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      “The job at the Bucks County Reporter is perfect for you.”

      “It is. You’re right.”

      “Darling, you’ll love Pennsylvania!”

      “No, Mom. I’m going to Las Vegas.”

      This little interchange took place last April, right after the letter carrier had dropped off two pristine white envelopes to my parents’ house and I had opened them in the kitchen while my mom drank her late-morning coffee.

      I remember it as though it happened ten minutes ago. I had graduated from college three years earlier. The internship scene in New York City was getting old, as was commuting from my parents’ house in Connecticut.

      All at once on that crisp spring morning, I had two genuine full-time job offers. I read them both to my mother, prompting the interchange I reported above.

      Things might have been so different. If, for example, the offer from Bucks County had arrived a day earlier instead of in tandem with the one from southern Nevada.

      Or maybe if it hadn’t been the era of “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.” If I hadn’t seen—and enjoyed—all those seductive commercials promising guilt-free anonymity in Sin City, who knows how I would have responded to the lovely offer of an assistant editorship on the right side of the tracks in Pennsylvania?

      But the slogan was ubiquitous and irresistible, and as I reread the letter offering me a position at The Las Vegas Light, I could swear it glowed with a hint of neon.

      Of course, Mom was right that Pennsylvania was the safer choice. But even she had no inkling then of just how right she was. Even with her often overactive imagination, my worrywart mother couldn’t have dreamed up what actually lay in store for me. Looking back, I wonder if things would have been different if she had been able to foretell the future.

      Copper, burglars are going to ransack your apartment. A thug in a ski mask is going to slash you with a knife. You’re going to get mixed up in murder. And that’s not the worst of it. Copper, darling, you’re going to make friends with a prostitute!

      It wouldn’t have mattered. I was twenty-four and itching to build a career. Las Vegas was a beehive of pop culture, and stultifying suburban security held as much appeal as an iron lung. Once I decided to go to Las Vegas, no one could have talked me out of it.

      Chapter 1

      Friday, December 9

      I carry business cards that read “Copper Black, Assistant Editor.” To my parents, they’re reassuring proof I’m a bona fide journalist, but what my title really means is that I update show listings and bring caffe lattes to Chris Farr, the arts and entertainment editor. But my parents are in Connecticut, where it’s far more satisfying to imagine me interviewing celebrities.

      “Copper,” my mother will say on the phone, “I read that Bill Clinton was in Las Vegas last week. Did you meet him?”

      No, Mom. I was standing in line at Starbucks.

      Not that I haven’t learned a lot in my nearly eight months in Las Vegas. I know about high pollen counts and flash floods, the shortage of obstetricians, and the abundance of Mormon churches. I’m an expert at giving and following directions using casinos as landmarks. I know that when real Nevadans said “Nevada,” the VAD rhymes with MAD. Only newscasters broadcasting from Rockefeller Center say Ne-VAH-da. Well, I used to, too, but I’ve acclimatized.

      Even so, I still have a lot to learn, even about subjects as ordinary as the good old-fashioned Yellow Pages. Remember those big fat books we used to use as booster seats and doorstops? I thought they had died out along with phone booths, but there’s a whole bookcase full of them at The Light. They’ve been relegated to the far side of the lunchroom, probably their last stop on the road to extinction, but there they are. I was eating lunch alone that Friday, so out of curiosity, I pulled one out to keep me and my ramen noodles company. I had just returned to my table when a familiar but unwelcome raspy voice fell on my ears.

      “Hey, blondie, help me out and turn to ‘Entertainers’ in the Yellow Pages you’ve got there.”

      I looked up to see Ed Bramlett leering at me from his usual spot near the windows. He covers business at The Light. Next to him, wearing a similar expression, was J.C. Dillon, who has the local government beat. They both have at least thirty years on me, and they liked nothing better than to see me blush. When I first arrived, they could turn me crimson in a matter of moments, but I’ve toughened up.

      “It’s Copper,” I said, looking back down. “Do you need some entertainment, Ed?” I hoped I sounded sufficiently sarcastic.

      “Not when I have you, sweetie,” Ed said. J.C. emitted a snort that was supposed to pass for a laugh.

      I should have ignored them, but I flipped to the “E” section. I know now that I should not have been expecting discreet ads for piano players, but I was still a Vegas newbie.

      “FULL SERVICE BLONDES,” read the three-inch headline staring me in the face. I looked up, and Ed smiled triumphantly as I felt my cheeks warming. I am the world’s fastest blusher, and I was glad I had worn my hair long that day. It covered my ears, which always heat up even more violently than my face. But I wasn’t embarrassed. I was angry. Ed had succeeded in turning me red again.

      “It means they bring you coffee,” Ed said, and J.C. snorted again. I slapped the phone book shut. Clutching it in one hand and

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