I’m home! And exhausted. But I wanted to try to get the last of the Las Vegas stories out while I still have the din of the casino floor in my brain. So, with no further ado, let’s pick up with Eddie and the anonymous ghost…
The wind swept through the empty space where the Riviera once stood, carrying the faint echo of applause that wasn’t there anymore as Eddie faced the nameless entity.
“What do you want?” Eddie asked, his voice firm with bravado.
“That’s the point,” the entity returned. “I don’t want anything. Nothing. Let the city churn and change and go on its merry miserable way and I will remain unknown, unremembered, and forgotten.”
“Then why are you here? I’m not stopping you from your anonymity.”
“But you are! You and your sentimentality about this city that doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything – I don’t know what’s changed, but your presence has been a… psychic canker sore! Walking around like a big glowing embodiment of remembering. And it’s driving me to distraction!” The shifting figure appeared inches from Eddie, screaming the last words into his face.
“So, what am I supposed to do about it?” Eddie said, taking a step back. “I remember because I can’t leave. I learn the past and engage with it because this is where I died, this is part of who I am,” Eddie spread his arms wide to encompass the north and south sides of the Strip.
“And that’s just it – nobody gives a crap! You’re dead! Ghosts in this town rival slot machines, and they’re just as interchangeable. Let it go, Eddie,” he spoke Eddie’s name like it was a slur. “You’re nothing anymore and the sooner you learn to forget, the better off you and every other ghost minding their own business will be!”
“Let it go? Stop remembering? That’s rich coming from the specter of The Solara…”
“The Aurora Grand Las Vegas,” the entity corrected the older name of the casino out of reflex.
“Oh, so you remember the history now?”
“What are you even talking about, kid?”
“You remember everything about this city but your name!
The words hung there, electric and ugly, shimmering between them.
The shifting form faltered, the static crawling slower across its outline. “My… name?”
Eddie didn’t move. “You correct everyone else’s memories, but you don’t have your own. You built who you’ve become out of everything that replaced you.”
“That’s not…” the entity started, but his voice wavered, rippling through radio static and snatches of old jingles. “That’s not true. I–”
A flicker of the Solara’s old sign bloomed across his chest, a half-remembered neon star inside a martini glass, before it sputtered out again.
Eddie took a step forward. “You were someone. You stayed because you wanted to be forgotten, but that’s still wanting something.”
The static shuddered. For a heartbeat, the Aurora ghost looked almost human – an older man in a cheap suit, the kind sold in casino gift shops for emergency weddings. “They said they’d comp me another night,” he murmured, dazed. “But they never…” He blinked. “God, that room was cold.”
Eddie’s voice softened. “Yeah. It usually is.”
The light in the parking lot dimmed. The shape of the older man in a cheap suit started to fade in, displacing the static. “Jack,” he said to himself before his eyes – his form now had distinct blue eyes – met Eddie’s. “Jack… Brenner….”
Eddie smiled, “It’s good to meet you, Jack Brenner. I’m sorry your stay at… the Aurora Grand?”
Jack shook his head tentatively, then more certainly before saying, “No… It was the Starlite…” his gaze became unfocused as if he was looking back through time. “It was the Starlite where I died… I was leaving the next day to…”
“To?”
“…See my wife… Oh my god… I had a wife… But she… I was unremembered. Nobody remembered me,” his form softened again, threatening to turn to static.
“You were unremembered by The Starlite, by this city. On that point you’re not wrong – the city doesn’t have time for a lost individual. What happened to your body? Did your wife come looking for you? I bet she did… But you have a thread now. You existed, Jack. You remember.”
The shifting lines of static began to smooth back into the form of Jack Brenner again, the entity’s edges turning to faint light. The air warmed.
He looked up at Eddie. “What happens now?”
Eddie glanced toward the Strip, where the neon shimmered like a mirage. “Maybe you leave,” he said quietly. “Maybe I finally can, too.”
The other ghost nodded once – a small, human motion – and turned, his back to the Strip. “Maybe I will leave, if just to see if there is a memory of me out there. Now that I have a place to start.” His outline dissolved into a swirl of soft light that drifted upward and away, leaving the air still and strangely clean.
Eddie stood for a long moment, the wind tugging at the edges of his coat. The Convention Center parking lot, the old Riviera site, stretched before him, empty again, but different – lighter somehow.
He smiled faintly. “Maybe leaving isn’t about where you go,” he whispered.
And for the first time in decades, the lights of the Strip reflected in his eyes instead of through them.
Epilogue:
“Eddie?” Lacey asked the costumed Labubu as it wandered down the strip.
“No, it’s Joey!” came the muffled voice from inside the costume.
“You finally got the ass fixed on that thing?” Georgia laughed.
“Laugh it up, showgirl,” Joey said as he kept walking.
“You’ve got to stop asking every Labubu if it’s Eddie. It’s been a month. Maybe he’s really gone?”
“I just… I want to know he’s okay, you know?”
Her orange feathers caught the neon, glowing like sunrise. “Feels wrong not seeing him around.”
They watched the river of tourists – Spider-Men, Barbies, Mandalorians, Blueys – all posing and hustling and shouting for tips under the hum of the Strip.
Then a new performer joined the line – tall, in a bright pink flamingo suit, head tilted, wings soft with sequins. He stood beside them, silent for a long moment.
Lacey laughed. “Now that’s commitment.”
The flamingo head tilted toward her, and a familiar voice came from inside. “You still working this block?”
Her breath caught. “Eddie?”
He pulled off the oversized head, hair tousled, grin unmistakable, and still translucent – he put the head back on before anyone seemed to notice. “Told you I’d find a way to stand out.”
“You… You could’ve gone anywhere!” she said.
“I did,” Eddie said softly. “And it turns out anywhere’s not as fun without friends.”
Georgia whooped. “Well, look who flew back!”
Eddie groaned. “That’s terrible.”
They all laughed – and just like that, he was part of the noise and light again, feathers and neon blending into the endless churn of Vegas.
For the first time, Eddie wasn’t haunting the past. He was home.
