blurring_the_edges_35_well_crafted_illusions birdmad You spend the time doing a little collection work here and there for Jimmy and Henry to take up the slack that resulted from Billy deciding to lay low after your little "intervention." After all, it was only through a few bits and pieces of well-executed negotiation and buying-off that BIlly's last episode didn't land the lot of you in jail. The laws of probability are not on your side anymore. Fuck all that, you can skip past Valentine's day this year. You spend it by ransacking a pricey house and beating the holy hell out of it's occupant who never sees you. It is times like this that you are glad no one who can only hear the sound of your voice would ever know you stick out like an assortment of sore thumbs and turds in punchbowls in these neighborhoods. Occasionally, to throw people off you put on a phony accent that throws them off even more, sometimes a slightly aristocratic English, sometimes a really thick Indian accent like that family of slumlord apartment owners from that big scandal near your grandmother's neigborhood. When you're feeling really tricky, you throw out a nearly impenetrable Scotsman's voice that leaves them wondering what the fuck you are saying until you stop and repeat yourself word for word. You laugh because they've all met you and have no idea that you're the collector who has taken portions of their debts out of their asses and in their ignorance they've glad-handed you time and again and welcome you into their homes. Since your half-assed resurrection, you have been feeling brazen, maybe even a bit callous in your approach to life and things in general. Weeks away from your 21st birthday, you go on a club-hopping binge with Tricia and indulge every opportunity the two of you can scare up. Surpisingly, you opt, more often than not, to remain mostly sober, taking the occasional dose of E that you can score from either Jimmy K. or from a girl who hangs out occasionally at The Works. You don't need the drugs to numb you now, you are already there. You feel next to nothing and no longer need Allison or Dana to build a reputation for you in advance. The only thing you need the chemistry for is to put a new spin on the reality to keep it interesting. With the illusory exception of time spent with Tricia, none of it even remotely resembles anything having to do with love. Between some of the clubs in Scottsdale and some of the bars along Mill Avenue by ASU, you go on a bacchanalian tear leading up to your birthday, which you spend relaxing among family for the sheer sake of contrast. Taking some more vacation time from the factory, you are pleased to discover that your sisters think it would be a good idea to take you to Vegas to commemorate the occasion of your turning 21. The gag here is that they would have likely gone anyway, but the occasion of your birthday provides them ample enough justification. After some discussion, you subtly manage to have it planned it out so that your sisters will do their thing and you will do yours and all will be happy as a result. You tell Tricia who flies up and meets you that Saturday morning after breakfast in front of the Tower Records near the north end of the Strip. You spend the rest of the day walking around taking in the sights of The Strip and looking for the more appropriately debauched sections of Las Vegas. Just after sunset, you make your way down all the way to the south part of Las Vegas Boulevard and walk over the Rio where you decide to try your luck at some slots. The two of you become bored even after managing to win fifty dollars in fairly short order, drawing the occasional envious glare from the bleary eyed, obsessive old ladies who occupy many of the slot machines. Tricia seems a tiny bit smitten by the cocktail waitress in the rather skimpy outfit who passes by on the way to bring a comped drink to someone at one of the blackjack tables. Now that, dear Alex, looks intriguing. Blackjack...and yeah, the thought of having a little fun with Tricia and the waitress if she's game for it. Letting your curiosity be your guide, you stalk cautiously over to the Blackjack table and ask if you may sit in. Another terribly cute woman in a similar outfit to the waitress walks by, stopping to convert some of your cash to chips so that you may play along. Between the $50 you just won at the slots and the $200 you are carrying on you, you decide to convert eighty dollars into chips, all in five dollar values, since that is the minimum bet at this table. For usually being Murphy's bitch in some matters, you turn out to be fairly lucky at the table, managing to beat the house on several occasions and turning your eighty dollars worth of chips into two-hundred by going balls-out on a couple of good bets. The cute waitress whose shapely ass led you to this table comes back to comp you a drink, which you largely let Tricia drink, preferring to focus on the game. Near the edge of the slot-bank, a couple of drunken frat-boys begins to harass the waitress on her way back to the bar. Not being able to help yourself, you opt out of the game and get to the spot just before security comes to check on the lady and give her a hand with the tray she dropped when one of the little bastards stuck out his leg in front of her. A few seconds after you make it over to the situation, Casino security comes and asks the frat-boys to leave. They do. She thanks you as you help her and Tricia comes and offers to help if you'll go back to the table and win some more. Looking back over your shoulder as you sit back down at the table, you see Tricia doing her best to proposition the lovely young Rachel. This, like your quick win, draws the rather disapproving look of the teeming horde of little old ladies in the general vicinity. Not much you can do when, without much in the way of persuasion from Tricia, she accedes to the idea, which you learn from Tricia as she stands behid you through the next couple of hands, leaning in to whisper into your ear that Rachel has just under an hour to go before her shift is up and to meet her on the seventh floor of the hotel area. You are so distracted by the thought of what's going to happen that you call for a hit even though you are holding sixteen. The next card turns out to be a bust, but the dealer busted as well and only the other player managed to stay low Two hands later, you have, through the sheer luck of the draw, managed to get back up by almost anoher hundred. You feel quite lucky... And when Tricia and Rachel are both in your grasp and you are at their mercy a little while later in Tricia's hotel room, you feel luckier still. 030510 what's it to you? who go blather from