Lady Luck's Map of Vegas

by Barbara Samuel

  “No.” What I don't say aloud is no friggin way. No way am I driving across the country with my mother and her cigarettes and her penchant for bourbon on some wild quest that will lead nowhere.

  “What I was thinking is that maybe we could look for Gypsy.”

  I ignore her. The house is straight ahead, a plain ranch style in Pleasant Valley, near the Garden of the Gods. My father bought it for her just after my sister and I were born, and it has quadrupled in value since. It's been paid off since 1979, so she's sitting on a small fortune. There is a light in the window, showing a crystal lamp shining on a red-velvet piano shawl that decorates the back of a chair upholstered in deep blue, one of the pockets of beauty that fill my mother's house. It looks welcoming.

  Without waiting for her, I get out of the Thunderbird, lock the door, and head toward my own vehicle, a slightly less dramatic dark blue Toyota sedan. Her high heels tap behind me.

  “I can see you're in a bad mood. We can talk about it later.” She nudges my arm.

  “What?”

  She leans her cigarette into the lighter she's had at the ready since she got off the bus, blows a plume of smoke politely away from me, and presses a crisp hundred-dollar bill in my hand. “Go to the spa for a day, sugar. It'll make you feel better.”

  “Mom!” I try to give it back, but she's already going up the walk, waving a hand behind her. “I don't need your money, I swear!”

  “Oh, just take it, baby!” She turns around but keeps walking backward. The tip of her cigarette glows red. “That man's coming in to see you tomorrow, isn't he? Buy something wicked.” She waves. “Night!”

  For a long moment, I stand there at the foot of her driveway, the bill in my hand. We all say this, but in my case it's true. My mother is a wacko with absolutely no sense of reality.

  Las Vegas. I shudder.

  Chapter Two

  India

  There are no messages on my machine when I get home, just as there have been no calls on my cell this evening. That's because I have no life in Colorado Springs—a place I had vowed never to return.

  Until six months ago I had a perfect life. A town house in the Capitol Hill area of Denver, a beautiful old place with twelve-foot ceilings and the original wood moldings, plenty of work pouring in, lots of interesting friends, many of them in the arts or the computer industry— a pungent mix when I stir them together at parties. I'm good at parties, which I say without arrogance. I love them; love the work of getting all the details just right, the food and drinks and people and music and settings. There are often people sleeping on my couch the morning after.

  The good old days, I think, flipping through my CDs. There's the Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin I used for a Rat Pack party I threw last summer. We all dressed up in A-line dresses and turquoise eye shadow with false eyelashes and danced to Frank's love songs. It was great. I got the idea from my mother, actually, who'd spent quite a bit of time in the old Las Vegas and loves to share tales of Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank and all the others at the bar of the Sahara or the Sands. That's where she met my father, at the Sands, playing blackjack. I wonder if that's why she wants to go there now.

  Tugging my hair into a knot at my neck, I keep flipping through the CDs. I don't want Frank or Dean tonight, and choose a Dido CD that's been a big favorite lately. I'm on a kick with female soloists—Natalie Merchant and Dido and K. D. Lang. I tell myself it's because I can do my work while listening to it, not because I'm in love.

  At that Rat Pack party last summer, my life had been exactly where I wanted it. Jack and I had had several long weekends together by then, one in Colorado, one in New York City; we were in the very first flush of a love affair—always the best part. My sister, Gypsy, had been stable and on her meds for more than two years. She'd recently been in town for an opening and had sold all but two of her paintings the first night. My father, eighty years old and vigorous enough to walk an hour every day, rain or snow, doted on my mother, leaving me free to live seventy miles away from her oxygen-sucking presence. I spoke to him on the phone the day after the party and he told me about a surprise getaway he was planning for her sixty-third birthday party.

  Two days later, he went for his daily walk and collapsed beneath the Kissing Camels, dead from a massive heart attack. We all said the same thing—that if you had to go, that was the way to do it—but the reality has been difficult for me. It proved impossible for Gypsy, who went off her meds and disappeared two months ago, in spite of the fact that I'd seen it coming and tried to get her space in a boarding home for a little while. There wasn't anywhere for her to go—cutbacks in the state budget meant all the private facilities were full to the brim and then some.

