The Desert Rose

by Larry McMurtry

  Before she left the dressing room she signed the work consent form. Gary had convinced her it was okay, he said how many sixteen-year-olds get a chance to dance the lead? Besides he had talked to Monique and Monique was giving serious thought to moving to Reno. She wanted to live a life that didn’t involve Bonventre, which sort of ruled out the Stardust.

  She took the form in and handed it to Bonventre, who was on the phone. He glanced at it and put his hand over the receiver. “Thanks, would you wait a minute?” he said, and went back to his call while Harmony leaned against the door. She felt so tired she was afraid she might go to sleep and dream another terrible dream about Francois being a starved corpse. But Bonventre didn’t talk long. He asked her if she would like to sit down.

  “I’m so tired I’d have to make an effort to get back up,” she said. “I’d rather just lean. So when will Pepper start?”

  “Next week,” he said. “It’s not what I want to talk to you about, though. I want to talk about you.”

  Harmony thought maybe he had heard about Dave and wanted to warn her or something. He didn’t have to bother—one breakfast of K rations was all the warning she needed.

  “What have I done now?” she asked.

  “Nothing, when’s your birthday?” Bonventre asked. He seemed sort of tired himself.

  “Next month, the fourth,” she said. It was a surprise question. What was he going to do, give her a birthday party for the first time since he’d known her?

  “You’ll be thirty-nine, right?” Bonventre said. “You know what I think? I think that might be the ideal time for you to retire from this profession. Quit while you’re ahead.”

  That was a jolt, he had never mentioned quitting to her before, though it was one of his well-known habits. He was always telling girls they ought to quit, then if they didn’t he fired them anyway. But he had never said one word about her quitting. Maybe the dark circles had brought it on, though he should know a little sleep was all she needed to correct that.

  “Jackie, I don’t know why you think I’m ahead,” she said. “I have plenty of bills. I even lost my Visa, I can’t afford to quit.”

  “This is not the only job in the world, you know,” he said. “There are even some that pay better. You don’t have to work at the Stardust forever just because you lost your Visa.”

  She didn’t feel like arguing, she had never even thought of having any other kind of job. Except for the three weeks as a waitress when she had first come to Las Vegas she had been a showgirl the whole time. What did he think she was going to do, become a secretary?

  “Is it just the dark circles?” she asked. “I told you I didn’t get any sleep. Jessie doesn’t break her ankle every day.”

  Bonventre sort of sighed, as if every word she said was exactly the words he didn’t want to hear. At least he was not going into a rage, though. Maybe he was too tired for a rage.

  “Harmony, you’ve got eyes,” he said. “You know every girl in this show. How many of them are thirty-nine years old?”

  Actually none, the next was Linda and she was just thirty-seven.

  “I know, but I haven’t gained,” Harmony said. “I haven’t even gained a pound.”

  Bonventre looked more tired. “You might never gain a pound,” he said. “I would be the first to admit that you take excellent care of yourself. You might not gain a pound in the next twenty years but that doesn’t mean you can go on being a showgirl until you’re sixty.”

  Harmony began to get a bad feeling. Bonventre wasn’t in a rage, but she was getting the bad feeling anyway. One thing she didn’t want was beating around the bush.

  “I just came in to give you the form,” she said. “Are you firing me, Jackie?”

  “Harmony, I’m firing you,” he said. “As of your birthday.”

  Harmony didn’t say a word, she was trying to think if there were any new shows about to start along the Strip, maybe there was still time to audition. Gary would know. Meanwhile she didn’t have the energy to work up a big rage, neither did Bonventre evidently, he was almost friendly for once, now that he was firing her. Of course she had known hundreds of girls Bonventre had fired, some had screamed at him, some had cried their eyes out, some had just got their stuff and split. Anyway there was no appeal if Bonventre fired you, you were definitely fired.

  “Jackie, what’s the real reason?” Harmony asked. She was so tired she felt like she had taken some kind of drug, a downer of some kind. She didn’t even feel like crying or screaming, she just wanted to know the real reason. One night of dark circles couldn’t be it.

