Leaving Las Vegas

by John O'Brien

Sera’s arms are weak, but her pulse is strong.

She watches as a staggering drunk,

This is Ben. She describes this to him when they meet and become friends a week later - page 138.

He groans out what sounds like no

He is pursuing his plan of drinking himself to death

Sera is a circle, twenty-nine years around.

So Ben is the line moving toward death and his travel on the line cannot be stopped and it includes booze. His line of life will touch her circle but not intersect it. He is who will be consumed as forwshadowed by his refusal of help. What follows is small bacground on Sera. 29 years old originally from east so lets assume eastern US and spent much of her life in LA before moving to LV

There will always be dark characters, but her life is good;

Forshadowing her treatment by Al (Gamal Fathi - her pimp from LA), and her getting roughed up by the 3 boys in a trick just a little later. Despite those things, on balance, we learn she likes her life here in LV where she works turning tricks on her own and lives alone.

insouciance,

One block down from the 7-11, in a yellow Mercedes, which is parked in the shadow of a silver camper and bears expired British Columbian plates, sits a sallow-skinned man, cutting a lone figure indeed.

This is Al - Gamal Fathi - originally from Oman, who was Sera's pimp in LA. He has tracked her down to LV and is watching her. This is the first mention of Al. We learn he has come down from Canada - BC - and his plates are expired indicating he is low on omoney. His skin is "sallow" indicating both pale - he is tired and not well, and dark - he is middle eastern. Interesting technique as this is *NOT* from Sera' POV. Instead it is the narrator POV. Sera has no idea about it.

Sunset and Western in Los Angeles.

A nice place - hollywood.

(He

The author uses a flashback technique I have never seen before - simply putting the remembrance in (). Not sure why as it doesn't stand out very well and requires concentration to find the end.

give twenty dollars to the fat Mexican

Later we have Ben telling her a story of doing just this in New York as a 16 year old, not realizing the $20 was just for the place and not the trick.

that.)

Thiz is oddly like Ben. Ths setting of the flashback is LA and she is probably working for Al given there is a house to go to. Note the narrator never gives us an idea of how she came to this life.

still living in a world that plays in a time window not yet sullied by deathsentence venereal diseases,

the real mistakes are made in the larger rooms.

So what does this mean? That the REAL mistakes are those where the tricks will lose tons of money to the casino on the open floor? And so a mistake of a few hundred $ with a hooker is a small mistake made in a small room - the bedroom. And so, in Sera's eyes, she blends in.

(She

she peed right on his hand.

So who is he? Is it Al? It is implied he is fingering a group of girls while masterbating in return for beer. Is this prior to becoming a hooker; a scene shown as an entry way into ultimately being paid for sex?

up.)

She can and will do this forever.

We are at the edge of massive change about to come into her life. This is the edge of the status quo of her life right before the twin catalysts of meeting Ben and having Al find her and re-take possession of her. Her status quo is that it is rare for a white girl to be a hooker - implying the trade is made up more of minorities - and rarer still to be a white girl from a good home - growing up in the east. She has thus CHOSEN this life because she is good at it and can make a lot of money doing it, instead of having it thrust upon her due to being a poor minority with no other choice to stay alive.

only to glimpse the same yellow Mercedes that she noticed earlier.

This is bad news at best, for she once knew a man with a penchant for Mercedes

And that would be Al. The narrator implies Al is a bad thing and she would rather not see him now.

not quite in the same league with the very expensive, very tacky, gold-plated German chariots in her past,

We get a wiff that Al has come down in the world. Couldn't be Al, as he drove much more expensive and nicer cars, so much so they were tacky. But unfortunately for Sera it is Al.

(“This

It seemed the simpler of the two fluids.)

A flashback of Al cutting her from behind as punishment. Blood is simpler than semen I think means in her relationship to Al the punishment is much easier to understand and deal with than the sex he demands from her and the strange "love" he has for her that he cries while punishing her and yet still does it.

she has earned enough already tonight for a full day at the tables

he resolves not to speak anymore.

Another example of a rapid POV shift and it works fine. This continues to show how she talks down to the tricks, that in a way she is smart and sophisticated much more so than a hooker should be. She is different.

he had other plans for these crisp bills.

(Of

“It’s because I love you the most,” he said, “that I allow you to work the hardest.”)

More information about Al's dual pimp/lover relationship with Sera. He loves her, but yet works her the hardest meaning she is being fucked the most. So by love does Al mean he loves her ability to make money for him, or he loves HER and wants her to do well?

She still can’t believe that these guys are dangerous.

Ah but they ARE, and this is the last moment when she will think this.

“Can we go home now?”

someone throwing up,

“Stop that puking, Bobby.”

(They were just boys, unwittingly paving their lives with misery.)

(The

down.)

Again Sera is thinking how the "trick" is being humiliated by his fellow cops, not the pain being inflicted on her.

(Sera

around.)

The jail flashback continues. It seems Sera was outside the bars when she was raped, and now the girls in the cell, who rushed the cop, we learn are expensive west hollywood hookers not like Sera and they don't like her. This implies, along with the flashback 1 in the nasty flop house, that she is NOT an expensive hollywood call girl but instead a street walker. She is remembering from before she improved her status.

(They

up.)

I think this flashback is a continuation. THEY are the hollywood call girls, and are afraid to be with her and with each other because they are not smart. Sera is smart and not like them.

She hopes that she can do well at the tables today, for a change.

Finding her purse intact,

Thus she was not robbed

Sera wonders at the woman’s pain—or her ability to remain ignorant of it.

The author's choice to add this line. I think there is a desire to compare Sera's life - a hooker who makes her money enduring sex and the occasional beating, with the poor worman who makes her money enduring laundering and manual labor and dealing with children. They share the same delima - pain in the life - and Sera wonders how that woman handles it or can someone ignore it like she does.

The windows have been open all night,

So in this passage, from Al's POV, we learn he is sleeping in the mercedes, living in it as he shaves in it, and that he is pawning his rings slowly to pay. We realize that he has lost everything in LA and is now pinning his hopes on finding Sera, his once best girl, and re-asserting his control over her to work his way back to wealth and power. There is no no notion, at this point at least, that he is in trouble with organized crime like there was suggested in the movie version.

bombilation

(Even

She was haunted, pursued, tortured emotionally, sometimes physically, day and night by the one who had made her the object of his obsession.

Sera is haunted by Al, who cuts her with a knife on her ass or back of thighs to assert his ownership of her. It is Al who is obsessed with her more than as just his employee.

bauble

so three years after arriving from the East, ...

bu...

Henderson

Henderson is a large town just south and east of vegas.

expired Canadian license plates.

So after LA Al must have gone to Canada and hit rock bottom there. Now he's come for Sera and his plates are expired, meaning he couldn't even pay to register the car anymore. He has come to the pawn shop to pawn a ring for money, more evidence he has lost all his money in the past, but how??? This is the second time the narrator has suppied that the plates are expired. Is that overkill?