Lady Luck's Map of Vegas

by Barbara Samuel

  Cliff's lips and tongue were silky, more like a drink than a stab. He went about it slowly, even though I could tell by his breathing that he wanted to do the same things those boys did. His hand stayed on my neck, touching my ear. He kissed down my face, up to my eyes, and that hand never moved.

  Then he stopped. Apologized. Took me home, and I didn't see him again until two weeks later.

  For those two weeks, I studied all the men I saw. I studied the happy ones, who came in with a wife they'd loved for sixty years. I studied the sad ones who seemed to do nothing but smoke over coffee at Dina's or go down the road and smoke over beers at the bar, and only go home reluctantly at the very very end of a day. I looked at the young ones, who seemed so lost. I looked at my daddy and remembered how he used to be with my mama.

  And I looked at my life. What I could do with it. Where I'd be in five years. I didn't want to be the wife some man avoided. I didn't want to be the worn and weary mothers coming in on Saturday afternoons. I didn't want to be stuck in Elk City for the rest of my life, either, waiting for the chance that would take me out of town, like my friend Pri-cilla, the waitress who left off her wedding ring. She was the one who gave me the idea, really, that you could leave.

  When Cliff came back, I was ready. We left Elk City in April of 1955, driving down Route 66. We arrived in Tucumcari at dusk. Cliff rented a room at the Blue Swallow and bought me some supper. There we made our bargain: He would not ever leave his wife. He loved her and his family. They would never know about me. I would never make any trouble for him, and if I did, it would be over. In return, he would take me to Hollywood, and establish an apartment for me. I could pursue my dreams of acting.

  Now, a girl who'd more or less said straight out what she wanted and what she was willing to trade has no right to feel hollow or sad about it when somebody takes her up on it. But I reckon I'd had some romantic dream about him being in love with me, some dream of romance. Star-crossed lovers or some such thing. Maybe that's how I made it okay in my mind to do what I did, taking off like that and leaving my two little brothers behind.

  But in the end, what are you gonna do? There wasn't anything back there for me. I didn't have any money and no way to get an education. What I had was myself. My face and breasts and the longing they stirred up.

  We walked back to the motel room. Inside, he pulled the curtains and started taking off his clothes. I just stood there in the musty-smelling dark, hearing cars drive by, not knowing exactly what I should do. He took off all his clothes and stretched out on the bed with his hands behind his head. His penis, red and rubbery-looking, fell on his thigh. I hadn't expected him to be so hairy, either, I have to admit. In the movies, men without their shirts always had just a plain triangle of hair over their chests, not all this black fur from head to toe. His arms were hairy, not just the bottoms, but the tops, and his shoulders. His legs looked like a gorilla's.

  He said, “Take off your clothes. Real slow.”

  I know, I know. I didn't have any right to be, but I was pretty humiliated. In that minute, I'd have given a lot to just be back at the diner, dreaming about Hollywood, rather than trying to get it this way.

  And it says something about me, I reckon, that I didn't stomp right out of there and get a bus right back to Elk City. Instead, I raised my hands and unbuttoned my blouse, one button at a time, and let it fall on the floor.

  “That's right,” he said, and he touched himself, just a little bit. “Now your skirt.”

  I dropped that, too, and stood there in my plain cotton panties and white bra while he moved his hand up and down. I was trying not to watch, but in fact, it was pretty interesting.

  “Now your bra, sweetheart,” he said, and when I undid it, he made a noise and said, “Come here.”

  So I went. And I can't say I enjoyed what came next. He wasn't a gentle man, and it all went too fast for me to work up any enthusiasm. Fact is, some men are just pure clumsiness when it comes to pleasing a woman, and I never learned a thing about my own pleasure with Cliff But he wasn't awful, either, which is about the best I can say. His fantasies never included anything like a soft and tender session of love-making. They were all about the things he couldn't do with his wife, because she was a good girl.

