Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Gonzo has been throwing up for most of the night, and by midnight, he decides he wants coffee. Driving down the Strip, Duke pulls the White Whale up next to a Ford with Oklahoma plates. “Hey there!” Gonzo yells. “You folks want to buy some heroin?” The Midwestern tourists are shocked, and they attempt to ignore Gonzo as Duke drives alongside them. Suddenly, one of the men in the Ford loses control. “You dirty bastard!” the man screams. “Pull over and I’ll kill you! God damn you! You bastards!” Duke spikes the brakes and shoots across three lanes of traffic. “Jesus Christ,” Gonzo says. “Those Okies were getting excited.”

Duke and Gonzo head for a diner in “North Las Vegas,” a “mean/scag ghetto” on the outskirts of town. North Vegas is for those who “fucked up once too often on the Strip” and have been exiled from town. It is a place for “hookers turning forty” and “pimps with bad credit at the Sands.” Vegas casino owners pay a lot of money to make sure that “high rollers” don’t have to deal with “undesirables,” and security is “super tense and strict.” Las Vegas is a “gold mine,” and it “breeds its own army, like any other gold mine.” Security “tends to accumulate in fast layers around money/power poles,” Duke notes, and in Vegas, big money is “synonymous with the Power to protect it.

Inside the North Star Coffee Lounge, Duke and Gonzo are the only customers, which is a good thing since they have just eaten some more mescaline. The waitress looks like a “burned-out caricature of Jane Russell,” or like a “very old hooker who had finally found her place in life.” She is “definitely in charge” behind the counter, and when she brings Duke his hamburger and coffee, Gonzo hands her a folded napkin with writing on it.

The waitress turns her back and reads the napkin, which says: “Back Door Beauty?” She turns back to Gonzo, angrily. “You sonofabitch!” she yells. “I take a lot of shit in the place, but I sure as hell don’t have to take it off a spic pimp!” She tells them to leave immediately and threatens to call the police. Gonzo stands up, holding a sharp knife, and walks to the pay phone. He slices the cord and brings the receiver back to his seat. Gonzo sets the severed receiver down on the counter and orders some lemon meringue pie. She brings the pie and the men stand to leave. Duke can see that Gonzo has “triggered bad memories” in the waitress. As they walk out, she is “in the grip of paralysis.”