Night Swimming

by Robin Schwarz

  The slots called for bills or coins. She had the bills, and so she began.

  As beginner’s luck would have it, Blossom thrived at the slots. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, a fistful of coins would fall her way. One hundred dollars, two hundred fifty dollars. Yes, this was how she’d imagined it going. But faster than this. At this rate it would take two years to make any real cash. But she persevered, losing a little, making a little. By lunch she was up by five hundred dollars. Not exactly high-rolling.

  That’s when she decided to wander. She knew that people played for high stakes. She’d seen a whole special on it on cable. She just had to find the room, the table, and the kind of game that promised high wins.

  Her attention was drawn to a croupier who was spinning a red-and-black wheel. Around and around it went, until the ball settled into a slot with a satisfying click. Some chips were taken off the table with a stick; some people would jump up and down and spread out more chips on different numbers. It intrigued her, and she watched it for hours. Someone had walked away with fifty thousand dollars, someone with two hundred thirty-six thousand. Most walked away with nothing, but Blossom was not interested in them. They were not even registering in her mind. She only watched the winners.

  At nine o’clock that evening, she was ready to put her first bet down on the table. She knew enough to play the game now. An intensity of excitement burned in her belly, the likes of which she’d never known. Some strange thirst was dying to be quenched. The gambling bug had bitten.

  “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.”

  Her first foray into the game was a straight bet. She put several chips on one number. The wheel spun. She waited anxiously, as if life itself were the wager. And the ball skipped, click, click click, over the wheel, finally settling on a number. Hers. She screamed with delight. This was going to be a breeze. And now the sweet addiction began pumping its slow drip into her system. Nothing could stop her now. She was indestructible, bulletproof.

  She went for inside bets, split bets, trio bets, corner bets, five-number bets, six-number bets, and still she continued to win. Success wafted around her like the sweet smell of honey, and the bees continued to gather.

  Every one loves a winner.

  Three hours she played, three hours until she was up so high, the manager came over to witness the carnival.

  “Okay,” Blossom said, “I feel lucky. I really feel lucky. I want to wager everything.” Everything was a million dollars. A silence swept the room.

  “I’m gonna wager it all...on a straight-up bet. If I win, the house pays me thirty-five to one.”

  The crowd gasped. This was just insanity now, but delicious, exciting, the very reason they were all there—to simulate the rush of the forbidden, take a bite out of that apple in Eden, push the limits of this excruciating madness to its inevitable end. The croupier leaned over to the manager to make sure this bet did not exceed the house limit. It did not, and Blossom was good to go.

  The dealer placed a token on top of her chips, indicating the value of her play. A complete hush settled over the room. She moved her chips onto the red seven. It was as if she were alone, with only the wheel, her chips, and the dealer in her vision. A blur of knuckles and nail polish unleashed themselves from the rim of the table. All breathing ceased. No one even dared clear his throat. Slowly, moving at half the speed of life, the wheel began to spin. A million dollars all on a single number. Every dime she had won, every nickel she had left. Red seven, red seven, come on, red seven. The wheel turned; the ball bounced, jumped from one number to the next, in and out of the red seven, slowing, skipping, slowing, skipping, slowing, slowing, slowing... and then it stopped. Thirteen black. And everything was gone in an instant.

  Disappointment echoed around the table. People meandered away, but Blossom just stood there, staring down as if there’d been some huge mistake. She’d been winning all night. What happened? She wanted to retake the shot. That was just a practice turn, like in bowling, when you get a couple of free rolls. But it wasn’t a practice shot; it was the real thing, and it left Blossom standing there without a dime, without a prayer. She was aware and unaware all at the same time. She was numb. A man was talking to her, but she could barely hear him. He sounded muffled and faraway. It was the manager.

  “We’ll comp your meals and your room,” he was saying, as if that were a consolation, but she could not move, frozen in her defeat.

  “Are you okay?”

  And she looked at him, through him, to the door, which she began walking toward.

