The Accidental Honeymoon. Portia MacIntosh
always still in bed. While I was on the way to work, not long after I left actually, I just decided I’d go home. I had loads of things I needed to do before this trip, but that wasn’t the reason. I just decided I didn’t want to go to work that day.’
The women look at me, puzzled.
‘You were suspicious?’ Liv asks.
‘I wasn’t,’ I tell her honestly – at least, I don’t think I was.
I should have known that moving to LA with dreams of becoming an actress was a long shot, but I had big dreams when I was younger. Instead of becoming an actress, I simply wound up becoming someone’s other half.
I work temp jobs, just taking whatever I can get whenever I can get it. A short-notice job came in for yesterday morning, filling in for a receptionist in a law firm. Work has been in short supply recently, so I accepted it, safe in the knowledge I could finish at lunchtime and then go home to pack our bags, ready for travelling today.
Perhaps on a subconscious level I knew something wasn’t right, but I don’t think so. I really did think we were happy.
‘I just didn’t want to go to work,’ I say softly.
‘Well, thank God you didn’t, honey,’ New York lady says. ‘You’re so lucky.’
‘Yeah,’ I reply, although I don’t feel it.
‘So you thought you’d come to Vegas to forget about him?’ she asks.
‘Not exactly,’ I reply. ‘We were supposed to be flying to England in the morning. I’ve been a bit nervous about it, so my fiancé booked us a romantic night here, to get the trip off to a good start. The plan was to fly from LA to here, spend a night having fun and then head back to the UK for a family wedding. But now it’s just me, and the hotel and flights were already booked, so here I am.’
‘So you’re on a romantic trip alone?’
‘I am on a romantic trip alone,’ I repeat. ‘And open to whatever you suggest as far as my hair goes.’
Liv teases my shoulder-length, mousy-brown hair with her fingers and pulls a face.
‘It’s not that this isn’t nice,’ she says tactfully. ‘It just doesn’t go with that smoking-hot outfit you’re wearing.’
I glance down at the gown I’m wearing to protect my clothes and cringe as I think about what’s lurking underneath.
When your heart has been broken, you don’t think straight, do you? Bad ideas seem like good ideas. Perhaps it’s a way of protecting ourselves, but we immediately snap into this ‘I have to show him what he’s missing’ mode. Whether it’s to prove a point to our exes or ourselves, I don’t know, but that’s what we do.
John is a well-known orchestral pianist (well, well known if you’re into that sort of thing). I played the role of his girlfriend perfectly, dressing and acting the part, which is probably why I’m acting out now.
I’m wearing a little red cocktail dress I’m now certain was intended for someone with fewer curves than I have, but, like I said, I was grief-stricken. I wasn’t thinking straight. And now, here I am, sitting awkwardly in my dress that is possibly too tight (and short, and low), in my heels that are probably too high, about to let Liv loose on my hair, which definitely has to be my worst idea yet. Oh, and for the first time since John gave it to me, I am out without my engagement ring.
‘So, you wanna know what I’m doing or you want me to just do it?’ she asks.
I think for a moment. When I started seeing John, the spontaneity slowly drained from my life. Everything had to revolve around his schedule, everything we did for fun was always on his terms. As a teenager I was a total wild child, but now… I don’t know what I am. I need to be spontaneous again.
‘Just do it?’ I reply. It was my intention to sound confidently decisive, but as my voice went up in pitch at the end, it just sounded like a nervous question.
‘You sure?’ she asks, giving me another chance to back out.
‘Yes,’ I reply confidently.
‘You in a rush?’ she asks, causing me to wonder what the hell she’s planning.
‘No…’
‘OK then, let’s get started.’
I glance at the $1,000’s worth of chips, fascinated that such little, unremarkable pieces of plastic could be worth so much money. They’re so gold I can see my reflection in them, and every time I look at them and catch sight of myself, it reminds me how different my hair looks now.
After what felt like a lifetime in the chair, I am now the proud wearer of very long, very blonde hair, or ‘Playboy Bunny hair’ as the lady from New York described it. With my light, bright, fresh peroxide colour, the long length curled at the ends, combined with my hastily bought midlife quarterlife thirdlife-crisis outfit (I am nearly thirty after all) – I can see what she means. From the new clothes, to the hair extensions, to all the new make-up I bought from the hotel shop, I look nothing like myself right now, and that’s fine by me.
Casinos are bizarre places, really. The room is split into sections, one end littered with green felt tables and the other home to rows and rows of brightly flashing, very noisy slot machines. It’s such a nice, sparkly, glamorous place at a quick glance. I’ve noticed a few people on winning streaks and, as miserable as I am, it cheers me up to watch people winning. A bit of good luck and they come alive, jumping up and down, victory dancing, grabbing their nearest and dearest (or just the nearest random person sometimes) in celebration. But when you stop and look, you can see the darker side to these places, those with anguished looks on their faces and just a few chips on the table in front of them. As their luck runs thin, so does their money. Just one good hand will turn things around for them, but sometimes it simply doesn’t come. It’s kind of depressing to watch and makes you wonder how much they’ve lost and what it will mean for them in the real world, after they leave the flashing lights and the free booze of timeless Las Vegas.
Without windows or clocks, it’s impossible to tell what time of day it is, or how long you’ve spent here without keeping an eye on your own watch. I can understand why people spend so much time here.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but I’ve been hovering by this Blackjack table for a while now – the only card game here I actually know how to play. John was going to bring me here tonight, teach me how to gamble, have me as his lucky charm, blowing on his dice like you see in the movies.
I watch as a forty-something, dark-haired man runs a hand through his hair as he waits with bated breath for the dealer to reveal his hand.
‘Blackjack,’ the dealer announces casually as he turns over his other card to reveal an ace. With the king the dealer was already showing, this hand is lethal and, with no chips left, the dark-haired man skulks off.
The dealer takes no joy from winning, effortlessly moving everything back into its place on the table, ready for the next player. The dealer looks over at me and raises his eyebrows, silently asking if I’m planning on playing. If I don’t do it now, I never will, so I climb onto the stool as gracefully as possible in my short dress and place my chips on the table.
‘Place your bets, please,’ the dealer says robotically.
I glance down at my golden chips, and take one final, long, hard look at myself in them. When the porter handed them to me, there was a little note with them saying they were complimentary chips and therefore could only be played, and not simply cashed out, otherwise I’d be spending this $1,000 on room service right about now.
From what I’ve observed, Blackjack is an amalgam of luck and skill. Luck comes from being dealt the right cards, but you need some skill to know what to do with them. But what if you left it entirely down to