Vegas Girls

by Heather Skyler

  Yesterday afternoon she and Adam had fought while the children were downstairs, most likely listening to their parents’ tense voices. Adam had promised the kids a trip to the children’s museum downtown, then changed his mind in the morning, explaining he was tired from such a long week.

  “You can’t do that to the kids,” Jane said, calmly at first. “You got them all excited, then pulled the plug.”

  “People change their minds. They need to learn that.”

  “Then don’t promise them anything!” Her voice rose. “It makes you look like an asshole.”

  “Well, maybe I am an asshole and they need to learn that, too!”

  “I think they already have!”

  In the end, Jane had driven the kids to the museum, her body tight with anger, and pulled them through the exhibits. Adam showed up half an hour later when they were in the room with the giant set of teeth and slipped his arms around Jane from behind, startling her. They hadn’t touched in weeks.

  Jane was drifting toward sleep now, the plane riding smoothly through blue sky, when an abrupt dip in the air jolted her. She opened her eyes and quickly touched Rocky’s shoulder, Fern’s knee. The plane bumped again and Rocky said, “Fun,” and looked up at her with a grin, his single dimple denting a cheek. Fern started to cry.

  Jane pulled her close and closed the tray table. She stroked her hair and murmured soothing words into the top of her warm head. “This is just called turbulence, sweetie. No big deal. Everything’s fine.”

  Fern howled louder, and Jane instinctively covered her daughter’s mouth with her hand, then realized that looked a bit brutish on her part and took it away.

  The man beside them sighed loudly, with obvious disgust.

  “Sorry,” Jane said to him, then turned back to Fern and whispered fiercely, “Stop crying. Everything’s fine.”

  The fasten seat belt sign dinged on and Jane told Rocky to put up his tray table, but he was right in the middle of a drawing and started to protest loudly. “I’m not done yet, Mom. One more minute!” He leaned over and began to draw furiously, pressing the crayon so hard against the paper that it snapped. He looked at the broken crayon in his hand, then began to cry too.

  “Rocky, honey, it’s fine. There are more crayons.”

  “No more black ones,” he sobbed.

  The plane dipped again, causing Fern’s cries to grow in intensity. Rocky threw his crayon on the ground, crossed his arms, and continued his heartbreaking boy’s wail.

  “For God’s sake,” huffed the man.

  “Sorry,” Jane said again but gave him a look of pure hatred.

  He absorbed the look, then pushed the button for the stewardess. “I think I’ll tell her that I need to move so you can purchase this seat for your daughter.”

  “My daughter is fine right here.”

  “She should have her own seat, don’t you think? She’s awfully big to sit on your lap for the entire flight.” He smiled meanly. “I have kids, you know. I understand the airline’s rules.”

  “Look,” Jane said, trying to make her voice softer and appealing, but hearing the hardness that she couldn’t shake from her words. “I just lost my job. Please, don’t do this to me.”

  There was a tap on her shoulder and Jane turned, preparing herself for the bland face of the stewardess. But it was the old lady reaching over from across the aisle. “Let me take her for you, dear,” she said. “I have a little practice with this.”

  Without a moment of consideration, Jane handed her daughter across the aisle. Jane expected Fern to resist this stranger, almost hoped she would, but her daughter snuggled into the larger woman’s lap right away and within five seconds had calmed down and stopped crying.

  Rocky was slowing down now, too. Jane handed him another cookie, and that stopped the tears as quickly as if she had turned off a faucet.

  The stewardess appeared then at Jane’s elbow and asked the man if he needed something. “I’m not supposed to be up right now,” she added. “Because of the turbulence.” As if to prove her point, the plane dipped again and she fell against Jane’s seat, then righted herself.

  “Sorry,” the man told her, looking sternly at Jane. “The problem has been solved.”

  Jane returned his gaze, feeling a mixture of relief and hatred. She would not smile or thank him, no matter what, she told herself.

  After a few long minutes of silence, the man cleared his throat and said, “I am actually sorry to hear about your job. What’s your line of work?”

