Something about the painting made her stomach pull. She stopped to take it in. To breathe with it. And she forgot for a moment that Paul was standing next to her. “This painting…” Paul finally said, “This painting should be called ‘Olivine.’”
Olivine had read somewhere that casinos were known to pump in particular aromas…aromas that might subliminally prompt a patron to spend money, to feel as though he were a high roller who couldn’t lose. And she wondered just then if there was a similar process in place to help you say just the right words to the woman who was standing beside you, because it was the perfect thing for him to say. So unlike him. So like…someone else.
It would have been more characteristic of the man she left behind. The man who would have, say, walked over to the Roulette wheel immediately upon entering the casino and who would have put a one hundred dollar bill on red, seventeen, because red is hot and seventeen was her birth date. And as the ball bounced and the wheel turned, he would have whispered something to her about the fact that he was about to get lucky, either way.
Olivine shook her head. It was strange imagining what one man would do when she was here with another, and an icy feeling rippled through her. A feeling that she would be spending the rest of her life doing this very thing.
She stood for a moment, again, looking at the painting. And then her focus shifted to her own reflection, staring back at her in the glass set just before the painting. And so consumed was she, seeing into her own eyes, that she startled when Paul said, “Jimmy Choo is just over here.” And she nodded and he offered his elbow, and he led her there, where he bought her a strappy silver shoe, a modest design by Jimmy Choo standards, and one she felt she would actually wear from time to time.
“Good thing we don’t have children,” Paul whispered to her after they swiped his credit card, “because that would have put a dent in their college fund.” And then he made a similar comment as he purchased two gauzy sundresses, a glittery pocketbook, and a selection of French lingerie from the boutique next door.
They exited Caesar’s Palace and walked back up the strip to their own hotel. Just before the bank of elevators was a bar with velvet booths set inside what looked like blooming flowers, the seats cradled by the open petals.
“You go freshen up,” Paul said, thrusting the shopping bags toward her. “And I’ll meet you here. At this very spot.”
She turned, and he grabbed for her hand, giving it a squeeze. “And put your hair up in that way that I like. Show some neck,” he said.
The elevator soared upward, and her stomach lurched. She could do this, she reassured herself. She took her time in the room. In the shower, she set the water as hot as it would go, and she stood under the sprays until she felt dizzy and dreamlike. And then she stood in the bathroom and looked at her reflection until nearly all the steam had cleared. She twisted her hair in just the way Paul liked. She wriggled into the gauzy emerald dress, the exact color of her eyes. And she slipped on her new silver shoes, which clicked across the marble as she crossed the room to stare out the window for a time. Then she transferred her credit cards, cash, and cell phone into her new pocketbook and threw open the door.
He was downstairs, just where he said he would be, perched in a crimson velvet booth, formed in the shape of a blooming peony. And there were other flowers of varying sizes and heights, each reached through cascading flights of stairs. She looked around at the other couples in other booths, each occupying their own flower, their own tiny stage, overlooking the Blackjack tables.
She climbed the seven steps into Paul’s booth. The seat rose high in the back but afforded a good view of the gambling tables below. There, on the casino floor, a cocktail waitress teetered on five-inch heels. Her hosiery caught the light. It was heavy and reflective, like support hose, and this made Olivine think suddenly of her great grandmother who would sit on an oak rocking chair all day in front of her home in Nebraska. Each morning she would stuff her legs into the thick pantyhose, like sausage casings, and she would rock in that chair. When Olivine had visited her as a little girl, she would sit at her feet sometimes to play board games with Yarrow, wishing and wishing for the time to go faster, so she could leave this place and go home again. And she would look up sometimes at her great grandmother and she could see the wiry white hair inside her nostrils and then she would look down again and she would see those legs, thick with veins, broad and blue.
Only a few decades would separate these two women, Olivine thought. The woman below in her panty hose and her tiny skirt, sashaying across the casino floor, looking for rich men. And a woman who was too old to go and get her own Pepsi Cola. Olivine felt a weightiness deep in the center of her chest.
The drink that Paul ordered for her arrived. The glass was tall and skinny, with two raspberries bobbing among clear bubbles and topped with a tiny red paper flower, a perfect replica of the booth in which they were sitting. “This drink cost more than seventeen dollars,” Paul said, and he laughed. “Since you have been upstairs, I have actually consumed fifty-two dollars worth of drinks. I don’t think I’ve been able to say that before. Ever.”
She smiled at him and tried to laugh. The bodice of her dress felt too tight, suddenly.
Paul’s eyes were glassy. He didn’t often drink. Olivine wriggled in her seat.
He took her hand and held it loosely on the tabletop. Then he turned and looked into her eyes. “Olivine,” he took a deep breath. “I want you to know that I forgive you. And that I trust you. I will give you a good life. And I want to start right now.”
She pulled her hand from under his. “Wonderful,” she said, and she took a sip of her drink through its tiny red straw.
“So, did you mean it when you said you would do anything I wanted here in Vegas?” he asked. A flash of the two of them on the white marble in the hotel room flashed through Olivine’s mind.
“I did,” she assured him. She smiled and pulled another sip through the straw. The bubbles filled her mouth and popped against the inside of her cheek
“Good.”
