“Miss QB? Here’s another fun fact. Every single day of the year sixty thousand pounds of shrimp are consumed in Las Vegas. That’s more than the rest of the country combined!” Suzanne looked from face to face, seeking a bit of acknowledgment.

“Oh, please,” Charlene said. “Suzanne wins every trivia night contest in Nevada!”

“Yes, I do!” Suzanne said. “Ask me anything.”

“Tell us the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard,” I said.

“Hmmm,” she said. “That’s a tough one. Okay, here’s something. How about in 1980, they had to suspend a bunch of hospital workers for betting on when a patient would die? And a nurse was actually arrested for murder, having killed a patient so she could win? How weird is that?”

“That’s out there,” Charlene said.

“If that’s not the work of the devil, what is?” the QB said. “Is there more sake?”

“Yes, but the larger question is,” Charlene said, refilling Momma’s cup, “do y’all want to ride the gondola down the Grand Canal indoors or outdoors?”

We finished all the sake and almost everything else, paid the bill, and made our way to the gondola passenger station.

“Thank you, Suzanne. That was absolutely fantastic!”

“Not exactly Shem Creek, is it?” I said.

“No. It’s another world,” Momma said in agreement.

Suzanne bought tickets for us, and after a few false starts and more than a few promises to save her if she fell in, we finally got the QB into the gondola, too. It was doing some serious wobbling. But then, to be honest, Suzanne was no skinny Minnie, either.

“I thought we were going to lose you there for a moment,” Suzanne said. “Come on now, sit right here next to me.”

As we drifted along the Grand Canal, Momma was strangely quiet, but smiling, and she seemed awfully happy. She was probably half in the bag, I thought.

“What are you thinking about?” I heard Suzanne ask Momma.

“I’m thinking this is my wildest dream, except I’m alive and in it, and how in the world would we top this?”

“Well, there’s the zip line on top of the Rio Hotel at the Voodoo. I was thinking we could knock back a couple of Witch Doctors and go for it,” Suzanne said.

“Witch Doctors?” the QB said.

“House cocktail,” Charlene said.

“Zip line?” the QB said.

“Yes, they put you in a harness four hundred feet above the ground and then you jump off the roof and go thirty-three miles an hour for a third of a mile. When it stops, you return to the roof facing backward,” Suzanne said. “It’s lots of fun and very safe.”

“You must be as crazy as every devil in hell to do something like that,” the QB said. “I think I’d rather just drink a Witch Doctor. That sounds more sensible to me.”

We all laughed at that.