  She couldn’t believe he was trying to appease her now after having been so cruel, but she couldn’t bring herself to give a stranger the silent treatment, so she shrugged with as much nonchalance as she could muster, then said, “I was a reporter. At the Wisconsin Times.”

  He nodded. “Lots of layoffs there I hear.”

  “Yep,” Jane said, wanting suddenly to tell him that she had not merely been laid off, but fired for a single, ridiculous mistake, but this was a secret she’d kept from everyone, even Ivy, so she said nothing.

  He nodded again, then picked up his magazine, which Jane now saw was Psychology Today. She couldn’t decide if this made him interesting or creepy.

  The fasten seat belt light blinked off and the captain announced that they were free to move about the cabin. The crisis had passed; still, Jane felt a thread of unease run through her.

  She looked over at Fern and saw she had fallen sound asleep against the woman’s chest. Jane felt a pulse of jealousy. That was one of her favorite parts of being a parent: holding a sleeping child on her lap. “Thank you,” Jane said to the woman.

  “My pleasure, dear,” she said.

  She looked across the woman toward the window, a brilliant pane of blue sky. They were likely close to Denver by now, where they would stop for an hour but not change planes. Jane wished she had booked the window seat. She wanted to see the silvery grid of the city beneath her, the white tops of the Rockies. Later, she would watch for the first signs of desert below the plane, recalling the bare mountains near Nevada that looked like the bumpy knuckles of a giant. Then the blue surprise of Lake Mead and the pale, reddish sand. Finally, the white and aluminum glimmer of casinos lined up in a row.

  Rocky had finished his picture and leaned against her, asleep in an instant. Jane freed her arm and put it around his shoulder, pulling him closer. She smoothed his shaggy blond hair out of his eyes and rubbed his back through his sweatshirt.

  “So what was it like,” the man beside her asked, “growing up in Las Vegas?”

  She shrugged. “Ordinary.” This was a question she’d been asked hundreds of times, and she always answered that it was ordinary.

  He shook his head. “I don’t buy it. C’mon, I really want to know.”

  “It was hot,” she told him, as if reading from a script. “The days it rained—about four a year—were the ones we looked forward to.”

  “I can see that,” he nodded. “What else?”

  “I don’t know. It was normal to me.” She tried to think of things an outsider would like to hear. “I ate a lot of ninety-nine-cent breakfasts in high school with my friends. I saw a lot of people walking around in wedding gowns. I pulled my first slot machine when I was twelve, on a dare.”

  He smiled, appearing satisfied, and turned back to his magazine. She, however, was now dissatisfied. I learned about disappointment there, she could have told him. I learned to live outside of my life, as if I were watching a movie.

  But she could have also said that she learned about joy. About love and friendship and sex—the same things people learned growing up anywhere.

  The drink cart pulled up beside her, and Jane ordered two glasses of orange juice for the kids when they woke up, then quickly asked for a glass of red wine for herself, despite the fact that she shouldn’t spend the extra money. She expected the man beside her to make a snide comment since it was still morning after all, but he said nothing, just ordered a Diet Coke and went back to reading.

>   Jane sipped her wine, feeling the warmth of it slide through her. The price of the wine was worth it, she decided, for this pocket of calm. Her children continued to sleep, and she thought about how strange it was that she’d arrived at this moment: she was a grown woman with two kids of her own, leaving her husband, flying home.

  JEREMY

  He had been trying to casually bump into Ivy for weeks, lurking around the new part of town where he heard she’d moved, but now that it had actually happened, he felt disappointed. He had imagined a long embrace, a shared look, a promise of future meet-ups. There had not been enough time, he decided, to get under her skin and remind her why she should want to be with him again, after all these years apart.

  In the car beside him, Gretchen smoked a cigarette and fiddled with the radio, stopping on a commercial for dog food, then honing in on a classic rock station playing the Stones. Jeremy punched the button to shut off the sound and Gretchen gave him a wounded look. “What the fuck?” she said.

