Adrian Ubina
Buyer for Strip Travellers

Me? I live in Westside. As soon as I get done delivering a case of special colored Nuka to a client at the Ultra-Luxe, I drag my ass home and hope I don't get shot before I make it to my mattress. It's—honestly, it's bullshit. I serve people living in the lap of luxury, and most days I come home to find some drunk passed out on my bed. It's ridiculous.

At 25, Adrian Ubina has built up a business as a "'procurement specialist'—which is just fancy Strip talk for a walking, talking shopping cart that brings stuff right to people's hotel rooms." Ubina is originally from New Reno, but moved to the Mojave soon after the New Vegas Treaty was signed to "see what all the fuss was about down south."

I hitched my way down to Vegas with an old caravaneer and her guards when I was seventeen. Luckiest thing to happen to me—some bright-eyed kid wandering down 80 with not much more than shitty old gun and a backpack full of food and water? There's no way I wouldn't have run into trouble. Luckily, I caught up to this little caravan outfit not too far from Reno. Bought a beer and got to talking with the caravaneer herself, and she offered me a spot as a "junior guard." Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure she was just taking pity on some teenager that she didn't want to see get smeared up and down 95, because I never so much as drew my gun. If I ever see her again, I'm gonna buy her a bottle of whiskey or something to give her a proper thanks.

My luck ran out when I actually got to Vegas, though, funny enough. Place was all lit up, though I don't think I was as dazzled by it as a lot of the tourists. Grew up in Reno, so, y'know, I like to think I'm used to light shows. It was still impressive, though. Must take a hell of a lot of electricity to run all that, but hey, NCR's got that dam up and running, right? Anyway, place looked nice on the outside, but I got stranded out in Freeside the first night I was in town. "You need a passport," all that shit. Might've tried making a run for it, but I was exhausted. Good thing I didn't—I've seen what those robots do to people.

So I stuck around in Freeside for a while. Place was on its way to becoming a shithole then, too. Took a while, but I managed to earn some caps doing odds and ends for people—some repair work, worked as a bouncer at the Silver Rush back when it was a casino—and managed to get myself a decent suit and a passport. Vegas is nicer on the inside, obviously, but if you don't have money to spare, it's a boring place to get ripped off for drinks.

Bounced around the casinos for a day or two before I came across this guy at the bar in the Tops. Big guy, looked pretty flashy—rings and stuff, a big gold cross, y'know, stuff you don't see on anyone but people looking to show off their money. Somehow, we got to talking, and my little stint with the caravaneer came up—I didn't mention that I was a "junior guard," figured the guy would drop me like yesterday's trash—and he goes, "Oh, so you're good with a gun? Know your way around the area?" What was I gonna say? "Nah, I'm so new I don't know where to go to take a piss"? I told him yeah, I'd been around the area for a while, and he offers me some caps to go pick up something in Freeside. Some fancy something or other he'd ordered at a shop.

Now, I'm no one's errand boy—or, well, I wasn't—but he offered me two hundred caps to go pick up this package and drop it off. Two hundred caps for a fifteen minute walk! I was still a dumb greenhorn, so I didn't ask, y'know, is it chems, is it a bomb. I just said, "Yeah, I'll go." Still had a little bit of luck going for me, though, since the whole thing turned out to be just as boring as I expected. I go, pick up a box, deliver it, and bam, two hundred caps in my pocket. Easy money.

And so I figured, "hey, maybe I could make this into a bit of a business." You know these Strip people, they don't like getting their hands dirty. Only reason they'll set foot in Freeside is if they're on their way in or out of Vegas. But they still want all the local goods, y'know, they want to feel like they're "locals" or whatever. But they only want the right local sort of stuff, stuff that'll show everyone how rich and travelled they are. None of those squirrel sticks. And here I am, and I'm not exactly a local, but I can learn fast enough, and I'm okay with a gun—well, I am now, I was crap at it until a ghoul sat me down and showed me how to hold one so I wouldn't break my hand when I pulled the trigger—and hey, why not? I could be a middleman. A buyer. Go out, pick stuff up, buy stuff they might like, come back and make deliveries and sales pitches, get paid. Just until I got on my feet. Easy money.

[Laughs.] Yeah. That was seven years ago and I'm still doing it. "Just until I got on my feet," yeah...

But I do like the job. I get to get out and see the world—I check out caravans and see what they've got, travel around and hit up other places like Novac and the 188. Some people just want more chems than they can get on the Strip or want them without actually having to show their face to buy them, but a lot of the clients I have are looking for exciting stuff, stuff they can take home and show off or give as "authentic New Vegas souvenirs." Sometimes they're looking for specific pieces, sometimes they don't have a clue, so I usually need to have a pretty good selection of items for them to choose from. Every week or every other week I usually take a few days off to go make my runs. Though it's more like every other week, now that they've got part of 15 shut down. Makes the trip a lot longer, but I guess it's better than getting mauled by deathclaws.

I suppose I should probably hire someone to actually do the legwork of going from place to place to shop around, but I don't make a lot of money, and anyway the legwork's the part of the job I enjoy the most. I've always liked travelling. When I was a kid I thought I was going to be running my own caravan by now, actually. I figure this is—well, maybe not the next best thing, but a step or two down. Not too bad. I'd be lying if I said there aren't days where I want to break off, get another brahmin, and sign up with the Crimson Caravan, but I've got a pretty good lot here, too. Better than a lot of the people I see on my way to and from the Strip, anyway.

