The girls of Las Vegas

for the beauties who bloom in that neon-and-baize oasis, it's a hectic night's journey into day

Midnight. The witching hour. When the gates of the churches creak and the tombstones topple over. When the full moon scowls like a one-eyed cat and bad girls who aren't in bed turn into chambermaids at the Holiday Inn. And their cars into summer squashes.

But not the girls of Las Vegas. At midnight, the Strip is so radiant in its 10,000,000 watts that a girl could study the fine print of the help-wanted ads. For here, God has created desert--the sands, the dunes and the native animals, such as the pink flamingos--out of pink neon bulbs, and the midnight hour is as incandescent as midday anywhere else. As everyone else has a good-night cognac, it is coffee break for the girls of Las Vegas.

•

12:01 a.m. Or thereabouts in a hollow corridor at the Circus Circus, Terry Cavaretta, a trim-built girl in a silver-spangled bikini, takes the hands of her sisters, saying a cheerleader's cheer for the 6000th time, "We'll do an act without a fall! We're all for one and one for all!"

"God be with us," her older sister says.

"Sticky," Terry comments, looking down at her sweating palms.

And they climb to the flying trapeze in the clerestory over the five-line slot machines. On the chain ladder, Terry now and then pauses, her arm high, her back arched, her knee as high as a drum majorette's, the posture of pinups on battleship ladders in World War Two. She swings to the roof, almost, on her trapeze, and then, letting go, she goes into a triple somersault and--ohhh, ohhh--falls on her back on the safety net.

The drum rolls. And jumping up and smiling a Doublemint smile to indicate that she isn't dead, she climbs back to her silver-sequined sisters. "I did something funny," Terry whispers.

"You had one leg high. And one leg broke," a sister says, "and you broke with it."

"Really?" Terry says. She seizes the bar again and she says cheese. And floats through the air with the greatest of ease. While wearing her silver B.V.D.s. And does three somersaults, if you please!

I'm in love with the girl on the flying trapeze!

•

12:30 a.m. "Oh, God forbid," says Tammy Feuer, a blonde, an absolute doll, a girl whose laugh is a waterfall in the Sierras. In bare breasts but in feathers of some orange ostrich and (as if enough weren't enough) in ice skates, too, she has just discerned that a skate blade is looser than a sandal's sole as the curtain ascends on the ice show at the Hacienda Hotel. The audience applauds. The orchestra plays Let Us Entertain You. "Oh, God," Tammy laughs, and starts skating on in figure eights. To fall on an un-ice-proofed ass in front of 600 people!

She doesn't. And, skating off, she clumps upstairs to her dressing room to fetch (from the lip pencils, eye pencils, eye-liner pencils, etc.) a six-inch screwdriver. Her leg in the lotus posture, her hand as adept as the village smith's, she screws herself together again, and she laughs as she picks up Pencil Puzzles.

(1) Most everyone enjoys a good pumpkin.

(2) Most everyone pumpkins every day.

(3) Generally----

Tammy laughs. "Go and guess what pumpkin is," she says to the girl at the photo-plastered mirror near her. The photos, incidentally, are of naked men.

"I already guessed. It's talk," the girl replies.

Tammy laughs again. And everyone down for the South American number! In bare breasts but a hat of paper grapes, apples and oranges and in her ice-evaporating smile, she is skating on just after laughing, "Aaagh! The screws are all loose again!"

•

1:00 a.m. It's mad, mad, mad on the stage of the one-o'clock spectacle at the Dunes. The big red curtain is down and the panting stagehands are dragging away the ocher columns of Karnak, the Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx and the other antiquities from the Egyptian number. Ella Kallish, six feet tall, three feet (and one inch) topless and 142 in intelligence quotient--Ella has, well, buttonholed another performer to try to terminate one of the more exorbitant of the lifestyles of Las Vegas. For months, she has taken taxis to the stores, laundromats, discothèques and The Dunes and has spent $4000 doing it.

"I hear you're selling an Opel," Ella says.

"Yeah----"

"First," Ella continues, "let me explain my financial situation. Since when I do, no one's interested anymore. I can pay fifty dollars weekly."

"OK, I'll give you the lowball from the Blue Book."

"I got wheels!" Ella yells, pulling off the clothes of Cleopatra, pulling on the clothes of Pocahontas and whooping onto a wigwam-congested stage for the Indian number. "Heyaya! Heyaya! Heya heya heya!" the men in their loincloths sing.

In the audience are 200 gentlemen of Japan (lucky little stiffs: To them it's five in the afternoon) and Rhoda Barton, a cocktail waitress with a 40-inch bust. "It shocks me," Rhoda whispers. "It's nasty to walk around with your titties out."