“Good.” She sucked in her stomach. The lace on her new lingerie wasn’t quite right under this dress. She shifted and reached her hand out to scoop up a handful of the Cajun-spice Chex Mix that lay on the table. What an odd thing to offer as an appetizer, she thought, crunching on the snack, trying to keep her mind off Henry and the things he would say if he were here next to her.
“Good. Because I booked the chapel,” Paul said. “While you were upstairs. I booked the chapel.” He laughed now, showing all of his teeth. “It was full until two in the morning, but hey, we’re in Vegas!” He held up two fingers to a cocktail waitress with fish-net stockings who nodded and minced to the bar.
Olivine swallowed. The air went cold and her face prickled and, just then, she heard the soft mew of a child, who was nearing the bank of elevators just below and to the left of her, skirting the casino floor. The child was about four years of age with blonde bouncing curls. Her mother wore a pencil skirt, cut too narrow, and she leaned over to speak directly into the girl’s face. Her hand clutched the child’s wrist. A tall man in a business suit walked two steps behind them, speaking into a cell phone. The man nudged the mother with his elbow and rolled his eyes, and the woman pulled on the little girl’s wrist.
“Did you hear what I said?” Paul asked.
Olivine listened to her breathing, in and out.
“Did you hear what I said?” he repeated.
“I guess not,” she lied. She found that her mind couldn’t conjure a response. “Sorry, it’s noisy in here.”
“I said I was able to get the chapel.”
“The chapel?”
“I want to marry you, Olivine. Today. Well, tonight. At two.”
Should she bring up practicalities? Marriage license. The certain disappointment of her mother and father if they were to elope? But she knew Paul would have an answer for each of these things.
And so she said simply, “No.” The word
was out of her mouth before she could stop it.
“You said you were ready, Olivine,” he slurred. “No more dragging this out. No more back and forth. No more wishy-washy insecurities. If you want me, you’ll marry me here.” His voice softened. “We can have a ceremony at home, too. Don’t worry.”
She swallowed hard and shook her head.
“I thought this was what you wanted.” His voice had fallen to a whisper. “If it isn’t, why are we here?”
“I…I guess I don’t know.” She took off her ring, and she slid it to him.
He stared at it. Looked up at her. Opened his mouth. Closed it. “Alright,” he said, finally, his eyes glossy. “We can do it however you like. It doesn’t have to be here, of course. It doesn’t have to be now. I just thought this was a good way for you to prove to me what you want. That you want me.”
Olivine’s eyes drifted to the casino floor. The little girl had been wrangled into the elevator. The waitress in support hose had swaggered out of view.
Paul was saying something. His lips were moving. The room was tilting. Her breath was coming fast.
“What should we do now? Shall we go home?”
Words came. “Yes. Yes. You go ahead,” she said.
“What the hell? Go ahead?”
“Yes, you go ahead. You go home. You do what you need to do. I am going to go.”
“You are going to go?”
“Yes.”
“You are going to go where?”
“I’m just going to go.”
Paul stared at her, and she thought about saying she was sorry, but she couldn’t make her mouth form the words, so she slid off the velvet upholstery, and she slid out of the casino and into the light outside, which stung her eyes and made them water.
And then she began to walk. She walked past three obese men in nylon superhero suits, standing by the fountain at the entrance to the hotel: one dressed in a nylon PowerPuff Girls costume, another as a nightmarish Chuckie doll and another as Robin, with no Batman to be seen. A sign propped on an overturned fifty-gallon bucket offered photos with the characters for twenty dollars each.
She walked past a disabled man in a wheelchair, just a head and a torso, trying to sell her bottled water. She walked past a man handing out promotional cards bedecked with nude, busty women, two tiny black strips along a blonde’s nipples. And when she had walked for a while, she hailed a cab from the rotunda of a towering yellowish hotel and she found herself at the airport. She tucked away the credit card that she shared with Paul, and she brought out her debit card. The one she’d kept from the time when she was alone in the world and the one that would draw on her own tiny bank balance.
She found herself, then, in line at the ticket counter, but then she decided that she did not want to go home. Instead, she decided that she might rent a car. A sedan. No. Her eyes glanced down to the Luxury Convertible category and she realized that, here in Vegas, she could rent any of a number of exotic cars. And so she decided on a Porsche 911 convertible in platinum silver because it was precisely the opposite of everything she had ever driven before. And she jingled the keys in her hand, and she clicked along the airport floor, and she tucked inside a bookseller’s shop, and she chose a thick leather-bound writing journal with crisp, buttery pages and a heavy white pen with ink that flowed fast. And then she burst into the glittering sunlight to find her new car.
Chapter Fifteen
The leather seat pressed lush against the back of Olivine’s legs. She placed her pocketbook and her shopping bag on the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition, feeling the Porsche’s throaty hum beneath her hands on the steering wheel and beneath her seat and beneath her feet. She pulled the switch on the center console until the convertible top had peeled back completely. She backed out of her parking space, followed the exit signs, and merged into the lane that would take her toward home.
Then she cut the wheel hard to the right, and she found herself heading west instead.
