by Pelzer,Lissa
‘Can I get my bag?’ she called out.
‘Just a minute.’
‘I kind of need it now. I have to go.’
And the lady he was checking in stepped back, stepped out of the way to let it happen. The guy wasn’t pleased about it, but what could he do? Lilly heaved it back up and was gone. Sometimes you just forgot to say thanks. It didn’t mean anything.
She found the place the girl was talking about. The sidewalk ran along the park and cars were lined up with their hoods pointing towards the trees. The place was deserted, but the girl was standing up ahead, barefooted in front of a car, the light shining off her calves.
Lilly lifted a hand as she raced up to her. ‘Hey,’ she said, pulling the bag back up on her shoulder. She hoped the girl wouldn’t see how much stuff she had with her and freak out, but the light moved, the girl turned and Lilly saw her face.
It wasn’t her. It wasn’t anything like her, just some woman in her late twenties looking at her phone.
‘Sorry.’ Lilly turned back down the line of shiny cars, turned and looked where there was nothing to see.
‘Come on, girl,’ she said into the night. ‘Now’s not the time to stop and talk to friends.’
But she knew already what was up.
The girl wasn’t here. She had tricked her. She hadn’t wanted to take her back to her house.
Lilly kicked at the bench.
She swallowed down the taste of acid that had risen up her throat.
Nothing was ever simple. Life wasn’t simple.
It had all just been some big, stupid mistake, anyway. This problem with Bobby was all just a big misunderstanding. Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight after Sea Island, because two days after they’d gone up to see The Judge, Bobby’s tame judge, she’d gone round to his condo straight off the beach. He’d opened the door and looked her up and down like she was something he’d run over with his truck.
‘I came over to make sure you got back okay,’ she said. ‘I was worried.’
‘No need to worry about me,’ he said, acting all weird. ‘But Miss Lilly, what on earth happened to you?’
‘I got back fine. I got to the airport and a girlfriend came and got me…I didn’t party. I’ve just been chilling out.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
Then she had glanced down and seen her flip-flops. Bobby hated flip-flops. He said they made young ladies look like ducks. And she put her hand to her hair. It had been in a braid before it got wet and had dried on the way over. As if someone had just held a mirror up for her, she saw what he saw, this raggedy beach bum. She probably had a red nose too.
‘I was at the beach…’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘I was about to take a nap.’
‘Bobby, I know I’ve fucked up coming here like this. I’m sorry. Can I use your shower?’
‘I don’t think a shower is going to help.’ Bobby grimaced. ‘Look, darling. I’m taking a little vacation this week. How about I call you when I get back?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Just around…’ He pressed his teeth together like a stapler. ‘And when I get back, I’ll give you some spending money…I know I owe you a little something from the last job.’
And she hadn’t been suspicious because he said he was going to get her a new ID. The print was wearing off on hers and he’d been saying forever, he was going to get her another one. She handed it over, thinking maybe he was going to the Bahamas and told him to call her.
And that was all there was to it.
Lilly glanced down the row of cars all parked up under the trees. A chill moved through her. She brought her knees up to her chest, pressed her thighs against her rib cage and let her head sink down. She needed to find a place to stay. She needed somewhere to sleep and she needed to be able to get ready tomorrow to make sure Bobby saw her looking hot again. Because he would kick himself once he saw her all made-up in a nice dress and nice shoes. He’d feel pretty dumb for avoiding her this last year over a stupid pair of flip-flops. But how was she going to be that girl, the one who turned his head if she spent tonight sleeping rough? Lilly closed her eyes and tried not to let it upset her. Puffed up eyes was the last thing she needed.
But screw that girl.
She’d just better hope she didn’t run into her again.
That was all.
Chapter 2
Back in the day, when she’d first run away down to Miami, when she’d been too young to go on dates to get a meal, she and Cassandra had shoplifted Pop Tarts for their dinner. Standing on different corners of an aisle pretending to read the back of the box Cassandra would say her name when no one was looking and she’d stow it in her shirt.
