Vegas Girls

by Heather Skyler

  “I just got divorced,” he told Jessica now. “Bradley probably told you.”

  She nodded. “And I just got dumped, so maybe we can just have a good time and not think about those creeps.”

  “Kristina isn’t a creep.”

  “Sorry,” she shook her head. “Of course. I meant Matt, that’s all.”

  He nodded and walked over to the bed, then removed his clothes with quiet efficiency, pulling his black T-shirt over his head last and adding it to the pile on the floor. He sat down beside her, completely naked, finally feeling the liquor take hold and erase his hesitation.

  She removed her white underwear, and he appreciated the pale haze of freckles above her small breasts, the smooth, taut muscles of her stomach. The fact that she was the physical opposite of Kristina helped him, and when she leaned to turn off the light, then crawled beneath the sheets, he felt relief that they would be covered up and in the dark.

  Their coupling was quick and intense, Jessica moving beneath him with quiet concentration, the only sound her faint, steady breathing. He wondered if she was thinking about Matt, or the man from the bar, or really just thinking about him, the actual person moving inside of her. He closed his eyes and thought of Jane, and then Kristina, and then nothing at all but the feeling of rising.

  Afterwards, lying flat on his back, he experienced an acute sadness once again, so he closed his eyes, trying to erase the feeling with sleep, but he was wide awake. Jessica was sound asleep beside him, and he listened to her steady breathing, hoping it would work on his restlessness, but it was no good.

  He needed to get up, so he rose and pulled on a complimentary robe from the closet, then fished a bottle of whiskey from the minibar and sat sipping it directly from the bottle, looking not at the lights outside but into the depths of the dark, foreign room.

  FRIDAY

  IVY

  In the morning, her leg throbbed lightly upon waking, but her head was clearer than it had been the day before, and she hoped she’d feel well enough to finish shopping for tomorrow’s birthday party. Lucky was in his typical splayed-out position in the middle of the bed, and Frank was on his side, both of them still deeply asleep. Ivy swallowed four ibuprofen from the bedside table, then slipped out of bed as quietly as she could.

  The house was silent, and Ivy wondered how her friends were faring downtown. She had a brief flash of jealousy at having been left here, but in the next second she was grateful for her night of sound sleep and the peace of the morning. Her leg had to heal so she could host this party.

  After starting a pot of coffee, she stepped outside, still in her robe, to retrieve the paper. It wasn’t yet seven o’ clock, and the street was still. The sky was a clear, pure blue. Ivy scooped up the paper, then padded barefoot back up the walk where something on the front door stopped her. There was a new painting. A white and gray pigeon perched on a brown branch had been added, just below the gecko. Ivy stepped closer and touched the image with her fingertip. The paint was already dry so it must have been done last night. She stepped back and inspected it.

  The placement of the image was perfect. It hadn’t ruined the door’s balance, and the bird was nicely done with sure, efficient strokes. As she stood looking at the painting, apprehension began to coil up inside her limbs. She thought she recognized something in the colors, in the shape of the bird.

  Ivy hurried inside, then hunted in the back of her closet until she found what she was looking for. Both Frank and Lucky were awake now—she’d made so much noise going through the closet—so she set the square package down on her side of the bed and untied the twine. Then she carried the painting of the fountain outside and set it next to the door. The lines of the pigeon were cleaner and more finely drawn, but despite the considerable improvement in technique, the style and colors were still very much the same. This painting on the door had to be done by her mother.

  She looked up and down the street quickly, almost expecting to see her walking up the sidewalk toward the house or crouched behind the oleander bush, but there was no one in sight. Back inside, she returned to bed, dropped the old canvas on the floor, and scooped up Lucky, holding him close to her chest, then lying back down and opening her robe to latch him to her breast.

  Frank was at the dresser now, stepping into orange boxers, and he watched her with concern, an expression she had seen on his face many times since yesterday at the hospital. “What’s going on?” he asked her.

  “Apparently, my mother is in town. She painted a pigeon on the front door.”

  He laughed at this, then realized she was not joining him. “Oh, you’re serious?”

  “Go see for yourself.”

  He pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and left the room. Ivy looked down at Lucky and touched the soft, silvery top of his head. Her mother’s nearby presence settled into her chest—a spiny, cold ball of worry that hurt when she breathed in. It struck her for the first time why she hated it here: she didn’t want to become her mother. Something about being in Wisconsin had diffused this worry. There was nothing in the green Midwestern landscape that reminded her of home. But here, there were constant reminders of who she was, of all the fault lines that crisscrossed her insides. She was her mother’s daughter, and if her mother could just up and leave her own child for no discernible reason, then surely that impulse lived inside of Ivy as well.

  Lucky pulled off of her with the small sound of a suction cup’s release and lifted his brown eyes to hers. This weekend he would turn one, and the distance between them would grow every subsequent day after that. He smiled and gurgled his contentment, then clutched a piece of her hair and pulled it toward his mouth.

  Frank appeared in the doorway and said, “Probably some kids in the neighborhood painted it. I can’t see how you came to the conclusion that your mother did that. You haven’t heard from her in over twenty years. And if she wanted to talk to you, wouldn’t a phone call be simpler?”

  Ivy considered this. She had never told Frank about the possible sighting of her mother at the park, and now it felt too late. “She must know about Lucky. She wants to see him.”

  “Possibly,” Frank said. “But I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

  “Get my hopes up? I don’t know if I’d even let her see Lucky if she was in town. I don’t know if I’d even agree to see her.”

  “Well, I don’t think she’s here.”

  “What type of kid does such a nice job vandalizing a door?”

