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described her father’s gambling addiction—how he never lost a gentleman’s amiability at the gaming table, how he had squandered most of his mother’s fortune.
    The Las Vegas hospitality industry is understandably respectful of losers. Marilyn’s father never paid for a hotel room in Las Vegas, or for a meal or a drink. The city’s generosity extended to the good loser’s next of kin. All Marilyn needed to do was to phone her father, who, in turn, phoned the general manager of the Flamingo Hotel. The Flamingo comped us in what I guess you would call the wink of an eye.
    In the morning, Marilyn passed her name to the Flamingo concierge, declaring we had come to see Elvis at the International. Elvis at the International was sold-out for the entire run. The concierge picked up the phone, called a uniformed officer of comparable rank at the International. And it was done. The only question that devolved to Marilyn and me was how much to tip the headwaiter at the International.
    Elvis Presley first came to Las Vegas in 1956, when he was twenty-one years old. Middle-aged audiences in Las Vegas heard him with interested puzzlement at that time. Elvis was fresh—he was certainly famous—but he displayed none of that finger-snapping, syringe-in-the-toilet, up-tempo flash that Vegas found so inebriating. In 1969, on his return, Presley was nearer in age to the women in the audience, and he had learned the Vegas sell.
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    The messenger room at the law firm in San Francisco was like a prison movie—time measured in poker games, crossword puzzles, knives, novels. A never-neatened splatter of
Playboy
magazines on a junked conference table. Perpetual “Proud Mary.” One corner of the room supported a mountain of legal briefcases. Another corner was a parking lot for dollies. There were fifteen messengers who sat on fifteen oaken office chairs facing the dispatcher, as in a minstrel show. When a messenger returned from a hike, his name was added to the bottom of the list; he sat down. (Messengers must be male. No experience necessary.) When a messenger took a hike, his name was crossed off the top of the list.
    Luther got into the habit of stopping by a senior partner’s office every afternoon for a chat, as if they were two free citizens of Athens. Luther found the Old Man interesting—his stories of growing up in turn-of-the-century California, of riding his pony over golden hills, of boarding a train that took him away toHarvard College, of homesickness, of scarlet fever. “Well, that’s how I learned self-reliance,” the Old Man said.
    The Old Man was interested in Luther, too. Luther had gumption. Luther had learned self-reliance from his mother, who worked in a chicken-processing plant, who raised ten children, whose husband left.
    Where’s Luther? The dispatcher ran his finger down the list of scratched-out names. Proud Mary,
unh, unh
. Luther was in the Old Man’s office, everyone knew.
    One day, after Luther had been working for the law firm for a year, he told the Old Man he figured it was about time he tried something else.
    Like what?
    Like working for the phone company. The Old Man grabbed up his telephone and barked “TelCo” to his secretary, which was short for: Please get me the president of the telephone company.
    Once the president of the telephone company had been procured for him (the firm represented every major California utility), the Old Man hollered into the receiver, as if from the bridge of his yacht: “Look, F., I have a young man here desirous of a career change. I’m going to send him over. Whom should he ask for? Sears as in catalog? Good-o! Love to Dotty.”
    Luther went for his appointment at the phone company. He wore the black suit that he and Andrew and Jimmy shared. The suit belonged to Luther, but they all wore it—Andrew to be a pallbearer, Jimmy to be best man,