The following fictionalized story is Based on actual events. Names and locations have been changed to protect the guilty.
Chapter 1: Gloria, the Gatekeeper
Meeting Gloria was like stepping into a sitcom you didn’t realize you were a part of. She was a force of nature—the kind of person you’d spot from a mile away and somehow still not be ready for when she got up close.
I had only been married a year when my wife and I moved to Las Vegas. I was 24, working as a headhunter for the gaming industry in New Orleans, when my boss gave me the news: the company was relocating to Las Vegas. Did I want to come? Originally from the West, I jumped at the opportunity. My wife and I packed our things and headed for Sin City, where rent was high, the desert heat was stifling, and everything felt surreal.
We found an apartment in Northwest Vegas. It wasn’t the best area, but it wasn’t the worst either. At least, that’s what we told ourselves. There was the occasional gunshot in the distance, accompanied by the constant noise of police helicopters circling the neighborhood, searching for someone, and one time, a murder happened in the alley right next to our building. We could see the body from our living room window. Quaint, right?
Three months after we moved in, my wife met Gloria by the pool. They struck up a conversation, and my wife, being the kind-hearted person she is, befriended Gloria right away. Gloria, who was transgender, had a natural charm that made her impossible not to like. She was loud, funny, warm, and a natural conversationalist. That’s all my wife needed to know.
When I finally met Gloria, I got it immediately. She was a New Yorker through and through. The accent, the mannerisms, the way she carried herself—everything screamed “Big Apple.” She had this massive head of frizzy red hair, a booming laugh, and a pair of breast implants that seemed to defy the laws of physics. She rarely bothered with a bra, which made her larger-than-life presence even harder to ignore.
And man, could Gloria talk. She had this sharp, biting humor that could disarm anyone, and she wasn’t afraid to use it. She could have been a stand-up comedian if she’d ever gotten on a stage. The jokes, the timing, the way she could turn a phrase—it was pure talent. But for all her humor and larger-than-life attitude, there was something else about Gloria: she was our weed connection to Lucky.
Now, Gloria wasn’t the kind of person who handed out trust easily, especially when it came to her business dealings. She was the gatekeeper, the middleman, and the only person Lucky trusted enough to handle his weed transactions. How the two of them met, I’ll never know. It felt like a partnership born of sheer cosmic irony: Lucky, the paranoid and overly cautious dealer, and Gloria, the flamboyant, red-haired New Yorker who lit up every room she walked into. But somehow, it worked.
For almost a year, we bought weed from Gloria. It wasn’t the smoothest arrangement—she worked a couple of jobs, sang karaoke at dive bars on the weekends (Bob Seger and BTO were her go-to’s), and wasn’t exactly easy to track down. But we made it work. She’d disappear for a week and then suddenly show up with her signature laugh, a plastic baggie tucked away in her oversized purse, and a story that would leave us in stitches.
We liked Gloria. She was funny, dependable in her own unpredictable way, and didn’t give a damn about appearances. But after nearly a year, we were ready to cut out the middleman. We didn’t want to deal with Gloria any less; we just wanted to deal with Lucky directly. We asked her about it more than once, and every time, she’d wave us off. “Lucky doesn’t trust nobody,” she’d say, her thick New York accent turning it into something closer to “no-boh-dee.”
But Gloria liked us. I think she trusted us, even if she wouldn’t admit it outright. Finally, after months of persistence, she agreed to talk to Lucky. “Don’t screw this up,” she warned us, and we knew she meant it. If Lucky didn’t like us, we were back to square one.
Introductions
The first meeting was set for a Thursday night. As I walked up to Lucky’s house, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Gloria had told me he was a bit paranoid, but she’d failed to mention the circus I was about to walk into. I knocked on the door, and it swung open to reveal a skinny old man in a filthy thin tank top and a pair of boxers. His nickname, We would give him later on would be, “Filthy Draws” or “Shitty Shorts” based on the day.
“Don’t look at me in my filthy draws,” he growled, shuffling back into the house.
The smell hit me next: a potent mix of spilled bong water, wet dog, and something else I couldn’t quite place. Inside, a large German Shepherd growled at me from the corner, while a massive Rottweiler—who Gloria had warned me was in heat—sniffed the air suspiciously.
“ Hey Buddy, Don’t mind the dogs,” came a voice from deep inside the house. “Have you ever seen a dog’s vulva that big and swollen?”
That was my introduction to Luis” Lucky” Quintero, he was a Hispanic man in his early 30s, tall and wiry, with a laid-back yet intense demeanor. He typically wore a white tank top and dark blue sweatpants with white stripes running down the sides. He’d greet you with a friendly, ‘Hey buddy,’ but underneath his casual air was a compulsive gambler whose life seemed to teeter on the edge of chaos.
When we’d go to Lucky’s house, we’d usually enter through the front door, head down the hall, take a left, and then a quick right to reach the master bedroom. His room, the last door on the right, was where we always ended up. Inside, there was always something playing: sports on the TV. After all, he was a degenerate gambler, the Allman Brothers on the stereo because he loved their sound, or, occasionally, porn because, well, Lucky had his gross moments.
His house was a typical suburban home in Las Vegas, but the master bedroom—his domain—was something else entirely. It was located at the back of the house, with a sliding door that opened out to the pool. The room was large, with white walls that had seen better days, and carpets permanently stained from years of spilled bong water and covered in dog hair. He had both a couch and a bed crammed into the space, and one entire wall was lined with mirrors, giving the room an odd, almost voyeuristic feel. It was the kind of place that made you wonder what had happened there before you arrived, but you didn’t really want to know. One time, instead of heading straight to Lucky’s room, we ended up in the dining room area. The space was cramped, dominated by a small circular table piled high with newspapers and random clutter. But what stood out most was the giant hole in the wall—like someone had been thrown into it. Later, we found out that’s exactly what had happened. There’d been some kind of fight over food, and someone had gone flying into the wall, leaving behind the evidence of the chaos that seemed to follow Lucky everywhere.
Lucky’s house also had a revolving door of strange characters. One girl who hung around refused to wear shoes no matter the situation. The soles of her feet were completely black like she’d been walking through coal mines. It was disgusting, but no one seemed to mind—or at least they pretended not to. Then there was a guy who had lived there for a while and was absolutely terrified of hospitals. When he got really sick, they finally took him to one, but he died not long after. The story goes that he died of sheer fear from being in the hospital, even though he was still pretty young. These were the kinds of people you’d find orbiting Lucky’s world—a weird menagerie of the eccentric and the unfortunate.
There was always sketchy shit going down over there, though, and you didn’t want to hang out for too long. You never knew what kind of chaos might erupt.
“Don’t mind the dogs,” came Lucky’s voice again from deeper in the house. “They won’t bite unless I tell ’em to.”
This was just the beginning of the whirlwind that was Lucky’s world, a place where chaos felt like the only constant. But at that moment, standing in his dimly lit house surrounded by growling dogs and the overwhelming smell of bong water, I had no idea just how deep into the madness we were about to dive into. TO BE CONTINUED
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