Neon Burn

by Kasia Fox

  She and Dev were both in their final year of the speech and language pathology degree at Minot State University. While Tessa had chosen MSU carefully because it was local, Dev came from Ohio to North Dakota kicking and screaming, because it was the only graduate program into which he’d been accepted. Immediately she liked him. He made her laugh, he complimented her outfit or her manicure and was always making study dates with her and suggesting they go check out a bar or restaurant together. Eavesdropping on Tessa’s phone calls, Lily had warned her daughter to be firm with this new man: No boyfriends. School was the priority. One night, when they were sitting in the library, Dev suggested they ditch studying for margaritas. Tessa decided that the moment had come for her to let him down easy. When she said she wasn’t interested in dating because she was focusing on school, Dev laughed so loudly people studying nearby turned and glared.

  “Oh, honey, I’m gay. You seriously didn’t know?” Dev said. “Minot makes Cleveland feel downright European.”

  The realization – so obvious in retrospect – embarrassed her. At times it seemed like her mom had set out to raise a daughter who was both naïve and aware of potential risk involved in any interactions with the world outside of church and the family home. Fortunately, her naiveté didn’t scare off Dev. They formed a solid friendship based on having the same sense of humor, class schedule and taste in television. He was the reason she’d rented at the Dakota Breezes after the house sold.

  “Have you been crying?” Dev patted the bed next to him and pulled back the plastic wrap on the paper plate. “Marnie brought brownies to the bar. I brought you one.”

  She sat, and picked up a brownie. Its center was fudgy, the chocolate rich and dark. “I need something to drink,” she said.

  “Hold that thought.” Dev hopped up. He left the apartment and returned holding a bottle of wine and two glasses.

  “I meant milk,” she said. Tessa rarely drank, but she was too tired to argue and held the wine glass as Dev poured.

  “I really thought you’d show up tonight,” he said.

  “How much fun could it have been if you’re already back?”

  “I’m just stopping by to change. Everybody’s going line dancing and I want you to come.”

  “Well, I’m not coming and you’ll understand why in a minute,” she warned. Dev drank his wine as Tessa detailed the events of the night. The farther into the story she got, the wider his eyes grew. At the end, she handed him the slip of paper.

  “I’m scared to call. Not to be mean, but if his friend Bert is any indication, my dad is probably a huge dirt bag.”

  Dev frowned at the paper. “So which one of these guys is he?”

  “Ron Doucette.”

  “Ooh, you sound French.” Dev whipped out his phone and typed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Googling him!”

  “Stop!” Tessa grabbed his hand. “I don’t want to know anything about him yet. He might have arrest records on there or… whatever. If I go, I want to honor the fact that this man gave me life. I don’t want to know anything bad.”

  He set the phone down. Its screen blinked off. “So you’re actually considering going to the funeral?”

  Tessa twisted the wine stem in her hand. The liquid made dark waves in the glass.

  “When I found out he was dead, it made me so sad. I didn’t realize it, but I guess, underneath it all, some part of me was planning that we’d meet someday. For that reason, I want to go.” She sighed. “My only fear is that his family will think I’m showing up out of the blue to see if there’s a will or something.”

  “What people think is the dumbest possible reason of all not to go. You’ve been dying to know anything about your dad and now here is your chance. Plus…” Dev’s expression shifted into a mischief.

  “What?” Tessa asked, already worried about his answer.

  “What if he’s rich and he left you everything?”

  “Of course he didn’t.”

  The thought, of course, had crossed her mind. Who hadn’t fantasized about a long-lost relative leaving her a fortune?

  “But what if he did?” Dev flopped back on the bed. The brownie plate bounced but didn’t spill. “Even if he has a family, you’re his daughter. And if he was thinking about you in the days before he died, there’s a good chance he was thinking about you when he wrote the will.” He rolled over to his side, propping his head up on his palm. “I vote that you go. And if you so, take an extra couple days of vacation. You might as well have some fun while you’re at it.”

  “I’d be too stressed to have fun.”