  The curse word hit him in the gut. He couldn’t recall Ivy ever uttering a swear word. “I need some peace and quiet,” he told her. “My head hurts.”

  “Oh,” she said, and crossed her legs beneath the long skirt. “Sorry.”

  His head did hurt, he realized, and his stomach was churning with regret, though this regret was useless, he knew. Ivy had married Frank a long time ago, and now she had a baby, too, and she would never be his again. He thought he might be able to accept that if they could be friends.

  At Gretchen’s apartment on Charleston, he fixed a goat cheese and red pepper frittata, then sautéed a side of asparagus, and they sat eating lunch together on the floor beside the coffee table. When the plates were cleared and washed, Jeremy reached under Gretchen’s long skirt and pulled off her black underwear, then they had sex on the green couch, her skirt billowing around their legs like a flowered sail. With his eyes closed, Jeremy tried to pretend the woman beneath him was Ivy, but it was no good. It had been too long for him to remember what Ivy felt like, though he did recall the slightly peppery scent of her skin in summer.

  Gretchen’s neck smelled of coconuts, and he bit her shoulder to see what she would do, wanting her to get angry with him. Instead, she yelped, then laughed. The laugh reminded him a little bit of why he liked her, and they finished, then lay together on the scratchy couch, listening to the traffic outside without speaking.

  After Gretchen left for work, Jeremy drove home and prepped for his party at six. It was for a small group out in Henderson, a book club celebrating a two-year anniversary, which struck him as odd, but he was happy for the work. He made a pan of pork tamales, a bowl of rice and beans, and fresh guacamole and pico de gallo. He was becoming known for his Mexican dishes, though he was also proficient in French and Italian cuisine. His grandfather on his mother’s side had been born in Guadalajara, and Jeremy always made sure to mention this when he catered a Mexican meal. Of course, he made up other relatives who were either French or Italian as necessary, but the grandfather was actually a real person who still lived in Texas with his aunt Pat.

  He arrived early at the condo in Henderson and could tell the woman didn’t know who he was when she opened the door. She had hired him over the phone based on a recommendation from a friend, and it was likely she hadn’t expected a man who looked like he belonged in a punk band instead of in the kitchen.

  “I’m Jeremy,” he said quickly, holding out his hand. “The caterer.”

  She smiled, and Jeremy smiled too, then he was inside assessing the space and asking when she wanted the dishes to come out. The woman, Virginia, was older, maybe late forties, but she had an excellent figure and Jeremy couldn’t help but admire the curve of her ass beneath her jeans. He had her test the guacamole before the guests arrived, and she made a noise of appreciation that had the quality of a sexual moan. It was easy for him to imagine her in bed, and this imagining lightened the feeling of pressure he’d had in his chest ever since Gretchen had left him alone and gone to work.

  The other women began arriving for the book club, and Jeremy got busy setting up the table in the dining room and heating the oven. He blended margaritas and salted the edges of the blue glasses Virginia had set out for drinks. There were six women and they gathered in a circle around the coffee table, three on the couch and three in chairs. Jeremy watched them through the opening over the counter as he made drinks.

  One woman was younger than the rest and she looked like she’d been crying. Her hair was cut short and shone blue-black in the light from the window. Her heart-shaped face was familiar, though Jeremy didn’t think he actually knew her; he’d just seen her somewhere around town before. She was not pretty exactly, but memorable, with a vibrating presence that sent sparks out into the room. It was her eyes, he decided, their small, darting vitality and black sheen, the arched brows above them as perfectly drawn as an old-timey movie star’s.

  Virginia put a protective arm around the woman and drew her back to the kitchen, where Jeremy pretended to be busy with the drinks while they murmured together in the corner. When they grew quiet, he turned and handed each woman a margarita, which brought the smiles he’d hoped for.

