The Englishman and I exchanged business cards, wished each other well, said goodnight. As soon as he was gone, I felt a tiny tickle of excitement in the top part of my stomach. I was alone, and that tickle was my body’s way of telling me that I was happy to be alone again.

Was it typical for me to feel excited like this after a seemingly harmless chat? It was. It’s always been this way for me. Once, after a business meeting in a hotel barroom in Vancouver last winter, I stopped off in the lobby Men’s Room and caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. What I saw looking back was startling: I had the eyes of a sailor who’d spent too many years at sea; a sailor who’d survived epic, wine-dark tempests and maybe even battled oversized octopi; a sailor who was only now taking his first unexpected steps back on land again. I could see the post-business-meeting gratitude, even subtle flashes of joy, in my eyes in that Men’s Room mirror.

If anyone wonders why I live alone with two idiotic cats and have never been married, well, case closed on that front.

Now that I was indeed alone again, surely I deserved a reward of some kind. But what? One possibility: I could sit at the bar in the Luxor and continue drinking, which is what my inner alcoholic—his name is Sgt. Asshole—obviously wanted me to do. Sgt. Asshole always wants to drink. Or, I could gamble. Or, I could order a Las Vegas-style steak, which would inevitably the size and shape of a Smart Car. I could, theoretically, indulge whatever low-grade indulgence that I wanted to indulge here in Indulgence City, USA. A pair of call-girls sat at the corner of the bar less than eight-feet away from me. As if on cue, they both hoisted their drinks in my direction. Boobs were bubbling like lava from the front of their dresses. Sgt. Asshole said: “VAAARRRRGGHHHAAA.”

What I finally did was this: I downed my last bit of beer. I bid farewell to the escorts, who were still beckoning like a pair of zoned-out Sirens. Then—and brace yourself for the decadence storm that’s a-blowin’ in—I purchased a $14 Club Sandwich from the Luxor’s “Backstage Deli.” Then I picked up a stick of roll-on deodorant in the casino’s gift shop, which I had forgotten to pack when I left Vancouver that morning. Like they say on the Internet: !!!!!!!

As the cashier rang me up, I impulsively grabbed a Twinkies two-pack (!!!!!) and tossed it on the counter the way that a craps player in movies always tosses dice: two shakes, fist blow, throw. “That all?” the cashier asked. She scowled down at my deodorant and package Twinkies. In all her years of operating the till in the casino gift shop, which specialized in tobacco, condoms, idiotic souvenirs and cheap booze, it was obvious that this woman had never seen a purchase cornier than this.

“Going to be a really crazy night for me,” I said, regretting saying those words as they left my mouth. I puffed my chest like a town sheriff as a last-ditch effort to make things right between us. Then I winked at her: boop. The cashier smiled and winced, then gave me a worried nod.

*

The 13th floor seemed quiet as a library. The palette of the decorator had obviously been limited to various shades of sand. Carpet, walls, ceilings, doors—everything was some variation of a sandy brown, like the beach on Coney Island after the tide goes out. Every few feet along the hallway I’d encounter a faux ancient Egyptian “artifact” hanging on the walls behind a pane of glass. All the artifacts looked like the oversized scarabs that vex Brendan Fraser in the 1999 film The Mummy. Side note: When was the last time you watched The Mummy? It’s one of those rare movies that’s always somehow more enjoyable than you remember it being. You’ll watch it and think, Oh man, this is so great. I should tell more people about this. I should watch The Mummy all the time! But within a few hours, The Mummy will have erased itself from your brain. Seriously, it will. You’ll go back to forgetting all about it again.

I padded the length of the sand-hued hallway, passing door after silent door, listening for the telltale sounds of human activity: a TV going, some voices, someone showering. But there was nothing there. Nothing at all. It occurred to me that maybe I was the only one gutsy enough, or stupid enough—or both—to agree to take a room on the Luxor’s bad luck 13th floor. I felt an unnerving sense of loneliness, of abandon.

Then I remembered the Japanese man. The one with the backpack and the overbite. The one from Kyoto. He was staying across the hall from me. I had a two-pack of Twinkies. I’d stop by, knock on his door, check on him, share a Twinkie, make sure that he was getting settled for the night.

When I reached his door I found a strange kind of “Do not disturb” sign hanging on the knob. Only, in Las Vegas fashion, the sign did not simply say the words “Do not disturb.” Those words were far too pedestrian for Las Vegas. Instead, the sign featured a photograph of a man and a woman, prone on a bed. The man was on top in the dominant position; the woman on bottom. The two of them appeared to be having a good laugh together. Maybe it was the final moments of a tickle fight. Their bottom halves were not visible in the photograph, so whatever was happening down there was left up to the viewer’s imagination. The couple’s faces were healthy and bland and American, but not unattractive.

Across the photo, in case there was still any ambiguity whatsoever about what was going on here, the sign offered four words of clarification: GETTING OUR LUX ON.

Did the Japanese man understand this sign? Maybe. Maybe not. The man was not “getting his Lux on” in there; I was absolutely certain of that. He was probably taking a dump, or eating a plum sandwich or whatever the hell it is that Japanese people eat when they travel. Maybe he was sleeping.

In solidarity, I found the “Getting Our Lux On” sign on the inside knob of my door. I hung it proudly on the outside knob, as my neighbor had done.

Then I shut the door, locked up, ate both of the Twinkies, and went to bed.