SOLUTE
There was a time of explosions. Distant nuke tests. You’d feel them around the break of dawn. A minor tectonic pulse would startle surface ripples in your morning coffee, and the ground under you would quiver for an instant, like the twitch-muscle reflex of a spooked horse. The nuclear disturbance would cross the Las Vegas Valley, rattling windows and dogs as it went, in ever-expanding circles of energy whose epicenter was 63 miles to the north—out on Frenchman Flat—the mid-point of a vast, inscrutable wasteland of brainiacs and reprobates.
These regularly scheduled shocks continued for years—monthly, bi-monthly—like sparkplugs driving the engines of time. But one day, they stopped. Congress passed a nine-month moratorium on all testing, above and below ground. Then the ban became permanent with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. What made them pull the plug? Maybe it was because the Cold War had just ended; maybe the risk of testing was too great for uncertain reward with the Soviet Union gone. You see, there was always a danger that an atomic test might go rogue. “What if we miscalculate?” the big-brained physicists secretly asked themselves. “What if, by tapping that first domino of nuclear fission, we set in motion a cascading effect of supreme destruction?” That’s why they always detonated those bigger-yield H-bombs in the middle of the Pacific instead of the mainland deserts. It was out of an abundance of caution.
Imagine: One morning, a dazzling light at your window. But it isn’t some Golden Grahams commercial sunrise. No. It’s a worst-case scenario, an unstoppable nuclear chain reaction devouring the sky, you, and everyone you love—everything turning to wind-scattered ash.
So maybe it was a good thing that they stopped the tests. But it’s funny what happens when you try to close a nuclear Pandora’s box, wishing you had never opened it in the first place. You think you can put the genie back in the bottle, but some small remnant of that vast kilotonnage will inevitably keep leaking out, one way or another. It will never stop cascading through some minor corner of the universe.
Morton Waterhouse occupied a minor corner of the universe. He was vaguely aware that the era of explosions had ended, but he had no idea that the fallout was still falling out. All he knew with any certainty was that he had a gut feeling—as he glided god-like on one of the main moving walkways at Caesars Empire—that something terrible was about to happen. What was giving him this premonition? Did he detect a minor tremor in the moving walkway’s rubbery banister? He tried not to worry about it too much and put on a brave face.
Lately, Morton had come to adopt the Stoicism of the great sage Marcus Aurelius, so that his life’s little off-seeming moments wouldn’t trouble him so much. For example, he was able to manage a divine shrug earlier that morning when his sandal straps started coming undone, as they occasionally did. And though he hated the aesthetics of the storefront sign for Magnet Maximus, a lame knickknack shop in the Forum, he didn’t let it bother him whenever he passed it that day. He briefly toyed with the thought that maybe he should put in a request at Thematic Engineering to get the sign’s font changed to something more dignified, like Trajan. But even this idea was soon discarded as he called to mind the words of the ancient sage:
Everywhere and continually it is in your power to be content with your present circumstance.
—Meditations VII, 54
Morton stepped off the moving walkway and scanned a mob of tourists luxuriously perfumed but shabbily attired. Acid-washed fanny packs for the Midwestern soccer moms and wine aunts, sports-ball logos on the barbecue boomer dads, threadbare ponchos on the Guatemalans, Cavariccis for the New Jersey Luigis, and Wrestlemania IX ads on the bewildered Gen-Xers. No one wearing the toga—except himself. And while these random passersby may have contributed to Morton’s sense of impending doom, he gave no sign that that was the case. Instead, he grandly hailed this rabble, as was his duty. (Think glorified WalMart greeter.) He waved his plastic aquila scepter in the air with his left hand to get everyone’s attention. Then he raised his right for a stiff-armed adlocutio pose.
“Salvete, cives Romani!” he announced, then resumed roving on his scheduled rounds. He paraded past the reception desk, past cocktail waitresses and bellhops, and entered the casino proper. Jeering bookies heralding his passing. “Hard eight!” Craps dice flying. Slot machine sirens and whirligigs. “Seven out!” The low-stakes machismo of frat boys. Pensioners doling out fragile high fives. All the while, from above, PA systems bragged in mystical syntax about the glory of recent renovation projects.
Raised have been our mighty triumphal arcs. Opened have we our Forum Shops’ incredible 500,000 square feet of retail space.
All around him, opulent facade and gold plated plaster pomp. But still there was that sense of foreboding. Maybe a loved one was dying somewhere. Maybe it was his dad. Morton pictured his old man crawling through the desert out near Pahrump, an empty gas can in hand, vultures circling overhead. Two days out there with no water. At this very moment he might be drawing his last gasp. That’s probably why he hadn’t been showing up to his usual spot in the poker room.
