To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie

by Ellen Conford

  “Did you bring any crinolines?” I asked, holding up the skirt to see how long it was.

  “Crinolines?”

  “Yeah, you know, to wear under the skirt. To make it stand out.”

  “Oh, petticoats. Gee, no, I never thought of that. I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Really. It was so nice of you to go to all this trouble.”

  It did matter though. I wouldn’t look like a beautiful senorita at all, I’d look positively frumpy with the skirt hanging off me all limp and saggy. And what if we went dancing? The skirt wouldn’t even twirl out when I turned.

  And I wanted to look beautiful for Vic. I wanted him to see me the way I looked when I left New York, all dressed up, with makeup and my Teena Paige dress, which I’d never see again. Maybe he was thinking that I was silly to imagine I could get into the movies, but if he saw me looking my best he’d know I wasn’t kidding myself. And he’d want me to kiss him. And he’d want to kiss me back. And he’d forget I was only fifteen.

  I went into the bathroom and put on the clothes. There was no full-length mirror in there, so I couldn’t tell how I looked from the waist down, but I was pretty sure I didn’t look like a beautiful senorita. The blouse fit okay, even though the elastic in the sleeves was a little loose, but the skirt was a size too big around the waist. And it did sag, halfway down my legs.

  I hoped Vic wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen with me. I mean, even when peasant blouses were in style, they weren’t supposed to make you look like a peasant.

  “Sylvie?” he called. “Did you think about what I said?”

  “Yes. Well, sort of. I mean, I did a lot of thinking and I’m not mixed-up anymore.”

  “Great.”

  I put on lipstick and sighed. There was nothing else I could do with what I had. I walked out of the bathroom slowly, almost wishing that Vic wasn’t there to see me like this.

  “Well,” said Vic. He looked me over, like he was studying me. “Well.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I looked down at the floor. I was sure he thought I looked awful, but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful after all the trouble he’d gone to.

  “Boy, I think you could put on a potato sack and look terrific,” he said brightly.

  I almost said I would rather be wearing a potato sack than this, because I couldn’t look worse. But I didn’t.

  “Now, you’re going to forget everything in the world except that you’re a beautiful senorita out to have a good time.” He blew on his fingernails and rubbed them against his chest. “With a handsome cowboy.”

  Well, at least he wasn’t ashamed to be seen with me. And maybe he didn’t think I looked as bad as I thought I did. After all, without a full-length mirror, I couldn’t really tell.

  “Okay.” I forced out a smile. “Let’s go.”

  Vic went out first and told me to follow him a minute later.

  I walked as casually as possible past the pool, past the office, and met him on the street across from the Lucky Silver Horseshoe Motel. I wondered where Walter was. I didn’t see the Pontiac in the parking lot. Maybe he’d left Las Vegas and gone back to Fort Wayne. I hoped so.

  Vic had borrowed his father’s car for the evening.

  “Now,” he said, “we’re off to fabled Fremont street, where you can lose more money in one night than you’ll earn in your entire lifetime.”

  “I don’t have any money to lose,” I said.

  “Then you’ll be one of the few people to leave Las Vegas richer than when you came.”

  I thought that over for a moment. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  He opened the car door and looked down at me as I settled into the front seat. “Do you care?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.”

  He got into the car and we set out to see Las Vegas.

  For the first couple of hours Vic took me around to see all the famous casinos. The Golden Nugget, Harold’s Club, the Horseshoe Club. I realized I could have been dressed in my capri pants and nobody would have noticed, because the casinos were mobbed with people dressed in everything from cocktail dresses and evening gowns to toreador pants and Bermuda shorts. There were even little old ladies in housedresses and bedroom slippers playing slot machines wherever we went.

  Some of them wore a glove—just one glove, on the hand they used to pull the slot machine lever. I asked Vic about that.

  “So they won’t get blisters on their hands.”

  “Blisters?”

  “Yeah, after a couple of hours—”

  “A couple of hours? They stand there like that for hours?”

