Chapter 4: Kylie Colchester

Hi there. How’s it going? How’ve you been? Yeah? I’ve been better myself, but then, I’ve been worse. So I can’t complain. Actually, I can, but I won’t bother. Who would listen? Well, you might, sure, but that’s not why you’re here. You want to know my story.

Let me start with introductions. My name is Kylie Colchester. I’ll give you a minute while you try to think of the significance of that name. Didn’t come up with anything? Well, that doesn’t really surprise me. I mean, it’s not like I’m that famous. Sure, my name means curled stick or boomerang, but what the hell does that matter?

But, you ask (or don’t, I don’t know): why should you recognize my name? Well, I’ve written the storylines for seven different comic book series. I’ve also written two radio plays, about half a dozen novels of humor, and I have a column in the Morning Call in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking Oh! That’s where I don’t know you from! Yeah. Unless your name is Dave Barry or Douglas Adams, people don’t recognize you anymore.

No big deal. I don’t write for the fame. No, the art is far more important to me. It’s about the craft, or some such crap. No, seriously, it’s not about the fame. There are deeper meanings, deeper reasons for me to write. That’s right. I do it for the money.

Anyway, my latest book, which was about a man who was so apathetic that when he got kidnapped by aliens, he didn’t care (confusing the aliens and leading them to try to find out why he wasn’t scared), did relatively well, and so I got invited to this convention in Las Vegas. Not a bad deal. Free trip, free hotel, and I might even get to sign an autograph or two. I hear ‘e-bay’ is a really popular name these days.

I love Vegas. At least, I love the idea of Vegas. I’ve never so much actually been there before, but I watch lots of movies. The ones set in the hideously garish town of Vegas, while not always my favorite, do tend to entertain me. Movies are my hobby. I’ll probably reference them a lot in our time together. So let me apologize for that ahead of time.

Anyway, I flew in on Wednesday. I took off from Wednesday to Tuesday of next week for this book promotion thing. My job is totally cool with that kind of thing. I’ve never gotten to the point where I can really afford to quit my day job. But I can afford to at least have a job I like. I work at a bookstore, and so the more popular I am, the better our sales tend to do. I love working at a bookstore. I get to help people find what they’re looking for, I get the mindless work of stocking shelves, and I get to go around and alphabetize things. I know that doesn’t sound like fun, but I’m a little crazy, and I enjoy things being in order. At least, in some parts of my life.

You wouldn’t know that I liked things orderly if you saw my apartment. There are two rooms. One is a dining room, kitchen and living room (complete with couch, sink, dishwasher, fridge, table, chairs, carpet, tile, and rug), and the other is my bedroom and office. It has my desk, my bed, my closet, my dresser, and about half a dozen bookshelves. Aside from those, most of the rest of my apartment is consumed by stacks of books or scattered papers. Even my bathroom (which I guess is a third room) has a book shelf in it.

Yeah. I read a lot. It’s part of being a writer. Or part of being obsessed with books. One or the other.

Back to Wednesday. I flew in, got my room at the Tropicana, dropped off my stuff, and left the room. I had a few days to spend, and I’d brought about three hundred dollars in gambling money (read that as spending money, I didn’t expect to actually win anything.) So I dropped my stuff off, took a hundred dollars and a novel, and headed out of the room. It was my own room, so it’s not like I had to worry about sharing it with someone or them coming in and seeing the suitcase on the bed. I checked to make sure I had my key, my pen, and my notepad, and I headed out on the town.

I always carry a pen and notepad around. It’s not what you think. I don’t carry it around to jot notes on. I mean, I do, if it comes down to it. But really, I carry it around because it fights off inspiration. I’ve found that I have all my best ideas when I can’t write them down. That way, I forget about them, only remembering that they were great ideas. So I carry a notebook to stop that from happening. Or to trick myself into thinking I can’t write something down.

Anyway, it’s a system.

I’ve been in a lot of towns. As such, I’ve been out on a lot of them. No town I’ve ever been in has anywhere to go out on that is remotely like Vegas. Just walking down the street, I saw Paris, New York, Camelot, Egypt, an alien spaceship, the 1920s, and basically the set of every Vegas movie ever. I kept waiting for something to explode or someone to start shooting.

Now, I have to say, I was amazed at how clean Vegas is. I mean, it’s always clean in the movies, but I figured they just cleaned up the part they were filming on. But no, the whole goddamned town is clean. Even the hotel for New York City was clean (the only part of it that wasn’t authentic, aside from the skyline, the scale, and everything else you would notice only if you’d ever actually been to New York).

So I had the money in my pocket, I had the time to waste, and I wasn’t interested in prostitutes. Those are legal in Vegas. I just thought I’d throw that little detail in there. But I wasn’t interested. You see, I’m not gay. Plus, I didn’t see Elisabeth Shue walking around. That was a reference to Leaving Las Vegas. Great flick. Maybe for her, I would be gay.

Anyway, I walked into one of the casinos. It doesn’t matter which one, and it didn’t matter at the time. Inside, they’re all pretty much the same. You walk up to a table, you hand the guy the money, and you get the chips. Then you start losing them.