Joe loved the work, except for the trips to Reno, which he believed was the real Sin City. He always felt depressed as soon as he got there. It was like the worst parts of Vegas, with no bright spots. Old ladies blowing their retirement at slots. Drunken bachelor parties with no bachelorettes. Unattractive couples fighting over money.

But last year in Reno, he’d met her: Victoria. A thirty-year-old graduate student who went by Vicki. She had short black hair and looked like a part-Asian Tinker Bell. She’d been sitting at the Japanese steakhouse bar, sipping white wine and staring at a martial arts film from the 1970s that played on a loop on one of the restaurant’s flat-screen monitors. Her eyes were glassy. Not drunk but tired. He approached her without his usual confidence and asked her timidly if he could pay for her next drink.

“No thanks, I’m fine,” she’d responded, in a raspy voice that surprised him.

“What if I told you I wouldn’t really be paying for it?” Joe had countered.

The woman shot him a confused look.

“This restaurant is one of my clients. I’m its supplier. When I’m here, I get my meals comped. We can just put your drink on my check.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “No strings attached. You just look like you could use a free drink.”

The woman smiled tentatively. “Well…if you’re not really paying for it…Okay. Thank you.”

After four more drinks, she agreed to accompany him back to his room. She seemed amused by her decision, shaking her head and flashing a weak grin as she took off her clothes by his bed as he watched.

“I’ve never done this before,” she’d said, “although I’m sure that’s what everyone says.”

“No, I believe you,” Joe had responded. “I do this all of the time,” he’d then said, surprising himself.

The woman, Vicki, now naked, had shrugged and smiled at him, her eyelids half-covering her pupils. “Thanks for your honesty.”

The sex had been unimaginative and depressing. Vicki seemed defeated, as if she were having intercourse to avoid doing something else.

Still there was depth to it all, in Joe’s mind at least. He decided that she needed someone like him, that there was a reason she’d chosen to have an uncharacteristic night of intimacy with him rather than going back to her room and watching television. He wanted to know more about her and to see her again. But he never thought to ask her for her last name. She was gone by the time he woke up.

He ran down to the Japanese restaurant the next day to see if he could get her name or room number from the bartender, but Joe was reminded that he’d comped Vicki’s drinks. There was no record of her at the bar.

Joe was supposed to leave for Vegas that evening, but he postponed his flight by a day on the off chance that he might see her again. He waited at the bar one more time, hoping that she would return, looking for him. She didn’t. At about two o’clock he wandered back to his room, hopeless and dejected. There was no way to reach her. He couldn’t even remember where Vicki said she had studied. He considered asking the hotel’s security to go through its tapes so he could at least get a visual. But they’d never agree to it. He’d sound like a predator.