In Las Vegas, There is Hotel Room Food (Not Quite Room Service)

"I felt glad that I had not lost my temper, but nonetheless I was shocked and needed a little time for reflection, so I climbed down on to the platform and began to look around me for food. It was the last chance before Belgrade next morning. I bought six ham rolls off a trolley and a bottle of Chianti and some sweet cakes--it was not so good a meal as Chicken would have provided, I thought sadly, and what a dreary station it was." - Henry, narrating in "Travels with My Aunt" by Graham Greene

"It seemed at first another and a happier world which I had re-entered: I was back home, in the late afternoon, as the long shadows were falling; a boy whistled a Beatle tune and a motor-bicycle revved far away up Norman Lane. With what relief I dialled Chicken and ordered myself cream of spinach soup, lamb cutlets and Cheddar cheese: a better meal than I had eaten in Istanbul." - Henry, having returned to the security of his dahlia-centered world.

Chicken is the dinner delivery service retired bank manager Henry Pulling relies upon after a day of tending to his dahlias, the only real claim he has to an identity in the world. (He's not that retired, though. Think of it as ordering up pizza delivery.) If anyone should know him, they would likely know his dahlias more, that is until Aunt Augusta sweeps into his life and sets him on a course with her on a trip through parts of the world, which includes the Orient Express. But that's not why I've got these words here.

I read that above passage, and I didn't think of Henry Pulling dialing Chicken for his evening meal. I thought about the rooms my family and I have stayed in at America's Best Value Inn on Tropicana Avenue in Las Vegas, comfortably removed from the Strip, which is very convenient when it's 11 p.m. and you just want to get back to your room to bed, ahead of a day full of future hopes and hopeful house hunting. I thought about the binder in each room with information on the property itself, the emergency exit plan on the back of each door. Then my memory's attention went straight to the menu for some company that provided salads, hamburgers, desserts and wonderfully greasy appetizers such as mozzarella sticks to these rooms (I can only assume that they're wonderfully greasy, as most mozzarella sticks tend to be). Oh, there were also pizzas on that menu, and I imagined not only the usual delivery car with pizza boxes inside that delivery bag, but plastic bags with styrofoam containers holding all the victuals one could strangely want, when there's a diner just a few steps (or a few hundred steps, depending on which room is yours) ahead of the Best Value Inn rooms. But I suppose it's a matter of privacy then, of tiredness, of not waiting to journey back to the Strip or surrounding areas just to have something. (By the way, $8.99 for mozzarella sticks? It had better be mozzarella I can't readily find at Smith's in Vegas, or Ralphs here in the Santa Clarita Valley.)

When we drive past the California state line, into Nevada, I see the casinos that make up Primm Valley. I see the smallish rollercoaster (smallish compared to others I've been on in Florida and California) on the grounds of one, and the outlet mall near another, and I think about those employees. I think about the dealers, the pit bosses, the waitresses who live nearby, who may be hoping for something better, but being that this is such a tightly-knit area, at least in past construction of these casinos, it's not a huge dream at the moment, just something to help gradually get to that big dream. Little steps first.

When we get to Las Vegas proper, near the Strip, past the MGM Grand and the Tropicana, I think about the dealers there, and the pit bosses on the Strip, and the cocktail waitresses at Caesars Palace, who, depending on what hour you get there, wear these wonderfully short white outfits that remind me why I love and will forever love this rarefied world of gamblers, of dreamers, of imaginative chefs in high-priced restaurants, of parking garages where it's guaranteed that you'll find at least one out-of-state license plate as soon as you pull in, the product of intrepid travelers looking for life that truly cannot be found elsewhere.

But, looking at that menu in those rooms at America's Best Value Inn, I think about the people who make the food for delivery to these rooms, and I'm fascinated. I hear the planes take off from McCarran, I look up into the night sky, and I know not only are there obviously the pilots on board as well as the passengers either going back home somewhat victorious or totally devastated, but there are also those in the control tower monitoring the plane's progress from gate to runway to sky before handing the plane off to the next air traffic control center, those who cleaned the plane before its departure, those who man the ticket counters, those who sell the books and magazines and candy designed to distract people from the fact that they're now in a metal tube hurtling faster through the sky than they ever could on the road in their own cars.

To get to the point, while perusing that menu, I wonder where that building is located, when deliveries are made of lettuce, of mozzarella cheese, of dough for the pizza. I wonder how the people who work there got to these jobs from wherever they were before. Do some of them work for this small company because they want to feed weary and excited travelers who might not yet be ready to explore the Strip but still need something to eat? Do they work there because there's quite possibly less pressure to perform and deliver than there would be in the buffet kitchens and other prestigious kitchens on the Strip? Or is it just a stepping stone for some who eventually want to work in those kitchens?

