But, oh, hell, they just looked so damn great.
And when was the last time she’d treated herself, or been treated, to anything (apart from the numerous margaritas that waiters had been shoving into her hands as long as she was at the slot machines)?
Tiffany deserved some new clothes. Yes, she was a leeeetle bit tipsy from all the free drinks the casino had been doling out, so she’d just buy what she was interested in and return the rest tomorrow.
She weeded through the clothes, taking out the more outrageous or event-specific items. (After all, how likely was she to go to the Kentucky Derby in the near future and need this brightly colored sheath dress with the matching large-brim lacquered cotton hat with little rosettes? On second thought, you never know, she decided and put it back in the to-go pile.) In the end she had a total of just five thousand dollars’ worth of clothes to choose from.
Okay, yes, five thousand dollars was a lot. But it was for only, what, ten hours on the credit card. There was no way it would be longer than that. They were leaving tomorrow afternoon at two, so she would get up early, return the items that she decided weren’t absolutely necessary, which would, of course, be most of them, and then she’d explain the charge of six hundred bucks or so to Charlie when she got home.
She’d point out that the last “luxury” she had gotten for herself was the vanilla-flavored Crest toothbrush, and before that it was probably a perm for her 1980s hair, before she even knew him. If he was going to have a problem with that, well, she’d deal with it later.
Meanwhile she was going to have a blast trying on all of these things again.
And she would save money by going up to the suite and sending the babysitter home. Kate would get a big kick out of helping her decide which things to keep.
All in all, she reasoned in the end, this was going to be a very profitable venture, emotionally if not financially.
And it kept her out of the casino, where the real danger was.
An hour later, in the hotel room after dismissing the babysitter, Tiffany had fully realized that the real danger was not in the casinos but in the Finola Pims shop.
And, now, spread out across her cheap hotel bed.
“I like it all, Mommy!”
Tiffany had hoped Kate would talk her out of some of these clothes, with that trademark child candor that had once made her announce in a Victoria’s Secret dressing room that “Mommy’s skin” was “spilling over her undies” and “looks gross.” It didn’t seem like too much to hope she’d make fun of at least a few of these crazily flamboyant pieces and help Tiffany weed them out. But no, Kate seemed to have some of her aunt Sandra’s lust for fashion and shoes.
She wasn’t going to be any help.
Of course, it was a pretty sad state of affairs when Tiffany was hoping for a nine-year-old to talk her out of extravagant purchases.
Besides, just as it had seemed under the harsh fluorescent glare of the changing-room lights, the clothes looked spectacular on her. It was impossible to decide what was the most flattering, since all of it was flattering. So she decided to divide them up according to what was most practical.
“Not the hat, Mommy.” Kate snatched it out of the return pile and put it on, preening in the mirror.
“I’ve got to, honey.” Tiffany was sorry to say it. “Put it back. Really.”
“Fine.” Kate put the hat back in the return pile, looking as petulant about it as Tiffany felt.
“So I don’t need the Kentucky Derby outfit,” Tiffany said, more to herself than to Kate. “Or the Vegas showgirl outfit.” Though she loved that one. Seriously. How did Finola make a leather jumpsuit look so amazing on a real woman? “Or the Audrey Hepburn Breakfast at Tiffany’s dress. Or tiara.”
She looked at her new “keep” pile.
It had gotten pretty small.
“Won’t Daddy let you keep the rest?” Kate asked.
“It’s not about Daddy, honey. He doesn’t tell me I can’t get things.” Lord, she didn’t even want to think about what Charlie was going to say. It was important to Tiffany that her daughter didn’t grow up feeling like men were in charge of women’s lives, even though the reality of their household was that Tiffany sort of did defer. It was all out of guilt for staying home and taking care of the children instead of working and contributing to “the household finances,” and she knew that was wrong, but she felt it anyway.
“Okay, help me fold these things and put them back into the bag,” Tiffany said, moving to the return pile, which was substantial at this point.