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  But she continued walking out into the surreal world of glass and glitter, of bulbs and overblown boulevards. She wandered for hours past the Bellagio, the Mirage, past Harrah’s and the Luxor, all the way down to the Mandalay. These casinos were long distances apart, but she wasn’t conscious of logging the miles between them. Lost in the carnival-like madness of Elvis look-alikes, newlyweds, showgirls and call girls, lost in the glare of amusement rides, fake sphinxes, Eiffel Towers, and Venetian canals, she walked. And she walked and she walked and she walked, but had no sense of having moved at all.

  She had lost all track of time. Maybe six months had passed in the last twenty-four hours, and she had died tonight and ended up here, in hell, in Las Vegas.

  Suicide, that’s all she could think of right now. It made perfect sense at the moment. No money, no prospects, no life span (which at this point she took as a positive). How would she do it? She wanted a clean, simple exit. All drama kept at a minimum. Pills. But where would she get the pills? And what on earth would she say in her suicide note.

  Dear Dolly and Skip,

  I know you’re wondering why I swallowed that poker chip that caused me to choke to death.

  Dear Dolly and Skip,

  I’m sorry I hung myself from the grand ballroom chandelier, but it was the only one in the hotel I knew would hold me.

  Dear Dolly and Skip,

  What a lousy place to take a vacation. If you’re planning any sort of getaway, consult a travel agent first, but don’t come here. This place sucks.

  How she found herself seated at a second-string performance of Stanoslofsky’s animals acts was a mystery. The stage was small, the cages cramped, the man with the whip, dwarfish and gray. Time and space had no reality. Things were just happening without any rhyme or reason. But she knew she must have met some awful fate to see such beautiful cats in such a bizarre place. Why weren’t they in the forests, sleeping by a stream, or running free under an endlessly blue sky? Why were they here instead, jumping through hoops of fire? The whole world seemed like a distortion. She couldn’t sit there any longer.

  With excruciating fatigue she rose to leave, but the glare of the lights and the sound of the drum roll were utterly disorienting. She hadn’t eaten or slept in two days, and when she stood, dizziness overcame her. The last thing she remembered was a man whose hands looked like lobster claws, waving for help. Blossom went down with a thud, straight onto the stage, as if she were throwing herself to the tigers.

  CHAPTER 41

  ARE YOU OKAY?”

  “Where am I?”

  “Back in your room . . . at the Golden Nugget. You passed out.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. The manager who helped you found your I.D. and room key in your bag. That’s how he knew where you were staying. We brought you back here in one of the complimentary limos.”

  “How fancy! I’m sorry I missed it. And who are you?”

  “The hotel doctor at the Golden Nugget. How do you feel now?”

  “When did this happen?”

  “About half an hour ago. When’s the last time you slept?”

  “I don’t know.” And then Blossom recalled what had happened. “I lost all my money. Every cent of it.”

  The doctor looked down. He had seen this before. He could offer no cure for having gone broke in Las Vegas.

  “Where are you from?”


  Where am I from? “I don’t even know how to answer that.”

  “I suggest you sleep here tonight. Get a good night’s sleep and go home in the morning. You’ll be surprised how much better things can look in the morning.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “The hotel can reach me if you have any more episodes.” He stood to leave. “Do you have enough money to get home?”

  Blossom looked away from him. How could she have gone from where she was to this? It was inconceivable.

  “Here,” he said, putting some money on the table. “This should be enough to get you to where you’re going.

  “I don’t know where I’m going. I’ve lost everything. And not just the money. I’ve lost my mother, my father, my best friend, T. J., Tom... everything.”

  She began to cry, inconsolable tears, tears filled with the salt of a hundred wounds. Tears that looked like glass fell from her cheeks, breaking to the floor as if a chandelier had snapped from its anchor after years of hanging ever so tenuously.