Las Vegas is seen by many to be a transient land, where people don't stay long enough to form lasting and meaningful connections. Yet I am looking forward to becoming a resident and finding a connection like that. Despite the cynicism surrounding Vegas regarding its transient nature, I think it can be done. There are natives there. There are people who have moved there 15 years ago, who hopefully have daughters within their families who might be beneficial for me. There are hundreds of thousands of stories to be found each day. And, being a writer, I need that kind of place. Sure I'll have my full-time career as a campus supervisor at a school there, because money is nice in order to live comfortably enough, but all those stories. Getting all of that just from one menu in my room near Hooters Casino Hotel, can you imagine the other stories that are waiting? Just in the Pinball Hall of Fame alone, off the Strip, across from the now-closed Liberace Museum, there are at least 100 stories amidst those machines and the guy who lovingly maintains them. This is what I've been waiting for. And thank god for Graham Greene for indirectly bringing those thoughts back to me.

"What If They Lived" by Rory Leighton Aronsky, for Rory Leighton Aronsky

Five copies of my book, per my contract, arrived today via UPS in a box smaller than I expected, but no less anticipated. More on my impressions once I get past being stunned that I'm now an author.

Do I Want That Copy of "Travels With My Aunt"?

Maybe it was last year, or the year before, when I wrote about my love for the book "Subways are for Sleeping" by Edmund G. Love, about the every day creativity of New York City's homeless population in surviving. I discovered the book most likely out of curiosity after I had put it on hold and picked it up at the Valencia library. It stayed with me through all the time I spent at College of the Canyons. I checked it out often. I decided one day, some time after I had graduated, that after all it had been through with me, all the times that I read it, that it belonged with me. So I told the library I had lost that copy (I knew which one it was because it was a greenish cover, while the only other copy from another branch was an aqua blue), paid $34, and it was mine. I still have it, in a stack of favorite books that includes "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow, "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck, "The Music of Your Life" by John Rowell, and now "Two Gentlemen of Lebowski" by Adam Bertocci. "A Week at the Airport" by Alain de Botton, which I haven't finished reading yet, and which I bought from abebooks.com today, will soon join that stack because I want my next book to feel just like how de Botton writes. I don't intend to copy his style exactly, but that's part of my research, to see how others handle book-length reportage, since I love it more than fiction, even though this book is going to be fiction.

Recently, I've become enraptured again by "Travels with My Aunt" by Graham Greene, which was published in 1969. In 1972, it became a movie starring Maggie Smith, which I checked out of the library yesterday in widescreen, on VHS tape. I must be one of the very few in the nation now who still owns a VCR. I was planning to finish reading the novel today, in order to watch the movie properly tomorrow morning, but it's late now and it's been a busy latter half of the day with a few errands.

Same situation as "Subways are for Sleeping": Do I want this copy, too? Do I want to pay however much it would be after I said it was lost? I think this is the same copy I checked out last time, but that was the first time. This is the second time. It's not the 13th, 14th, 15th or 16th time. I feel a kinship with this copy, but really not as closely as with the other book.

It's not a question to be answered by the time I return this hardcover copy, which is pink, with illustrations of a bird inside a curved glass encasement, next to a black urn with a dahlia sprouting out of the top, the dahlia being the main character's favorite flower, which he maintains in his garden. I answered the question a few days before. Yes, I love this copy. But I think it's because of the sense of discovery of this story, and that I love it for bringing this story to me. But it's not the same as the deep connection I have with my acquired copy of "Subways are for Sleeping." Not only did I feel that I had truly discovered a writer like Edmund G. Love to enjoy, but he kept providing me with more to explore each time I read the book. And how unassuming that green cover is, just with the title on the spine and "Love" below it, I know what's in the book every time, but I always get that thrill every time I pull it from the stack. This copy of "Travels with My Aunt" is slightly more obtrusive. I may get the same thrill, but it would only be from the words. I don't mind that this book apparently began its library life in 1988. I don't mind the aging smells coming from it. It's part of why I do and will forever love reading, for smells like that, which also reveal its history, maybe just a bit of each person who reads this particular copy. But it doesn't feel like it will fit as well in my collection as that copy of "Subways are for Sleeping" does.

So I went to abebooks.com the other day and ordered the Penguin Classics edition from 2004. I can begin my own history with that copy. And, save for hopefully a passionate female book lover, it will never pass through anyone else's hands. It will be mine.

