Finding love in Las Vegas

I’d been hesitant about accompanying my brother on his annual Vegas trip with his buddies. I had no friends who might want to come with us — really, no friends at all in those days.

The last time I’d been to Vegas, I was 19 and married my high school boyfriend. That was the year my mother was dying, a year punctuated by trips back home to sit in long shifts at her bedside, so she would never be alone in the hospital. I’d wanted stability, and to show her I was okay.

After my husband and I split, I moved back to my father’s house and hung out with my older brother and his friends, going out and drinking, making up for all those years when I was good and straitlaced. All of us had the kind of place-holder jobs that made our parents anxious. I worked as a substitute teacher, going from school to school, and thought I wanted to be an actress. Everything felt transitory. Mostly, I waited for my real life to begin.

I swore I wouldn’t remarry until I was in my 30s. If then. I would do everything right.

Despite this vow, everyone I dated was wrong. Men who were dating multiple women, men with alcohol or drug habits on the edge of being out of control, men with amorphous job goals.

To sway me in favor of going to Vegas, my brother showed me a video of their last outing, starring a friend of his I hadn’t met.

Keith was not like my brother’s other friends. He narrated the Vegas proceedings like a Mystery Science Theater emcee. I watched him gesture with his hands — big, strong, well-shaped. He flirted with some forgettable women.

My brother told me about him. Keith was stuck at boot camp, awaiting his security clearance, and was now on his way to the Ranger Indoctrination Program. His degree was in Classics. I’d never met anyone who enlisted in the Army, not with a college degree. Pre-9/11, we thought that patriotism belonged to our parents and grandparents, those who’d fought all the wars so we could drift aimlessly through our 20s.

I rewound the tape and watched it again and again, like a 12-year-old girl watching a teen idol.

The next evening we met Keith in the sportsbook of a casino, amid rows of chairs facing television screens. His hair was shaved. He wore a striped button-down shirt and jeans and had the straightest posture of anyone I’d ever seen. I felt a jittery lump in my throat.

He said hello to me and shook my hand, but wouldn’t meet my eye. Then he sat down in the row ahead of me. An old man advised him to hit on some women across the room, but Keith didn’t move.

Later, at the motel, he came to talk to my roommate, the sister of his best friend. Suddenly he peppered me with questions. I told him about college, subbing. He related strings of facts about his family and his life. I asked why he wasn’t an officer, since he had a college degree. He wanted to be a Ranger, he said. “I wanted to prove to myself I could do it. Have some adventure before I got too old.”

He was the first man I’d met in a long time who had any goals. I liked him, but I didn’t think he liked me any more than he liked his friend’s sister. At one point he looked at my face as if he was assessing the doneness of a cake.

The whole group went to a casino, but split off into smaller groups. Nobody invited me along. Keith was alone, too, at a blackjack table all night, chugging free drinks and winning money. He told me later that he had to play blackjack to win enough gas money to drive cross country. That he still had two years left in the Army.

“I know you just got out of a relationship,” he said with a laugh. “But I can see us getting married one day.”

I made a half-hearted attempt to pull away. He was crazy. This was Vegas, not real life. Besides, I’d slept with someone else the night before. What kind of sorry, how-I-met-your-father story would that make?

But part of me wanted to go with him wherever he went.

“Maybe,” I said. My head told me to be cynical, keep watch. “I don’t know.”

We parted ways. I didn’t expect to hear from him again.

A few weeks later, a letter arrived. It was one page, talking of inconsequential things. Days later, Keith called me. We talked about Shakespeare. Why was he using up his precious calling card minutes to talk about a play? This relationship was going nowhere. I refused to be touched.

One evening not long after, I arrived at a friend’s house. There was Keith, perched on the back of his convertible. He’d been at the Ranger Indoctrination Program and looked like a military recruitment poster. “I have a week off. I came to see you.”

I considered my future plans. Call me in five years. A relationship would be messy.

But then I thought of my mother. In the hospital, her tortured heart slowing, she told me, “I just want you to be happy.” Maybe this would work out, maybe not.

Life, I knew, was not necessarily long.

I said the scariest thing I could think of. “I’m glad you came back.”

Margaret Dilloway lives in San Diego with her husband, Keith, and three children. She is the award-winning author of five novels for adults and children. “Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters” is the Honor Award winner for the American Library Association’s Asian/Pacific Islander Literature, and is in movie development with Fox Animation. The next in the series, “Xander and the Dream Thief,” is out Tuesday.