  “Sometimes all night.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t understand that at all.

  But as the evening went on, the excitement and color and noise of the casinos began to get to me. I started to see why Walter liked Las Vegas. Even if you weren’t gambling yourself, just watching the other people at the roulette wheel, the dice table, playing blackjack, was like being in a movie.

  I mean, people actually were winning and losing thousands of dollars right in front of your eyes. It was positively dramatic to see people practically faint at the turn of a single card, or almost drool when the guy at the roulette table pushed this whole stack of chips toward him with a little rake-shaped stick.

  And at the dice table, whole crowds would gather to groan or cheer as the game was played and somebody went on a winning streak or lost everything on one roll. Somehow, watching the people cheering and groaning for the players made me think of all the movies I’d seen about gladiator contests in ancient Rome.

  But probably the most exciting thing I saw in the casinos was $1,000,000 in the Horseshoe Club. An actual $1,000,000 in $10,000 bills, framed in plate glass, shaped like a horseshoe. I just stood there, staring and staring at it—along with a lot of other people. Some of them were having their pictures taken in front of it. Vic could hardly drag me away.

  “I’ve never seen a million dollars before,” I kept saying.

  “Neither has anybody else,” Vic kept answering. “That’s why it’s here.”

  “Aren’t they afraid someone will steal it?”

  “This is probably the safest place in the world to display a million dollars. It’s always crowded, it’s never closed, how could anyone break the glass and run off without being caught?”

  “I guess so. Isn’t it beautiful?” I sighed.

  Vic shrugged. “It’s money. If you think money is beautiful . . .”

  “You do if you don’t have any.”

  Vic smiled. “Good point.”

  One of the reasons Vic was so anxious to get me away from that display in the Horseshoe Club was because we weren’t even supposed to be there in the first place. You’re not allowed to hang around the casinos if you’re under twenty-one, so we didn’t stay in any one spot for very long.

  After we toured the casinos, Vic drove to the Strip, where all the big, famous hotels are. Vic took me to the dinner show at the Sands, and it was just like a nightclub. They had a lot of beautiful showgirls, and a whole stage show, including an act by Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy, which made me laugh so hard I almost choked on my dinner (which was very good, by the way). They were doing a sort of takeoff on gangster movies. I don’t remember all of it, except that everybody was nicknamed after a color—like Blackie, Brownie, Whitey—and Peter Lind Hayes kept lighting cigarettes and sticking them in his mouth till he was smoking about seven cigarettes all at once.

  After the show we went to another hotel, where they had dancing in the “Congo Room,” and Vic and I danced to a live orchestra. Vic said he wasn’t a very good dancer, and I said that was okay because I wasn’t either; I didn’t get very much practice.

  Actually, he wasn’t a very good dancer, but I didn’t care. I loved him holding me during the slow dances. I thought he must be able to feel my heart beating against his chest, but that was okay because I wanted him to know I loved him.

  It was strange,
though, that he mostly wanted to dance cha chas and lindys, where you don’t stay close to your partner but have to move around a lot and do tricky steps. Usually someone who doesn’t dance very well would rather do the fox-trot than anything else. I figured he was doing the other dances because he thought I liked them better and he was just trying to be considerate.

  My skirt hardly swirled out at all when I turned.

  I didn’t care.

  Finally Vic said we ought to get back to the Lucky 7-11 Motel because we might have to scout around a little before we could sneak me into the empty room.

  Vic had spent an awful lot of money on me, I knew, but when I started to say something about it in the car, he shushed me.

  “Did you have fun?”

  “The best time of my whole life,” I sighed.

  “Then I got my money’s worth.”

  Vic drove to the drugstore near the motel so I could buy some magazines. As we were about to walk out, Vic pointed to a slot machine.

  “Why don’t you try it, Sylvie?” he whispered. The owner of the store was in the back, waiting on someone else. I hadn’t played any of the machines in the casinos because you’re not allowed to gamble if you’re under twenty-one, and Vic said they watch you like a hawk there because the casinos are very law-abiding.