  But that was later. That night, after he finally went to sleep, I crept out of bed and went to the bathroom and ran me a big tub of hot water, and while the water thundered in, I rubbed my sore thighs and tried to forget the ache between my legs and cried.

  Sitting there in the hot water, I wondered about all kinds of things.

  How to make it work better. If I should just go on back to Elk City and find some man to marry me and live the way everybody else did.

  And it came to me that it wasn't gonna be any better there. Men were men, weren't they? They'd all want pretty much the same thing. At least in Hollywood, I'd have a chance to do something, be somebody.

  In Elk City all I'd ever be was Nobody on the Highway to Nowhere.

  Part Three

  RANCHO DEL LLANO BED AND BREAKFAST

  You will enjoy Kiva fireplaces, viga ceilings, Mexican-tile floors, private baths, flower-filled patios, and extensive gardens. The village of Truchas is located within a 15,000-acre Spanish land grant established in 1754. In the heart of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, the population of the village is approximately 1,000 and the elevation is 8,400 feet.

  Chapter Eighteen

  India

  It's a grueling day of driving, east down I-40 alongside the old Route 66 to just beyond Santa Rosa. I once had an aching desire to visit Santa Rosa when I was a kid—there was a famous Fat Man restaurant there. Even now, the eleven-year-old inside of me jumps up and down and wants to stop, but I keep driving. Twenty miles beyond Santa Rosa is State 84, and we turn north toward Las Vegas. New Mexico, not Nevada.

  It's a slightly longer route than heading directly to Santa Fe from Tucumcari, but I chose it for two reasons: It avoids repeating the landscape we saw the day before, and at least I drive the interstate for sixty miles.

  After Las Vegas, we head into the mountains. As if to lend drama to the shifting landscape, the sunny spring day turns softly moody, with low clouds sliding over the tops of the peaks. The road is quiet. We listen to music on the CD player, Neil Diamond's Tap Root Manuscript, the African side. “Remember when we decorated pillow cases listening to this?” I say to my mother.

  “Oh, I forgot about that! You were such a creative little girl—one craft idea after another.”

  “You showed us how. With some kind of paint in a tube.”

  “Tri-Chem! I forgot about that. And the next year it was decoupage, remember? You made that pretty plaque I have in my kitchen now.”

  It was a wedding picture, she and my father, along with a notice from the newspaper and little bells and flowers. “I can't believe you still keep it hanging up. It's so corny.”

  “It is not!” She slaps my arm. “It's beautiful, and the colors are very sophisticated for a girl so young. You were always good at things like that.”

  “Not like Gypsy though.” While I'd been slapping decoupage together, my sister had already started on her crosses and graveyards. While I laboriously practiced my calligraphy so I could write little poems on pillowcases in a beautiful hand, she was smearing blue and purple Tri-Chem into mountain landscapes scattered with crosses. They were too pretty—and too rough—to sleep on. I hung one in my bedroom, in a frame my mother had made for it.

  “Your talents are different, that's all.”

  “No. Hers is huge and mine is small.” I hold up a hand to keep her from arguing with me. “I'm not trying to get strokes. It's just true.”

  She shakes her head, but doesn't argue.

  A young girl's voice comes on the CD, singing a sweet little song about lions, and I'm transported with almost physical force to that summer so long ago. Why did that summer make such a difference?

  We started counting descansos and I find myself repeating the coun
t now. There are a lot of them. I'm up to twelve before I realize they're starting to give me the creeps.

  “You're quiet this morning,” my mother says.

  “Nothing much to say.”

  “Did I shock you?”

  I give her a quick look, realizing that is how it would seem. “No, not at all.” My heart squeezes a little and I think about touching her hand, but I don't. “I hate the man who did that to you,” I say quietly. “You were a child.”

  “I was,” she agrees. “But I wasn't blameless. I wanted to get out of there, and he was my ticket. You do what you have to do.”