Kate came over and helped lift the piles with her thin arms, pushing the clothes into the bags alongside Tiffany.
She was left with just under a thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise. And she rationalized it by telling herself that there was no way she’d ever find this same stuff in the D.C. metro area, and if she had to fly back to Las Vegas to look for it, it would end up costing a lot more than it would if she just purchased it now.
And she deserved it.
She was worth it. Just like all those L’Oréal models had been telling her from the TV set over and over again for as long as she could remember.
So. With that in mind, Tiffany got the bags full of returns to take back first thing in the morning.
Half an hour after Tiffany had put the children to bed, Abbey came in, looking drained.
“Rough night?” Tiffany asked, smiling.
Abbey looked startled. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just kidding,” Tiffany explained quickly. Shoot, she’d offended her. “You know, because it’s been such a long night with the concert and all.”
Abbey nodded and pushed her hair back with a weary sigh. “It’s been a long night for sure.” She really didn’t look well, though.
Tiffany changed the subject. “By the way, have you seen Loreen?”
Abbey shook her head. “Not since we first went down.”
“Oh.” Hm. “Okay. Do you want to sit down and have some tea or something?” Though the tea bags by the coffeemaker looked like they’d been there for quite some time. “Or wine? The kids are asleep and we could have some actual quiet.”
“Thanks for taking care of that,” Abbey said. “But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just turn in myself now. I’m seriously exhausted.”
It looked like more than that. Tiffany wanted to ask her what was wrong, if there was anything she could do to help, but she didn’t really know Abbey all that well, and pushing her at this point would probably prove to be more insulting than helpful. Instead she just said, “Sure. Get some rest.”
“Good night,” Abbey said. “And thanks again for taking care of the kids.”
“Sure.” Tiffany looked at her watch. It was almost 1 A.M. Not really all that late. And Loreen was a grown woman, but Tiffany couldn’t help but wonder if everything was all right. Unlike Abbey, Loreen was one of Tiffany’s closest friends, so when another half hour had passed without word from Loreen, Tiffany didn’t have a problem calling her up to check on her.
She took out her cell phone and dialed Loreen from the speed dial. It seemed to ring forever before Loreen picked up.
“Hey, I’m just checking up on you,” Tiffany said, relieved to hear Loreen’s voice. She had gone from simply wondering where Loreen was to being half-sure she’d been dragged off by some seedy gambler in about three seconds. “Are you having fun?”
“Blast,” Loreen said shortly.
Was Tiffany getting paranoid? Why did everyone sound like there was something wrong? “Are you okay?”
“Just dandy. But, look, I can’t really talk right now. I’ll be up in a bit. Would you mind putting Jacob to bed?”
“Already done.”
“Thanks. Don’t wait up, I’m fine.”
“Okay,” Tiffany said. She felt like a meddling old aunt, checking up on everyone. “See you in the morning, then.”
“Okay, where is it?” Loreen asked, clipping her cell phone shut.
Rod p
ointed. “Right over there.”
And there it was. A big silver ATM with stickers representing every known bank network. Sort of like an Olympic tribute with all the nations’ flags.
Only this wasn’t about feats of athleticism and it wasn’t about national pride. It was about emptying her bank account so she could pay off a male prostitute, even though it meant she’d have to serve rice and beans for dinner for a month. Or more.
Jacob wouldn’t mind. He enjoyed farting.
And he especially enjoyed other people farting.
So there it was. She’d done it for Jacob.
“Lorena?” Rod snapped his fingers. “Hey, Lorena. You’re passing it.”
She turned her attention back to Rod. He’d already forgotten her name and begun calling her by the name of a woman famous for performing a penisectomy on her abusive husband.
Rod was lucky she wasn’t Lorena Bobbit.
She went to the machine and took out her card. Her hand shook. This was, without a doubt, the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to her. She had foolishly luxuriated in this man’s attention, despite the fact that she knew on every level that she wasn’t that attractive to men this attractive, and now she was paying the price. She should have expected it. There’s a price for everything.
