THE SANDS

    There was no denying it.  Napoleon hadn’t a clue as to how he had gotten here.  Just four years earlier he had lost his job, an event that was shortly followed by his wife resigning from their marriage.  The former had been a political maneuver gone awry, while the latter had been the result of the first real mistake of his life... that is, marrying a woman purely to end the lifelong struggle of attaining the ideal of love.  You know, that one that only exists in 30 minute time slots on any given television screen.  Napoleon soon realized that, even love was a political endeavor and like all things politic, they were only real in the advertisement.  Caveat emptor.

    Many would have crawled into a corner to die after having faced such a debilitating double-defeat, but to Napoleon, it wasn’t a defeat, it was a release.  Truth be told, the job and the marriage were one in the same; shackles that only held him back from his destiny.  They were diversions that put drag on the lift from his meteoric rise.  Thankfully, both vacuums only consumed 2 years of his time.  After shaking them both off, he had shot up like the last bubble of air escaping a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean.  Like that bubble, once released to the atmosphere, he had vanished from the area, leaving only the submersed vessel of those two years, hidden from view to quietly erode to dust.  Out of sight, out of mind.

    And here he was, just 4 short years later, at the height of his powers, worth over a million dollars and sitting in the foyer of the 4,000 square foot, mid-century mini mansion he had purchased.  “The secret life of Frank Sinatra” and the ideal that myth implied, was now at his finger tips in a very real way.  It was a far cry from the cramped 2 bedroom apartment he had shared with his former wife and infinitely more to his taste.  The Ex had an interior design sense that could only be found at Walmart.  Napoleon’s style echoed the culmination of the best of what art, history and the great masters of architecture provided to the world.  Thus, time seemed to stand still at Napoleon’s house.  It was 1960 here, morning, noon and night and it was his.  That’s not to say that he didn’t have designs of indelibly putting his stamp on the place.  It needed work to bring it to the vision his mind’s eye had, but it was close.  There was a perfection here begging to be brought out and shown to the world and he knew precisely, right down to the last stone, what needed to be done.

    The house wasn’t just a bold expression of his success and taste, it also represented security.  Made entirely of stone and steel, the house was an impregnable fortress.  Not wind, nor rain, nor thief or even death itself could enter the premises without invitation.  When Napoleon had initially checked out the property, the home inspector declared that it was built like a bunker, and more than likely would survive a nuclear blast.  Napoleon laughed at such an assertion, but the inspector assured him that he was serious.  He believed that in a category 5 tornado, only the windows would possibly need replacing.  And so, with style and permanence declared, Napoleon aptly named his new estate after another architecturally stylish and impenetrable building... The Sands.  After all, The Sands in Las Vegas had withstood every thief in the world.  It had even survived the storm that was Sinatra walking out, swearing to destroy the place by signing with Caesar's Palace.  In reality, he only broke a few plate glass windows in frustration on his exit.

    The interior was massive with a grand entrance.  The living room was 30 feet high, bordered by a balcony, suspended by an open flight of stairs, that led to the hidden second story bedrooms.  Though he never cooked, there was a kitchen large enough to support a busy catering business.  Lined floor to ceiling in glass tile and shining with chrome at every corner, it was nice to look at, but Napoleon had no plans to use it.  “Maybe if we break sales projections next year, I’ll hire a maid/cook on the week days.”, Napoleon thought to himself.  He was slowly getting used to thoughts like this as being normal instead of the unobtainable dreams his former wife would have painted them to be. 

    “Speaking of hired help,” Napoleon thought as he stared out the floor to ceiling window to the backyard, “I’m going to have to hire a lawn service.”  The back yard stretched a huge distance from the tiered stone deck.  100 plus year-old trees dotted the grounds giving a canopy to the back yard that made it feel like a roofed extension of the house, tripling it’s size in the illusion.  It would easily be a 40 hour a week job for one person to maintain the landscape.  Napoleon felt a crew could whack it out in a day, once a week.  After all, that’s why he worked hard to make money.  Money paid for the inconveniences of life.

    The basement wasn’t anything to sneeze at either  In reality, it wasn’t a basement so much as it was another complete floor unto itself.  Complete with a real bomb shelter, an engine room with a boiler, a steam room with a sauna and shower, a music studio and a full bar.  The bar was something to behold.  Like the kitchen, it was professional grade and only required a liquor license to become fully functional.  The bar itself could seat 12, while the room it was in could easily hold another 30 people.  A perfect collage of neon, mirrors and padded walls, Napoleon, keeping the Sands theme going, dubbed it “The Copa Room”.  Other than having his audio recording equipment installed in the music studio, only a full supply of liquor and the pool table in the bar were all that Napoleon had in the house.  However this and much more was soon to change.