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# What Happens Here Happens Everywhere
- URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/what-happens-here-happens-everywhere/
- Published: 2023-04-10T17:49:56.000Z
- Updated: 2026-02-19T13:08:41.000Z
- Description: I had time to kill at the Las Vegas airport, where it feels like being returned to a pleasant memory of 1987.
- Author: James A. Reeves
- Tags: Notebook

C.’s flight home from the Middle West was delayed due to some tornadoes that were tearing up Missouri, so I had time to kill at the Las Vegas airport, where it feels like being returned to a pleasant memory of 1987: corridors of neon, spaceship aluminum, slot machines, and burgundy carpet.

Eager tourists queued up to photograph themselves with the new Vegas slogan. A few years ago, Vegas decided to shake off the sleazy implications of *What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas*. So they hired an advertising agency to drain the English language of any meaning until it became a cheap koan that belongs anywhere: *[What happens here, only happens here](https://rrpartners.com/case-study/lvcva-what-happens-here-only-happens-here/?ref=jamesreeves.co).* I pondered this phrase until it became terrifyingly existential.

A tattered man settled into the bench next to me and surrounded himself with a fortress of plastic bags and the weather of the street. He launched into a litany of muttered theories about the government and a man named Bobby. I would have given him a dollar or two, but I never seem to have any cash these days. It might be worth carrying some for these moments. Because I’m goddamned lucky. A few tweaks in the timeline could have left me in his seat, haunted and alone. Hell, it could still happen. Two airport cops eyed the man for a while, then kept walking.

Time stretched into a crawl while my neighbor’s muttering downshifted into a snore. Eventually, the big screen said C.’s flight had landed, and I scanned the faces that passed by, each defined by the simple fact of not belonging to her. When I finally spotted her at the other end of the terminal, she gave a little wave, and time resumed again.