Rapture in Las Vegas

I staggered across the floor. I was groggy and wading through a gaggle of smirks and grins, led by the hand of a topless woman, until a pair of metal doors flung open. Dear Lord, the sun. I was in there all night!

Outside the sun shone like a nuclear explosion and I was temporarily blind. It wasn’t farmer early, like five or six; it was workday late — just after nine. Focus bled back into my eyes and I realized there was a limo waiting for me just across a bridge of cold, arid winter desert air that pecked at my face like a wake of vultures. Dutifully, I proceeded to cross it.

The door of the limo was held open by a thin Japanese man who greeted me with a terse bow. I lift a hand into a slight wave and bowed into the waiting opening, then slid on the leather to the middle of the rear seat. The door closed and the music inside rose from a hiss to clarity. The song playing: Billy Squire’s, “Learn How to Live."

Learn how to give, learn how to take
Learn how to live, before it's too late

I gave, all right. And took a little, too. Maybe I gave too much, though.

Sixteen hours earlier I was on an airplane flying through the gentle and mischievous turbulent air above the Spring Mountains, Nevada. The fasten seatbelt signs above every seat, of every row, flickered in chorus until lit solidly...

Find out what happens when the plane crash lands!

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