All the Beautiful Girls

by Elizabeth J. Church

  “Make it two,” he said to the waitress, who slipped the carbon paper between tickets in her book and jotted down their order.

  There was a moment of awkward silence until the man said, “Mason.” He held out his hand. “Mason Maddox.”

  She remembered to use her new name. “Ruby”—she smiled—“Wilde.”

  “Nice to meetchya, Ruby Wilde.” He fiddled with the long-handled spoon the waitress set before him and unwrapped his paper straw. “Going to Vegas to spend all your hard-earned money?” he asked.

  “I’m a dancer,” Ruby said, feeling warm, easy, as she opened into her new self. She had a quick vision of a full-blown cabbage rose—pink, luscious, the scent of early summer before the heat set in.

  “My daughter Rose works in Vegas. On my way to visit her.”

  “She dances?” The waitress placed two thick malts on the counter. Ruby plucked the cherry from the top of hers and dropped it into her mouth.

  “Works reception at the new Caesars. She’s been in Vegas almost two years now.”

  “Does she like it? Las Vegas?”

  “Loves it. But to be fair, she’s comparing it to Salt Lake City, and there’s one hell of a difference.” He laughed to himself, sipped his milkshake. “Mind my askin’ how old you are, Ruby?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Tell them you’re twenty. It’ll be easier for work in the casinos. And”—he looked critically at her face—“wear more makeup. It’ll make you look older.”

  “Okay….”

  “Do you know anyone there? Got a place to stay?”

  Ruby hesitated.

  “I’m just concerned about you,” Mason Maddox said. “My daughter’s only a couple a years older than you, and the stories she tells…Well, let me just say, Miss Ruby, that I know my Rose isn’t telling me everything, but what she does tell me is plenty. You gotta watch out for yourself. Don’t trust anyone.” He stirred his shake. “Everyone’s on the make. Everyone.”

  Ruby quietly focused on her malt.

  “How about I do this.” Mason eased a napkin from the dispenser. He wrote out Rose Maddox, carefully printed his daughter’s address and phone number, and slid the napkin to Ruby. “Just in case,” he said. “I’ll let her know you might be callin’. She’s a good girl. She’ll help you out, show you the ropes.”

  “Thank you.” Ruby folded the napkin and slipped it into her purse. “I mean it,” she said. “You’re kind.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine,” Mason said, standing. “It’s what I’d want someone to do for my Rose.”

  She finished her malt, had one more cigarette, and climbed back onto the bus. Thanks to the ice cream, Ruby managed to doze until the brakes sounded and the bus pulled into Las Vegas just after midnight.

  * * *

  —

  THE GREYHOUND TERMINAL was located within the Stardust Casino, and even though it was the middle of the night, people swarmed all about her. Standing with a heavy suitcase on either side of her, Ruby stalled, overwhelmed.

  Slot machines were tucked into every nook and cranny, and most of them were occupied. Women’s hips oozed from the backs of their chairs and flowed like slow, lugubrious lava over the edges of their stools. Their eyes were transfixed, glazed over, as they grabbed the levers. She heard raucous bells, the jangle of coins falling into metal trays, and she saw flashing lights. Men with cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths, neglected ashen tips grown long, rolled up their sleeves, inserted more coins, and waited for the spinning to stop and land on their futures.

  Ruby thought she saw hope mixed with despair, longing brushing away reality’s faint protestations. Their faces held an intense desire for something better, something else. She saw homeward-bound bus passengers standing in line with their emptied pockets, the light gone from their eyes. She saw insomniacs who let habit carry them someplace, nowhere.

  With sudden clarity, she also saw herself, and she panicked. Her plan was inadequate. She was in the wrong place. This was a mistake. She would be consumed here, disappear like flash paper in a magician’s hands. She’d been a fool to follow Mrs. Baumgarten’s advice.

  Moving to a wall, Ruby leaned against it, tried to catch her breath and force the encroaching tunnel vision to retreat. Her heart shouted. She cupped her hands about her nose and mouth, breathed. I’m just tired, she tried to convince herself. That’s all. Just tired, unwashed. Too many hours on the bus to sustain hope and optimism. Don’t panic.