Even now, when she fell asleep, Lilly would sometimes hear Cassandra calling her. The voice was so clear and exact, it was like a recording or a small bell, always the same note and tone, slightly critical, ringing in her right ear. Sometimes the voice said, ‘Carol Ann,’ but mostly it said, ‘Lilly’. And instantly she would remember all the times they were together, before Bobby, during Bobby, but never after Bobby. She wished she’d seen her after Bobby.
‘Lilly!’
She woke up to her name and to the sound of a car door closing and saw the light from the trees reflecting off the old man’s thin white hair.
‘So this is it,’ he said. ‘This is Flickerama.’
Lilly squeezed her eyes closed and prayed he hadn’t seen her. And when she heard the other voice, she wondered if it really had said her name and woken her up.
‘What-exactly-where?’ the voice asked, ‘Is Flicker-rama?’
Lilly blinked in the dark. She would recognize Cassandra’s voice anywhere, the deep southern tone that Bobby had asked her to adopt as well. The one that made him laugh and blush, even when Cassandra looked at the pug gun he gave her for her birthday and asked – you call that a gun?
Bobby was getting something out of the back.
‘Customarily,’ he said, ‘A valet would take the car, but they close the street to vehicles during the festival.’
‘Well, why don’t you go to the hotel and get them to send down a porter?’
‘Darling, it’s not fifty yards from here. Don’t you want to show off your nice new luggage set?’
‘Not if I’m the one doing the lugging.’
There was a pause.
Through her closed lids, she could see Bobby’s frown and Cassandra’s arms crossed against her chest.
‘Well, if it’s quicker, let’s just go. I’m ready to collapse. At least we can get something to drink, and get to sleep.’
‘Sleep? Is that all you young ones think of these days? Why, in my day, this would be early evening.’
Lilly heard the car trunk close.
‘When I was a buck down in Cancun, we would just be getting together about now to start our evening proper.’
Cassandra mumbled something. Lilly didn’t hear what and maybe Bobby didn’t either because he carried on talking, his voice growing softer into the night.
With sleep still dimming her mind, she got up, stashed her canvas bag under the bench and crouched down behind the next tree. Bobby walked slowly and Cassandra was matching his gait to be polite. His jeans were too tight or his knee was playing him up, but he was trying his best to hide it. Lilly hung back, waited until they got to the main street and ran to catch up as they reached the mass of bodies assembled there.
Here the night was alive and bright again. Bobby pressed on the backs of men to let Cassandra make her way through, saying, ‘Excuse me’, ‘Now mind yourself,’ sounding like a perfect gentleman. And Cassandra was calmly passing between, thanking people like a ballerina picking up her roses at the end of a performance. Lilly followed, she could see them right now, but in a moment, they were gone.
She came out on the sidewalk where people were sitting on stone doorsteps, leaning against walls, drinking out of plastic cups. She stepped over fe
et and bags until she found an elevated place. Going up on her toes, she spotted them again. The clack-clack-clack of Cassandra’s case gave them away and the glow from Bobby’s white shirt was easy to spot.
Two people going in the wrong direction while everyone else craned and pushed to get a view of the stage. A pretty woman with a wide smile was giving an interview. Lilly pressed in and got closer again. She could see them in an opening, Cassandra’s rosebud lips, puckered at the annoyance of being in a crowd. Then there was an incident. A drunk man stepped up and back onto the sidewalk and Lilly heard Bobby speak.
‘Watch out buddy,’ he said. ‘There’s a lady walking here.’
The guy turned around, hostile at first, but looking up into Bobby’s deeply wrinkled face, he must have seen something. Some hint of what this man was capable of got through his drunken haze and he cooled, said ‘sorry Ma’am,’ and was pulled back down by a friend.
Aware of how easily he could have turned around and seen her, Lilly dropped back. She turned her attention to the floor strewn with flyers and listened for the suitcase. When the noise stopped, she stopped. She craned up to see up. They were mounting the steps to The Colorado Palace now, Bobby straining under the weight of Cassandra’s case, gritting his teeth but quickly turning it into a pained smile as she glanced down at him.