  “I am completely alone, and I just can’t do it anymore. It’s too painful.” Blossom wept. “I want to go to sleep for a hundred years and wake up in another time and place. Can you do that, Doc? Is there anything in your bag that can do that for me?”

  The doctor took her in with such empathy, it made him turn around and look in his bag. “This won’t put you to sleep for a hundred years, but it will help you sleep now.”

  “What is it?

  “A shot of Valium.”

  He rubbed her arm with alcohol and injected the tranquilizer.

  “I am going to stay with you until you are asleep.”

  She lay back and closed her eyes. “Even whales have families...” She was fading now, and her words became slurred. “And they sing to each other.”

  “It’s going to be all right.”

  “I’m so sorry, so . . .” But she couldn’t finish her sentence. She was swimming with whales somewhere in the middle of the sea.

  She awoke in the evening, having slept nearly twenty hours straight. Oh, my God, what did I do? Blossom was trying to remember what she had said last night. She was bereft: she recalled that. But what did she say, and to whom? Regret grew in her heart and spread through her loins like a chill, as if someone were walking over her grave. All she could do was get up, shower, and leave. There was no reason to take her suitcases now. They were empty.

  Blossom made her way back home. It was late when she got there, almost midnight when she walked down to the pool. How often it had soothed her, helped her to disentangle from the complicated strings that life had attached to it. It had been the place she could come to hold confusion at bay. But now all those hours in the water felt as if she’d only been swimming upstream. She was so tired.

  She slipped in and pushed off, breaking the stillness in half. Back and forth, back and forth, she began her laps. Distant thunder rolled in from the valley, and rain started to fall. But she felt nothing. Hot tears fell from her eyes only to dissolve beneath the wash of the cold water. Sometimes, she thought, even the sky needed to have a good cry. I’ve lost everything. Money, love, hope.

  Today someone will fall off a ladder and hit his head; today someone will realize the proverbial prediction of being hit by a bus; today all the little cells will continue their death march inside my body. So arbitrary, so inevitable. We live; we die... someone else is born. No matter how rich or famous a person is, it just doesn’t matter. We all have our day to die. On the day Jason Robards died, someone was laughing at a joke; on the day Jack Lemmon died, someone was throwing a birthday party. On the day I die, Skip will be watering the lawn. Life is so unfair; it just goes on without you.

  She plunged below the clear black surface, wishing the water would just close over her forever. Even her brain hurt, thinking about it all.

  Dolly, you tell me I must love myself before I can love another. You tell me that sometimes when a situation is at its worst, it can bring out our best. You tell me that I can grow through my pain if I learn acceptance, especially of myself. But I can’t, Dolly; I can’t. I am trying to, but I can’t. People need love; I need love. I’m all need and loneliness right now, Dolly. And you tell me that the one thing I need I can’t have, just because I need it the most. There are too many lessons to learn, Dolly, and I just can’t do it. I just can’t do it.

  She didn’t remember exiting the pool and standing in the rain for hours. She didn’t remember walking across the lawn and climbing the stairs with the new light breaking against the eastern sky. She didn’t remember being dripping wet when she knocked on Dolly’s door at five in the morning, crying under the enormous burden of sadness and secrets. And she didn’t remember standing in the hall, holding on to the doorjamb, with an ache in her heart so great, it was as if it had been split by an ax.

  “I have to talk to you, Dolly. I need to tell someone the truth.”

  Dolly took her in and put her to bed. The next day she would hear the entire story, unedited and untold to a single soul—until now.

  CHAPTER 42

  WHEN BLOSSOM OPENED HER EYES, she was in bed. But not hers. She looked around and saw that she was in Dolly’s guest room, and the events of the nights before came rushing back. Dolly was there in a chair by the bed, smiling gently at her. “At last, Sleeping Beauty arises.” And then Blossom spoke, emptying her heart, a heart she thought had nothing left in it to empty. She told Dolly everything. Everything.