  “We need a new lead dancer,” Bonventre said. “It’s going to be your daughter. I don’t want to put a mother and a daughter on the same stage, it could mean some tricky publicity. You could be a grandmother soon, you know. Topless grandmothers just aren’t what the public wants to see, I don’t care if you haven’t gained a pound.”

  Harmony just leaned against the door, wondering where the disco gang went, she definitely needed to see Gary.

  “I thought I still looked okay,” she said. Most girls got fired because their breasts began to sag too much, or they gained weight or got pregnant—not because they had a daughter who had just been hired.

  Bonventre gave a little shrug and stood up. “It’s comparative,” he said. “Ten years ago you were the most beautiful woman in Las Vegas. Can you remember yourself?”

  Not when I’m so tired, Harmony thought. Once in a while looking at her pictures she’d see a shot of herself with some celebrity, Elvis maybe, or Mr. Sinatra or Jerry Lewis, she had had her picture taken with all the greats, once in a while when she looked the pictures she would think hey, that was me—but that was about it, just a moment once in a while, she wasn’t one to always be thinking about the past. She had known plenty of girls who practically spent their whole life being insecure about getting old. Dressing rooms were good places to hear about those worries, but she just tuned it out, she had things going on she’d rather think about, guys maybe, or Pepper’s birthday parties or heading to the lake on the weekend, there was always something coming up.

  She tried to think about ten years ago, but it was sort of hard to pinpoint a year like that, they hadn’t been that different from one another. Basically she couldn’t remember herself, maybe she had looked a little better then, but not that much.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Bonventre said. “You look like you’re about to fall over. You want me to get one of the guards to drive you home?”

  That was a new one, he had never shown the slightest concern. Maybe he thought she was really tired of being a showgirl—maybe it wasn’t that final. She could go home and get some sleep and talk to him about it tomorrow.

  “I got Gary’s car, I’m not going to have a car accident,” she said. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Well, I hope Gherri’s sister really has tits identical to hers,” Bonventre said, as they were walking into the casino. “If that’s the case our problems are solved, we’ll just put the two little sisters from Texas up on the discs.”

  It was like he was thinking out loud, he had just figured out who ought to go on the discs, his mind never stopped working on problems like that. The way he said it caused Harmony to feel a bad sinking. He wasn’t thinking about her anymore, he was just thinking about the show, it was final. He didn’t want her or Jessie anymore, he wanted beautiful young girls with breasts that stuck straight out. He wasn’t even being mean to her, why bother? She didn’t really work for him anymore. Bonventre didn’t even notice when she stopped walking with him, he just went on into the keno bar to get a nightcap or two.

  Meanwhile people were playing the slot machines all around her, or else keno, or watching basketball scores come in on the big board. The casino was going full speed ahead but Harmony felt she’d be lucky to make it to Gary’s car she was so tired.

  It just made her realize Bonventre was right. There had been plenty of years when she could have skipped a night’s sleep and still
hit the discos with Gary and the gang and thought nothing of it. Now she was barely making it down a row of slot machines, too tired even to get mad at Bonventre. He had just slipped her daughter in and kicked her out without a by-your-leave, she should have given him some wrath, but she didn’t even feel any wrath, she just mainly wanted to get on home. That Bonventre, he was a genius of some sort, he had picked the one time to fire her when she wouldn’t have stabbed him with a letter-opener or something. All she could do was yawn.

  She finally made it to the car. Then she started feeling lonely. It was strange that she was too tired to feel mad but not too tired to feel lonely. It was driving away from the Stardust that brought the loneliness on, after all she loved it and didn’t even mind its disadvantages, such as that the elephant had been farting more and more. Plus she had a lot of friends there, she knew half the people who worked in the casino. You got to know people when you worked in a place twelve years. Of course she could still go in and say hi, they wouldn’t ban her from the casino or anything.