•

1:30 a.m. In the casinos, in the dim light of (text continued on page 140) chandeliers: in the pallor of middle earth, a Mexican in an apricot-colored suit is pressing--raising--the bet by $500, $500, $500 at the Sahara's baccarat table. As the six of diamonds comes from the red-plastic shoe, he learns that he has lost $4500. "You can't count very good," the Mexican shouts. In his white-patent-leather pumps (and his white matching bobby socks) he looks like the Godfather.

"No, you owe forty-five hundred dollars," the dealer murmurs.

"You better not get smart," the Mexican shouts.

"I'm not getting----"

"I ain't signing nothing for forty-five!"

Norma Fregeau, the pit clerk, an exotically colored girl who sits in an ill-lit corner with a couple of dozen pigeonholes and staplers, sharpeners and paper clips like a clerk in some melancholy novel by Dickens, is placing a call on a five-button telephone. "Give me a rundown on"--and she names the Mexican. "He's out," she reports to the dealer a minute later.

"What?"

"He's out," Norma repeats, and she slices her index finger across her gold-chokered throat. She looks coolly out of her corner at that maraca-mouth from Mexico. "Turkey," she whispers.

•

2:00 a.m. At this dark hour, Darlene Madison is looking quite like a harpist as she deals 21 at the Golden Nugget. The cards fly off her finger tips like sixteenth notes. One quick fingernail neatens them and she sweeps them up one minute later as if she were doing glissandi in Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp. And, plink! She slides a pile of ten-dollar chips to an old, old man in a red-plaid shirt. "Oh, thank you," the old man says. "I'll give you a smooch for it."

"Now don't be a fool and be losing it," Darlene says.

She's serious. Her brother lost all his money once (and $400 of hers, besides) in 21 in Las Vegas. She remembers him. She remembers how she and Sonny had looked for lizards in their childhood, saying, "Now, don't touch their tails!" She had translated for him, too:

"I wanna wassa gassa."

"What?" their mother would say.

"He wants a glass of water, Mom."

And 20 years later, he had come to her, crying, "I got a gambling problem, sis."

"So that's where the money's gone to."

"I'm moving out to Chicago."

And now, the old, old man in the red-plaid shirt is in the red himself at the Golden Nugget. In its rose-colored glow, he is chewing his lower lip as he tries to recapture the pile of ten-dollar after-dinner mints. "Aww," he whines to Darlene. "Why dincha gimme a three, instead?"

"Dear Lord," Darlene, a Catholic, is saying in her most secret self, "help him to stand up and walk away from here, amen." She shuffles the cards with the fingers of a Segovia.

•

2:30 a.m. At the green table, Brigitte Corvaisier is looking down at an eight of spades as she draws a seven of hearts, saying, "All right!" She wears denim cut-offs and a T-shirt of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck. She is barefoot, too.

On the back of the cards themselves are red, yellow, black and white pictures of Mickey Mouse. As she does every night after work (as reverently as others do transcendental meditation), she is playing solitaire in her kitchen, a half hour from the Strip at Sunrise Mountain. "I want to play rummy with you," her little sister says.

"No," Brigitte answers softly. "I want to play solitaire."

"Whatever," her little sister says.

She understands. On the one hand, there's the serenity of two-o'clock solitaire. On the other, there are the discos--the too-loud tunes, the too many men, the ones blowing smoke up someone's nose as they try to maneuver her to their pads. Her sister remembers how Brigitte said, "I wouldn't want to trade solitaire for all that hustle and bustle, would you?"

The light of the chandelier falls on the tablecloth as Brigitte, a bank teller by day, is drawing a six of spades, saying, "All riiight!"

•

3:00 a.m. But everyone else in Vegas is on the oak floor of its innest disco, the Jubilation. Terry, the girl on the flying trapeze, is dancing to Slayin' Alive. Ella, the girl with the taxi habit, is telling an import-export man, "I'm for dancing. I'm not for romancing." Norma, the pit clerk, is telling friends, "I'm going to be in Playboy." A girl whose exotic origins are France, Italy and Spain, her fantasy is to be shown in the centerfold at a plaza de toros somewhere with a bull, certifiably tame, and no other clothes but her red muleta.

"You understand about the stars in the P," a salesman says to Norma. He refers to the little stars on the cover of Playboy, one to 11 for the Eastern, Western, et al., editions.

"No, what about them?" Norma asks.

"They're there on account of Hefner. One for every time that he balls the Playmate."

"I don't believe it!"

"You better believe it," the salesman says.

"But I haven't even met him," Norma protests.

Cynthia Parker is in her 15th minute of nonstop stepping but--too broke for the Jubilation--is one mile east, jogging along the rubber-coated track at the University of Nevada. Jogging at three o'clock in the morning, everyone! In the starlight, like a camel crossing the desert ("The sun's anvil," says Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia). Clop, clop, clop, Cindy is dressed in blue nylon shorts, and at her blue-and-white-striped feet a German shepherd is nipping now as Cindy says, "Hey, puppy, stay in your lane!" And clop for another quarter mile.