If she’d been dressed already she might have just followed them in, said ‘well, what a surprise!’ or something similar. But here she was. She looked like shit. She looked worse than the time she’d come to his condo.
Her thoughts lurched and changed track.
Bobby was here.
That was good news. But she wasn’t ready for him. She had to get to Denny’s. She had to get cleaned up. And Cassandra was with him. Lilly bowed her head, trying to work it out. That didn’t make any sense, just not one ounce of sense. The last time those two had been together fireworks had flown.
Lilly got down off the step and began to push back through. She had to get her bag and get to the restaurant. She’d have to be quick. It was late already. Someone blocked her way and she stepped on his toes to get him to move She was angry and riled up with no time for anyone but when the next torso wouldn’t move she stopped.
It looked familiar.
‘Miss Lilly,’ it said slowly, kindly.
And she craned her head to look up at the silhouette of Bobby’s tall frame. He’d put a Stetson on. He usually did when he was worried about being seen.
‘Darling…?’
Lilly pulled down at her shirt where it had stuck to her body with sweat. She pushed back her hair and felt it clump in her hand. ‘Bobby?’ She tried to sound surprised. ‘Bobby. Wow.’
But he wasn’t moved. ‘What on Earth… are you doing here?’
‘I’m here with a gentleman.’ She hadn’t meant to say that, but it just came out.
‘A gentleman? You mean a fella.’
‘No, a gentleman.’ She repeated, using his same code – a fella was for fun, a gentleman was for business.
‘You came out here with a gentleman, looking like that?’ His gaze drifted over the heads of the crowd, the lights catching his pale eyes under the brim of his hat.
‘Yeah, so he’s more the casual kind.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘He actually prefers I dress like this.’ She made a sign with her hand to show how crazy she thought it was, but the realization had already sunk in.
All her plans, all that traveling had been for nothing. With Bobby seeing her looking like this, it was all over.
‘Bobby,’ she blurted out, trying a different approach. ‘I need to talk to you. Let’s go somewhere and talk.’
He sighed but beckoned her to follow him and she did. Her heart raced as she tried to rearrange the speech she’d had planned in her head. She’d practiced it all dress up in front of a mirror, saying the words out loud, convincing him to take her back, to let her keep working, to make sure she’d still get the cut of what they’d been earning. He was taking her now towards The Colorado Palace. Nothing had been said. Everything was understood. He was going to get her a room, even if there were none, Bobby would get one, and then they’d get this settled.
Bobby stepped into the alcove next to a bookshop to let someone pass and Lilly stepped in too. The woman passed. Lilly waited and was still waiting when she felt his eyes on her. Bobby got out his smokes, lit one up and held it up to his face.
‘Aren’t we going inside?’ She asked.
‘You expect me to take you into this nice hotel looking the way you do?’
‘I’m staying in this nice hotel.’
‘Is that a fact?’ Bobby lifted his chin. ‘Could be, I suppose, but it doesn’t mean I want to be seen with you in there, like this.’
‘But I need to talk to you,’ she whispered, hearing the words all reedy and weak.
‘So talk.’
‘You want to talk here?’
Bobby didn’t exhale. Perhaps he’d swallowed the smoke in his mouth. He said, ‘I suppose you’ve got a point. You never know who’s listening and I have the strangest feeling I know exactly what you want to say to me.’
Lilly looked up at him and waited for his suggestion. She could have said it, said ‘so let’s just go inside,’ but Bobby didn’t like being told what to do, especially not by women.
‘How about this…I know you’ve come a long way to say what you want to say to me. How about you go to wherever it is you’re staying and get cleaned up and I’ll meet you in twenty minutes and we’ll have a little chat. How would that be?’
‘That would be perfect.’ She pulled a strand of her hair across her face. ‘Except I need more than twenty minutes. The gentleman I’m with, he just stepped in the shower.’
‘Did he now?’
‘He did. Can you give me an hour?’
