Will the Real Céline Dion Please Stand Up?

I went to Las Vegas to see Céline in concert. I found her everywhere

- Suzannah Showler

It starts the way a dream might start: I’m in a boat riding down a canal inside a shopping mall that is also somehow Venice, and Céline Dion is my gondolier. Her voice is right there, singing just for me. “Take me back into the arms I love,” she begins, so close it’s more like temperature than sound.

This gondola is made for love. It carries passengers in units of two, or two and two plus the gondolier makes five, which happens to be Céline Dion’s lucky number. I’m riding alone, balanced in what isn’t so much a seat as a place to cuddle up, press knees, hold hands. “Just believe in me, I will make you see all the things that your heart needs to know,” Céline reminds me, romantic as hell.

We pass under a bridge and the key changes, the song gliding up to meet its own bridge. The word for what’s happening is coincidence. Céline lets her voice open all the way up, reaching out to caress every stone: “ Whatever it takes, we’ll find a waaaaaaaay — ”

We emerge into the light, and the singing is cut short. Dream over: I’m in Las Vegas, being ferried on a twelve-minute journey up and down the Grand Canal Shoppes of the Venetian, which is an almost-pretty thing to call a mall. For the remainder of the ride, my gondolier, who moonlights as a Céline Dion impersonator, slips back into character, and we pretend to pretend that we’re in the real Venice. It’s only kind of a stretch — the boat is real, and the canal is really man made, like all canals are.

My gondolier, clad in a navy-striped T-shirt, straw hat, and red satin neckerchief and sash, serenades me with an old Italian folk song as we glide past an Auntie Anne’s pretzel shop and a store called Socks & Bottoms.