Sam Mendes: 007's New Boss

I was watching Annette Bening in "Mother and Child," marveling not only at the seamlessness of storytelling esteemed writer/director Rodrigo Garcia embodies in his films (and why I was stupid to give up "Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her" when I was getting rid of an excess number of DVDs), but also at the gradations of Bening's career. I realized how actually over the top her Caroline Burnham was in "American Beauty", which I knew was the point when I first saw the film at then-Muvico Paradise 24 in Davie, Florida (It's Cinemark now, though I've learned that that company has not changed any of the Egyptian theming, and it's nice that one thing I remember from living in South Florida has not changed drastically in the years since I've become a former resident), but I didn't know the extent of it.

And then, by extension, I got to thinking about Sam Mendes, the director of "American Beauty" and one of my favorite filmmakers (Garcia is another, and Barbra Streisand is probably the third). I'm still amazed, and very happy, that he's directing the next Bond film. It's pure joy to me, and one of the personal benefits of having been a Bond fan all this time. Some say that the Bond director is just the worker bee, just the one to answer to the producers, but with Mendes, that seems to be just a quarter true. With Mendes, and with his prestigious filmography (including "The Road to Perdition" and "Revolutionary Road"), I imagine this film will be an equal partnership, and Mendes will no doubt make his mark on this next Bond film. It will be in his style.

The Day's Plans - Conclusion

I got the bananas, and the gala apples, and the Bartlett pears, and the carrot chips, and the Yoplait Greek strawberry yogurt, and the hummus (Sabra spinach and artichoke, until I get to Trader Joe's, because there's a hummus there I want to try, though I forgot which one it is. I'll know it when I see it), and the Cheerios, and the library books (among them, two Nigella Lawson cookbooks just to read, and a huge book on ghost sightings. Time to begin research for my second book), and I love my mp3 player even more now.

No pita bread, and I don't mind. I do not think of the Sara Lee brand at all when I think of pita bread, and that did not look like pita bread. That looked like a pita bread philistine's idea of pita bread.

The Day's Plans

I don't have bananas. I need bananas. I don't have gala apples. I need gala apples. I don't have Bartlett pears. I need Bartlett pears. I don't have carrot chips. I need carrot chips (or baby carrots. I've become fond of them lately). I don't have pita bread. I need pita bread. I don't have Yoplait Greek strawberry yogurt. I need Yoplait Greek strawberry yogurt. I have roasted garlic hummus. I like it. But I need other hummus. I'm almost out of Cheerios. I need more Cheerios.

I have library books. I also have library books to return. And I need to pick up library books that will begin research on my second book. I haven't yet cycled my way through the rest of my mp3 player. I need to do that, to take pleasure in having deleted everything that was on there, and starting again and finally making it the way I want it to be.

(The first paragraph is dedicated to my first grade teacher, Mrs. Turner, at Stirling Park Elementary in Casselberry, Florida who had set forth a writing prompt about what we would buy if we had all the money in the world. I answered with the first thing I would buy (I don't remember what it was), and then followed up with each subsequent purchase, beginning with "After I buy...." whatever it was. I received my writing journal back with "Too many 'After I buys'" as her comment. Well, Mrs. Turner, I can do it any way I want now. And I have my first book to prove it.)

Lost My Dream Girl. I Hope There's Another One.

Last Wednesday, after spending most of the afternoon at IKEA in Burbank, and then wiping out two gift cards and paying some of my own cash at Barnes & Noble for 7 books and a magazine ("The Normal School," the most unique literary magazine I've seen in years), we stopped at a $1-only used bookstore near Fuddrucker's, where we were going to eat.

I ended up paying $9.88 there, for such as books as "The Brethren" (about the Supreme Court from the 1969-1975 terms), volume 2 of Richard Nixon's memoirs (The White House years), and "On the Road with Charles Kuralt." But those, even though they are always important because they are books, weren't even remotely important compared to what happened.

Meridith came up to me as I was on the right side of the store, looking at those shelves, and told me there had been a woman, about my age, at the counter, though she had only seen the back of her. The woman had brought books up to the counter and the guy ringing it all up said, "Only five?" The woman replied, "Well, I bought 12 last week."

Damn it damn it damn it damn it damn it damn it damn it!!!

If Meridith had seen more of her and could recognize her, I would have asked her to follow her, bring her back, and I would have seriously proposed marriage right then and there.

That's why, on all my profiles on a few dating websites I signed up for (the most convenient being OkCupid, because it's free), I added this: "You must love books, or be willing to love books."