













 (Note: Leslie's adventures will be serialized in future
        issues of DREAM FORGE.)

 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 TRAVELS WITH LESLIE
   by Leslie Meek
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 The Adventure Continues,
 Part 5, (XIII, XIV)
 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

 Travels With Leslie
 August 28, 1993

   LAS VEGAS, NEVADA -- Las Vegas is just like buttermilk. Either
 you love it or you hate it.

   No one, it seems, can maintain a blase attitude while visiting
 this plastic, soulless city of obsessions. The glaring neon lights
 burn as a 24-hour reminder of the city's false promises and its
 founder's ultimate arrogance. Those who turned on the switches for
 the first and last time did so assuming they could deceive a human
 being's innate ability to distinguish the nighttime from the day.

   The illusion works for thousands of people who walk its casino
 lined streets at all hours of the day, looking for something for
 nothing. If they paused to consider who paid the electric bills,
 they wouldn't be here. But they are here, hoping they will leave
 with more than they came with from a city that takes more than it
 gives.

   I drove down Las Vegas Boulevard with a well-nourished attitude
 problem. I was tired. I was hungry. I was lonely. I watched the
 people on the "strip" ablaze with fantasy gone riot and forced back
 pictures of the long, solitary drive from Corpus Christi. I was
 overwhelmed with the feeling that, somehow, I had left reality behind,
 stranded in the desert. I thought back.

   I had watched through my windshield as the sun set over the rusty
 orange sand, yucca plants, and jagged out croppings of un-touched
 stones. From my speeding van, it seemed the cactus trees were holding
 up two hairy arms toward the sky and pleading with me to stop. Granted,
 the neck is a bit too long and the head non-existent, but otherwise
 the trees look remarkably human. With the setting sun behind them,
 they stand as authority figures over the desert floor. But they seem
 to become more patient and approachable when the light dims.

   At dusk, I pulled off the highway onto one of the million little
 sandy trails that scar the desert. I bumped along through nowhere
 until the highway behind me was just a tiny string of silent lights.
 I turned off the engine and took off my Nikes. Leaning back in the
 seat, I took my first real breath of air since my trip began.

   "Silence" is an unfit word to describe what surrounded me. The
 desert whispers to those who listen. It hums for those who dream. I
 knew only that I was exactly where I belonged at that moment in time.
 I thought about my friend, Jennifer, sitting in front of a computer
 screen somewhere, searching for a word that made some sense, and
 wished she were with me. She belonged there as well, just at that
 moment in time.

   When night falls almost all of the desert's creatures, both large
 and small, respond to their instinctive alarm clock and venture out
 onto the sand. This is their time to eat, to play and sometimes to
 die around the watching cactus. They do this without thought. They
 wouldn't change any of it -- even dying -- because this is the way
 it is meant to be. Those who survive return to their crevices, holes
 and bushes to sleep during the day; none of them with even the
 slightest expectation of another night.

   As I watched the desert come awake outside, I began to understand
 the difference between being alone and being lonely. This evening
 would be all that mattered to creatures blessed with not having to
 know why things were as they were. Some would find another of their
 kind and copulate with no less passion than we do, yet, part happily
 and unchanged. They do not fall in love, because love is not theirs
 to give or to take. Love is a gift, given all of them as part of a
 plan none of them would dream of designing or changing. They have
 only to share it and live it.

   I realized that I was just another animal put here as part of the
 same plan. As a human being, I differed from them only in thinking I
 could somehow change the plan. My loneliness was a byproduct of this
 arrogance. I had to be alone in the desert to understand that.

   I belonged there, just at that moment in time.

   I opened the door and waited quietly. A pack rat appeared from
 nowhere and tentatively studied a bush some 20 feet away from me.
 He circled it, then, satisfied, skipped off into the darkness. Soon,
 the area around me was teeming with animals living their moments.

   I took off the rest of my clothes, grabbed my purse and some
 blankets, and wandered out into the night. I did not watch my feet
 as I made my way between the scrubs. I had nothing to fear from
 creatures that crawl. Jeni wouldn't fear them either. We would call
 them by their genus, Crotalus, and understand one another. Most of
 mankind refers to them as rattlesnakes and watch their feet when
 they walk in the desert. Our fearlessness stems from playing with
 snakes instead of dolls when we were little girls and living with
 boys instead of men when we grew older. We've learned.