  And my mother simply retreated into a bottle. She's always been fond of her bourbon, but within a week of the funeral she was disappearing nightly into a fifth. Too much. Since my father once made me promise that I would care for Eldora after his death, I had no choice but to sublet the apartment in Denver and come back to the Springs to get her stabilized.

  Which, happily, she appears to be. I've been thinking I can move back to Denver within a month or two. Go back to my perfect life. Work I'm actually crazy about. My beautiful apartment. Weekends once a month with Jack, alternating between New York and Denver, weekends that have been wildly romantic and never too threatening.

  I think of the plus sign on the pregnancy test.

  With Dido in the background, I sign on to collect e-mail, and there is a satisfyingly huge amount of it. Here is where most of my social life takes place these days—online. There's a note from Jack, but I leave it to last and sort through the rest. Ads for penis enlargement and the latest letter from an alleged African minister begging for help go in the trash. I flag a discussion about writing and designing for the living Web, collect all the business-related e-mails into a file for morning, when I'll be fresh enough to give them the attention they deserve.

  There are a couple of chatty e-mails from friends in Denver. Alice is having a party on the twenty-fifth and wants the pleasure of my company. “C'mon, India,” she writes. “We miss you! It's a forty-minute drive!”

  There is another from Hannah, my best friend, she of the throaty voice and designer shoes. “What's going on, Redding?” she writes. “You've been ducking me for a week. Call me. Right now. I mean it.”

  I glance at the clock, pick up the phone. Hannah answers on the third ring. “Okay, what's going on?”

  “Hannah, I am so sorry. I've just been swamped. Jack is coming tomorrow and my mother has been having me drive her all over the universe and I've been working my head off. How are you?”

  “I don't believe you,” she says. “You only do the recluse thing when you're upset about something. Are you depressed about Gypsy?”

  It's a good cover, and I leap on it. I can't bear to tell her about the pregnancy test yet. “I am depressed about her,” I say, and I realize that it's true. “I really thought she might make it this time, that she wouldn't get delusional anymore. It sometimes happens when people get to their forties and fifties.”

  “I know, sweetie.” Hannah, a gallery owner, had been instrumental in getting Gypsy's work into the world, and she owns several of her paintings. “I think about her a lot.”

  “I got a postcard from her today, in our twin language. I'll save it for you—there's a pastel drawing that's just fantastic.”

  “How's Jack? How's your mom?”

  “Fine and fine. My life is boring right now, Hannah. Tell me about yours. Have you met any interesting men lately?”

  “Well,” she purrs. “Now that you mention it, there are a couple of interesting prospects.”

  I smile. Hannah loves men and they love her back, but the prospects angle is a joke. A man caught her in marriage for three years in her twenties, and afterward she swore off marriage forever. Since she's nearly six feet tall, with red hair and natural, double-D breasts, there probably won't be a shortage of suitors anytime soon. “Tell me,” I say.

>   She does, and I'm happily enfolded in her adventures for a while. By then, I'm ready for bed and the e-mail I've saved for last. It's from Jack and it's only one line: “I am thinking of the red shoes with great pleasure.”

  I'm seasick again and put my head down on the desk.

  It's funny how the moments that change your life sneak up on you. The night I met Jack, saucer-sized feathers of snow were falling out of a heavy pink sky. I walked to the pub, not minding the kink the moisture would give my hair. There's nothing quite like the soft air of a falling snow. Light from the pub, with a proper Irish name—O'Connell's— spilled yellow onto the sidewalk through a mullioned window. I could hear the rush of voices inside, and there was an agreeable sense of happiness in my chest. New work. That was what I was thinking about.

