had a real love-hate thing going with Las Vegas. When I was in the groove of it, when I felt like I was living it on the upswing, I felt all exhilarated and sparkling. This happened at odd moments: walking down the Strip, sitting in a restaurant, wading in the hot tub of my hotel's spa.

But there was a cyclical thing going on. I'd find myself peaking and then finally plummeting into a kind of despair I never know in New York. Because, ultimately, everything in Las Vegas is set up to part you from your cash. And so, with every good thing here, I felt the grim motivation behind it. This happened specifically at a Sunday brunch at the Sheraton Hotel, where a decadent spread was set up (all kinds of salads, eggs every way, trays of desserts, plates of waffles alongside huge bowls of whipped cream). I sat there in this ballroom, looking up at a chandelier, at all the people munching contentedly, at the waiter pouring endless champagne, and then it would hit me: it's all foreplay leading to financial ruin. You can just feel the failure, the loss here. It seeps out from between the lines, there's a real stink to it.

Far from what I had anticipated, Las Vegas was not sexy. People focused that intently on cash have little concern in engaging in anything with other people. It was all a weird, disembodied brain massage. It felt clinical.

"You've got to see the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Museum," my friend Daisy had said before I'd left. "See her perform. She is a total drag queen." I'd read a story about it in Vanity Fair, a somewhat sensational story, intriguing, horrifying, and bitchy all at once, done in a way that has become a hallmark for that magazine. The writer detailed the saga of Reynolds dropping a lot of money into what was depicted as a white elephant of a hotel where some of the rooms were still in mild disrepair. The writer sat with in the hotel lounge. They talked, drank, and apparently by the end of the interview was quite tipsy.

Locating it was easy enough. My hotel was already pretty far down the boulevard. Past the crosswalk, turning right, and wow, into an L.V. desolation zone. Suddenly the white white heat felt silent, still, as I wandered down the street, taking a right off the strip, past a dead-looking deli, a parking lot littered with tin cans. Some sort of Sno Kone place that had gone out of business. And yes! There-- big, bold, high in the sky-- loomed the signature of Reynolds on a building. It was a movie star signature, loopy and extravagant. As I walked closer--yes!--a painting of her face on the building came into view. Big, bold, movie-star mother-ish. I knew then that I would be enjoying not just the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Museum, but Carrie Fisher's Mom, You Know The One Shirley MacLaine Played In Postcards From The Edge-- her museum.