is men for you,’ she shrugs, her French accent strong, but her English perfect. ‘My boyfriend, he just gambles all the time, he has no time for me. Right now he is in the casino and he thinks that he can just give me money, send me here, and it will be fine. It’s not fine.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Liv, the lady who is about to do my hair, agrees.
We all live thousands of miles apart, but we all have the same stupid man problems. That said, I think I can top all of them. In the age-old words of the internet: hold my beer – or my third glass of complimentary champagne, more accurately.
‘I caught my fiancé cheating on me,’ I say quietly. ‘Literally, like I walked in on him doing it. With his assistant.’
For the first time since I arrived, no one is saying anything. Nothing but the whirr of a hairdryer and the dulcet sound of Justin Bieber’s latest hit can be heard. Then the responses come all at once. Gasps, expletives and questions from all angles.
‘His assistant?’ Liv shrieks.
I nod.
No one ever really stops and thinks about what they’d do if their significant other cheated on them, do they? No one has a contingency plan in place, in case of adultery. Some might say cheating is cheating, whereas others might see the difference between a drunken one-nighter and full-blown affair. Not only was my fiancé stone-cold sober, but he was at it in my bed – probably still warm from my getting out of it.
‘What happened?’ Liv enquires gently.
‘I got up for work, had my breakfast, got dressed and left the apartment with my fiancé fast asleep in bed. He doesn’t work office hours, so when I go off to work, he’s always still in bed. While I was on the way to work, not long after I left actually, I just decided I’d go home. I had loads of things I needed to do before this trip, but that wasn’t the reason. I just decided I didn’t want to go to work that day.’
The women look at me, puzzled.
‘You were suspicious?’ Liv asks.
‘I wasn’t,’ I tell her honestly – at least, I don’t think I was.
I should have known that moving to LA with dreams of becoming an actress was a long shot, but I had big dreams when I was younger. Instead of becoming an actress, I simply wound up becoming someone’s other half.
I work temp jobs, just taking whatever I can get whenever I can get it. A short-notice job came in for yesterday morning, filling in for a receptionist in a law firm. Work has been in short supply recently, so I accepted it, safe in the knowledge I could finish at lunchtime and then go home to pack our bags, ready for travelling today.
Perhaps on a subconscious level I knew something wasn’t right, but I don’t think so. I really did think we were happy.
‘I just didn’t want to go to work,’ I say softly.
‘Well, thank God you didn’t, honey,’ New York lady says. ‘You’re so lucky.’
‘Yeah,’ I reply, although I don’t feel it.
‘So you thought you’d come to Vegas to forget about him?’ she asks.
‘Not exactly,’ I reply. ‘We were supposed to be flying to England in the morning. I’ve been a bit nervous about it, so my fiancé booked us a romantic night here, to get the trip off to a good start. The plan was to fly from LA to here, spend a night having fun and then head back to the UK for a family wedding. But now it’s just me, and the hotel and flights were already booked, so here I am.’
‘So you’re on a romantic trip alone?’
‘I am on a romantic trip alone,’ I repeat. ‘And open to whatever you suggest as far as my hair goes.’
Liv teases my shoulder-length, mousy-brown hair with her fingers and pulls a face.
‘It’s not that this isn’t nice,’ she says tactfully. ‘It just doesn’t go with that smoking-hot outfit you’re wearing.’
I glance down at the gown I’m wearing to protect my clothes and cringe as I think about what’s lurking underneath.
When your heart has been broken, you don’t think straight, do you? Bad ideas seem like good ideas. Perhaps it’s a way of protecting ourselves, but we immediately snap into this ‘I have to show him what he’s missing’ mode. Whether it’s to prove a point to our exes or ourselves, I don’t know, but that’s what we do.
John is a well-known orchestral pianist (well, well known if you’re into that sort of thing). I played the role of his girlfriend perfectly, dressing and acting the part, which is probably why I’m acting out now.
I’m wearing a little red cocktail dress I’m now certain was intended for someone with fewer curves than I have, but, like I said, I was grief-stricken. I wasn’t thinking straight. And now, here I am, sitting awkwardly in my dress that is possibly too tight (and short, and low), in my heels that are probably too high, about to let Liv loose on my hair, which definitely has to be my worst idea yet. Oh, and for the first time since John gave it to me, I am out without my engagement ring.
‘So, you wanna know what I’m doing or you want me to just do it?’ she asks.
I think for a moment. When I started seeing John, the spontaneity slowly drained from my life. Everything had to revolve around his schedule, everything we did for fun was always on his terms. As a teenager I was a total wild child, but now… I don’t know what I am. I need to be spontaneous again.
‘Just do it?’ I reply. It was my intention to sound confidently decisive, but as my voice went up in pitch at the end, it just sounded like a nervous question.
‘You sure?’ she asks, giving me another chance to back out.
‘Yes,’ I reply confidently.
‘You in a rush?’ she asks, causing me to wonder what the hell she’s planning.
‘No…’
‘OK then, let’s get started.’
I glance at the $1,000’s worth of chips, fascinated that such little, unremarkable pieces of plastic could be worth so much money. They’re so gold I can see my reflection in them, and every time I look at them and catch sight of myself, it reminds me how different my hair looks now.
After what felt like a lifetime in the chair, I am now the proud wearer of very long, very blonde hair, or ‘Playboy Bunny hair’ as the lady from New York described it. With my light, bright, fresh peroxide colour, the long length curled at the ends, combined with my hastily bought midlife quarterlife thirdlife-crisis outfit (I am nearly thirty after all) – I can see what she means. From the new clothes, to the hair extensions, to all the new make-up I bought from the hotel shop, I look nothing like myself right now, and that’s fine by me.
Casinos are bizarre places, really. The room is split into sections, one end littered with green felt tables and the other home to rows and rows of brightly flashing, very noisy slot machines. It’s such a nice, sparkly, glamorous place at a quick glance. I’ve noticed a few people on winning streaks and, as miserable as I am, it cheers me up to watch people winning. A bit of good luck and they come alive, jumping up and down, victory dancing, grabbing their nearest and dearest (or just the nearest random person sometimes) in celebration. But when you stop and look, you can see the darker side to these places, those with anguished looks on their faces and just a few chips on the table in front of them. As their luck runs thin, so does their money. Just one good hand will turn things around for them, but sometimes it simply doesn’t come. It’s kind of depressing to watch and makes you wonder how much they’ve lost and what it will mean for them in the real world, after they leave the flashing lights and the free booze of timeless Las Vegas.
Without windows or clocks, it’s