Chapter 5 - The Hotel on Red Rock
I didn't leave Las Vegas immediately. That would have been frantic, and I was not feeling frantic.
I drove west, away from the Strip, away from the neon glow that turned the clouds pink over the valley, toward the dark, jagged wall of the Spring Mountains. I checked into a small, quiet suite at a boutique hotel near Red Rock Canyon—a place where people went when they wanted to drink wine by a stone fireplace and not look at a slot machine.
My room was on the third floor. It smelled of lavender and clean cedar.
I turned my phone off at 9:00 PM.
That night, I slept for eight hours without waking once. I didn't dream of Ryan. I didn't dream of Ava. I dreamed of a clean steel filing cabinet whose drawers slid open without making a sound, empty and waiting to be organized from 'A' to 'Z'.
At 7:00 AM on Saturday, I woke up, ordered a pot of black coffee and a plate of sourdough toast from room service, and sat by the window watching the morning light turn the red sandstone cliffs the color of wet rust.
At 8:15 AM, I turned my phone back on.
The screen lit up instantly, vibrating so violently on the glass table that it sounded like an alarm.
Forty-two missed calls. Sixteen voicemails. Twenty-eight text messages.
I opened the texts first. They were all from Ryan, spanning a twelve-hour descent from mild irritation to full-blown panic.
11:02 PM: Babe, why aren't you answering? I'm home. Where are your clothes? 11:18 PM: Nora, this isn't funny. Why is the ring on the counter? 11:45 PM: Did you really go to a hotel? Call me right now. 01:12 AM: Nora please. Ava’s still here. She’s freakng out too. We didn't know you were going to take it like this. 04:30 AM: Answer your damn phone Nora! What does "officially logged" mean??? We were supposed to go to the court this morning to cancel it! 06:45 AM: I'm coming to the bureau right now. I know you work the Saturday morning desk.
I closed the text thread.
I listened to one voicemail. It was from 5:12 AM. His voice was thick, dry, and raspy, the sound of a man who had been drinking scotch and pacing on hard wood floors all night.
"Nora... please. Look, I know I was stupid. Okay? I know it was a dumb joke. But you can't just... you can't just leave a note like that. It’s a paper, Nora! It’s just a piece of state paper! You work there, you know how to fix it! Just call Brenda or whoever and have them delete the line! Ava’s crying, her mom called me this morning asking why her status on Facebook says 'Married'... Nora, call me back. Please. I love you."
I deleted the voicemail.
Then I called Brenda’s cell phone.
"Nora?" Brenda answered on the second ring. She sounded like she was already on her second cup of dark roast. "He’s standing in the lobby."
"I know," I said.
"He’s wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday, except his tie is in his pocket and he looks like he got run over by a delivery van," she said, her tone completely neutral. "He tried to tell Jenny at Window Two that there was an administrative error on his certificate."
"Did Jenny help him?"
"Jenny told him that unless he’s got a court order signed by a District Judge showing fraud or mental incapacity at the time of the vows, the record stands until a formal dissolution petition is processed through the Eighth Judicial District Court," Brenda said. I could hear the distinct sound of her snapping her lighter open to light a cigarette outside the back door. "He asked for you. Jenny told him you were on indefinite administrative leave and that your address had been scrubbed from the employee database per county safety policy."
"Thank you, Brenda."
"Where are you, honey?"
May you like
"I'm looking at the mountains," I said. "They're very quiet."
"Good," Brenda said. "Keep looking at 'em. Oh, and by the way—his new wife is sitting in a Mercedes in the red zone outside the main entrance, furiously deleting posts off her Instagram account."