  “Looks like you could use a drink.” A sinewy man, wearing a short-sleeved white T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes jammed into one rolled-up sleeve, started to reach for her arm. He had tight hills of biceps and his palms were suffused with blood, red hot.

  Ruby pulled back. “No,” she said.

  “C’mon. Beautiful newcomer like you. Let me carry your suitcases.” A rose tattoo lurked beneath the thick black fur of his forearm.

  Ruby took hold of the handles of her bags, straightened herself. “Please go away.”

  “Bet you could use a place to stay. I got room.” He grinned.

  He was standing too close. She could smell grease and onions.

  “Ruby!”

  She heard the name, but it took a moment for her to realize that it was her name.

  “Ruby Wilde!” Mason Maddox called again, stepping between her and the insistent creep. “Glad we found you.” He gave the other man a hardened stare, and the man walked away slowly, looked back once, shook his head as if it were Ruby’s loss, not his.

  Ruby wished she’d had something more sustaining than the milkshake, which now left her shaky and needful.

  “Girl, this isn’t good. I knew it. Shouldna let you go off all alone.” Mason picked up one of her suitcases and added it to his own. “This settles things.” He turned, motioned to his daughter. “Rose? This here’s Ruby. Ruby, Rose. Now,” he said, nodding at his daughter, “you get her other bag.”

  “But—” Ruby tried feebly.

  “No ifs, ands, or buts. Rose’s got one of those teensy-weensy VW bugs. We’re gonna squeeze into it like a pack of sardines and give you a ride to wherever it is you’re going.”

  Rose was elegant in tight jeans, with a bright red silk blouse, gold hoop earrings. She smelled good—something wistful, floral. Straight, golden-blonde hair was parted down the center and hung just past her shoulders. She had clear, grey-blue eyes that made Ruby think of rainbows and prisms.

  “Daddy, hold on a minute. Let her talk.” Rose smiled a warm welcome. “Sometimes you can’t get a word in edgewise with Daddy. What do you want, Ruby?”

  Ruby was tempted to say Rescue, or To get back on the bus, but she didn’t. Instead, she pulled from her purse the AAA guide the Aviator had given her, flipped to the page where he’d starred several entries with a ballpoint pen. “Do you know how I could get to one of these motels?” She handed Rose the directory.

  Rose ran her finger down the page. “Bombay Motor Court is the decent one. It’s got kitchenettes and is close enough to let you walk or catch a bus between the casinos. While you look for work, I mean.” Rose handed the book back to Ruby. “Daddy says you’re a dancer. So cool. Why don’t we drive you there? You must be beat.”

  “I’d be so grateful,” Ruby said with relief.

  “Now, Daddy. Now we can help her.” Rose winked and picked up Ruby’s other scuffed thrift-store bag. “On the way, we’ll show you a bit of Vegas.”

  Outside the bus terminal, stupefying neon displays towered like mountain cliffs, and the superheated desert air burned her nostrils. The Stardust’s marquee featured a globe of blue-and-green neon, surrounded by pink-and-white rays; blue-and-pink stars twinkled off and on. Two times over it said Stardust in white lights, and planets whirled about the earth as if it were the center of the universe. Another brightly lit sign said, ’67 Lido of Paris—Grand Prix
67, and beneath that, a smaller sign read In the Lounge: Kim Sisters, Big Tiny Little, and Lou Styles. Ruby recognized Big Tiny Little as the piano player on Aunt Tate’s dreadful Lawrence Welk Show, but he also played for Dinah Shore. His fingers flew across the piano as if the keys were electrified. She’d seen the Kim Sisters performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in their tight, satin cheongsam dresses. Maybe she’d seen them with Dean Martin, too. It was unreal. Ruby really was in the land of the famous.

  Wedged into what passed for a backseat, her knees bumping the back of the bug’s front seats, she felt her flame reignite like a furnace’s pilot light bursting from a tiny blue maintenance flame to a full bar of fire. She could do this. She could and would dance on the same stage as Big Tiny Little and the Kim Sisters. Ruby smiled. She sounded like the children’s book—the little train. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. Well, there were worse mottos.

  Rose caught Ruby’s smile in the rearview mirror. “Feeling better?”

