Lethe just showed up at the Backpacker’s Inn one day, looking confused. He was stoned, I think. Later Tracy, the janitor here, told me that he had invited Lethe to smoke a joint.

I called Lethe over to the bar to have a drink with me. He said he liked Bloody Marys so I ordered him one. Clearly he was hungering for a companion; his fierce, wild eyes gave that away. When we mixed, chatting and smoking and having our drinks, we were like childhood pals. Sure Lethe was inclined to outbursts and ramblings of every kind. Sure he broke out of his Jack-in-the-Box once in awhile, giggling like a possessed criminal. Lethe’s larger-than-life personality drew attention to itself, and I was there, by association. He embarrassed me in front of the sleek Euro kids with his cawing. But by the end of the day, few thought anything of us and our relations. We minded our own business at the Backpacker’s Inn, usually behind closed doors.

I understand adolescents better than most adults and I never would have chided him for laughing like that. He could laugh as much as he wanted around me, I didn’t care.

Most of my friends are young people. That’s why I came to the Backpacker’s Inn, to meet young people. Now don’t get the wrong idea, I’m a friendly man.  But it’s true, we get a lot of runaways in these parts of Vegas, a lot of wayfarers of the middle-class suburban variety, the ones with the North Face backpacks and scruffy clothing. I’m fond of these lost souls. I like to hear how they hate their parents, how they flunked out of college, or spent all their money. We get together and drink, I’ll even buy. Hey man, Las Vegas can get lonely if you don’t make friends. And everyone’s a little screwed up here so it don’t matter. We’ll accept you whoever you are.

I accepted Lethe even though I could tell he didn’t accept himself. If I was going to hang out with him, then I had to learn one thing. Lethe Bashar believed that he was living in a novel. I watched how he approached people and situations and it was not completely sane. It took me a long while to understand this about him. At first he just seemed to have a lot of energy and we had a good time together. But later I realized that he really thought he could control people and events. He believed he was at the center of a vivid, elaborate world, a magical world rising up and around his actions, moment-by-moment, and dissolving into nothingness when he left the scene. And the people around him, the major, the minor characters and the extras, were not in his life by accident but part and parcel of the epic story he called The Novel of Life.

Now I can’t speak to whether this Novel was real or not, perhaps to Lethe it was real, but I will say that he seemed unable to consider my place in the universe as different from his. In short, Lethe Bashar was under the spell of his own playacting. I admit I fed this beast in him, mainly because I found his behaviors entertaining. After all, participating in Lethe’s world could be a rush.

I didn’t have any problem befriending a lonesome backpacker who comes to the Inn. Hell, I was a lonesome kid once. I think I ran away from home too. Too many beatings.

We sat by the poolside sipping our drinks and telling stories. That’s what I love about Vegas. You could be sunning out in the crapiest motel in town and the sun still shines ruby-red or bloody orange. Boy, do I love sipping on a salty drink by the pool.

“Do you know you’re a character in my novel?” Lethe blurted out loud.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “What’s the novel about?”

“It’s about you and me and our adventures in Las Vegas.”

“And what’s going to happen to us?”

“Well, after this we’re going to go up to your room to smoke some more crack-”

“Uh-huh and then what?”

“And then we’re going to run out . . .”

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