In Las Vegas, but not staying in Las Vegas

Vegas is how you imagine the world ending: inane frivolity alongside fear and suffering, each pretending not to notice the other.

In Vegas, money trawls its nets through humanity, leaving the skeletons it stripped. They wear layers of clothes they got out of dumpsters and, for the lucky, a child-sized mattress they tote around for getting through cold nights on the sidewalk. Vegas is a…