She could get her bag from under the bench, get down to that Denny’s and get back within an hour.
‘You’re pushing your luck.’ Bobby pulled his sleeve back and looked at his Rolex as if he had a hundred different things to do. ‘One hour. At The Dust Bowl.’
‘Where?’
‘Right here, in the hotel. I thought you would have know that, you’re being a guest…’ And he thumbed the door to The Colorado Place, turned around like he was following his own directions and left her to it. She saw his hat for a few feet but turned around herself before she had a chance to see him going up the steps again.
Lilly had seen the small hotel bar from the reception. She knew where he meant. But the way he said it, a little too easily, like he didn’t believe she was staying there and why should he? He knew how much the rooms cost and he must know she was broke. He was probably counting on the doorman not even letting her inside.
But she’d be there.
She just had to get her bag. She had to get to Denny’s.
She turned sharply and a drunk, the same drunk who had stepped up to Cassandra bumped into her.
‘Watch it!’ she yelled, but he didn’t.
He came stumbling towards her again, missed his step and spilled half of his plastic glass of beer down her shirt and shorts.
Lilly gasped.
‘Oh my God,’ a woman whined. ‘Jeff just threw his beer over some little kid.’
Lilly looked around, thinking he’d got someone else too before realizing they were talking about her. The woman lifted her phone and the light went off as she took a photo. A purple and red pulse darted across her face.
‘Oh my God, Jeff. Only you. Only you!’
‘You think this is funny?’ Lilly pulled her shirt away from her chest. She was soaked right through and as she stood there she could feel the cold liquid going down her shorts and into her pants.
The woman pulled her phone down to see the picture.
‘Did you get that?’ Her piggy-eyed friend asked.
‘What? No. But I got the aftermath.’
The woman turned and tried to show her friend the picture. Piggy Eyes strained trying to se
e it properly.
‘Hey, you don’t get to laugh at this,’ Lilly shouted, but it was like she was on mute, stuck behind a glass wall. ‘Hey – Hey!’ And no one could hear her.
There was no planning involved. She hit the bottom of the woman’s beer thinking it would splash up in her face, but it didn’t. The woman was holding it so loosely, it flew up out of her hand and landed somewhere in the group behind.
The woman’s ugly, old face contorted. ‘Oh my God. What the fuck is wrong with you?’
Lilly didn’t pause to let it sink in.
She slapped Piggy Eyes’ beer right out of her hand and it dropped and exploded on the floor to shrieks from someone else. And something in the back of her head told her to stop, that this could only get worse, but she didn’t, she couldn’t. She was soaked and these idiots weren’t and she wouldn’t stop until their evening was a fucked up as hers. She took a beer from a complete stranger and threw it straight in the guy’s face, square in the eyes and while he screwed them up tight she let him have it, a hard wet slap against his cheek.
He screamed.
Someone grabbed her by the hair.
She jammed a heel in their foot.
She dropped to the floor and crawled between a pair of legs and came out ready to punch anyone that came at her, but no one did.
More people were screaming now and the air was wet with beer and drinks being thrown around. Lilly looked up and saw an arch of sparkling, amber liquid flying overhead. A rainbow and sparkles caught in the droplets. For a moment, it was beautiful. People were taking pictures and getting it in the face as they did. But she didn’t need to get any wetter. Lilly ducked down again, pushed her way past carelessly placed arms and shoulders until she was out of the throng. And she looked down and saw the beer streaming down her legs and into her wedges and she knew what it meant. Denny’s just wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
‘Fucker!’ she shouted.
Someone placed a hand on her shoulder to calm her down. She shrugged him off. That was the last thing she needed.
‘Those fucking-fucks.’
‘Hey!’ The guy shouted.
‘Fuck off,’ she shouted back without looking and the hand came out again. She turned around to repeat herself when she saw it was a guy, a youngish but not young guy, maybe thirty at the most. He was pretty well dressed too, in chinos and a white shirt. In his hand, he had a Panama hat, a real one, not the kind tourists buy when the drive down to the Keys.