•

3:30 a.m. On coming home from the Jubilation, Sallie Lancaster hears the sound of a man upstairs. "Is that you, Sallie?"

"Hi, Daddy," Sallie says. And, washing up, she goes to the copper-colored stove and is cooking herself a supper of bacon, cheese, catsup, scrambled eggs and a Pepsi as her father, 60, a dentist, comes in in blue-striped pajamas.

"Sallie, what do you think they'll say in Playboy?"

"I don't know, Daddy. Why?"

"'Cause what do you think they can say? I'm normal. You're normal. We are just normal people."

"I'll drink to it, Daddy."

"So what's there to say about us, Sallie? You wake up, you brush your teeth--and you brush the damn enamel off--you work every day and you come home."

"Sometimes I come home," Sallie says. She smiles an imp's little smile, the tip of her tongue in her immaculate teeth.

"So you shack up, sometimes, too. And that's normal, too," her father says.

"Oh, Daddy. I do more than you do."

"Do you do it backward upside down?"

"I might not be as knowledgeable as you, because----"

"You don't do it backward upside down?"

"Because you're older than I am, and----"

"Backward upside down. Ah, I had fun that way," her father says. "Now I don't even do it. Except every year at Thanks-giving."

And they talk, talk, talk. By the clock on the copper-colored oven, it is bedtime even in Honolulu.

•

4:00 a.m. Extra! Extra! Someone has fallen asleep in Las Vegas, Nevada! It happened, inadvertently, of course, to Tammy, the screw-loose girl at the ice show, as she watched the Late, Late, Late Show on channel five, An American in Paris. At her home, Tammy had changed to rubber thongs, sat on the spinach-colored carpet, turned on a Zenith and listened to her boyfriend say of (concluded on page 142) Girls Of Las Vegas (continued from page 140) Gene Kelly, "Wow! He can really dance, can't he?"

"He's fabulous!" Tammy laughed.

"I got rhythm! I got music! I got my gal! Who can ask for anything...." Snore, for Tammy (who danced at her jazz-dance class at four o'clock in the afternoon, ate at six o'clock, skated on thin ice at eight o'clock, auditioned as a $400 dancer at ten o'clock, skated again at 12 o'clock, went to a disco show at two o'clock) is fast asleep at four o'clock on the spinach-colored carpet. One down in Las Vegas.

•

4:30 a.m. But everyone else is up. Remember Rhoda? The girl with the 40-inch bust and the flapper's face? The one who didn't think it was decorous to walk around with your titties out? As high as the Hilton at half past four, she has regressed to baby talk and has succumbed to the munchies, too. "I wanna nanner split and a Cockie-Cola," Rhoda announces at Dairy Queen. "Aw," she says to a gentleman with her. "You got more whoop cream than I do." Her index finger fillips a little of his whipped cream off and Rhoda continues, "We gotta chair, man," or, in translation, "We gotta share, man. Do you want my cherry?'

"Yeah," the man says.

"You gotta catch it. Oh," she continues as he opens his mouth and closes his eyes, "you look like a panting dog. Catch!" It ricochets off his nose and Rhoda says, "Oh, I lost my little cherry!"

The two skiddoo from the Dairy Queen. A ball in a pinball machine, the car that they're in caroms through the lights of Vegas to Sunset Park. It is now closed, but the two climb over the Cyclone fence to the manual merry-go-round as Rhoda says, "I wanna go on the hippie potamus!" After that, Rhoda does cartwheels to the monkey bar, the slide and the swing and, as she swings higher, higher and higher, says, "Oil! oh! I'm getting nauseous!" And falling off and taking off her yellow top (don't touch the knobs, they're adjusted, the letters say) and her white pants, she and her date make love in the dark in Sunset Park.

"There's the Big Dipper," Rhoda whispers. It's 30 minutes later, and she is supine on the star-shadowed grass.

"Where is it?"

"There. Right there," Rhoda whispers.

Chi chi chi chi----

"God! What's going on?" Rhoda cries.

Chi chi chi chi----

"God! They've turned the sprinklers on us," Rhoda cries. "And there are the rangers there!" And grabbing up her clothes and her red-and-green-flowered purse, she is running out of the park with all of her 40 inches out. And everything else.

•

5:00 a.m. Ella, the taxi addict, the girl with the six-foot body and the 142 intelligence quotient, is depressed with the Jubilation. She scribbles on a cocktail napkin, "The painted smiles on plastered faces, like the blank pictures on white walls." All night long, Ella has been assailed by the unabashed men in open-buttoned shirts. "Wow, I'm in love with you." "Oh, you're wearing white. It will go with my car." "Do you do cocaine, baby?" "Do you want to go, uh, somewhere else?" "It will be cool, baby."

