Moon: waxing gibbous, almost full. A high of 68 degrees and clouds, dust, and a spatter of rain. Scrolled past a Vegas tableau of an abandoned baby stroller and a bottle of champagne on the median of Dean Martin Drive. Lunch at a Malaysian restaurant on the second floor of a strip mall crammed with markets from nearly every Asian nation, then we continued combing through the sprawl. I love the garbled energy here, the thrum of people around the world drawn to the desert, to a landscape that once belonged to religious visions, and now there’s a city invented solely for hustling people—a city built around an airport. There’s something bracingly honest and futuristic about this place.
We drove south until we picked up Route 66 in Arizona, its diners and gas stations faded and empty, or else transformed into photogenic trinket shops: the ghosts of a lost nation.
