MY TIME IN A LAS VEGAS TRUCK STOP BROTHEL
(PART 1)

We were just a few miles outside of Las Vegas. Our faces were drained of the delight that had decorated our expressions when had first approached the sparkling strip, 3 days before. The air conditioner in Sabrina's '87 Honda Caprice had sputtered out days ago, leaving us to wither in the dusty heat. To make matters worse, her window's (which had been stuck open on the moist and foggy San Francisco freeway) were now stuck shut. I held my hand out of the skylight, trying to direct the rushing air into the car, while I stared at the passing hazy landscape. Joshua trees reached their pointed thistles towards the cloudless sky.

"God, everything is so dead in the desert", Sabrina remarked, fanning herself exhaustedly with the map. My eyes scanned the patches of dusty shrubbery, thinking of all of the creatures that may inhabit the arid land. I refrained from making one of my annoying and unfounded comments like, "the desert is probably full of all kinds of undiscovered species", and continued to stare out of the window silently, letting my mind drift.

A man a few towns back had sold me a fossil of a seashell. He had, supposedly, found the fossil in his backyard (which was in the middle of the Nevada desert). I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the rolling terra cotta scenery at the bottom of the ocean. I began to think of all of the hidden treasures that a person could find in the vast "nothingness". When I opened my eyes, I saw a trace of smoke drifting past my window. At first, I dismissed it as my imagination or a heat-induced hallucination. Then the trace of smoke grew to a billow, and clouded my view, snapping me out of my trance.

"Oh shit!" I cried, my hands grabbing the dashboard, "The engine's on fire! FUCK! Pull over, pull over!". A sulfiric smell filled the car. Smoke was now washing over the windshield. The first thing that I thought was that we were both about to become one of those hidden treasures in the desert that I had been dreaming of. Our fossilized bones would be found ages later, and sold to some unknowing young girl.

I got out of the car, heart pounding, squinting my eyes and dodging the cloud of smoke. "I thought I saw smoke, but I wasn't sure", said Sabrina. She began to bite her nails viciously, with a concerned look on her face. I could see her slipping into that familiar state. As her best friend since childhood, I knew it all too well. She simply couldn't handle the stress. In a few moments, she would be practically catatonic.

I put one hand on my hip (something that I often did to convince myself that I was in control), and the other hand over my brow, to shield my eyes from the sun. I scanned the terrain for a sign of life. When I saw the giant sign that read "Angel's ladies" I breathed a sigh of relief. The sign was at the entrance of a long driveway that led to a group of trailers. It took me a few moments, but I eventually realized that "Angel's Ladies", our only hope of survival, was a truck-stop brothel.