31st FLOOR — CHAPTER ONE
Another long day in my office at the Wynn Las Vegas. Everyone else had left around 5PM and I stay another three hours, heading out at 8PM. It’s a 20 minute walk from deep in bowels of the main casino’s multi tiered basement to my room in the Encore tower.
The casino floor is just beginning to hum. The retirees and cargo shorted millennials are giving way to the more dressed up, higher rolling guests of assorted generations. The slots are starting to thin out and the table games are uncovering for the night ahead, pit bosses on alert.
The Wynn properties are a step above the rest of the strip. There are many top tier hotels in Vegas: Caesars, Bellagio, Venetian, Cosmopolitan, etc, But Wynn takes it a bit further. The T shirted flip flop crowd come by to gawk during the day, but the nighttime here is like the old Vegas.
I fucking hate Las Vegas. I hate the money for nothing mentality of gambling. Yeah, I know, ‘poker is more than that’, but the general allure is simply about MORE. Trust me, only the casinos are getting more and at the expense of the lemmings on the floor.
The city’s siren call is for people to live beyond their means, to pretend to be someone they are not. The underlying message is “You are not enough.”
But if there is ever a lost group of lambs that needed my skills, it is the people I am currently wandering among.
“Situational Awareness” is about the last thing on anyone’s mind in this joint.
I am in the middle of a month long consultation and assessment of the Wynn and Wynn Encore’s security. Nothing involving gaming or money. I am specifically consulting on crowd safety and security. With their higher end clientele, it is a delicate dance.
At this level, they want everything to be air tight, but invisible. Many of their whales travel with their own security and some of them are armed. They make exceptions but I see it as an issue and am grateful for their private elevators, away from the general public.
Luckily, a lot of those games are in private rooms away from the main floor, but thus under my purview.
However, today’s work had to do with boring shit like access and egress, locked or unlocked doors and crowd flow statistics. I am near blind from a day of pouring over CCTV archives and assorted spreadsheets.
I nod at Bobby, the second shift tower security guard (Monday through Friday). Another weak spot. They pay some guy minimum wage to have him inspect room key cards that people can fish out of the trash at the airport rental car drops or another dozen spots around town.
Some elevators require a key card to access the floor buttons, but most of those are generally programmed and not floor specific, so another weak spot. That anyone could believe this makes the hotel tower more secure is a joke.
I walk into the waiting elevator, wave my card over the sensor and push 31, my home floor for the past three weeks.
The Encore actually has unique set up for their elite, suite floors with an elevator that serves a handful of those rooms on each floor, allowing more exclusive access, less wait time and a shorter walk. They are just a quarter of the entire floor, walled off from the common folk.
My room is on a more plebian floor and is about as far from the elevator as possible. The building also has a curve to it, so that when making that walk, it seems interminable as you cannot see the end, until well after the halfway mark.
As the doors slide shut, first a hand, then an arm and finally an entire body……………… slips on board, without triggering them to re-open.
“Thanks!, I just made it.”
I nod, even though I had nothing to do with her making the elevator.
Thus, I am joined by a woman in her mid to late 50’s on her way back from the gym. She is fit, but not cut. Attractive, but not really pretty. Probably about a decade younger than my worn out frame.
She punches the already lit ’31’ button and steps back.
She carries herself with assurance and vigor. She has tight workout shorts on with a tank top. I, on the other hand am wearing a white dress shirt, an Armani dark navy blazer and black slacks.
She catches my eye in the mirrored doors and says “Aren’t we the odd couple?”. I laugh and agree. “Indeed we are, indeed we are.”
We continue the ride without conversation, but keep looking directly at each other in our reflections. I am impressed. Most people cannot hold a gaze without making small talk. She is not flirting, but there is a strength, and some sort of challenge in her countenance.
She still has a sheen of sweat on her and a strong tang of body odor which frankly gets me a bit aroused. I inhale deeply.
We reach 31 and I hold the open button, allowing her to exit first. I am at first concerned she might be worried with me following her, but then remember that I had already pushed the button when she got on board.