  “One hundred percent better,” Ruby said, and looked for a handle so that she could roll down the window, stick her head out, and see more of the neon-filled sky. She found an ashtray but no handle—the VW’s backseat window didn’t open. She sat back, thought about how the neon kept night at bay.

  “So, this is the Strip, obviously,” Rose began. “The Frontier and the Desert Inn are behind us. Coming up is the Flamingo, and then across from it, my place. Also known as Caesars Palace.”

  The Flamingo had a marvelous bubbly champagne tower that lit up gradually, like neon effervescence. Ruby had never had champagne; it was one of the things she intended to do—to let bubbles tickle her nose, fizz and pop on her tongue. She started a mental list of never-hads: avocado, lobster, baked Alaska.

  But it was Caesars Palace that took her breath away. “Oh my God,” she said.

  “Pretty spectacular, isn’t it?” Rose turned to look at Ruby.

  “It’s giant!” Ruby gasped. A series of huge fountains and marble statues led toward a magnificent semicircle of columns that enfolded patrons in a generous embrace.

  “Over thirty acres,” Rose said, slowing down to give Ruby a better chance to gawk. “The theater-restaurant seats a thousand, and there are several dining rooms, two health clubs, even a beauty salon. See the trees? Well, if not, you will in the daylight. Anyway, they’re genuine Italian cypress trees, imported. Several theaters—the Circus Maximus, Nero’s Nook, the Roman Theatre.”

  “Good grief.”

  “I know.”

  “It literally leaves me breathless.”

  “That’s what it’s meant to do,” Mason said. “You’re in another world.”

  “Beauty salons and health spas?” Ruby asked.

  “You never have to leave.”

  “Also on purpose,” Mason pronounced, and Ruby heard the disapproval in his voice.

  “Daddy doesn’t like Vegas.” Rose paused. “But what he doesn’t seem to understand,” she said, “is that people come here to escape. To get away. To feel a bit of magic for a little while.”

  “People come here to be robbed of their hard-earned wages.”

  “Isn’t it the place of dreams?” Ruby asked.

  “Oh, dear girl,” Mason said, and then let it rest.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Rose said. “Sometimes, Daddy can be such a square.”

  “Realist,” he countered.

  “No imagination.”

  “No delusions.”

  Ruby sat back, halfheartedly listening to the father-daughter banter while she reveled in the fact that she’d done it. She’d escaped. And now here she was, in Las Vegas. Scallywag’s stubborn determination had paid off.

  Soon, the neon lights were spaced farther apart and the shouting edifices gave way to intermittent empty lots. Rose pulled into the Bombay Motor Court, and a reassuring neon arrow above a facsimile of a Moorish arch flashed VACANCY and FREE TV, HEATED POOL, IN-ROOM PHONES.

  “We’ll stay until you’re checked in, make sure everything’s set, all right?” Rose asked, and Ruby didn’t bother to protest. She felt some of her misgivings return as she thought about facing it all alone. But the room was clean, with a bright pink bedspread and white walls stenciled in gold with images of East Indian statuary and twining vines. She was able to get a room right by the pool, and she imagined how refreshing it would feel to cool her burning feet, to float and let the ripples and sun relax her.

  “We’ll call tomorrow,” Rose said, taking her father’s hand to tug him away. “Not because we think you need us,” she added quickly. “We’ll call you because Daddy is a worrier, right?” She smiled at him.

  “Right,” he said and then gave Ruby a brief hug. “I kinda feel responsible for you, kiddo.”

  “I owe you,” Ruby said. “Big time.”

  “You don’t,” Rose stated firmly. “It’s what people should do for each other, that’s all.”

  Ruby waved to them from the doorway, and then she broke the paper strip across the toilet, peed, unwrapped the thin sliver of pink Camay soap, and took a long, hot shower before falling into bed. Feeling profligate, she dropped a quarter into the box next to the bed, and the Magic Fingers started up. “Ahhhhhh,” Ruby said, keeping her mouth and throat open so that the vibration of the bed made her voice waver wonderfully.

  At last, it was her future to define, to take. Her life belonged only to her.