  Then she remembered Howie. For about ten years Howie was the main security guard. He was a big guy and he took his job very seriously, he was always patrolling the casino looking for troublemakers. Howie had got to be her friend. There was never anything else between them because Howie was a happily married man, but they were really friends, his eyes sort of lit up when he saw her hit the casino. He liked to refer to her as the queen of the Stardust. If he happened to be talking to some tourists and she walked by sometimes he would show her off a little, he would say let me introduce you to the queen of the Stardust. Then his wife had died of cancer and he had begun to drink a little too much and lost his job. Howie had plenty of friends in the casino too, he was a very popular security guard, and they all told him be sure and come back and see us. Howie said he would, but he never did. Once or twice Harmony saw him on the street and he said he’d probably be dropping in at the casino in a few days, but he never did. Gary’s theory was that once you’ve sort of been a boss it’s a big blow to just suddenly be a peon.

  Well, she definitely wasn’t the queen of the Stardust anymore. She was going to go check the discos and find Gary and tell him the bad news, but then she felt guilty about it, after all Gary had been kind enough to loan her his car, why load him down with any more bad news when his body clock was all screwed up anyway? Gary deserved at least one night when he didn’t have to be bothered with anyone’s problems. She and Jessie between them had sort of overdone it with the problems in the last few days.

  But she didn’t want to go home, either, she had to talk to somebody, after all she had been fired. She decided it would have to be Wendell and whipped into the Amoco station even though the gas tank was still three-quarters full.

  “Oh Wendell, I got fired!” she said, before he could even ask her if she wanted unleaded or what, he was not used to seeing her in Gary’s car.

  “My goodness,” Wendell said, then while he was getting the windshield Harmony started to cry. She didn’t even try not to, just sat in the front seat and cried while Wendell got the windshield.

  “Well, I guess it’s been one of them days,” Wendell said. He always put on a clean uniform every night, even though he wasn’t manager. It was one of the things Harmony liked about him, it showed he still had some self-respect even if there had been tragedy in his life.

  She was too tired for much of a cry, it had been too long a day. Then to her surprise Wendell said it was about time for his break, could he buy her a cup of coffee?

  “Sure, but Myrtle got mad because we whispered, what’s she gonna think if we have coffee?” she asked.

  “I heard her talking to another man, I guess I’ll take my chances,” Wendell said. Harmony was so shocked she forgot even to reach over and unlock the other door for him when it was time to go, he had to knock on the window. It was definitely the first she’d heard that Myrtle was talking to another man.

  “She called him Bobby, I was hoping you knew what was going on,” Wendell said. Gary just had a Datsun and Wendell was big, he sort of filled the car. He must have shaved before he came to work, Harmony could smell his after-shave. One thing she liked was that his sideburns were silver, she thought that was appealing. He was definitely too big for the Datsun, though—she kept bumping his leg with the gearshift when she shifted, which seemed to embarrass him a little.

  They just went to the McDonald’s, it was handy. As for this Bobby, Harmony didn’t have a clue, she had supposed Myrtle and Wendell were a happy couple, although it was her opinion Myrtle didn’t treat him very well.

  Wendell was not what you’d call a big talker. He mainly held his coffee cup in his hands and stared into space. Harmony suggested maybe Bobby was just a man who ran a garage sale or something, but it didn’t seem to be much consolation. Definitely Wendell had sad eyes. The hair on his wrists and arms was silver too, like his sideburns. He had a blood blister under one fingernail. When she asked about it he said a jack had slipped, really that was about the extent of the conversation.

  Driving back to the Amoco Harmony wondered if maybe Wendell was sorry he had taken the risk of having coffee with her, he knew what a jealous nature Myrtle had. The more she thought about it the more she thought it might be understandable that Myrtle was talking to another man. If she wanted to talk to a man at all it would probably have to be another man. Wendell didn’t say a word on the way back. Still, he was sweet though, he had probably suggested the coffee because he knew she was sad about being fired. She really wanted to hug him for the kind thought but was afraid to, she still had her makeup on and if she left traces on his clean uniform Myrtle would find them and go through the roof.