So no way I was stalking her. Hell, she barely made the ride! So why do I feel like I am? She seems to have hit a nerve with me.
She continues toward the end of the hall as I stop at my room.
Never looking over her shoulder, she seemed completely unconcerned that I was behind her.
The stink of her body odor still lingers in my nostrils and I think about how far I could take a fantasy about her tonight.
At my age (mid 60’s), I don’t really have options to “hook up” much with strangers. I have active sexual relationships with three women roughly in my age bracket, one of them an ex from 30 years ago. They span the gamut of divorced, widowed and lifelong single.
They live in different cities and I get to see each of them several times a year. Online dating or hiring a woman for sex are of no interest to me.
One of them is a bit of a freak, but in general, the sex is tamer than I would prefer. And yet, my desire is as strong as it has ever been, possibly stronger and my boundaries are fewer. With these limited options, I masturbate like a teenage boy.
Yeah, my stinky elevator companion could take center stage in tonight’s fantasy.
I contemplate ordering room service, but instead opt for some snacks while I peruse TV options for the evening.
Finding nothing worth watching, I start to fill the big jacuzzi tub in my room and get undressed, looking forward to relaxing in the tub and continuing Ken Follett’s latest novel, “Never”. It is remarkably accurate in most of its research and I am enjoying the read.
Behind the drama of possible nuclear war, it is essentially about back channel communication between nations, something that was my domain before the private sector. He has a great source as the descriptions are spot on.
Just as the tub was nearing full, I notice my phone has an AirTag alert, as I have left my travel folio behind in the office. Even though my temp office is in the security complex, an unlocked drawer is not a secure location and I know that cleaning teams test any unlocked door or drawer.
The pebbled leather Prada folio contains my passport, a few hard to replace governmental clearance cards and about $3,000 in hundreds
FUCK!………………….
It would be more than embarrassing for a security consultant to report a theft due to his own lack of diligence.
I turn off the tub, get dressed and ready myself for another long walk through the hotel and casino to the security complex. Pulling on a silk t shirt. It clings and shows every fold, bulge and curve in my ‘older’ torso……
I check myself in the mirror, sucking my gut in a bit. Note to self: need to get back to the gym. Got a bit of sag to my belly and my arms are getting too scrawny. I contemplate putting on something cotton, something baggy….. Nah, who I am trying to impress anyway?
I head out and as I exit my door, I almost collide with exercise gal, now dressed up and ready for a night out.
“Hah! Our roles are reversed. Where are you heading dressed down like that, I liked you better before” she says.
“I forgot something in my office that I need to retrieve”.
“Retrieve……….. is that like you have to go get it?” she teases. “What office anyway? Aren’t you a guest?” I explain as we walk the curved, never ending Encore hallway. She tells me that she is in town for a convention involving AI. She is a former coder who now pitches artificial intelligence for a variety of applications. On the elevator we do the eye exchange in the mirror again.
“Nice ink.” She says, nodding at my sleeved forearms, usually covered, but no longer the alienating signposts they were nearly 30 years ago when I mustered out and joined the private sector.
“Thanks.”
I examine her transformation. Her open toed, strap pumps reveal she has tattoo work on both feet, covering her metatarsals. That takes serious commitment and is usually not a first tattoo location. I wonder what else on her is inked. They look like mandalas and seem to have some intricate detail.
Her dress is a light copper with uneven hems that fall below her calf on one side and is cut away above her knee on the other. The dress is belted with a wide leather belt and she has an odd assortment of necklaces across her chest.
One looks like it could be Bulgari, the others are more like some exotica from a souk in a middle eastern bazaar. The neckline is wide, but shows little cleavage.
She has curled a wave into her shoulder length brown hair and put on a bit of makeup. Her lips are bare, but full and rosy, not really needing help. There is a scent of perfume, but I would swear I still smell her workout underneath it.
Maintaining eye contact, she adjusts the belt across her midriff, runs her palms up her flanks and then lifts her breasts a bit, pushing them together, causing the heavy one to disappear into her cleavage. She dips a hand in between them and seemingly caressing herself, lifts the necklace back out.