  We'd only communicated by e-mail, Jack and I. He'd seen my Web designs and wanted to talk to me about putting together something for his magazine, a publication for adventure travelers. I had a picture in my mind of a jowly Irish American, an Ernest Hemingway type, hard drinking and hard living, with fists like hams and white hair. It was some face my brain sent up from central casting to go with “Jack Shea, magazine publisher and outdoorsman.” He'd been skiing at Aspen and had hired a car to bring him into Denver for the night.

  All great for me. It was plain he had deep pockets and wanted a substantial site.

  I pulled open the heavy wooden doors to the pub. Air heavy with a heady mix of cigarettes and ale, perfume and old nights enveloped me. From the jukebox came the sound of a heavy fast Celtic drum, which lent a sense of excitement to the room. It was crowded, but I'd asked him to meet me by the main taps, and I pushed through the college students and businessmen.

  Spying Jack, I knew right away it was him, even though he was so very different from the picture I'd had in my head. He had a pint of something dark in front of him, and he wore a black leather jacket with many years of wear on it, not battered, but comfortable to the last degree. He was digging in the pocket of his jeans for a bill to give the bartender, and a lock of that thick black hair was falling on his face. I had a glimpse of a sharply cut white cheek, and light glanced off the crown of his head, and I swear, it had been years and years, but my heart flipped.

  It scared me. I stopped and thought about leaving. I stood there for a minute, waiting for him to raise his head. His nose was strong and straight, that elegant right angle, and his mouth was generous, which is a sort of requirement of mine.

  What surprised me was the aura of rough-and-tumble about him. The well-worn boots, the jeans, the scuffs on his leather coat, his too-long hair. Not a bad boy—he was tougher than that. Bad boys were posers where he came from.

  And how do you know all that about a person in three seconds? I don't know, but we all do it. And sometimes we know we're right.

  I had the advantage when he looked up and saw me. His face didn't show a damn thing, but his eyes—and this was the first time I'd seen them, so clear and even a gray, the exact color of the ocean on a cloudy day—flickered.

  He said, “Your picture does you no justice.”

  “You're Irish Irish,” I said without thinking.

  One side of his mouth lifted. A thin white scar cut through his left eyebrow. The eyes were spectacular up close, flecked with darker gray. “So I am. Galway.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and stuck out my hand. “That was pretty idiotic. Jack Shea, right? I'm India Redding.”

  His hand went around mine, white and strong, with scatters of dark hair on the back. His nails were clean, oval, neat; a contrast to his hair, which seemed curiously untended, a little shaggy, too long across his forehead. The blackness pointed up the gray of those eyes, which were having a conversation with me, sweeping my face, my lips, my breasts—but in the right way, admiring without leering.

  He looked at me. Not politely. Not with any expectation. Just looked, and I felt it all through me, as if he really could see everything I was, all I'd ever been. After a moment, he lifted his chin. “I am very pleased to meet you, India.”

  I admit it, the accent slayed me. Who could resist that brogue, ruffling the Rs and frolicking through ordinary words like “very” and “pleased.” I gave a passing imitation of someone with a brain, however, and gestured him toward a booth. “It will be quieter over there. We can talk about what you're looking for.”

  He followed me over. Not so tall, I noticed, but graceful, light on his feet. We settled across from each other, both of us shedding our coats, then leaning forward over the table. There was a moment of collision, almost shocking, when our eyes met. I was arrested for a moment, and the air was thinner—all those things that sound absurd. Wonderful. Terrifying. Electric.

  “Well,” he said, clasping his hands around his glass, “I'm flummoxed. You're beautiful, and I don't know what to say.”

  I smiled at that, ease coming back into my chest. “So are you.”

  “Now that I know is a lie,” he replied, and I noticed his finger stroked the scar on his eyebrow. “But it's a nice one, so I thank you.”

  We made small talk until the waitress brought me an ale. I was going to order Guinness, but I was afraid he would think I was trying to curry favor, and ordered a microbrew instead. The waitress cooed over him.

  “I just love that accent,” she said.

  “Thank you.” He smiled at me, and cocked his head a little as she left. “It's Irish Irish, you know.”