  “Don’t tell her I asked about Bobby,” Wendell said, after he had managed to get out of the Datsun. “She don’t like nobody to pry.”

  “I won’t, thank you for the coffee,” Harmony said. He looked so sad in his clean uniform that she had a longing to do something kind for him, but then a car came up behind her before she could think. She just blew Wendell a kiss and drove on home.

  Once she got on her own road, bumpy as it was, she felt a little better. It was always a happy surprise to be reminded that there was a place that wasn’t the Strip. Once you were on the Strip it sort of took you over, you could easily forget that there were other places and other ways to live. The night air smelled wonderful and the stars were very bright. She saw a little winking red light on an airplane flying over the mountains, it was hard to imagine why an airplane was flying around at that time of night.

  When she drove into the driveway she saw that Myrtle and Maude were spending the night in the Buick. Maude woke up and bleated a time or two when Harmony parked but Myrtle was sound asleep. Pepper had covered her with some blankets.

  She checked in Pepper’s room and sure enough Pepper was there asleep, with her radio on. Harmony took off her shoes and tiptoed in and turned it off. Pepper rolled over in her sleep but didn’t wake up.

  Harmony was thinking the things people say are true, your children grow up before you know it. In another month her little girl sleeping there, with one leg dangling off the bed, would be the lead dancer at the Stardust. Maybe she would be the greatest star in the history of Las Vegas. Maybe she would go on to New York or Hollywood or Paris. Maybe the rich man who loved her would be a kind husband and always take care of her, or maybe she would get tired of dancing and just be rich and have children, making her a grandmother, like Bonventre said.

  The one thing she knew was that Pepper had grown up and wouldn’t just be her little girl anymore, although over in the corner there were still some dolls and quite a few of the stuffed animals that had been presents from Jessie, many of them mangled from times Maude got in the house.

  Poor Ross, she thought, as she was taking off her makeup. He missed all those years. Harmony had a scrapbook of all Pepper’s birthday parties and dance recitals. She thought it would be nice for Ross to see the pictures, if he ever came back, it would make up for
his having missed Pepper at various ages.

  She was so tired she didn’t know if she’d even need the sleep goggles, but she put them on anyway and for once didn’t think of Denny, maybe it was finally going away or maybe it was just that she was so tired.

  3.

  THE PEACOCKS woke her. She took off the sleep goggles and raised the shades and looked at them. They were calling, walking around the yard spreading their beautiful feathers, but the poor goats that Myrtle didn’t love weren’t paying any attention. Harmony decided she’d get up and feed them and feed Pepper, then she could go back to bed and sleep till it was time to visit Jessie. She put on her robe and went out. She hadn’t slept long, but just being in the yard in the early morning with the peacocks was almost as good as sleep. She sat on the steps and let them eat corn out of her hand. When one got a little corn it would walk away a few steps to be proper, then after a bit would come back for a little more.

  While Harmony was feeding them, her robe tucked around her, she heard the shower running. She went in and started breakfast and pretty soon Pepper came in, rubbing her hair with a towel and looking disgusted.

  “Pepper, why are you making that face? it’s a beautiful day,” Harmony said.

  “Because I got up and I didn’t need to—I’m not going to school anymore,” Pepper said. “I didn’t remember until I’d already washed my hair.”

  “I don’t really like you quitting school. Maybe you can take a correspondence course,” Harmony said. “Your father always said a high school diploma was important.”

  “Well, it isn’t, I’ve already got a job,” Pepper said, and went back to get her blow-dryer. She brought it and plugged it in by the refrigerator and sat at the table drying her hair while Harmony scrambled some eggs.

  In the midst of scrambling the eggs, Harmony suddenly remembered that she was fired. It didn’t seem very real. It occurred to her that maybe it had been a dream, like the one she had had about Francois being a starved corpse. Maybe she had gone to sleep leaning against Bonventre’s doorway and had a dream that he had fired her. In fact the whole day after getting sick from the K rations had seemed like a dream, maybe she had been out on her feet and imagining things.