The lobby at the Mandalay Bay casino is a marble and limestone monstrosity, on a scale intended to dwarf. Patrons gaze out onto an ersatz jungle, Friday, Sept. 30, 2005, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Jason Fields)

I'm on a flight that leaves the gate at 8 a.m. EDT. Not a very Vegas time of day. My girlfriend and I are sitting in first class, because she is a woman with the resources to make stuff like that happen.

I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about attitude. Her attitude has a language all its own. It says, "I should be in first class, and you want to put me there."

The flight out is a dream of magically refilling glasses and plates of stale pancakes. People in steerage are blessed with some pretzels, and the nice ones may get a glass of water.

The cab driver at the airport is an obvious sunbird who can't lift our bags. The ride to our hotel is sunny, smoggy and slightly terrifying. I tip generously and hope I can ease our driver back into retirement.

We walk into THE Hotel. It's big, sort of art deco, sort of not. It's dark wood and airiness, with ceilings above the clouds, which are made of brass.

Check-in is a long, long line. We wait. We aren't patient. Every third man is wearing a Rolex, but many have the look of eager rats.

Our reservation is lost, we are told by a woman who just doesn't care. We do care, so we push. This diva behind a desk is not looking to help, but this is where my girlfriend truly begins to shine. A sleek, painted fingertip reaches out toward a sleeker Motorola Razr keypad.

Whack! A phone call.

Whack! Another call.

Wham! My girlfriend's personal assistant is on the case.

The woman behind the desk is already dead. She just doesn't know it yet.

Within an hour, we are installed in a Penthouse suite at Mandalay Bay. We have our own set of elevators behind exclusive wooden doors. The riffraff can't reach up to touch us anymore.

We glide to the top, install our stuff and go off to gawk. Within minutes, we're in Egypt, amid the ruins of temples and monuments that never were. We're taking pictures and making fun with all the rest.

Inside, it's the golden age of a civilization that worships the god of Chance.

We gawk some more. I stop to take a photo of an old lady engrossed in her slots, a cigarette longer than her cropped tresses dangling unnoticed from her ancient lips. She is the mummy in pharaoh's tomb, but no one has told her.

We aren't there to join her, only to appreciate her. We are headed to THE BUFFET.

My girlfriend has some deadly allergies. The buffet sacrifices one of its chefs to tell each ingredient's tale.

Everything is as you would hope -- the Dennyesque fried chicken redolent of industrial vats, the catfish tasting like it came from the bottom of a suspicious river. All washed down with Diet Pepsi and a fleeting wish for beer. Around us are the gorgers, grabbing hold with both hands. Not all are fat, but if what I see here is evidence, we all soon will be.

After putting the buffet behind and into us, we move on to see some more. We tour from hotel to hotel, finding difference amongst the similarity of money.

The window dressing of Las Vegas is reason enough to go. Sure, it's all just an elaborate ruse to make you come and sit down at a table, lay your lifetime's meager savings on the line, and lose. But some of the city-states of sin within the city's whole have taken on a real life for me.

The Venetian is Venice as Venice can only be. I've been to that town in Italy, and its charms are similar and equally whorish. The stores in both are shared. Prada is as Prada does.

But this Vegas Venice is a place without the burden of history, complete with the purity of fantasy. And if it isn't real, reality seems hard to find.

And reality, as I find out, is that when you're in Vegas, you gamble.

My girlfriend can't help herself. One, two, three, four $20 bills come out of a slender purse and fall gently to the baize of a roulette table, and are replaced by chips.

She bets it all, scattered across the numbers, and she wins very little. She plays some more, planning to lose, but instead, she wins some more.

Will she walk away? Not this time.

She places the chips once more.

The wheel spins.

She says she has a feeling.

Round, round.

And the ball skips and slides into its slot.

She's up $50.

She takes my hand. And away we go.

Used to be that Las Vegas was all about $5 steaks and $2 lobsters. Those days have waned. Now it's only in the spots covered in desert grime that you can find the nearly extinct animal known as cheap eats. Instead, the casinos have become such destinations that lunch has become a $76 affair. Oh, you want fries with that? Make it $92.

My girlfriend points out some of the logic behind one $300 lobster we see. If you've just won $5,000, a $300 lobster probably sounds tasty. And why not wash it down with a $500 bottle of $50 non-vintage champagne? This is why what you win in Vegas stays in Vegas.

My girlfriend's $50 sure went that route. I can't point to the exact dinner or lunch or cab ride that it disappeared into, but I can be sure our paltry winnings stayed behind after wheels up on Sunday afternoon.

We'd been, we'd gawked, we'd won. And we paid through the nose.

But you know what? How many times in your life do you get to wash away the desert dust with soap made by Bulgari?

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asap contributor Jason Fields has less than $30 in his pocket at all times.

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