she wanders out the bellagio around three in the morning. by four the sidewalks sizzle here and the mojave wakes. her good hand clutches a white shopping bag, unbranded and tattered along the ridges. a dirty pair of jeans fade inside, right next to the canary yellow blouse she bought at the hotel gift shop back when she was riding high. she hoped to return it but couldn’t muster the strength to take it off, even after the cresting thrill ebbed and faded away. besides, seconds before she left she spilled a bourbon 7 along the neckline, and so now she carries it in mourning, like some euthanized old cat.

how far can she wander through paradise before the lights and sounds of the nearby traffic start to fade? a pair of high-heels hide away in her blue hobo bag. she wore them for only that one hour, when the gentleman in the felt stetson escorted her to the bar to hear her life story and laugh at her jokes: how long do you plan to stay in vegas? he dared to ask. i don't know, she snorted, forever? she brayed and sucked the olives of her dry martini. she crossed her legs at the knee so he'd notice her shiny red pumps. but the man in the stetson would be gone within the hour. everything would be gone within the hour: the crowds, the cheers, the chips.

but i'm a bottom dweller by nature, she thinks. i scuttle sideways along life's ocean floor. why, she could get down on hands and knees and lick the sidewalks of south vegas boulevard. it would taste like crystal, like bobby, like her mama’s house, like a night shift at the dollar store. the bottom was always in reach, right beneath her shoeless feet, and she could hit it face first without even trying.

odd, she thinks, that the bottom is so concrete, so obvious, so there, and yet the high is boundless, infinite, no matter how high she gets, she never quite reaches the top. we are floor beasts by nature, she fancies, turning upward to the clear blue sky.

she pulls and stretches apart the moist singles she shoved in her yoga pants for safe keeping. the concierge instructed her to walk south toward interstate 215. eventually she'll make it to the bus terminal. she’ll sleep the twenty-eight hours back home, and when she wakes, it'll have never happened. she chucks the blouse and the shoes and her ratty old jeans in the trash bin outside the delano. she walks lighter to the station, throws her money down and takes her chances one more time.