Father returns and takes Theo to Las Vegas

Larry Decker, who abandoned his family without warning or child support, returns to New York with his girlfriend Xandra Terrell and, with the help of Social Services, takes custody of his son Theo, forcibly removing him from the Barbour household and transporting him to a new life in Las Vegas that is defined by isolation, gambling, and parental neglect.

Return and Confrontation

Larry Decker, accompanied by his girlfriend Xandra Terrell, appears unannounced at the Barbour apartment on Park Avenue, where Theo has been living since his mother's death. Theo is stunned by his father's changed appearance: he is heavier, tanned, puffy in the face, with a new suit and a haircut that makes him look like a downtown bartender. Xandra, a tan and fit-looking woman with flat gray eyes and a strong smell of Juicy Fruit gum, introduces herself with the instruction that her name is spelled "with an X." She explains that Larry has been sober for fifty-one days, having detoxed on the sofa with Easter candy and Valium. Larry's immediate request is for the key to the Sutton Place apartment, which Theo does not have, leading to a tense negotiation where Theo agrees to accompany them to the building with the help of the doormen. At the apartment, Theo retrieves the painting from his mother's bedroom and hides it in his suitcase, while his father and Xandra explore the rooms, with Xandra later found to have taken some of Theo's mother's jewelry, including the emerald earrings that had gone missing before Larry left.

Journey to Las Vegas

Theo is taken from New York to Las Vegas, a journey that begins with a taxi ride to the airport where he is terrified that security will discover the painting in his suitcase. On the plane, Larry and Xandra give him a large white pill, which he takes half of, and he drifts in and out of air-conditioned dreams. Upon landing, the airport is a shocking contrast to New York: slot machines, towering palms, and movie screens with showgirls and acrobats. The desert heat is breathtaking, and the city's skyline, with its pyramid and Eiffel Tower replicas, feels like another planet. They drive in a new silver Lexus, which Theo realizes his father must have acquired before he disappeared, through endless strip malls and pastel stucco homes before arriving at a large Spanish- or Moorish-style house on Desert End Road in a development called The Ranches at Canyon Shadows.

Life in the Desert

Theo's new home is a large, open, and mostly bare house with bone-white walls and a stone fireplace, a stark contrast to the cluttered warmth of his old New York apartment. He is given a large room with a bare mattress and its own tiny bathroom, which feels like the kind of room where a call girl or stewardess would be murdered on television. The house is isolated, with no neighbors and no public transportation, and Theo is left to his own devices. He learns that his father's former job did not involve as much business travel as he had claimed; he had actually been flying to Vegas for months and met Xandra in an Asian-themed bar at the Bellagio. Larry has switched from Scotch to Corona Lights and Vicodin, and his mood is more pleasant and predictable than when he was drinking, though he is often gone on unexplained errands. Xandra works nights managing a bar called "Nickels" in a casino on the Strip, and she and Larry often stay on the Strip, leaving Theo alone in the empty house. The only constant is the desert landscape, with its florid twilights and a sky full of stars that seem cold and glorious, a far cry from the glow-in-the-dark stars on his old bedroom ceiling in New York.