  It still breaks my heart. I can see her in my imagination, in her pink nylon uniform, nubile and perfect, breathtakingly beautiful, and innocent. “What happened to him?”

  She lifts a shoulder, fiddles with her purse straps in that way that lets me know she'd love to take out a cigarette and light it. “I think I'm tired of that story for right now, if you don't mind.” She clears her throat. “How's that man of yours doing?”

  I shrug. “I haven't talked to him. I'm sure he's fine.”

  “I sure hope you're—” She halts when I glare at her. “Fine. Never mind.” She wiggles into the seat. “Can we stop for a cigarette break sometime soon?”

  “Maybe in Mora. I'll need some gas.”

  She stares out the window for about five minutes, then tries again. “Something on your mind, baby?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “I am your mother, you know. I've known you your whole life.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You just have a way about you when you're fretting. Are you having problems with Jack?”

  “Mom, not everything is about men! Especially not in my life. They're not exactly my biggest priority.”

  “Well, I have noticed, and I have to say I've wondered about it. You had a good relationship with your daddy. That's usually what puts a woman off men, not having that right.”

  “I just don't want to get tied down to all of that.”

  “To what, India?” Her voice is softer. “I'm curious.”

  I roll my shoulders slightly. “Just the whole business of marriage and the little trade-offs you make. It's like cutting off a little piece of your own flesh, and another, and another.”

  “It's not always like that. A good partnership helps each person become more of themselves, don't you think?”

  “Yeah, probably a good one does. It's just that most of them don't.”

  “A good man, a good relationship is a sweetness in life, India.”

  I really do not want to talk about this right now. I tighten my hands on the steering wheel and don't say anything. I'd honestly been thinking along those lines with Jack, and here it is again, the letdown.

  Again. The word has a curious weight in my mind, and I frown. What other time did a man let me down?

  “You're so stubborn. You always were.”

  “Mmm.” What I want to say is, I'm not stubborn. I just don't have any faith.

  A voice in my head says that I never tell my mother the truth about anything I think, and I don't even know why. So I say “I'm not stubborn. I just don't believe in romance and eternal love and all that.” She looks at me, waiting, and I straighten in my seat, slow for a curve. “I'd like to, you know. I'd like to believe life was like a movie, and there could be happily ever after somehow, but all I feel when I go to romantic comedies is pissed off.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean?” I snap. “Why? Just because it's stupid and banal and idiotic. Love doesn't conquer all. People fall in love for a half hour, then spend the next forty years being annoyed with each other's bad habits.”

  “Is that what you think will happen if you settle down with Jack?”

  “Settling in with him has never come up, Mom. I don't know why you keep wanting to take it there.”

  “You've been dating for more than a year.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  She just looks at me. “So, usually that means, at this age, that you're getting serious.”

  “Well, we haven't ever discussed it.” That much is true, at least. “I don't want it to suddenly become boring, and everyone taking each other for granted.”

  “I didn't feel that way about your father.”

  “Mom, you barely acknowledged his existence! He waited on you hand and foot and you brushed by him like a ghost most of the time.”

  “Oh, India. Did I?”

  Too late, I realize that I'm the mean one. I glance at her stricken face and there's a pain like the Grand Canyon in my chest. Why do I keep slapping out at her? Why can't I just be kind and nice to my mother like other people are? I'm not mean to anyone else. Only her. Hannah keeps telling me that I have unresolved anger toward my mother, an issue, according to her, that I'll have to address.

  And maybe she's right. Maybe I am angry with my mother. Otherwise, why would I feel this petty need to wound her in little ways all the time?

  “I'm sorry, Mom,” I say now. “No.” The word is too small. “No, you didn't.” There's a roadside stand ahead, closed for the season, and I pull into it. “This is a good place for a cigarette, huh?”

  “It's all right. I don't need one just this minute.” She's staring out the window in such a focused way I know she's trying not to cry.