  “All the more reason! Go to the funeral, then stay on the strip. Lay by a pool. Get laid. Let your inner crazy lady out of the attic for a few days. When you come back here, guess what? No one will be the wiser. Your reputation in the Dakotas will still be as pure as hand-sanitizer.”

  “How did you turn a trip for a funeral into me getting laid?”

  “You said he lived in Vegas.” Dev shrugged. “The mind makes certain connections.”

  Tessa took a big gulp of wine. At an Oktoberfest party last fall, she’d drank three steins sparkling full of German beer and Dev had seized the opportunity to work her over for details on her sex life. The resulting story that spilled out of her – along with plenty of vomit – only increased Dev’s pity for her. Tessa’s romantic life could best be described as tepid. The boys she’d dated hadn’t convinced her that sex was worth the sneaking around, dodging constant questions from her mom. It seemed easier to avoid dating all together than to betray the woman who’d devoted her life to Tessa.

  “This isn’t going to be a sex mission,” Tessa warned. “I’m not going to Las Vegas. I made a promise to my mom. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

  “I get it.” Dev sat up and kissed the top of her head. “As long as there’s a sex mission somewhere in your future.” He left to change clothes for line dancing. Alone, Tessa finished the chocolatey brownie and dumped the rest of the wine down the sink. A few minutes later she heard him call out, “’Night, Tessie,” as he passed her door. Dev was going to hang out with friends who’d love to take sex missions to Las Vegas, people who’d take too many celebratory shots of Fireball, line dance too hard, throw up outside the bar and howl at the moon. Tessa was so sick of herself. So sick of being boring.

  Buzzed and sleepy from the wine, she lay back against her pillow. The heater had done its job in the apartment, and the wine had warmed her. If anything, she was too hot. Instead of carefully folding her jeans and sweatshirt and putting them away as she would usually do, she stripped them off and kicked them to the floor.

  That night she slept fitfully, tossing about the bed, sheets tangling in her legs. Hours later, she woke to morning sun streaming through the crack in the curtains covering her balcony door. She was too hot and felt, suddenly, embarrassed to be caught naked in the light of day, as if she’d been a different person when she’d fallen asleep the night before.

  Tessa showered and dressed. She sat on her bed for five minutes, trying to talk herself out of what she was about to do. Then she got in her car and drove to the Division of Vital Records office. Across the counter, she handed a woman in a green sweater the necessary documents. Ten minutes later, the woman handed back a copy of her birth certificate. It was the first time she’d seen it. FATHER: RONALD JOSEPH DOUCETTE. BIRTHPLACE: LAS VEGAS, NEVADA.

  From the outside, the memory care home where Tessa’s grandad lived looked like the kind of nice, mid-range hotel chain that offered a free morning breakfast. The hallways smelled like scrambled eggs and antiseptic cleaner. She signed in at the front desk and greeted an aid she didn’t know well – mornings weren’t her usual time to visit – and walked to her grandad’s room.

  He sat in a recliner directly in front a television playing an entertainment news show. Which of the aids had decided that her granddad seemed like the kind of person who cared about which pop star was pregnant or which actres
s had launched her own wine label? Tessa sighed and switched the channel to National Geographic. She wished she could afford better for him.

  Tessa greeted her granddad and wasn’t surprised to see no recognition on his face. Most days she didn’t discuss people or places from the past, not wanting to confuse him. That day, perhaps because it was spring, her grandad had gardening on the brain. Several times he repeated a word for a flower and looked frustrated, as if he were saying one word but meaning another. As he talked, she rubbed lotion on his dry hands, massaging it in. His hands got so cold.

  “I just wanted you to know that I’m going out of town for a few days, Granddad,” she said. “I’m going to a funeral. For a man you knew once. My father. Ron Doucette.”

  “Zinnia,” her granddad said.

  “He died and I’m going to his funeral so I won’t be visiting but everybody here will take good care of you and I’ll be back soon.”

  “Zinnia. Zinnia.” His face was screwed up in frustration. Time to go.

  Tessa rose, bending to kiss him atop his head. “I hope your hands don’t get too cold while I’m gone.”

  Suddenly, he locked eyes with her. His gaze was focused. “Las Vegas,” he said, his voice clear as distilled water. “Las Vegas.”

