Trust: Book One of Gypsies, Gamblers & Thieves

Chapter 4: New Year's Day

For Thanksgiving, Maggie and I went to Atlanta, where we ate, danced, and laughed with the Hancocks and Boswells, Gordons, and Blackwells. Granny flew back with us to Vegas, where she found a bag of pot in my knock-off Gucci clutch.  She dragged me back to Georgia for Christmas and New Year's Eve.

That holiday season, some back-door dealing went down. My grandmother declared Las Vegas "A Principality of Darkness." Then she informed my mother, my grandfather, and me that I would henceforth reside with my father, Clayton "The Madman" Dobson, and my stepmom, Roxie. My dad vowed to keep a sentry's watch over me at their house in Eisenhower Estates, a middle-class neighborhood on the "white side" side of Magnolia Lake.

Theabelle Pembury (that's my granny) moved back in with my Granddaddy Willow on Millview Street. Their tin and aluminum shack was in a neighborhood called Mosquito Hollow. The Hollow was one of a few places in Morrisburg where whites mingled with blacks, probably because almost everybody was poor. Willow grew up poor, but he wasn't any more. My granddaddy ran one of the most successful bookmaking operations in town. And my father competed with him for customers. Name the game: Football, baseball, basketball, boxing, or golf. The patriarchs of my family provided the odds.

While I loved the way she laughed, cooked, shopped, scratched my back, and waited on me hand-and-foot, my granny had gone too far. For the second semester of ninth grade, I went to Azalea High School, where I knew no one. I railed against the injustice of having to live in "Morrisburg, F'ing Georgia!" No doubt, my loud mouth and bad temper caused my grandmother great suffering those seven long months.

By Independence Day, I got my way and returned to Las Vegas. It was one hundred degrees—Fahrenheit—at night.

At fifteen, I learned these Mojave Desert summer survival essentials:

      1. Sleep until noon. Try not to leave the house before 2:00 p.m.

      2. Drink water until your stomach sloshes.
      3. Wear floppy hats with large brims. 
     
      4. Buy cute sunglasses.
     
      5. Apply SPF 45 everywhere, even under your clothes.

I admit it was embarrassing to always be the whitest girl at the pool. Sweating and sizzling in the sun exhausted me, even though it required no effort. Plus, I believe all those Cosmo articles about the sun ruining your skin and causing cancer. If ladies want skin to match their shoes and handbags, that's their prerogative. I choose pale.

Fortunately, most of the lines at Wet 'n' Wild were shaded beneath palm trees or curving, climbing tube-slides. You could get as much or as little sun as you wanted. The massive water park on Las Vegas Boulevard was a perfect place to explore the cognitive dissonance of wanting to play on slides and with the opposite sex. Small bikinis, shirtless boys, and slippery bodies made Wet 'n' Wild a popular hangout for teens. All hail the summer pass.

Badass roller coasters and theme parks were opening up all over the place. Grand Slam Canyon at Circus Circus was my favorite. The whole thing was inside a big pink dome. That's where I met Nori Suzuki. He was a quiet, humble virtuoso. Nori's parents were union musicians on The Strip. By the time he was ten, Nori could play the piano, guitar, drums, bass, and violin. He had big brown eyes and long black hair. Sadly, Nori had a crush on another girl. Her name was Martina. We called her "Marty" and "Tinkerbell."

Martina was Swedish, gorgeous, skinny, and stupid as silverware. Her mother and aunt were glamorous, and her father was deferent to all three women. Marty's freckle-faced brother Hugo was a pizza boy and UNLV student. He'd drive us anywhere in the Valley for five dollars' gas money.

Nori and Marty were hella fun. For his senior year of high school, Nori's parents bought him a red Pontiac Sunbird with a manual transmission. A few times he took Marty and me to the Lucky's parking lot, to teach us how to drive a stick shift. Our lessons ended when Martina drove the car over a median and got it stuck there. Nori decided then and there--we were bad news for his transmission.

I was glad that Nori and Marty went to Ruby Walker High School. They made a great, tenth-grade starter clique.