note of, pushing aside his disgust to admit that her hair is dark and glossy, her lips look soft and her eye sparkle, and if she was a different girl in a different place, Dan might find her attractive. If she wasn't a spoiled daddy's girl who was using his money to further her career, he might really dig her.
Dan laughs out loud, the sound a little jarring in the silence of their apartment. His sister is ridiculous. He's not going to interview Blair Waldorf. Then again...
It would mean money. Lots of money. Maybe he could even try to sell it to a national magazine, get a byline somewhere besides Las Vegas. "By D.R. Humphrey" in black and white, for thousands of people to read. Maybe it could open doors, finally get him in front of a publisher who would take him seriously.
Maybe Jenny's idea wasn't so crazy after all.
Dan gets up from the kitchen table. His hair is a mess, curls sticking up everywhere. He'll need to comb it. He's wearing a plain white t-shirt and there's at least two coffee stains on its front. He'll need to look a little nicer if he's going to go begging for an interview with the illustrious Blair Waldorf. He has that suit that his dad had bought him when grandma died. It should still fit. It's a few years old but it should work well enough.
She's at the Stardust. It's a huge place, full of people, and Dan has no idea how to find Blair Waldorf there, but he not going to find her sitting around at his kitchen table. He'll start by going there, looking around, maybe try just asking for her to see if she'll actually answer. It's worth a try.
Dan walks down the hallway and stands outside the closed door to Jenny's room. He can hear the latest Blair Waldorf song playing on the little record player she keeps on her dresser. Jenny is humming along and Dan thinks that his sister doesn't have a half bad voice, that it's actually really good. It's only a matter of what family she was born into that keeps her here working the tables at the casino, trying to make ends meet, instead of on that same stage that Blair Waldorf stood on last night, singing her heart out. This makes Dan sad for his sister. He knocks on the door.
"What?" Jenny says, irritatedly. "Can't a girl get some privacy."
"You're not asleep." Dan says. "I can hear your music."
"Excellent detective skills, big brother." Jenny calls out. "Now leave me alone."
"This is all your fault for putting the idea in my head." Dan answers back, "So, how could I find your Miss Waldorf?"
The door opens and Jenny sticks her head out, grinning, and wiggles her eyebrows.
"So you're going to do it, eh?"
"You mean sacrifice all my values as a journalist and a writer to whore myself and try to make some money. I guess so."
Jenny's face lights up with Dan's words. He knows she has stars in her eyes, thinking that if this works out maybe other doors will open, maybe they will get invited to parties and dinners, and late night soirees. Maybe she will finally get to hobnob with the rich and famous that she serves every night.
"Goody!" Jenny exclaims.
Goody, Dan thinks to himself. He's about to sell himself out and his sister says 'goody'.
TBC