  While the tamales were heating up, he washed his hands in the sink and looked out the window onto the sloping lawn and broad elm trees. Despite the nearby presence of other condos, the world was still, and Jeremy could almost imagine he was out in the country. His own apartment was near downtown, and the noise from the street below and the kids above him was at times unbearable. Gretchen’s apartment wasn’t much better, but he stayed there many nights now anyway, desiring the presence of her thin form splayed out in bed beside him. They had been dating for three months, and before that he’d had a surprisingly long dry spell, which had worried him to the point that he could now imagine asking Gretchen to move in with him just so he wouldn’t have to go through so many nights by himself ever again. He had been married, once, for two years. The first year and a half had been like a dream, but the last six months had been the worst of his life.

  The younger, red-eyed woman—he’d heard them call her Kristina—came into the kitchen and asked for another margarita. He made one on the rocks at her request, and she leaned against the counter waiting. A heated discussion rose up from the other room, but it made no sense to Jeremy. He supposed this was because he hadn’t read the book they were arguing about, but it was also because these women seemed to exist on a different plane than he did, in a separate, more organized world that didn’t include noisy streets, or sex on scratchy green couches, or old girlfriends you’d talked into selling pot for you in high school.

  “Here you go,” he said, handing over the fresh drink. He wished he could have one too, but knew that would be bad form on a job. In the old days he would have snuck half a dozen drinks in a two-hour period, then burned his hand on the oven or fallen over a kink in the carpet while holding a tray of fajitas. Both of those things had happened at the first restaurant he’d worked in after high school, but he was wiser now, an entrepreneur making a name for himself around town.

  “Do you have a kid at Grant?” the woman asked him. “You look familiar.”

  He shook his head. “No kids.”

  “Did you go to Chaparral?”

  He shook his head again. “Vegas High.”

  “Hmmm,” she mused, studying him.

  It was then that he remembered her. She’d been a waitress at that first restaurant, years ago, a witness to his bad behavior. “I have a familiar face,” he said, wanting now to hurry her out of the kitchen. “Lots of people think they know me from somewhere.” He smiled but was nervous, thinking her memory might somehow cost him this job. Oh, you’re the guy who fucked everyone over, the guy who stole all the cooks’ tips your last night, right? He imagined her revealing these bad deeds to Virginia, and word spreading everywhere about what a jerk he’d once been. No one would care that he was no longer such a bad guy. It was only his past that would matter to them.

>   She shrugged and thanked him for the drink, then returned to her seat on the couch. Relief moved through him as he removed the tamales from the oven and arranged them on a serving tray.

  He brought out the tamales and cleared the almost empty bowl of tortilla chips, but left the pico de gallo and guacamole. Virginia hurried over from the couch and asked him to make another round of drinks, then looked at the food and said, “It looks wonderful. I can’t wait.”

  These words lit a small light in the base of Jeremy’s neck, creating a warmth that carried him back to the kitchen and eased his worry about the waitress from his past life. He’d worked in that dump—what was it called again? The Crescent?—over sixteen years ago now, and even if Kristina did finally recall who he was, it could no longer hurt him. Lots of people did bad things when they were young, then reformed. It was an old story.

  Making this second batch of drinks, he risked a glance at Kristina. She’d had long hair back then and the same magnetic presence. Her boyfriend picked her up in the bar most nights after work, looking like he’d just walked off Wall Street in a neat suit, his dark hair slicked back. People gossiped that she would marry him and be rich, then never have to waitress again. They had also gossiped about the weird outfits he made her wear in the bedroom—one was an elf costume; he remembered that—but Jeremy imagined that little if any of that talk had been true.

  Ivy had been long gone by then, off to Wisconsin with Frank to go to college. He could remember calling her once, drunk, from the bar of The Crescent, and the way she had listened to him patiently even though it was obvious he was in bad shape and not making much sense. He had asked her to come back—he could remember that moment clearly—and the pause over the line, then the catch in her voice when she told him that wasn’t possible. At that point, she hadn’t yet married Frank, and Jeremy realized much later that he should have flown out there to see her in person, while she still had that catch in her throat. But he had been busy making a mess of his life and then he had met his wife, Stacy, at a party out in the desert, and he had forgotten all about Ivy for a long while.