Whale Watching in the Desert

The casino is an ocean with tables bobbing like buoys on its gentle swell. As each decisive card is dealt, or ball comes to rest, or dice tumble, heads and hands rise or fall in the way that gulls stick out their wing feathers to stabilise themselves as a wave passes by. Slot machines sparkle and jingle like motes of sunlight on the moving water. A craps table makes a breaker of hands waving, people leaping winners and losers alike yawking like gulls scattered from the wave crest. The croupier hides in the rising face of the wave, reaching out to scoop the loosings like a lurking shark. Two men in black breeze through, making ripples, parting the prey. Orcas. Whale killers. Eyes follow them, perhaps from those who cling to the bobbing buoy tables, too terrified and exhausted to swim away. Other eyes like those of great lolling sealions hauled out watch indifferently and throw more free food and drink down their stroked throats.

The whale comes. We cannot see it but heads turn by some instinct and make a path of gazes across the floor. The heads of the queue for some bar imported from New York or Paris swirl as the whale passes them, past the deferential nodding of the security at the head of the line. The gulls twitter and crane, looking to see if the whale has left any tasty detritus behind it. Two pretty girls, all neons and frills, are pulled from the line by the passing wake and gather to the whale's breast like pilot fish.

On the strip, I see whalesign again. In one moment, groups of people burst chatting from a casino, wowing and tutting and laughing. The whale has breached here. A stretch limo glides to a halt outside, waits for a moment. The driver opens the door, waits. His lady attendant waits too, with a tray of champagne harpoons. The man's ear jabbers and they both get back in and row away across the tossing swell of the strip. The whale is not leaving. The casino has speared the beast and is trying to inflate it with hot air and comps. But it's fierce and young and not yet wasted enough to miss the jeopardy that faces it. It breaks free.

I follow the whale for an hour or so, my cash and credit card are my muscles and my body is my boat. Both soon tire of following the whale into deeper and more turbulent waters. I give up the pursuit for today and row back home.