At least for most people.
Her thoughts jumped to Abbey. Gorgeous, perfect, pain-in-the-ass-because-of-it Abbey. God, Loreen hoped she didn’t run into her tonight. She couldn’t bear to have Abbey look down at her, and possibly figure out what Loreen had accidentally done. Of course, she’d have to read Loreen’s mind to figure it out, but maybe Abbey could do that.
She seemed to be able to do everything else.
Loreen vowed to try to be more like Abbey, even though part of her couldn’t stand the woman. Abbey was aloof, and too good for the rest of them—like tonight, when she hadn’t wanted to come down and have a drink. “I’ll stay with the kids,” she’d said, like she was the only good mother among them.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe she hadn’t been trying to be holier than thou, but it had sort of come off that way anyhow. Especially when she’d completely disappeared, to go off on her own.
“You seem distracted,” Rod said, but it wasn’t a kind comment. He was prompting her to hurry up and get the cash.
“I was just trying to remember my PIN.” Loreen put her card in the ATM slot and entered her PIN—Jacob’s birthday, which she’d never forget—and felt a twinge of guilt. No, it was more than a twinge. It twisted around her stomach and heart like a boa constrictor, and made her feel sick.
She pushed WITHDRAWAL.
She bypassed the offered amounts of twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, and even up to two hundred dollars, which she’d never taken out at one time but always wished she could. Now, punching in the I-O-O-O and O-O CENTS, she hoped she’d never see an ATM again.
There was a moment while the machine rattled and blinked, and she felt like she was playing check-card roulette. Would it give her the money or wouldn’t it? It was up to fate.
The rattling stopped; a receipt popped out. The screen, and the receipt, said, YOU CANNOT WITHDRAW MORE THAN $500 AT THIS TIME.
“Sorry,” she said to Rod, who looked pretty irked. His eyes had turned to little black pieces of coal. “Apparently there’s a cash limit.”
He sighed heavily. Dramatically. She suddenly wondered if he was actually gay. “There are cash advance windows, you know. You can just get money from your credit card.”
“Oh.” The embarrassment just wasn’t going to end, was it? “Where can I do that?”
He gestured, another flamboyant movement that made her question his sexual preferences. “They’re all over the place. There’s one right there, behind the blackjack tables.”
For the second time in fifteen minutes, she followed his indication to a place that could make her life just a little worse.
When she got to the advance window, the woman there—about thirty or so, with a hard, colorless face—looked behind her and said, “Hey, Rod,” before turning her flat gaze back to Loreen. “A thousand?”
Oh, God, she wasn’t the first one to do this. The woman knew exactly what had happened; she knew exactly what a fool Loreen was. How could the embarrassment increase? Loreen had thought she’d reached the bottom, yet here she was, falling further.
At least she had the comfort of knowing that she had, indeed, been charged the going rate. He hadn’t found her so awful that he had to charge her extra. That was . . . good.
Plus, she was able to say, “Five hundred, please,” and imply that he had, in fact, found her so attractive that he’d given her a discount. A mere five hundred bucks for a twenty-minute fuck—yes, it was an awesome fuck, but no wonder! He was a professional! And a bottle of champagne and foreplay, to boot.
Oh, wait. She had to pay for the champagne. “Make that six hundred and forty, please.”
The woman looked at Rod, and Loreen heard him say, “Cash-machine limit.”
Asshole.
Loreen dug out her Visa and handed it over. “Can we just get this over with?”
“I’ll need to see your license.”
Loreen dug through her purse, looking for her license. “I’m not sure I have it,” she said, pushing tampons, pennies, and an open lipstick aside in her frenzy to find the license and end this.
“No license, no cash.”
For a moment, Loreen considered this. If she couldn’t pay him, what was he going to do? He couldn’t get blood from a stone. Then again, she wasn’t a stone, and she most definitely had blood, and in an unsavory town like Las Vegas, the chances of spilling some over a debt seemed greater than usual.