   In the desert, they rattle first.

   I stopped -- when it was whispered I do so. Then bunched up one
 of the blankets and impaled it on the needles at the base of a tall
 cactus tree. I spread out another blanket and sat down. Leaning back
 against the cactus, I listened and watched and felt. A gentle gust of
 wind swept by, swirling around my thighs, tickling and cooling me. It
 fluffed my hair, gently carrying strands and wrapping them about the
 thorns above me. The sand underneath me gave way for my comfort each
 time I moved. There was no competition among the crickets that
 serenaded me and no jealously within the owl that watched.

   Hours later I was zooming along the highway, nibbling on what was
 left of an apple.

   Heaving up and down over the bumps the highway was built on,
 I was filled with a new sense of determination about where I was
 going and what I was going to do. The cactus trees seemed to get
 smaller and smaller; massive four-legged structures carrying power
 lines into the city seemed to grow even larger. The van strained up
 a hill, then suddenly, bathed in impossible light below, Las Vegas
 began lying to me. A metropolis stuck in the middle of nowhere, it
 was a geographical obscenity.

                                *  *  *

 August 28, 1993


   LAS VEGAS, NEVADA -- I wonder if Eve would pick another apple
 if she had it all to do over again.

   After I had left paradise hours before, I thought I was prepared
 to go through with what I learned from the past to be a mistake.

   All of my new-found determination left me when I started fighting
 the traffic on the strip. That's when the attitude problem ripened.
 I struggled with the traffic for another block or so and then turned
 into the parking lot of Caesar's Palace. I parked the van and took
 out my laptop, the video camera, my smaller suitcase and my "escape"
 basket. The basket is one of those wicker carrying cases crammed full
 of stuff like books, poems, letters from friends back home, computer
 disks and old diaries. I open it up when I want to run away from today.

   I put the computer inside the basket and locked up my van.

   The giant hotel and casino loomed in front of me. It was an
 imposing building, all lit up in an impossible turquoise-blue
 color. I lugged my baggage to the front of the place and asked the
 guy standing there in uniform for a taxi. He raised his hand, snapped
 his finger, and wham -- a taxi zoomed up and squeaked to a halt beside
 me. I was impressed.

   The driver opened up the trunk and started loading the baggage.
 He paid particular attention to the camcorder case. I stood there
 and watched him. He reached for the escape basket.

   "No, I'll take it up front with me, if that's ok," I said.

   He opened up the back door and tossed the basket in. He stared
 at it as I ducked into the back seat. He closed the door behind me
 and walked around to his door and jumped in.

   "Downtown, please," I ordered.

   "Oh, you want the bus station."

   "Nope. Fremont street. Motels there below the Nugget."

   The driver stumped on the gas and we were off. He blended
 into the traffic with a vengeance. It gave me an inner-sense of joy
 watching him play out my resentments against the other drivers on
 Las Vegas Blvd. Besides becoming quickly bored with whatever lane he
 was in, the driver couldn't tolerate silence.

   "Fight with the boyfriend, huh?" he said, into the mirror. When I
 didn't answer he said, "Usually, luggage means the airport. You here
 on business or pleasure?"

   "Little of both, I guess."

   "Oh, I see." He was doing a bad job of hiding a smirk.

   As he zig-zagged over lines and between cars, I leaned back in
 the seat and tried to relax. The people outside were all anxiously
 casino hopping, hoping that the odds would be better next door. I
 watched them and realized that I was really very much in the same
 boat. I had come to "Sin City," as it is called by some, for different
 reasons -- but I was still repeating the same mistake and expecting
 something different to come of it.

   "I bet I could guess what your, ah . . . business is."

   I glanced at the driver and noticed that he had dropped all
 pretense of concealing his thoughts. So I returned to mine. I
 wondered about Eve and tried to remember if there was anyone else
 with an extra rib that crashed into her life. Maybe Adam was enough.
 Maybe she learned.