Morton turned a blind corner and was immediately jolted back to the here and now. There, before him, striding arm-in-arm in pompous procession, were Mark Antony and one of the Cleopatras. He hailed his fellow tyrants with a friendly, “Salvete, magnates!” But they didn’t hail him back. Instead, they peered down their noses at him in a show of contempt. Then they continued on their grand cavalcade, leaving him to watch in stunned silence as they disappeared around a column.
As Morton made his way towards the Race and Sports Book, he desperately tried recalling his favorite Marcus Aurelius quotes. But he couldn’t rise above this most recent petty insult to his sense decorum. Why had his peers snubbed him like that? Maybe his toga wasn’t up to snuff. Granted, it had recently shrunk a few sizes after his roommate, Desi, inadvertently nuked it in the dryer.
Refurbished have been our grand towers with twenty-million-dollar upgrades, featuring some of the toniest penthouse suites in America.
But who were Mark Antony and Cleopatra to judge him—this retail Cleopatra with her cheesy King Tut headdress? A bit too Middle Kingdom for the Ptolemies! Maybe he should file a complaint with Thematic Engineering. He felt himself getting flustered. His tutor, Athenodorus, who sometimes appeared above him in a hazy cloud, would not approve.
Now Morton was entering a different cloud, which stank of nicotine and lavender Febreze. For the fourth time that day, he was nearing Caligula’s High Limit Poker Lounge. He steeled himself for another round of disappointment. The room opened luxuriously to his right, between two Doric columns. He slowed his pace, loitering awhile to study the wide range of phenotypes. There were high-rollers and young guns and aging playboys and bedraggled degenerates. But he was looking for one man in particular who was particularly bedraggled and who also had the distinction of being his father. The old pater familias.
But, once again, his dad wasn’t there—another no-show. The whole point of taking this job, apart from his ever-increasing interest in ancient Rome, was to be able to keep tabs on his old man. Morton needed to see if his recent avoidance strategies were having any effect—if they were making his dad any less inconsiderate, any less self-obsessed.
But if his dad never showed up to be spied on, what was the point of working there? Was Morton now just an ornament? Maybe he should cut his losses and quit. Put in his two weeks. He could claim to have a dread disease. Tarquin would understand. In all likelihood, he wouldn’t even be surprised. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Tarquin would probably say. “Just like your old man,” he would say. And that wouldn’t do.
Morton shrugged and hailed the poker players with a stiff-armed salute—“Salvete, populi Romani”—giving the expression some extra oomph this time out of a spike of unchecked frustration.
As if in answer, the PA system overhead suddenly blared out a different voice, a woman’s voice in uncompressed frequencies.
Morton Waterhouse, please report to Hotel Operations. Morton Waterhouse to Hotel Operations pleeeeease.
He turned on his heel to find the nearest staff elevator, which gobbled him up and spat him out again on a different floor.
Old Tarquin Lombardo, the VP of Hotel Operations, was a heavy-breathing, beige sort of man. He reclined in a stiff leather Chesterfield Executive Swivel in an office that smelled of analgesic heat rub. He didn’t acknowledge Morton at first. Instead, his eyes were fixed on a ceiling smudge, his brows knit in an expression of mild indignation as he blindly drummed his thumbs against his computer’s spacebar and argued with a speakerphone lodged in a faux-wood box perched atop his desk.
“Since the Circus Clownshow deal? Freakin’ Ontario?” Tarquin whined.
The phone blared back in a kaleidoscope of competing voices. Morton caught snippets: “Total thematic overhaul,” “your legacy infrastructure,” and “upgrade to a family-friendly future.”
Tarquin answered this Jackson Pollock of voices in a wheezing fortissimo: “Our theme? Gimme a break! We’re up 4.6 percent, extended. Hell, we got 91.6 percent occupancy. And you’re tellin’ me that’s a problem? Why fix what ain’t broken? Anyway… Got some sticky business here. Over and out.”
The box went dead. Tarquin gestured to an orange tweed Barcelona chair. “Morton. Come in. Take a load off. How’s ’ol Bill?”
Morton felt suddenly on the spot. “I haven’t really talked to him. Uh… I guess it’s been a few months. Maybe a year... or two.”
Tarquin turned indignant. “You’re living in the same city, and you don’t visit your old man? That ain’t right. Your dad’s an ol’ war buddy, you know. We sacrificed for your freedoms. Anyway, I hear ol’ Bill ain’t doin’ so good these days. So, for cryin’ out loud, why don’t you sack up and check in on him now and then?”
