Vegas Snapshots: Characters

A week ago I hit burn-out. I was weary in spirit. Then we spent four days in Las Vegas, and the strange, wonderful and delicious things that happened there gave my soul a jump start. Robert and I go often enough that we’ve settled into a happy rut. This time, the familiarity was punctuated by astonishment. But I’ll get to that later.

This trip turned out to be partly about people. Not just the ones we know, but also the ones we saw. We were both enchanted by a couple in their early 60s walking in front of us during a post-breakfast stroll through the Venetian. She kept grabbing his butt. I tried to take a picture, but it blurred.

Downtown, I saw a burly man with shaved head and graying goatee, muscles bursting out of muscles, one arm devoted to a lone wolf tattoo--- wearing an ornate gold Star of David over his wife-beater t-shirt. Obviously he doesn’t care where he’ll be buried.

I kept one photo that was blurred beyond recognition. The woman had to be at least 70, with a graceful presence you could feel from ten feet away, and a beautiful face. Her companion was a handsome young man who held her hand and looked at her with utter devotion. They exuded such serenity and happiness as they walked that I ran after them and snapped a picture although Robert tried to stop me. I hope I never forget them.

At one restaurant, a compliment about the food elicited the life story of the waiter. Apparently he’d been in the food industry for 16 years (he looked about 25 but was over 30) and had owned his own establishment at 18, traveled Europe with Eric Ripert and now was a triathlete who trained UFC fighters. The same thing happened the next day at a different restaurant, with a different waiter, who had a very different biography.

On the last night, the table next to ours was filled with defense contractors ranting about work-related issues despite the public setting. They paused to discuss the wine list (10,000 bottles long, this was at Aureole.) After much consideration, they asked the sommelier for a bottle of “red”, and then returned to talk of Afghanistan battles and product lines. A woman stopped by to say hello to one of them. She had been sitting unseen at a table directly behind the loudest complainer, and knew him professionally. I hope he hadn’t divulged anything proprietary.

Are you still with me? I’ll close on the astonishing thing as a reward for your patience. When I stopped by Aureole to make the dinner reservation, the reservationist remembered us from our first visit there nearly a year ago. She told us--- correctly--- where we sat. How many people go through there in a week? In a year? Why on earth would a hostess (not the server) remember us? But she did. At Bouchon, the waiter looked at us and said (also correctly) “I’ve waited on you before, haven’t I?” We hadn’t caused a scene, nor done anything notable in either place. I try to tip well by normal standards, but again, nothing memorable. It was downright freaky.