  * * *

  —

  RUBY WALKED OVER to the motel office and bought a pack of cigarettes from the machine, along with a copy of the Las Vegas Sun and two postcards. Seated in the sweet morning air beside the pool, she read that the war in the Middle East might be coming to an end and that the Monkees had appeared at the Hollywood Bowl. She went through the newspaper’s want ads, found three promising-looking dance auditions, and circled them. Then she addressed the postcards. One, of a jackalope—some mythological jackrabbit with an antelope’s horns—she sent to Mrs. Baumgarten, and the other, a sun-drenched pool scene with huge fringed umbrellas and women strolling in bikinis and carrying cocktails, she sent to the Aviator. She signed them as Lily, and she gave the Aviator her temporary address and the motel’s phone number. Then, after going through the dollhouse cabinets of her kitchenette, she made a grocery list: coffee, cigarettes, cereal, milk, fruit, and a category she labeled actual food. Just after ten, she put on a pair of cutoffs and a cotton tank top and climbed onto the empty bus. She took a seat in the front, near the driver.

  “Am I the only person who gets up before noon?” she asked the man, whose curly dark hair and bass-drum gut reminded her of Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden.

  “Just you and me, honey,” he said, looking at her in his rearview mirror. “Just us early birds.”

  Ruby tucked her hair behind her ears, looked out the streaked window, and saw her first palm tree. The bark reminded her of the rough diamonds of pineapple hide. She craned her neck, looking for coconuts.

  “First time?” the driver asked, although it was obvious.

  “Just moved here.”

  “Gonna work in the casinos?”

  “I’m a dancer.”

  “Oh,” he said, and this time he looked at her much harder, longer. “One of those dancers?”

  Ruby wasn’t sure what he meant. “Like the June Taylor Dancers,” she said.

  “Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “With your looks and all, I just assumed you’d be one of the other kind.”

  What on earth? Did he think she was a stripper? Was that it? “I’m the kind of dancer who keeps her clothes on. A professional dancer,” she added for emphasis.

  “Beg pardon.” He touched the back of his hand to his cap. “No offense intended.”

  In the long run, he turned out to be helpful, pointing out the grocery store, a Laundromat, and a drugstore where she could buy stamps. “Watch yourself,” he
advised as she left the bus. “Lotsa crazies out there, even before noon. Leftovers from the night before.”

  Why did everyone keep telling her to be careful? If there was one thing she’d long ago learned, it was that no one could be trusted.

  After a few hours of exploring on foot and trying hard not to look like a tourist, she found slot machines lining a section of the grocery store and decided to try her luck. Ruby loaded ten pennies and pulled the lever. On her third pile of pennies, the three reels landed on the same image: a yellow bird. She smiled as the hopper filled with coins—a whopping three dollars. Feeling lucky, Ruby climbed down from the stool and stopped while she was ahead.

  She’d never eaten TV dinners—Aunt Tate thought they were too expensive and designed only for self-indulgent, lazy people. Ruby bought a Swanson fried chicken dinner with mixed vegetables, another with chopped sirloin and French fries, one with sliced turkey and gravy, and another that had shrimp with cocktail sauce. She even bought Jiffy Pop—another forbidden extravagance—along with small jars of mayonnaise and mustard, and bologna for sandwiches. As she made her way down the cereal aisle, she caught herself humming Dean Martin’s “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” and dancing the quickstep.

  This, Ruby realized, is what happiness feels like. Freedom. Bubbling champagne, yellow birds, music and dance and neon and possibility. Ruby grinned at everyone she saw—the cashier, the women with bristled curlers and miserable, snotty-faced toddlers, the gawky boys stocking shelves, and the heavy-jowled butcher weighing out three pounds of ground chuck. She made her way back to the motel, put away her groceries, practiced her dance steps until she rained sweat and felt the cathartic release of physical effort, and then she did stretches beside the pool. She took a quick, late-afternoon dip before heating up her shrimp TV dinner, lifting the foil when it was finished and salivating over the six tiny battered shrimp. She turned on the color television that was not pinned under Aunt Tate’s milk glass collection, and through her open window listened to kids released from the backseats of station wagons, mileage markers, license plate games, and highway rest stops, as they shrieked and played Marco Polo in the pool. Later, when the sun had gone down and the temperature relaxed below 95, Ruby sat on the lawn chair outside her room, savored a cigarette, and watched insects congregate beneath the lamps that lit the pool deck.