  “Oh, no, I’m not a gambler.” But my eyes must have lit up with excitement. I really did want to try it—just once. Only I didn’t want to take any more money from Vic, and certainly not for gambling.

  “Come on,” he urged, “it’s only a nickel machine. You can’t leave Las Vegas without trying it once.” He handed me a nickel and I put it in and pulled the lever down.

  The pictures in the little slots whirled and whirred and clicked into place and all of a sudden a pile of nickels came gushing out of the machine.

  “Jackpot!” Vic yelled. I shrieked with excitement, and the salesclerk and two customers came rushing to the front of the store to see what had happened.

  “I won!” Vic yelled, before I could say anything. “I hit the jackpot! Eight bucks!” Everyone smiled and said congratulations as Vic gathered up the money and started pouring it into my pocketbook. “Hold this for me, will you?” He winked at me.

  I was so excited that I was jumping as we left the store, actually jumping up and down. “I won,” I whispered, “I won, I won! Let’s go play another one!”

  “No,” said Vic sternly. “You’ll end up like one of those little old ladies with gloves.”

  “I will not.”

  “You will too. That was beginner’s luck. You’ll spend this whole eight bucks trying to win again. Just hold on to it.”

  “It’s so heavy,” I said happily. I lifted my pocketbook up and down.

  “I’ll change it into bills for you tomorrow. Come on. Let’s get back to the motel.”

  We walked down the block to where Vic had parked his car. We were right across the street from the Lucky 7-11. We started to cross, when a car coming around the comer screeched to a stop only a couple of feet in front of us. Vic grabbed my arm to pull me back to the curb.

  The car door flew open and a man came charging out.

  “Sylvie! Where the hell have you been?”

  Chapter 17

  “Walter!”

  I shrank back against Vic and he put his arm around me, like he was protecting me.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you! Where have you been? Why did you walk out on me?” He turned to Vic. “Who are you?” He really glared at him, like he was going to challenge him to a duel or something.

  “I’m a friend of Sylvie’s,” Vic said.

  “You sure make friends fast, Sylvie.” Walter’s voice was real sarcastic. I knew he was thinking about Jim. He reached out like he was going to grab my arm. Vic pulled me back away from him and sort of pushed himself between me and Walter.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Walter growled. “ We were supposed to get married today, did she tell you that?”

  “She told me a lot of things,” Vic said. I didn’t know how he could stay so calm. I was shaking like a leaf.

  “Mr. Murchison, if you’d cool down a little, I think we all ought to go someplace and discuss this like civilized adults. There are a few things—”

  “Civilized adults?” Walter was practically screaming, right there in the middle of the street. “I don’t have anything to discuss with you, you little snot-nose. This is between me and Sylvie.”

  “Look, I don’t blame you for being upset,” Vic said. “After driving her all the way here from Indiana, crossing all those state lines ...”

  “What are you talking about?” Walter’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Vic suspiciously.

  “Sylvie can’t marry you. Not even in Las Vegas. Not even if she wanted to.”

  “She wants to. She told me she would. Didn’t you, Sylvie? We had it all planned.” Walter’s voice was suddenly almost pleading. I felt terrible. I couldn’t look at him.

  “She’s only fifteen.”

  I heard a sort of choked little gasp. I looked up, and saw, even under the pale light of the streetlamp, that Walter’s face had turned almost white.

  “She was in trouble, and you helped her out. But you crossed a lot of state lines bringing her here...

  “I wanted to marry you,” Walter said hoarsely. His face looked awful. “You told me you were eighteen.”

  “Walter, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I really am. I didn’t know what else to do. I’ll pay you back every penny you spent on me, I promise. I really mean that. I just—”

  Walter kind of slumped against the lamppost, shaking his head.

  “Walter?” My voice shook. “Walter, my things are still in your car. Could I have them? They’re all I have left.”

