
Supposedly. Vegas never sleeps. Supposedly, its rallies itself through the night and into the crack of day with the same zeal and endorphin high as it began the evening with. Cocaine may or may be a part of that. Alcohol most certainly is.
What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but the sun comes up and sinks down the same way. I know because I woke up at 6 am and had nothing better to do than stare at it.
Not directly at it of course. According to my first-grade elementary school teacher, that’d be stupid. Though she called it “dangerous and not good for my eye sight” which is elementary school teacher speak for “you are being an idiot. Please stop.”
Vegas may be a mini-testament to the potential stupidity of humanity, but I still know better than to stare at the sun (thanks, Mrs. Cole!) and instead spent a good few hours on a Saturday morning watching the way it lit up everything else.
The people awake at 6 am in Vegas are not the people you’re thinking of. There are a few late night partiers who forgot how time works and fell into a void. These people also refuse to share their secrets about time travel which seems really selfish.
For the most part, though, it’s the cleanup crew. It’s the people who you never see in a casino as if the place magically keeps itself clean and beautiful and shaped like an intricate maze without help. A man lifts a Windex-soaked mop up to the corners of a two story glass wall, stretching for the corner. A woman circles a wet towel over a counter top. Circle, circle, spray, circle, circle. A man in a deep purple and red suit peels a poster from its spot along the wall and hangs another, the new opening act a smiling face I don’t recognize.
The music, usually drowned out by the roar of craps and black jack tables, contently hums in the background, filling a silence it’s grown accustomed to losing. Light filters in sideways, casting malformed shadows on the slot machines. Bartenders watch me as I go past. They don’t say anything as my steps echo past. Breaking up the quiet like cracking the top of a creme brulee; satisfying in a quiet way, undramatic, and subtle.
It’s odd, is what I’m saying. It’s Vegas with the volume turned down. It’s not sleeping, but it’s also not awake. It’s in that in-between stage when you’ve just woken up but you haven’t had coffee yet. The synapses aren’t firing. The buzz hasn’t kicked in.
Go home, Vegas. You’re decaffeinated.
What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but the look of “I’m tired as hell. Why does my shift start this early?” stings the same across the country. Guess we still have some things in common, even if it’s just the need for another (closer) Starbucks.