A lot of my clients I meet by just talking to them at the bar. I mostly hit up the Tops—good bar, good casino, that stage they've got, it's a flytrap for people that want to show off their money but can't afford to get into the Ultra-Luxe. I do hit up the Luxe, too, though it's a crapshoot if I'm going to get in, and even if I do a lot of the people that go there just turn up their noses and act like we don't even speak the same language. Vault 21's not exactly the sort of place where people who want a buyer go. I like kicking back there from time to time, though—it's nice, laid back. Just not rich. Gomorrah...good money, but skeezy. All the clients that've screwed me over I've met at Gomorrah. The place is just bad news. I mean, all the casinos have their sketchy people, but Gomorrah...I don't know. I think it's the lighting. Place feels like a damn cave, even on the casino floor.

Regardless of the casino, though, the process is basically the same. Mostly you just have to go up and talk to people, get them comfortable with you. People don't trust you when you're just having a conversation, they're definitely not going to trust you with their goods. It's all about the relationship you have with people. If you're not a people person, there's no way you could do this. You've got to get friendly with them, booze and shmooze, get them laughing and talking about themselves—their money, what they've got going on back home, why they're here. What they like about Vegas, what they don't like about everywhere else outside of Vegas. Then you mention, "Oh, yeah, I can get why you don't like Freeside. Place is dangerous if you don't know the right people. But, y'know, I know the right people, and let me tell you what you're missing..." You go in for the kill. If you set yourself up right, it's easy money.

Do I like the people? Well. Some of them I like quite a bit. There's some people that are smart, funny, that aren't jerks with their money. They don't think it makes them fundamentally better than you or me. I can sit down with them, have a few beers, and really have a good conversation. Those are the clients I like best. Others...they really like to show off with their money, think it makes them so damn special that they've got a thousand caps they can piss away without too much worry. They talk about everyone else outside of Vegas like they're pieces of shit, me included. I try not to hang around them too much before they start thinking I'm their damn slave. Those people I don't like at all, no.

I don't think this is a big business. Honestly, most of my clients don't stay long anyway. There's a few who actually live on the Strip proper, but most people are just here for a few weeks. My client turnover's pretty horrific, but that's how it goes. This place runs on tourists, and tourists don't stick around. They do tip well, though, at least most of them. There's fewer crap-outs than you'd think. Most people like paying their bill, I think, so long as it's in their sweet spot, because then they get the satisfaction of knowing they have the money to pay their debts and get nice things without actually spending a lot of money. Or what they think isn't a lot of money. These people...

But really, there's no one else doing what I do. That's part of the reason I feel okay talking to you about all this, aside from the fact that most of my clients aren't permanent. I'm not worried about competition. It's not that other people couldn't do it, but I'm pretty sure people don't even know about it. Most people, I tell them I'm a buyer for people on the Strip, they go, "What? What the hell's that?" When I explain it to them, they go, "That's dumb, who would pay you to do that?" I mean, they usually phrase it a little nicer, but that's the gist of it. I don't blame them—if someone came up to me and told me the same thing, I'd go, "Well, what the hell use is that?" It's not prestigious work, not at all. But the way I see it, yeah, my job isn't exactly necessary, but it's not necessary to go and blow money on card games, either. I'm just playing to the market.

Besides that, it's hard work. It's like running a caravan except you don't get the same sort of respect. Most of my clients don't even know my real name—I go by another name when I'm introducing myself to Strip folks. Adrian Ubina just doesn't have the same sort of ring to it, and here, the ring is everything. Your image has to be top notch, absolutely polished. You've gotta look perfect, like everything else, or people just spit on you and laugh. It's rough.

One time, a few years ago when I was still sorta new to the whole business, I woke up a little late. I was in a rush, so I didn't do my whole morning routine—I have all these things I do in the morning, so I look as good as I can. You don't know how many clients I've gotten because someone likes my hair. [Laughs.] So anyway, instead of doing my whole morning routine I just brushed my hair back, threw on one of my suits that wasn't so nice. I wasn't going to be in it long, anyway, since I was starting on a run later that day. But I had to talk to a client on the Strip about some money issues first, and none of my clients are gonna say two words to me if I show up in travelling clothes.

So I run over to the Strip in this not-great suit, and I run up to where the guy's staying at the Tops, and—it's not early, exactly. Maybe, what, ten, eleven in the morning? Like I said, I overslept. So I run up and knock on their door, and the guy that answers isn't wearing anything but some ratty old robe. And get this—he's dressed like a damn hooker, and he says to me: "God, what happened to you? You look like you got caught in a brahmin stampede."

This guy, saying this to me! And his robe's probably over a hundred years old and probably belonged to some dead old lady. And he owed me fifty caps. I wanted to tell him where he could shove his brahmin stampede, but...well... [Sighs.] You've gotta make money, you know? You can't tell every asshole to shove it, much as you might like to. You do that, you're gonna find yourself without a dollar to your name. It's horrible. Some people treat you like dirt and you just have to smile and take it. I just wish people were a little nicer sometimes. We're all stuck in this hellhole together—you'd think we'd smile at each other a little more often.