  Walter stared at us, then, almost like a zombie, he walked in slow motion to the car and opened the trunk. He pulled out my hatbox, my pink dress, and my three crinolines, and handed them to me.

  Walter stood there for a minute, staring at me, his mouth working as if he was trying to say something but couldn’t get it out.

  Finally he slammed the trunk closed and leaned on it heavily for a moment. “Good luck with your screen test, Sylvie. Not that you’ll need it.” He laughed, a short, bitter laugh. “You’re a great little actress.”

  “Walter, I—” But Vic held my arm and shushed me. Walter got into his car. The motor turned on with a roar, and the Pontiac peeled out like a hot rod and disappeared down the street.

  “Oh, Vic.” I thought I’d faint on the spot. “Oh, I feel terrible. That was awful. I feel like such a rat. He really must have loved me, Vic. I mean, he wanted to marry me and everything. . .”

  “Come on, Sylvie. Let’s get back to the room.” Vic’s voice was sharp, almost like he was angry with me.

  We crossed the street to the Lucky 7-11 and sneaked into the vacant room without any trouble. Vic stopped me from turning on the light. Instead, he turned on the TV picture so there was just this dim glow from the set. It was sort of romantic.

  I put my stuff on the bed and Vic sat down on the chair. He let out a deep whoosh of breath, and I realized that maybe he hadn’t been as calm and cool as he seemed with Walter. That’s why he had sounded so annoyed with me. He’d probably been as nervous as I was. But he’d protected me. Because he loved me.

  I wanted to go and sit on his lap again, but I was afraid of being too forward. I was sure it was only a matter of time before he would make the first move.

  “Vic, what was all that stuff about crossing state lines? I didn’t know what you were talking about. Why did that get Walter so upset?”

  “Because of the Mann Act.” Vic’s voice sounded kind of distant, like his mind was someplace else.

  “What’s the Mann Act?” I wanted him not to be distracted, not to be thinking of anything but me. We were here, together, alone. We loved each other. Why didn’t he concentrate on that?

  “Taking minors across state lines for immoral purposes. He must
have broken the law about seven times getting you from Indiana to Nevada. That’s why he flipped when he found out your real age. Probably why he gave up so easily too.”

  “Vic?”

  “What?”

  “Except for Walter, I had a wonderful time tonight. The best time in my whole life.”

  “I’m glad. You deserve it.”

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “Yes.”

  I guess he was still shook up about the argument with Walter. Well, I was a little too, but with Vic here to love me and take care of me, I didn’t want to keep thinking about Walter. Especially because I knew I would see his shocked, hurt face in my mind for a long, long time.

  Vic just kept sitting there, brooding, until I couldn’t stand it anymore. What does it matter who makes the first move? I asked myself. We love each other, that’s all that counts. Maybe he’s just shy. Maybe he doesn’t want to rush me. Maybe he thinks I’m too young.

  I walked over to the chair and sat down on the armrest. I put my hand gently on his cheek. He reached up and took hold of my wrist, pulling my hand to his lips. He kissed the back of it, then the palm. It was so romantic I thought I’d die.

  “Oh, Vic,” I breathed. I bent down and kissed him on the temple, on the cheek, on the bridge of his nose.

  He made a funny little sound in his throat and pulled me onto his lap. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on the mouth. I kissed him back till I thought the room was spinning. Then he was kissing my neck, my shoulders, my ears, my eyelids, and I thought I would never catch my breath again. I wanted him to crush me against him, tight, tighter. I hugged him as hard as I could and pulled his head against my chest.

  “I love you,” I cried. “Oh, Vic, I love you so much.”

  He whispered something. I thought it was, “No, you don’t,” but I wasn’t sure. He kept kissing me and stroking my back and my neck and we stayed that way for a long time—only it didn’t seem like nearly long enough. Not when I could have stayed in his arms forever.

  “Sylvie? You’d better get up now.”

  I put my head on his shoulder and tried to snuggle even closer against him. I didn’t want him to stop kissing me. Ever.