  “Yes,” she gasped. “That’s right. He lived in Las Vegas. What do you know about him, Grandad?”

  “Zinnia,” he mumbled. “Zinnia.”

  ✽✽✽

  One morning when I was a girl, I woke to find my father gone. My mother told me he’d left before dawn to go hunting with a friend. When my father pulled into the driveway, I went out to greet him and saw a dead deer bleeding out in the bed of his truck. I ran inside the house and hid weeping in my room. I couldn’t look at my dad that day. The next morning my mother sent me to the garage to get a loaf of bread from the freezer. I opened the garage door, went inside and bumped into a skinned, frozen carcass strung from the rafters. I screamed. The deer was headless, armless, all frozen blood and muscle and fat.

  “How could you?” I wept to my father. “Deer are peaceful creatures.” Irritated, my mother told me not to give my father grief. The deer was our food.

  But my father wasn’t angry. He confessed that killing any animal had always made him sad. He said that if I didn’t want him to hunt anymore, he wouldn’t. Right away, I said I didn’t want him to. And he didn’t. That’s the kind of father I had. A man with a tender heart. When you have a father like that, you’re ruined for other men. Because you think all men are capable of keeping their hearts soft too.

  My dark parishioner made a poor first impression on my father. I invited him to our home for supper one night. I cooked while the men talked. My father asked how he liked his job. My dark parishioner replied that he wasn’t a man destined to work on rigs. He’d come north to make a quick buck. This place wasn’t his home; big plans require bigger places. He was moving to Las Vegas soon. Winter was about to set in. He claimed he couldn’t take another. When he left, I stood alone at the sink washing dishes. My father remained at the kitchen table. “What do you think?” I asked. My father replied that he didn’t trust a man who couldn’t stay put for one season.

  3.

  Skinner spotted the girl on the escalator to baggage claim at McCarran Airport. Long dark brown hair, fit, nice rack. Pretty much the same as the picture on the internet. Most chicks looked nowhere near as good as whatever photo they put up on their profiles. Tessa rode down the escalator, one hand circling her thin wrist like she was nervous. Skinner shook his head in disbelief. How Ronnie Doucette’s genes produced a daughter that good-looking was beyond him. Then again, by the time he’d met Ronnie, the dude’s face had already been smashed in a hundred times over.

  He held up a sign onto which he’d written her name: Mary-Therese. He saw her read the sign. She frowned.

  “Oh, I, uh,” she began. Then she cleared her throat and started over, pointing at the sign. “That’s me, I think. But I just go by Tessa.”

  “Apologies,” said Skinner. Probably this was where a real limo driver would tip his hat. He didn’t have a hat. Skinner was a certified mixologist and an aspiring club owner.

  “I was going to take a rideshare to the house,” she said. “The lawyer didn’t mention sending a car.”

  “Lawyer?”

  “Mr. Harbach?”

  “Oh, yeah, Harbach. That dude. Well, guess he wanted to do it nice.” Skinner shrugged. He wished he wasn’t wearing this dorky outfit. He was a skinny guy, and the dumb button up shirt didn’t show that he was all lean muscle. Didn’t show any of his tats either.

  “How far is the ride to my father’s house?”

  “Twenty minutes, tops.”

  “And Harbach will meet me there? He wasn’t clear on the phone. I don’t have a key.”

  “Someone’ll let you in.” Skinner pointed to baggage carousel fourteen and told her that was where her luggage would be coming out. He was proud of himself for remembering this detail. She said she was just in town for the weekend and had brought with her only the huge backpack hanging from her shoulders. Skinner chose not to be offended when he offered to take the bag and she refused.

  Leaving the terminal, he tried to walk beside her but kept falling behind, distracted by the sparkling ceiling, her head spinning this way and that at the screens screaming advertisements for magicians and French-Canadian circus freaks. From the baggage area, they went up a glass elevator. He held the door for her, and she squinted in the sunlight and murmured, “Wow that feels nice.”