“Yeah, Mr. Lombardo, I guess I should. Is that all?”
“No. The reason I summoned you is, uh, there have been complaints.”
“Complaints?”
The old administrator trained his gaze on his underling. “Some of my boots on the ground, or sandals on the ground as the case may be—pit bosses, blackjack dealers, Antonys and Cleopatras—claim you’re yelling gibberish at our guests. Is this accurate?”
“Gibberish?” Morton frowned and tried to look dignified by adjusting his posture.
“Well, we hope you’re using the proper salutations,” Tarquin continued. “You’re supposed to greet everyone with the standard ‘Hail, Caesars!’”
“I thought I was supposed to be Caesar.”
“Did you even go through training?”
“I think so.”
“It’s ‘Hail, Caesars,’ plural. That’s the default greeting, officially. These things were decided long ago. Part of our heritage. Our theme. Sure, call it a marketing gimmick if you will. Our founder left the apostrophe off. So it’s not Caesar's possessive. It’s Caesars, plural. But I thought you already knew this stuff. I mean, your old man was one of the greatest Caesars of all time.”
“And look where it got him.”
“Well, anyway, the idea is to be, you know, inclusive. All our guests—everyone from Windsor and Saudi VIPs to knuckle-dragging randoms from off the street—are actually semi-divine Caesars and are to be addressed as such. So it’s ‘Hail, Caesars!’ and not whatever you’ve been saying.”
“I try to vary it a bit. Sometimes I say ‘Saluto!’ Sometimes it’s ‘Salvete populus Urbis!’ or ‘Salvete, cives Romani!’”
“Uh. Right. Definitely not those. And how about the salute itself?”
Morton snapped his best stiff-armed Roman.
“No. This won’t do,” Tarquin said. “That’s entirely too threatening. Do more of a jazz hands thing. Normally I would turn a blind eye to your shortcomings, you being Bill’s kid and all. But we’ve got bigwigs here all week from corporate. Big things afoot—planning meetings for thematic renovations, themed poker and slot tourneys. You can bet we’re being evaluated, and it’s imperative we get a perfect score. Our score determines things like raises, bonuses, comped show tickets and sensuous spa treatments. So, gotta look sharp. Capiche?”
“But isn’t it a little cruel?” Morton dared to ask.
“Cruel?”
“I mean, you know, calling people Caesars—pumping them up with unearned accolades and unrealistic expectations.”
“I don’t know about all that. It’s a new age, kid. The Soviets have shat their last. We won. Free markets. Consumer freedom! So, the customer deserves—demands—a new level of service.”
Morton looked confused. Tarquin kept going.
“History ended last year, Morton. Didn’t you hear? America is now the world’s sole superpower. A hyperpower, they say. Amazing, isn’t it? And Vegas is the fastest growing city in America. And Caesars Empire is the richest, most iconic, and most rapidly expanding brand in Vegas. So, each one of us is really at the center of civilization and the known universe here. That sense of confidence is what we are selling to our guests, who are truly great and glorious Caesars—every last one of them!”
With Tarquin’s words still browbeating his conscience, Morton made his way back down to the casino level, brazen doors opening wide again to those convoluted crowds. Again with the cocktail waitresses and bellhops, the wine aunts and sports-ball dads. But still no Dad in the poker room.
Near the Race and Sports Book, a great simian shout went out. Men were fist-bumping and knocking over serving trays with their somersaults. A frat house celebrating the end of term was going ape over a twenty-dollar win at craps. Morton would address them, salute them. He would say it. He would call them Caesars, plural.
He breathed in deep and raised his molded plastic scepter. But he couldn’t bring himself to speak. He wandered away, deflated and perplexed.
Into the Forum Shops once more now as the PA crooned overhead. But I won’t cry for yesterday. There’s an ordinary world... Morton tried to focus his thoughts, but his attention kept getting subdivided by the sound of shuffling flip-flops and splashing fountain water, the distant bells and whistles, the endless multilingual chatter of all these upstart Caesars, and the anxieties rising in his dissociating brain. “There’s Planet Hollywood, Carol.” “I told ’em, land sakes, I never seen so big a salad.” “¡Es tiempo de fiesta!” “Try the Brazilian next time.” “오와우. 목성이될수있습니다.” “I am Bacchus! God of merriment and wine!” “Booya!” Echoes upon echoes. Everything was blending into an aural haze like conch shell resonance. And Morton was being blended too, becoming just another face in a sea of identical Caesars, a solute indistinguishable from its surroundings.