  I touch her shoulder. “I really didn't mean that, Mom. C'mon. Let's get out and stretch our legs.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  I nod and get out, slamming the door behind me. It's utterly silent, only the sound of wind blowing over the vast high landscape. There are pines in the distance, but just here the mountain is covered with open, grassy fields. The roadside stand is substantial, red-painted wood with solid tables in front of closed, boarded windows. The sign says “Montoya Chiles,” and has a painted list of items: Chimayo, Pabalano, Sun-dried, Powdered, Pueblo-roasted whole. After each word is a space for next season's price to be entered in.

  It's crisp enough outside that I want a sweater, and fold my arms around my torso. In the air is a scent of a storm. Even in April, it will more likely be snow than rain up this high.

  I wonder where Gypsy is, if she has a good coat. She left Colorado on a cold February night, so she probably does. With a futile but ingrained gesture, I find myself reaching out for her essence, that twin-ness, that other part of me. I think of her curled up in some doorway, cloaked in her yards and yards of springy, thick hair, a blanket she can carry with her like an animal carries its pelt. Sometimes when she comes home, I have to go through it and cut out little burrs and bits of whatever that have become tangled in the long strands. I'm careful doing it, combing out whatever I can, only resorting to scissors when I've loosened all but a few threads. I never suggest she should cut it off.

  Behind me, the car door opens and closes. I give Eldora space to light her cigarette, smoke a few drags, then I turn around. It strikes me that I've never seen my mother really cry hard, not even at my father's funeral. It's funny because you think she'd be the kind of woman who'd be good at it. Tempers and dramas and tears.

  Instead, she smokes them away, her tears. She's doing it now, exhaling that verbal slap.

  “He worshiped the ground you walked on, Mom, you know that, don't you?”

  She doesn't look at me. Nods. Takes a long draw on her cigarette and brushes the hair away from her face. “I didn't deserve it, you're right. I took it for granted until he was gone.”

  “No, you didn't.”

  “Oh, India, don't try to make me feel better. What do you think I've been trying to make peace with since he died? I know I wasn't good enough to him! I know it.”

  I step closer. “Who cooked his meals, Mama? Who lined up his pills every morning, right beside his plate so he wouldn't forget them? Who bought him special socks for walking and taped Western movies for him?”

  She swallows. Smokes. Stares hard at the line of mountains to the east. A wind ruffles her glossy hair, swirls through an earring and makes
it swing and shimmer against her neck.

  When she doesn't say anything else, I put my hands in the pockets of my jeans. “One of the things that makes it hard for me to get involved with anyone is the way my dad loved my mother. Most men don't look at their wives like that, you know? But once you've seen it, how can you settle for anything less?”

  “You should look at the glass the other way, sweetheart. At least you know it's possible.” She drops her cigarette, grinds the butt to smithereens with the heel of her shoe. “It's cold out here. Let's get moving.”

  We ride in silence for a long time, passing the odd house, a tiny village hidden in the hills, a skinny dog, the rare car, usually an older version of something, or a pickup. The mountains surround us, purply blue and mysterious against dark skies. The emptiness feels lonely. We round a turn, and the only thing standing on the hill is a cross with bright yellow ribbons flying in the wind.

  “God this is lonely country,” I comment. “Why did we come this way back then?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “An accident?”

  She shrugs. “Yeah. A big pile-up closed I-25, and this was the only way to go. I'm glad now, even though it took so long. It's like another country up here, you have to admit.”

  “And everything Gypsy does artistically comes out of this road. Isn't that odd? How one day all those years ago should have made such an impression?”

  She's quiet for a little while. “I don't understand anything about her mind. Not one single thing. I've read and read and listened and listened and”—a shrug—“it's just not in me, I guess. I just don't understand.”

  “I don't think anybody does.”

  “Your daddy seemed to.”

  I shake my head. “No, he was just more patient.” Then I add, “Than either one of us.”