by Don Hall

Gabrielle is a single mother in Las Vegas. She’s twenty-eight years old, has three children, and works as a cocktail waitress in my small Off-Strip casino. She’s bubbly and pretty so her tips usually make up for the dismal hourly wage (less than $10.00 an hour) but then the virus descended, the country tanked the collective response, and Nevada shut things down for a time.

Gabrielle has been clinging to the the fact that the corporation that owns the casino, while defiantly non-union, opted to pay its employees consistently throughout the 78 days of hard shutdown (sans tips, of course) but with the opening and subsequent bar shutdown, business has been limping forward.

Now the schools in Vegas are going to be online only. Her daycare person is no longer comfortable watching her kids because of the virus.

She used to be a nurse but like so many who come to Vegas, her prior experiences meant next to nothing. That’s something they don’t tell you when moving out here — your work experiences, education, and resume don’t mean much. You’re a tourist until you aren’t and stripping down and starting from scratch is the required path. The smaller industries in Vegas circle the wagons and block those who come in from bigger cities from access. It isn’t so much snobbery as a protective measure because most people aren’t looking to make a life here but to strike it rich and move on.

Gabrielle has been paying her dues for a few years. When the state slowly reopens casinos yet still has the bars closed, she makes her money but looks for ways to game the system. She takes a COVID test without symptoms because she knows that the results will take ten days and she can’t come into work until she brings in the paperwork. Thus two weeks of figuring out the bizarre Zoom home school situation.

At forty-seven, white, shaggy in that Wayne Campbell still living in his mom’s basement sort of way, Del Mar is what is called a long-term hotel resident. He has been squatting at the Days Inn off of Tropicana and I-15 for twenty-five days. His room looks like a dorm room from the 1980’s — he even has posters up on the walls.

Del Mar was sacked from his Reno-based truck driving gig. No long-term contract, no unemployment benefits, no medical. He hitchhiked down to Vegas after a couple of months doing pick up handyman work despite statewide shutdown protocols. He figured he’d take his meager savings and gamble some of it to see if he could strike some gold. He did because he was smart enough to play conservatively and has been using his winnings to pay his hotel bill.

He confesses at one point that he may having a drinking problem as he spends every day sleeping and watching television and every night playing slots and drinking comp’d liquor until early the next day. He asks me for resume tips and assures anyone who will listen that he has a job in Reno that will pay him $87,000 a year but he has to get there first.

He gets temporarily banned from the casino because one night he brings his electric guitar and amp into the Sportsbook and starts playing for tips. The graveyard manager squashes that but he decides to ditch his amp and walk around the slot floor playing acoustically until the manager has had enough. He almost gets evicted from the hotel when he hooks up his amp in the pool area and does the same.

Despite the moratorium on home evictions in Nevada, Lisa and her boyfriend Rick are homeless. Knowing that the couple didn’t have the money or education to fight the eviction, their landlord of three years waited until they were out one evening, had a crew clear out their one bedroom apartment and changed the locks. They came home to everything they owned on the sidewalk with some of the more pawnable items gone.

With nowhere else to go, they loaded up Rick’s pickup with what they could salvage and book a week at the hotel. She tells me a week is all they can afford and hopefully will give them time to fix their situation. Rick is fixated on the landlord and has so much anger at the eviction he spends most of his time ranting on his phone and drinking Michelob Ultras in cans.

Lisa drinks, too, but tells me that this is new to her. She never used to drink. These days, she relates, she can’t afford her anti-depressants so booze will have to do. I tell her that alcohol is a depressant and she shrugs. Before things were shut down, she worked as a blackjack dealer at MGM. Rick has been between jobs for a year and change. They walk across the street to the gas station to buy their beer — they don’t gamble and the prices at the casino gift shop are marked up too much.

Gabrielle recognizes that the corporation took care of her during the shutdown but, with three kids, she is wholly focused on her family. She decides to apply for FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) benefits to carve out another paid two weeks at home. She’s healthy so she decides to get her six-year old son circumcised as a medical reason. Both her doctor and HR approve but her vacation time is used to pay the two weeks.

When she returns, the bars are open again but the schools are still closed. She hasn’t paid her rent in four months. Rock meet hard place.

Del Mar, on Day 28 of his stay, is told that he has to vacate the property for 24 hours. He has to take all of his belongings and leave. He can come back and re-book but Nevada law states that if the hotel allows him to stay 29 days, he becomes a legal tenant and cannot be evicted without court intervention so he has to go temporarily. He doesn’t have a car so he loads up what he can carry, stashes the rest behind a dumpster off-property (which will almost certainly be picked through and then trashed before his day is finished) and decides to go spend the night on the Strip.

He doesn’t come back.

After the week is up, Lisa and Rick load up his truck. They have no plan. They have little money. Rick swears he can get work up in Utah but the look in Lisa’s eyes say that she’s heard that song and dance before. Without many choices, they decide to drive to Utah and see what happens.

The world at this point has been in pandemic for 205 days with 215,000 Americans dead from the virus. This is over 1,000 COVID deaths per day. This is just slightly worse than if two fully-loaded 747’s crashed into the sea or a mountain every day for 205 days.

For Gabrielle, Del Mar, Lisa, and Rick things weren’t gravy before having to wonder if a random encounter with some idiot who refuses to wear a mask in public will result in infection and potential death. Combining the hooded figure of the Corona Reaper with the sudden lack of economic possibility has created an uncertainty of purpose, a lack of clarity, and an impenetrable fog through which to navigate.

Will things get back to normal? Doubtful. For these three, normal wasn’t so hot to begin with and I’d hazard a guess that an awful lot of people would agree. Will the new normal feel…normal? Who can say but the most and least adaptable among us. We will go on. That’s what we do. Move forward, one step at a time, one decision after another.

At least that will seem normal.