"As cool as the other side of your pillow," Ella has answered that one. And scribbling this on another cocktail napkin, she has finished her Coke and slipped out of the Jubilation.

"Hey, Ella," the doorman says. "You come alone and you go home alone. How come?"

"It's how I like it," Ella says.

A taxi takes her to her bedroom/living room. In her refrigerator, there is a $70 bottle of Taittinger 1971 ("I'm sorry. They're out of '66," an admirer with a pink carnation told her), but it's half frozen over, like a frozen daiquiri. "Well, I've got me a champagne frappè," says Ella, and she pours some into a plastic glass. She sits down, extricates (like an infant at a difficult birth) the cocktail napkins out of her tight white pants, types the bons mots onto paper, places them in a file folder and, as she finishes her iced champagne, takes one of her own poems out for the hundreth time.

Dad makes me unhappy.

I try to talk to him

but he is so busy being sad, hedoesn't hear.

Instead, I sit and stare at him

and I see age eating deeper anddeeper,

gnawing at his insides,

doubling him in half.

I cannot tell him I love him.

He would not listen.

It's almost day, and she sweeps the hairpins off her cool-pillowed bed.

•

5:30 a.m. "But Daddy," says Sallie, the girl who does or doesn't do it backward upside down. "I don't really love him. You would be happier, wouldn't you, if I marry someone who's down to earth who I really love?"

"Well, honey," her dentist daddy says in their kitchen at this ungodly hour, "I can't--I can't--I can't say who you should marry. I just think if you don't hurry up, people will say, Who's that girl with the old, old man in that camper in Yellowstone Park?"

Sallie laughs, and her tongue in her teeth is a jujube. "Daddy, I'll hurry up," Sallie says.

And tick tock goes the clock on the copper-colored oven. God, has anyone in this city slept tonight? Yes, Betty Bryant, a hostess at Caesars Palace, has been asleep since nine in her four-poster colonial bed. To stay up all hours is not her habit anymore. A few years ago, she had two bottles of Cabernet every night, pot, phenobarbitol, codeine, cocaine, 150 milligrams of Serax and one hard pack of Nat Sherman's Cigarettes. She worked as a madam and for recreation was a real witch, honest to God. "Okka wakokka," or something like it, Betty would say, and someone a mile away would drop over dead. She was suicidal herself. And one day, she washed with Tone and brushed with Aim and gargled with Listerine and told herself, "It's a new day, and it's a new life."

By half past five today (as every day), she has been awake with the sparrows, has fed 300 sparrows, has walked her German shepherd, has fed her cat and has watered her 40 pothoses, philodendrons and ferns, telling them, "Grow for me! Get beautiful!" She has eaten her seven-grain cereal in a silver-rimmed bowl to fortify her for 16 hours of tennis, racquetball, training dogs, riding horses, breaking horses and driving her four-wheeler up to Red Rock Canyon. Right now, she is stretching her arms, hands and finger tips to the white horizon in the surya namaskara asanas of yoga to greet the morning sun.

•

6:00 a.m. Myself, if I must be up at the dawn's early light, it better be to be going to bed, thank you, and I am driving to my air-conditioned and drape-darkened room as the sun overpowers the lights of the Sands, The Dunes, the Sahara and the Flamingo Hilton hotels. So good night, or good morning, girls of Silver Dollar City. I love you all. Do not believe, reader, that the young women of Vegas are hookers and hard-nosed opportunists--no, they're as warm, fresh and miraculous as anyone else in America. Appreciate them. But just don't telephone them until one o'clock.

Strip Teach

in which a would-be pedagog finds a new career at vegas' palomino club

Vegas tourists tend to break out and boogie in a way that would make the neighbors back home blush. Of course, all they'll ever know is what you tell them on your postcard. For instance, you may forget to mention the night you horsed around at the Palomino Club, a popular, bottomless burlesque establishment that features a nightly amateur striptease contest. The runway is open to all comers and has drawn graying matrons as well as Teri Tomas, the young student teacher whose victorious promenade we record on these pages. The competition begins with solo performances, everybody stripping down from street clothes to birthday suits. Then all contestants return and do it again together, and the winner is selected by audience applause. Resident applause-o-meter and creator of the contest is onetime burlesque comedian Bob Mitchell, who acts as m.c. and generally encourages Palomino Club audiences to feel their oats. The audience, by the way, usually includes as many women as men. The contestants--who come from all over the world--are, however, 100 percent woman. The winner receives a cash prize and gets to put her clothes back on, but every entrant can leave the runway firm in the conviction that for a few minutes, however fleetingly, every eye in the room was glued to her.

"Grabbing up her clothes, she is running out of the park with all of her 40 inches out."