   "The video camera part of your business?" The driver asked,
 chuckling.

   "Well, kinda'. I . . . ."

   "Wow . . . . And what's in that basket of tricks there?" He looked
 back at me, leering.

   "You've heard of Crotalus cerastes?" I asked.

   "Ah, no . . . sounds pretty kinky, though."

   "Long, thin. It's got little tiny horns on it. Works the same way
 the sidewinder missile does. In fact, cerastes were around first."

   "Wow. I don't think I get you. But, I can call in and take the
 rest of the night off if . . . ."

   "The missile senses the infra-red heat from a plane's engine.
 Crotalus cerastes senses infra-red heat too -- from living things.
 We all give off heat," I continued, pointing to a single level motel
 off of Fremont Street.

   He pulled in and stopped in front of the lobby.

   "Yeah, I'll say. I'm pretty hot right now, if you don't mind
 me saying. I'm not a `Palace' guy, but I have some bucks. Maybe
 we . . . ."

   "It works perfectly in the dark. It's got a little pit in it's
 head, right underneath it's little horns, that tells it where the
 heat is," I said.

   "Cool."

   "That's why they call them pit vipers."

   "What the hell?" He spun around in his seat and glared at the
 basket.

   "Cerastes kinda' moves sideways in the desert sand, so they call
 'em sidewinders. That's where they got the name of the missile."

   "A Rattlesnake! Jesus!"

   The driver hit a switch that unlocked the trunk and leaped out of
 the taxi. He made the trip back to the trunk a lot faster than one
 would have expected from a man his age. By the time I got out, he had
 my luggage on the pavement and his hand outstretched for the fare.

   I know I wasn't doing a good job of holding back my smirk as I
 stood there, staring at the back door of the taxi. I had left the
 door open for him. The basket was on the seat. He followed my gaze.

   "Now, wait a minute, lady. No way. What do you . . . Jesus."

   I picked up my suitcase and camcorder and started toward the lobby.

   "Lady, what the hell? You haven't got everything. Come back!"

   I set my stuff down in front of the door and turned around,
 folding my arms across my chest expectantly. I just couldn't resist
 the temptation to buy some more moments. Opportunities like this do
 not appear often in my little life story of mice and men.

   "No way. No, lady. Nope." The driver was standing maybe fifty feet
 from his taxi, carrying on a very intense conversation with himself.

   I walked back . . . slowly . . . and ducked into the taxi for the
 basket. The meter read $9 and some change. I hugged the basket close
 to my chest and started toward him with a ten-dollar bill. When he
 gestured me away, I walked back and dropped it on his seat. Neither
 one of us would have considered a large tip appropriate.

   "I just love it when you call me a lady," I told him, as he
 crabbed back to his taxi.

   I checked into a room with two twin beds and two of the same
 oil paintings on four of the same walls. I tossed my suit case on
 the bed furthest from the window and picked up the phone.

   "Thank you for calling the Mirage Hotel and Casino, may I help
 you?"

   "Do you have a James Clark registered," I asked.

   "Yes, we do. Would you like us to connect you?"

   "No, thank you."

   I yanked the cord out of the phone and got out my laptop. I plugged
 the line into the computer, and waited while it booted up. Once I got
 Telemate blinking on the little screen, I chose The Night Exchange
 Bulletin Board and hit the enter key.

   While my laptop dialed my favorite BBS, I walked over to the window
 and pulled the drapes. The bright neon lights outside were now out of
 sight and soon, hopefully, they would be out of mind.

   I don't think much of buttermilk.

                                {DREAM}

   (Get the next issue of DREAM FORGE to follow the continuing saga.)

 Copyright 1995 Leslie Meek, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Leslie has been searching and in her travels relates to us what she
 has found so far. Warrensburg, Missouri is where the travels have
 begun and there is no telling where her search will end -- if ever.
 Perhaps leaving was her fist step to realizing -- she was *there* and
 already knew. She's eager to hear from her readers and can be reached
 via: U'NI-net's Writer's Conference and regularly logs onto  Crackpot
 Connection (816-747-2525). She likes to chat, if you catch her online
 -- tell her Rick said, "Hi!"
 =====================================================================

