We have time for a quick lunch before our bus goes so we think we might as well eat in the Bellagio’s bustling buffet. And the food goes on forever like the Colorado River bends and I really don’t know where to start but just drop in somewhere and take her out someplace else. Behind the buffet are non-stop cooks making pretty much what they made yesterday, but still in touch with the reason for why they do it — their love of food creation — and I thank them by digging into what they’ve made. There’s smoked salmon and catfish and chicken breasts with camembert and ham, and roast beef, turkey and lamb with satay sticks and pizza and desserts with strawberry jam. We all dive into it and stuff ourselves again ‘cos we know this is the last decent feed we’ll be having in a while.

Our gentle waitress, Tammy, brings us endless Coke (the drink) and Sprite and water and coffees and it’s all so unconquerable but we give a damn fine all-you-can-eat shot at it. We sit and lean back quietly and think about the quick-fire last few days, and I know there’ll be more time to think about it when we’re not living it, and we can finally sit in tranquil surrounds as Wordsworth did.

We tip Tammy good and go back to our rooms to pack up and say goodbye to it, then we’re down in the car park waiting for the Escilade and we kick the football across the Bellagio driveway as we wait. The valet guys smile at the silly out-of-the-ordinariness of us and I know they secretly want to join in too if their boss wasn’t looking, but really he wants to have a kick as well. So whilst they all hold themselves smiling back for now, we kick the Sherran as the fountains strike up a flurious shoot and the music booms out of the speakers and it all looks different down here amongst it where we know the show will forever roll along.

Eventually the Caddy arrives and we say goodbye to George the nicest man you could hope to find anyplace and his loving gal and we close the doors on it and Heath whips us down to the Greyhound station in the sad used-up back blocks of Vegas. And there’s the Golden Nugget casino and guys asking for dollars on the street and we all pause a while before we even think about opening the doors. But eventually we do and Heath lets us out into it, and in a brief nanosecond we thank him for everything as we hug and unload all our stuff onto the other-end sidewalk, saying goodbye to a bright star in our universe — shining for us like he shines for the whole world too.

We all promise to keep in touch and get together again soon, but things always draw out long on the no-time line of forever. We say goodbye to Mel, and give her a kiss, the strange, warm girl who lived a lot with us, and with that Heath is gone in a horn honking V8 get-out back to beating LA and we’re left with all our piled gear in the downtown back-area of America — everyone sad and gone with their tired old hands pushed out.

Slowly and quietly we move inside and get our tickets and wait in the middle of the shiny cold plastic floor whilst everyone sits dejected and empty and waiting around the edges under the fluoro lights, and it hits us in an instant that our world has fallen away and a different reality now slaps our faces. But I’m not ready to deal with it right here just yet and I need to get out of this and have a piss or something, so I go on over to the Golden Nugget and the people there are all spent. Absolutely the loneliest place in the USA right there with the saddest oldest housewives and divorced husbands slotting their money away whilst the stained carpet and cracked mirrors look coldly on and the toilets are rusted an orange streak and I get out of their quick before I lose my way and grow old with all these poor souls.

I get back and our bus is loading to Grand Junction, Colorado, and we line up with everyone else, heads bowed and push through to the ticket-checker who just needs to be somewhere else, on the road or something, and so we get up to him and he says, ‘Grand Junkyard, hey — enjoy your trip’. And this is a harsh hard reality to switch to, and we find four spots on the bus and sink into them heavy and tender.