A few years ago, I found $40 on the floor of a sandwich shop in Henderson. My first thought, of course, was Free sandwich! Second thought: I should turn this in, in case the person who lost it comes back. That’s the one I ultimately heeded. But it was my third thought, admittedly
zany — What if this is some hidden-camera special in which TV jerks try to gauge the honesty of ordinary people? — that’s relevant here, because it was the only one that wondered where the money came from. Why here, why now? What’s the story? Who lost it, and how much do they miss it? I began to imagine a father frantically frisking himself for the two twenties he set aside to buy his kid’s birthday present, but that’s just me.
This urge to a x bits of speculative signifi cance to random stuff
animates the pages that follow. A letter in a book, a fl ier in a closet, a wedding album in a thrift store, even a discarded carton of milk — each offers its own grabby narrative nub. Together the items and stories gathered here begin to concatenate into a richly suggestive scroll of scenelets about life in Las Vegas.
This is a great city for finding things, since our tidal surges of visitors mean an ever-changing tableau of the lost and tossed. So much is abandoned here. And the anticipatory tingle of finding something potentially cool or enigmatic will be familiar to anyone who’s played one of our games of chance: the possibility that life’s randomness will, however briefl y, assume a fortunate shape, and pay o with an unexpected new experience. A glimpse into another life, maybe. Or, as you’ll see, sometimes into your own.