THE MOONLIGHT CLUB 
                                                                    (chapter sample from novel) 

                                            CHAPTER 57

Things hadn’t really been going well for me in the days after I touched down in the land of the free. For a start, I’d had constant shooting pains in both legs and was terrified the plane journey had given me a thrombosis. On day six, I called in the hotel doctor who sent me for some tests and declared me fit but stressed. It was obvious that he assumed I’d lost money. It would have been great to have simply lost a bit of money. Instead, I was losing my grip.
      Two days after Fritz’s tongue lashing, that old hitman called Guilt finally tracked me down. I was sitting in the bar at the Mirage, working my way methodically through Margarita number four, when something hit me in my stomach. It felt like I’d been punched from the inside out and I doubled up in my chair, causing an elderly couple opposite to throw me a nervous look. The punch was just for starters and as soon as I righted myself, my heart began slamming in my chest. I slapped my hand against my front, breathing deeply and trying to tell myself I couldn’t be having a heart attack. It wasn’t right to be having a coronary with so many beeping monitors around, not one of which was an ECG.
       I flapped and patted until the elderly lady got up and came and stood in front of me. “Are you okay, honey?” she asked. She sounded like Dolly Parton and I liked her immediately. You couldn’t die with someone around you who sounded like Dolly.
       “No,” I gasped, patting my chest and sending my glass of Margarita flying. “…..think I’m having….. a ….. heart…. attack.”
        Within minutes there was a group of people around me, watching as I continued to have the longest coronary in history. I am sure that some guys in the back were placing bets on it. But this was Las Vegas after all.
        The next time I looked up, Dr. Yates, the hotel’s finest, was standing there eyeing me with morbid fascination. “You again, then,” he said, as I fluttered my fingers against my chest and gave him a pleading look. I didn’t want to die with so many people looking on. At the back I saw money changing hands.
        A moment later, Dr. Yates had me on my feet and was escorting me back to my room. “Hospital,” I gasped, as he settled me on my bed and went over to my mini bar.
       He opened the cupboard and started rooting around in there. I was dying and the hotel doctor was fixing himself a snack. If this was the service I was getting at the Mirage, I was glad I hadn’t stayed at Circus Circus.
        Dr. Yates tore open a bag of crisps and popped one into his mouth. My heart flipped some more. I was going to expire and he was eating snacks. Yates took one more fond look at the crisp packet, upended it in the bin, rinsed it out under the tap and brought it over to me.
        “Not hungry,” I gasped.
        “Breathe into it, Mr. Durrant,” he said, and held it in front of my face.
        Bring on the leeches, I thought, as he instructed me to breathe deeply and slowly. I was about to protest again, when I realised that the thumping in my chest had subsided and my breaths were coming easier. “Good fella,” said Dr. Yates, rubbing a soothing hand over my back. “That’s it. In and out. And in… and out…and in…”
        You know your life’s truly hit rock bottom when you’re sitting on a hotel bed in Las Vegas and the on-duty doctor has to remind you how to breathe. After a bit, Dr. Yates took the crisp packet away and tossed it in the bin. Coming back, he pulled a chair up and sat facing me. “You know, I’ve been a doctor here more years than I’d care to admit and I’ve seen it all. Oh yeah,” he said, a faraway glint in his eye, “I’ve seen it all.”
        I didn’t quite like to think about what Dr. Yates had witnessed over the years – it’s a huge claim to boast that you’ve seen everything and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about it.
       “Yup,” he continued, “I’ve seen it. From rock stars out of their heads on drugs, to dead men still clutching a handful of pills and their last two dollars, and you know what surprises me most?”
       I shook my head.
        “That nobody leaves. They all stay until they can’t take any more. Their money goes, bit by bit; of course the time it takes depends on how much they had in the first place, but one thing they all have in common is that they never leave whilst they’ve still got some. They all wait until they have nothing left. No money, no dignity, no hope, no future. No nothing.”
        Well that wasn’t too bad a story, I thought. At least he hadn’t told me anything about canines or glass coffee tables.
        Yates regarded me squarely for a moment before grasping my shoulder. “You know what you just had Mr. Durrant? A panic attack, that’s what. It’s your body’s way of telling you it wants out of here. I’d listen to it if I were you.”
        When Dr. Yates had left, I mulled over what he’d just said. He’d simply assumed that I was wound up over money – and if I was, the sensible thing would have been to take his advice. Thing is, I wasn’t wound up over money. For me, Las Vegas had been the answer, not the problem. Vegas was the get out. Vegas was supposed to be my peace of mind – my guarantee that there wouldn’t be any panic attacks. What sort of body did I have, then, if it was telling me to go back to a country where there was a price on my head? Okay, so I knew it was the sort of body that had always got great pleasure from throwing obstacles my way, but was it the sort of body that really wanted me to die? Something told me that I was almost out of chances. Ironic isn’t it; there I was in the land of big chances and mine had just run dry.