Page 6 of My Thursday Throwback

Chapter 3 – Interesting...

Las Vegas, ThursdayNight

Zelda arrived at the Spring Hills Suites on the Las Vegas Strip, checking into her home away from home for the next two months. In her luggage were the three diaries she’d kept, and somewhere in between writing, she would read the words she’d penned at three different stages of her childhood. It all felt so stupid looking back on it. The three or four smelly boxes, papers, journals, and notes chronicling years of abuse sat there waiting to be read, and Pip’s words echoed in her ears even in her sleep.

I am going to happy.

I deserve some happiness.

Her cell phone chimed with the Ed Sheeran tune she and Scott first danced to at the Vent convention a few months prior. It was not just her ringtone for him. The song was also now her jam. Each time it came on the radio, her mind went back to that first night with Scott. A sexy, mind-altering night of adulterated, pure, animalistic, hot sex.

“Hey, Big Guy,” she said in the line as she answered the phone.

“I managed to sneak away a day early and my plane is landing in about an hour,” he told her.

“Landing where?” she asked, her face scrunched up.

“Vegas, Baby; where else? I am coming early so you can, too,” he said, kicking himself as he looked around the aircraft cabin to see if anyone heard him.

“Listen to you working on your sexy talk,” Zelda said softly.

“I have a few other things I want to work on as well,” he told her, pausing briefly. “Across the street from your hotel is a little bar call Hoolihan’s. Horrible food, warm beer, and it is nice and dark. Wear a skirt and meet me there at 7:30.”

“Oh, okay,” she said suspiciously. “Anything else?”

“I love you,” he said, lowering the octaves in his voice.

“I just bet you do, because I love you back,” Zelda said, clicking off the call.

Before she had a chance to get overly excited, her boss Nathan Ridgeway called. He started by yelling in the phone about the Hurricane, then he yelled about his bursitis, and by the time he made it the third thing, he’d forgotten why he called.

“Mr. Ridgeway, you called to tell me something important,” she encouraged him through gentle persuasion.

“It’s not important, but that Berger guy is guest speaker tomorrow night at some event in Las Vegas. I think it would be a swell idea to hook up with him again and do like a follow-up piece about how vast the ventriloquism field is to purists of the art or something equally as hokey,” Nathan told her.

“Maybe I will find him tonight and hook up with him,” she said, smiling at herself in the oversized mirror. If there was one thing Nathan Ridgeway hit on the head, it was that Zelda was truly looking forward to hooking up with Scott Berger again.

****

ZELDA ARRIVED AT HOOLIHAN’Sin a black miniskirt with a flowing design. It was actually a knee length skirt that she rolled the waistband over several times to make the skirt shorter. After all the catcalls and wolf whistles walking along the Boulevard, she entered the dark, smelly tavern, looking for her big handsome man. It wasn’t very crowded for a Thursday night. The regulars sat on stools permanently indented with the impressions of their butts, saturating the room with dark thoughts and deep regrets. Scott sat at the end of the bar, nursing a drink just as he had the night they first met. Instead of sitting beside him, she took a seat a few stools away, giving them same distance as their first encounter.

A soft voice was heard in her ear. “You know you want some company tonight,” the voice said.

Zelda looked up at Scott, whose eyes were down in his drink. She looked over her shoulder at the other sad faces in the bar, earning a smile from a man who resembled Droopy Dog.

“He didn’t say it. I did. Put that drink down and let’s get the real party started in my room,” the voice, now slightly muffled, suggested.

Zelda’s intense brown eyes return to Scott, her focused remained on the man, her man, with his eyes still in his cup, which he lifted, taking a sip of the dark brown liquid. In her estimation, it was the oldest trick in the ventriloquist handbook. Taking a drink while throwing your voice.

“I’m still not amused,” Zelda told Scott.

One of Scott’s hands was under the bar, fiddling with what she assumed was Danny his vent doll. On his other hand, he fingered the glass while his eyes held her stare. One eyebrow arched as if he were challenging her to join in on his game. She twisted her lips in the trademark sister girl annoyance, just as she had before.

From under the counter rose the tiny hat attached to Danny’s tiny ceramic smiling face. “Would you be amused if I told you I was rocking three inches of solid oaken wood for your pleasure?” the little dummy asked.

“No, I would be interested if you told me you wanted me to ride the nine iron you so deftly like to swing,” Zelda threw back at him. “If you ask nicely, I will let your little friend watch.”

Scott started to laugh, almost breaking the character he was trying to portray. “See that booth in the corner? Go slide in it and take your drink. We will meet you there in a second,” he said, using his head to point at Danny.

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