“Come on, Deirdre,” Rod said to the woman. “I trust her.”
Deirdre snorted. “Sure you do, it’s no skin off your nose—”
An expression Loreen had always despised.
“—you’re the one who benefits from this. Not Loretta or me, huh, Loretta?”
Loreen looked up. “It’s L—”
“Lorena,” Rod corrected, then frowned and said, “it is Lorena, isn’t it? Or is it—wait a minute—what’s your name?” Apparently as soon as the job was finished, the hard drive that had contained her name for the purposes of romancing her was wiped clean.
She felt like he was shouting it, calling attention to her, though he was probably using a normal voice. “Loreen,” she said hurriedly, “it’s Loreen. Now, does my thousand bucks at least buy me a little discretion?”
Rod looked surprised. “Sure.”
Truth was, she was surprised at herself. Loreen was always so damn polite, no matter what the situation was. When her boss had tried to kiss her at work, she’d given him a peck on the cheek and pretended that she’d misunderstood his intentions. When a guy had rear-ended her in traffic on the beltway, then come out yelling at her for letting her car drift backwards into his, she’d apologized (though her insurance money had won the claim from his).
Loreen had good manners. Even in bad times.
Maybe someday she could be proud of that.
At the moment, though, she was a woman who had just spent a thousand dollars in one night, for the first time in her life, and she wanted her money’s worth. “I’d appreciate it,” she said calmly, “if you could just keep our transaction between us. And, of course, Deirdre here.”
Deirdre nodded, as if she were really in on this deal, and—hallelujah!—Loreen found her license. She handed it to Deirdre, horribly conscious of the fact that she was handing a lot of personal information over to a stranger who knew she’d just hired a male prostitute. “Looks okay,” she said, handing the license back to Loreen.
What was she supposed to do, thank her?
Deirdre ran the credit card, had Loreen sign a slip that had enough carbon copies to make her imagine them arriving anonymously in her parents’ and other relatives’ mailboxes, then asked—Rod, by the way, not Loreen—“Hundreds okay?”
“Fi
ne,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” Loreen said, foolishly up in arms about this one small detail. “Shouldn’t you be asking me?”
Deirdre looked bemused. “But it’s for him, isn’t it?”
Loreen shook her head. “As far as you’re concerned, it’s for me. I’m the customer, or the cardholder, or whatever you want to call it, and if you have a question about this transaction, you ask me.”
Deirdre was totally unfazed by this. “Are hundreds okay?” she asked, in exactly the same tone she’d used to ask Rod that question a moment before.
“No.” Where was this coming from? Loreen probably shouldn’t be antagonizing a guy who had this kind of information on her, but then again, it wasn’t like she was some sort of public figure who had to worry about the story coming out the night before the New Hampshire primaries. She was no one. She’d remain no one, too, so if he wanted to blackmail her, he’d have to get pretty creative to make her really care. “I want ones,” she said, nodding definitively.
“What?” Rod and Deirdre asked simultaneously, though Rod’s cry was far more vigorous.
That was satisfying. “Ones,” Loreen said again. “Is that a problem?” she asked, keeping her gaze on Deirdre.
Deirdre shrugged. “No.” She opened a drawer and took out stacks of one-dollar bills.
“Come on, Lorena,” Rod said, his voice sharp and a little bit shrill. “Loreen, I mean. This is ridiculous. I’ll just get in line behind you and change them back to bigger bills.”
Loreen turned to him. “Yes, but Deirdre will have to count them out. Both times. Am I right, Deirdre?”
“That’s right.” Deirdre was counting them out right now, with a deliberation that was probably painful to Rod, who was eager to move on to his next mark.
“Time is money, right, Rod?” Loreen asked him.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Sometimes it’s not worth it.”
“Do you want to cancel the transaction?” Loreen asked. “Because I’m fine with that.”
Secrets of a Shoe Addict Page 4