She suspected that, once she was encased, alone, inside the cocoon of the car, she would fall apart. She would begin to weep and ask herself, “What now?” But she found, instead, that, as she drove, the highway presented her with one green road sign after another, each positing a plain and simple choice. This way to have that experience. This way for a different experience. Each experience unknown. And she no longer wanted to cry. Instead, she envisioned herself as the woman of the tiny wick in the painting. She didn’t need to illuminate anyone’s world but her own. And she felt free.
She lifted her shoulders back and inhaled and watched her chest rise up, up, up. And she began to laugh with her mouth wide open. When she felt hungry, she stopped at a convenience store, and she bought a bag of cherry sours candy and a Dr. Pepper, knowing that they would interact to produce a fizzy sensation in her mouth and, later, a stomachache. At the counter, she added a four dollar pair of sunglasses and a two dollar pair of flip flops.
The man behind the cash register asked her where she was headed and she began to say that she had no earthly idea, but then she decided that this was not a safe thing to tell someone, so she made up something about being on her way to a medical conference in San Francisco, and the man grinned and shook his white hair into his face and slid her purchases into a plastic bag. And she laughed at the rush of relief she felt over the fact that this was a total lie. That this could not, in fact, have been further from the truth.
The truth was, she was going where she was not someone’s child, not someone’s sister, not someone’s fiancé. At some point, she would need a destination. Some point. Probably soon. But that would not be a problem. Because she made her own light, wherever she went.
*****
After Olivine had driven awhile and the sun had set, she pulled off the highway to find some dinner, and she ate it sitting at a bar, which felt gritty against her forearms. And then she checked into a hotel, where she opened the French doors wide, and she stood on the balcony, and she let her dress flip in the wind.
She fell into a hard sleep, on top of the bed, without slipping between the sheets. And in the morning, she scrubbed her face, and she turned on her cell phone, which had been buried in her pocketbook, and she sent a text message to her sister and to her mother, saying she was taking care of some things and not to be alarmed by anything they might hear and that she would be home shortly.
“That,” she said aloud to herself, “will have to do.”
And then she got in the car again, and she set off. When the phone rang, or the text message alert chimed, she would answer or respond only if they were from her mother or her father or from Yarrow.
Paul had tried to call. And so had Henry. But this trip wasn’t about them. It was about her. For a decade, she had been wrestling with memories of the one who had gotten away and yearning for a way to get him back. But now she saw that it wasn’t Henry who had gotten away at all. It was Olivine: the person she was and the person she loved. And she would get her back, but, to do that, she needed quiet, and she needed distance and she needed time.
So Olivine set off, with no particular destination and with no particular deadline and deciding, from one road sign to the next, where to go; sometimes turning onto a new route solely for the satisfaction that came with deciding to do so. A decision that no one would care about, debate over, or chime in on. And, everywhere she went, she wrote.
She wrote pages upon pages upon pages. She drove along the Pacific Coast, and she wrote with her feet in the sea and the kelp twisting between her toes. She wrote atop rocky outcroppings above the crashing surf. And when that first leather-bound journal was filled, she bought another. And then another.
And when she tired, finally, of diner food and hotel beds, she headed toward home. And she found that, once she was headed in this direction, she drove all day and all night, stopping only when she entered the Rocky Mountains, at the first scenic overlook, to sit amid the soaring peaks to write some more. And here she wrote about the rocks that lift
ed straight up into the sky, dotted with tiny pines, weathered and beaten.
She wrote about how spring had arrived and how the landscape bloomed fresh and how the grasses had shrugged off winter’s snow and were standing tall once more. And she wrote about the sky and the shade of sapphire that existed only here, high in the Rockies, where the air was so thin and so dry. And she wrote about where she would go next, and what she might do and the kind of woman she was and would forever be, as she returned to this home and to the family she loved.
*****
As she drove back into her town, she inhaled the sweetness of the pine needles and the soggy earth, and she knew it was time to face a few things. She would need to face the rental car bill, for one, and she would need to face Paul, at least in order to get her own car back. Out of his garage or out of impound or whatever he had done with it.
And in the face of all these things, she found herself driving out to the cabin. To sit on the porch, perhaps, or on the fallen cottonwood tree in the river. To breathe in the air and to surround herself with her past, with her memories. She would stay here, at the cabin, until she was ready to leave once more.
Pebbles pinged the sides of the car as it purred up the driveway. She parked near the front of the house and picked her way along the forest path in her strappy sandals. In the short time she had been gone, the alpine buttercups and evening primrose had nudged through the soil, their bent heads shy and wary. The clearing where Henry’s bus had been parked was mended. Self-healed. The grasses once trampled by the bus tires and by the melting snow had risen again.
Everything had returned to its original condition. A release surged through her, and her shoes clicked up the porch steps as she went to stand at the rails. She pressed her hands on the wood and expanded her chest and breathed the air, so familiar in any season. Today, a wet scent. Nearly swampy, but mixed with sweetness. The promise of a great many wildflowers, of knee-high lupine and fireweed and blue flax. These would come along in time, but not yet. For that, she would have to wait.
The One Who Got Away: A Novel Page 20