  They crossed a pedestrian bridge to the parking garage. People were probably mistaking him for her boyfriend. Skinner wasn’t too ugly to be her boyfriend. Not by far. Vegas was filled with ugly dudes with hot women. The hotter the woman, the cooler people assumed you were to get her. Not that she was his type. Maybe she’d look better if she hit the tanning bed. He liked ladies a little more done up.

  Several minutes of silence had passed. “First time in Vegas?” he asked.

  “First and last.” She read his surprised expression and corrected herself. “No offense. I’m… not a gambler.” When she spoke, she touched him briefly on the arm. Ah ha. So maybe she was into him. For a change, it might be nice to date a chick who didn’t leave smears of makeup on his pillowcases.

  “We’ll see,” Skinner said. “If it’s your first time here, who knows what could happen.”

  4.

  The town car drove down Tropicana Avenue. Crossing over Las Vegas Boulevard, Tessa’s head swiveled to take in the gleaming emerald MGM Grand on her right. Up ahead was a mini New York City and a building that looked like a children’s castle. Billboards advertised nightclubs and indoor shooting ranges and fancy restaurants to the people swarming the sidewalks below. Soon, the hustle and bustle disappeared behind the the car. Tessa quickly tried to tamp down the brief flare of disappointment that they weren’t driving up the full length of the strip. She was in Las Vegas for a funeral, not fun. At least the weather was beautiful, like a real vacation. The sky overhead was a cloudless, fairy-tale blue.

  On the phone, the lawyer, Mr. Harbach, had been vague. Her father had died suddenly and they were still awaiting the autopsy results, he said. From what Bert had told her, Tessa assumed her father had a long illness but Harbach made it sound sudden. Tessa asked if his wife or children would be there and after a puzzled silence, Harbach told her that Ron never remarried or had any more children. The news touched her. For him never to have remarried, it must mean that his marriage to Lily was significant in some way. Either that or he was so traumatized from the relationship he’d never desired another.

  Several miles from the strip, the car left Tropicana to turn into a gated residential community. A sign out front read Spanish Palms. A low, flat-roofed building with tinted black windows was flanked by two sets of gates. On either side of both gates were massive stands of palm trees and greenery that blocked the view of the community’s homes from the street. A guard dressed in a Stetson and a
khaki uniform like a state trooper came to the window and checked the driver’s identification before waving the town car through.

  “This was where he lived?” Tessa asked. Skinner – he’d introduced by list last name only – looked like he’d dressed for work in his dad’s clothes. He was a wiry guy in his twenties with horseshoe ball earrings in each ear, bad teeth and an even worse bleach job on the tips of his hair.

  “Yep,” Skinner replied. “One of the nicest neighborhoods in town.”

  So much for her dad being one of Bert’s bus depot buddies.

  The houses they passed driving down the street were all spectacular, built in styles utterly different from the nicest homes she’d seen in North Dakota. The one the town car eased to a stop in front of had buff-colored stucco walls, a Spanish tiled roof and a yard green with palm fronds and agave plants.

  “Can I at least carry your backpack in for you?” The driver asked.

  “No, thanks.” She opened the door and stepped out into the bright sunshine. The weather had to be at least eighty degrees. The jeans and snug cream-colored sweater she’d dressed in that morning in North Dakota were too heavy for the desert.

  “Just up there?” She gestured to the tiled walk that led to a set of glass and iron front doors.

  The driver had rolled up his sleeve; one tattoo-covered arm dangled out the window. A skull with snakes popping out of its eyes. A bloody corkscrew.

  “You got it,” he said. His eyelids were lowered and he lifted his chin at her. Was this the type of guy Dev would want her to have sex with while she was in Las Vegas? Ugh, forget it.

  Tessa followed the walk that led to the front door. The path was trimmed with small crushed rock and dotted with bulbous barrel cacti of varying sizes. She got to the door, smoothed her hair and pressed the bell. Her index finger was still extended from ringing the bell when the door opened. On the other side loomed a tall, barrel-chested man in his early sixties. He had a full shock of salt-and-pepper hair, leaning heavily toward the pepper. Dominating his face was a big, pushed-in nose that hooked to the left before righting itself, and a scar that bisected his right eyebrow on a diagonal. He didn’t greet her but stood a long time, with one hand on the doorknob, staring.