Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas   ::   Thompson Hunter S.

I waited until he was almost in front of me, then I reached out to grab him - but he jumped back and went around the circle again. This made me very nervous. I felt on the verge of a freakout. The bartender seemed to be watching us.Carson City, I thought. Twenty years.

I stepped on the merry - go - round and hurried around the bar, approaching my attorney on his blind side - and when we came to the right spot I pushed him off. He staggered into the aisle and uttered a hellish scream as he lost his balance and went down, thrashing into the crowd… rolling like a log, then up again in a flash, fists clenched, looking for somebody to hit.

I approached him with my hands in the air, trying to smile.

“You fell,” I said. “Let’s go.”

By this time people were watching us. But the fool wouldn’t move, and I knew what would happen if I grabbed him. “OK,” I said. “You stay here and go to jail. I’m leaving.” I started walking fast towards the stairs, ignoring him.

This moved him.

“Did you see that?” he said as he caught up with me.

“Some sonofabitch kicked me in the back!”

“Probably the bartender,” I said. “He wanted to stomp you for what you said to the waitress.”

“Good god! Let’s get out of here. Where’s the elevator?”

“Don’t go near that elevator,” I said. “That’s just what they want us to do… trap us in a steel box and take us down to the basement.” I looked over my shoulder, but nobody was following.

“Don’t run,” I said. “They’d like an excuse to shoot us.” He nodded, seeming to understand. We walked fast along the big indoor midway - shooting galleries, tattoo

parlors, money - changers and cotton - candy booths - then out through a bank of glass doors and across the grass downhill to a parking lot where the Red Shark waited.

‘You drive,” he said. “I think there’s something wrong with me.”



7. Paranoid Terror… and the Aweful Specter of Sodomy… A Flashing of Knives and Green Water

When we got to the Mint I parked on the street in front of the casino, around a corner from the parking lot. No point risking a scene in the lobby, I thought. Neither one of us could pass for drunk. We were both hyper - tense. Extremely menacing vibrations all around us. We hurried through the casino and up the rear escalator.

We made it to the room without meeting anybody - but the key wouldn’t open the door. My attorney was struggling desperately with it. “Those bastards have changed the lock on us,” he groaned.