  In my younger days, I would have blushed. Instead, I inclined my head in return, smiling to acknowledge his little insider joke. “Now, how can I help you, Mr. Shea?”

  One brow lifted. “Well, Ms. Redding, I'd like a Web page.”

  I had a steno pad and took notes. It was a quick, straightforward exchange; he spoke clearly and directly. I asked for clarification, he gave it. I sketched, he shook his head; I sketched again, he began to nod, tapped the page with his index finger.

  I leaned back, poked the page with my pen. “The demographic is not the twenty-something, then. You're looking for a market share among an older set.”

  “Exactly. A fit fifty-year-old who wants to hike to Machu Picchu or take an adventure cruise in New Zealand.”

  “Excellent.” I sipped the ale, made a note to myself to check some of the other magazines in this age group. “What about the financial demographic?”

  “Sensible, not luxury.”

  “Arthur Frommer, not Condé Nast?”

  Again that quirky half smile. “Right.”

  “Interesting. I think I can come up with a few ideas for this. I'll require a retainer, but it will apply toward the final bill if you hire me.”

  “Fair enough. I'd also like you to meet some of my staff and get their ideas as well. Is that possible?”

  “In New York?”

  “Sure. It shouldn't be a long trip, but it should be face-to-face. I'd be happy to put you up—we keep an apartment.”

  What the heck. I hadn't been anywhere in ages, and it would be tax deductible, and, well, how awful would it be to listen to him talk a little more? “I'm sure I can arrange that.”

  “Good.” He raised a hand for the waitress, and patted the notebook. “End of business, then. We'll just be ourselves now. Is that all right? May I call you India?”

  “Please.”

  When the waitress appeared, he said, “What'll you have?”

  “I didn't want to be patronizing before,” I said, and grinned, “but I'd really like a Guinness.”

  A little breeze of surprise over his mouth. “Make it two.” When she'd gone, he said in that musical way, “My kind of woman.”

  “Tell me about yourself,” I said, leaning forward. “You're from Gal-way. How did you get here?”

  “That is a long and tangled story, girl.”

  “All right. Tell me a little bit of it then.”

  He fingered the scar again, and seemed to notice me noticing. “Beer bottle when I was seventeen.” He mimed fisticuffs. “I had a bit of a temper in those days.�
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  “Rakish. You could be a pirate.” The pints of Guinness came, black and frothy. I sipped mine and sighed. “They always say it doesn't travel well, but it tastes fine to me. I love it.”

  “It's better in Ireland, but it's not so bad here.” He raised his glass. “Cheers.”

  I clinked the glass. “So you were a wild young man?”

  “Sure, I was,” he said. And he spun a tale, cheerful and funny, of his youth in a neighborhood of council houses in Galway. His father worked for the railyard, his mother as a clerk for the local grocery. Both were quite religious and dragged him to mass far too often for his pleasure. There were seven brothers and sisters, of which he was the eldest. “There were too many of us in that house, and I signed on with a freighter going to Australia. Didn't have to go to mass anymore.”

  I laughed.

  He traveled the world and made his way into travel writing, and made a good living for himself.

  The story unrolled in a droll voice that poked fun at himself and his life, and had the ring of an oft-told tale, which I didn't mind. It was funny and punctuated with bits of trivia. On a trip to San Francisco, for example, he fell to drinking with a group of young computer geeks. He did an article on them, and one sent him a thank-you with an offer to invest in a software product they thought would revolutionize certain business practices.

  Jack paused, lifted his glass. That heavy lock of black hair fell on his forehead and he tossed it off. “It was a bloody coup. I made a fortune. Bought the magazine, and here I am.”

  “Never married?”

  “Sure, I was married.” A darkness crossed his face, the expression I recognized could probably be thunderous. He said, “Everyone marries, don't they? But I prefer not to think about it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Now your story, India. No husband? No children?”

  “Nope. Not interested.”

  His gaze went through me, seeking the truth of that. I didn't look away. “Unusual.”

  I told him then, up front. “I have a twin sister who is schizophrenic. It seems wiser not to have a child.”