  “So just to review,” Dolly said an hour and a half later, “you robbed a bank in which you had worked for fifteen years, left town, changed your name, and moved here. You did this because a doctor gave you one year to live, and you thought by moving to Hollywood you would find love and happiness before you died, because Hollywood is the land of dreams. Is that about right?”

  “In a nutshell.” Blossom went on to tell Dolly about T. J., MaryAnn, Tom Barzini, and Skip. She opened up like a water tower struck by lightning, and a billion tears came down in one final deluge.

  “Does that pretty much bring us up to the most recent Las Vegas debacle?”

  Blossom nodded.

  “Lord, Blossom, when you tell a story... you tell a story. Well, the first thing we need to do is to get a second opinion.”

  “On what?”

  “Not your sanity. I know you’re crazy. But your health is another matter altogether. We need to get you to a doctor and get a second opinion on your health.”

  “No way, Dolly. My mother had refused treatment, and she was doing okay. She really was. But then when she began doing worse, they talked her into chemo, and that’s when it all fell apart. It’s what killed her; I’m sure of it. I don’t want to go like that. I want to go like this. Intact. The poison that kills the disease is worse than the cancer. No, no doctors, Dolly.”

  Dolly regarded Blossom. She looked so healthy, but maybe that was why she had lost all this weight. At least seventy-five pounds. And she looked so good with it off. But maybe it was the disease. Dolly wasn’t finished trying to convince Blossom to get a second opinion; she was just finished for now. She would definitely get her to see a doctor, by hook or by crook; right now, however, she just wanted to get her up and flying right.

  “We need a plan, Blossom.”

  “A plan?”

  “Yes, you’re a mess. You’re a shade paler than milk. Look at you. Somebody call nine-one-one.”

  “Are you sure you want to give me this pep talk now?”

  “Well,” Dolly said, “you’ve got to sell your Hockney. I have a couple of connections. I know some dealers and some collectors. Hey, we might be able to get you an even better price than what you paid. You never know.”

  “That was supposed to be for you when I died.”

  “Well, you’re very much alive, and that painting’s worth something.”

  “But that was my gift to you,” she said in a sad, low voice.

  “Make me a card instead—I’ll be just as happy.”

  “Dolly?”
>
  “What?”

  “You’re not freaked out that I’m a fugitive from the law?”

  “No, not at all. I’m far more ‘freaked out,’ as you say, that you won’t get a second opinion from a good doctor out here.” She paused. “Let’s concentrate, Blossom; what we need is structure.”

  “Structure?”

  “Yes. You just can’t go lollygagging about every day, looking at Skip with big, sad eyes and doing nothing. In a couple of days, when you’re feeling better, you’ll come with me. I have something in mind.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you be worrying about what. You’ll see.”

  “Dolly, how is it that... that you always know what to do? I feel so clueless right now. Yet you seem to understand things that... that . . .” She couldn’t finish her thought. Couldn’t quite find the words and connect them to what was going on inside her. Even words were alien at the moment.

  “Therapy, Zoloft. And remember, Blossom, I was out of it for two years. I don’t think anyone could have been as sad or lonely as I was during that time. Oh, I’m sure that’s not true, but that’s how it felt. I’m just remembering what it was like, and I’m offering you a couple of shortcuts to help find your way out of it. Unfortunately, there’s no getting around it: People have to work for their happiness. We go into battle every day, and we have to work to be happy. It just isn’t handed over to us, as much as we wish it was. I know. It stinks.”

  It was the first time Blossom thought destiny wasn’t just “what happens”; destiny was what you made happen. Ingrid Bergman didn’t have to get on that plane. That was her choice.

  “All I’m doing is giving you a couple of tips before you go into battle.”

  “But all I wanted to do was leave a legacy before I died; that’s all.”

  “Love is a legacy, Blossom. Love is how we stay alive after we die.”

  Blossom got up and walked toward Dolly. Her arms were open. She hugged her as if she were the last person on earth. Somehow, Dolly’s words always felt like a salve on her sadness.