  “A nerdy hoodlum?” He wanted her to smile at this—she could tell by his lifted eyebrows—but Ivy couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  “Well, why don’t you decide whether or not you’ll agree to see her if she actually appears,” he said. “Until then, get up. We have stuff to do.”

  “My leg hurts,” she told him, though it was actually beginning to feel better from the ibuprofen. “I think I’ll just stay here for a while longer.”

  Frank came to the bed and sat on the edge beside her. He ran his palm from her shoulder down to her wrist, then leaned and kissed her cheek. “I can take Lucky,” he said, reaching over her. “You go back to sleep.”

  “No,” she stopped his hand. “I’ll keep him here with me.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, seeming to hesitate. “Okay, you two stay here, and I’ll go shop for party supplies.”

  Ivy was almost asleep when the doorbell rang. Lucky was sitting up beside her playing with a loose string on the blanket, and she picked him up and went to the door, then peered cautiously through the peephole, not wanting the person on the other side to detect her presence, in case she didn’t feel like letting them in.

  To her great relief and disappointment, the person outside was not her mother. It was Jeremy, looking off to the side and toying with his necklace. Ivy wasn’t sure about letting him in either, but then Lucky let out a squawk of delight for no apparent reason, and Jeremy’s head turned, and it looked as if he could see right through the peephole and into her eyes. She took a step ba
ck and opened the door, but not all the way. She was still wearing her robe and she wanted to get rid of him quickly and return with Lucky to bed.

  “I was sleeping,” she told him, without saying hello.

  “Oh, sorry.” He turned to look over his shoulder at the street, as if expecting someone else to join him on the porch, then he turned back to Ivy. “I wanted to drop off the menus for tomorrow. I had them printed up.” He held up a thin rectangle of pale blue paper, and Ivy leaned closer to read it. Frilled letters at the top said, In celebration of Lucas Jacobsen turning one year old. Below, there was a list of the food to be served: empanadas, petit fours, and about six other items.

  “I didn’t ask for a menu,” Ivy said. “I can’t pay extra.” This was actually the first time money had been discussed at all, and she felt how it instantly shifted the tone of their interaction.

  Jeremy stepped back and pulled the stack of menus to his chest. “I just thought it would be a nice touch. Free of charge, of course.”

  “Oh, thanks then,” she said. To make up for her rude behavior she stepped back and gestured him inside.

  He crossed the entry hall and placed the blue stack on the dining room table, then turned to face her, hands behind his back. He looked very young to her just then—almost exactly the same as he’d looked back in high school—and it was not so difficult for her to imagine that he was her husband and this was their baby in her arms right now. There had been a scare once—didn’t everyone have a scare during high school? A two-week delay in her period had sent Ivy and Jeremy to a clinic for a test. The twenty-minute wait afterward had been nerve-wracking but also packed with tender feeling. They would have the baby, she decided, then move to California and camp on the beach. Ivy had imagined the sandy floor of the tent, while she waited in that dingy Planned Parenthood behind the library. She had pictured fresh fish in a pan over the fire and the stripe of sunburn that would cross Jeremy’s cheeks and nose, making him look healthier than he actually was. Ivy had constructed an entirely new life in that twenty-minute wait, then disassembled it and left with the news that she wasn’t pregnant after all.

  She limped over to him now, feeling the pain in her leg more acutely than she had this morning, and picked up a menu for inspection. The paper was card stock, good quality, and not a single menu item was misspelled. It surprised her that Jeremy remembered Lucky’s real name, and she set the paper back down then smiled up at him. “Thank you.”

  “What happened to your leg?” he asked.

  She told him about the fall and the stitches, and he frowned with concern, then put an arm around her shoulders and led her back down the hallway to her bedroom. “You should be resting it,” he said, releasing her from his hold at the doorway and watching as she limped to the bed and set Lucky down in the middle.

  “It’s okay,” she told him, sitting on the edge of the bed. “It will heal.”

  He seemed nervous today. She watched him hesitate on the threshold, then nod, apparently deciding. He walked over to sit beside her on the edge of the bed. Ivy felt the need to lean into him, to feel his hand move over her hair and down her back in comfort. Jeremy had known her mother. He had actually spent time with her while he waited for Ivy in their small, yellow kitchen, or sat beside her mother on the couch watching TV. He would remember those first months of her absence, and the way Ivy had been unable to sleep at night. Often, he had woken up in her bed to find Ivy on the floor, sitting cross-legged playing solitaire in the light of the street lamp coming through her curtain.

  “My mom’s back in town,” she said softly. The words sounded strange on the open air, like a misremembered lyric.

  “I know,” he said. “I spoke to her yesterday.” He explained seeing her at the grocery store and following her to the park.

  Ivy absorbed this information slowly, not quite believing him, even though she knew what he was saying was true. There were a million questions crowding her mind, but none of them seemed adequate to get the answers she wanted, so she sat in silence for what felt like a long time, Lucky cooing and flopping on the bed beside them. She turned and rubbed her baby’s stomach through his green onesie, then sighed. “So she talked about Wheel of Fortune but she didn’t ask about her grandchild.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t know about Lucky.”

  “She knows,” Ivy said, certain this was true. “I just feel it.” She turned away from Lucky and leaned against Jeremy, giving in to the urge for comfort. Ivy closed her eyes as he ran his hand over her hair and down her back, just as she’d imagined him doing a moment ago. The touch wasn’t sexual, but it made her feel guilty, so she moved away and stood up.

  “I won’t let her hurt you,” he told her, looking down at his hands. “If you don’t want to see her, I can find her again and let her know.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not sure yet what I want to do.”

  “Okay,” he lifted his gaze to hers. “Just let me know.”

  She sat down next to him again, but farther away this time. “Would you like some iced tea or something?” Ivy asked.

  “No, please, just rest. How about if I get you something?”

  Before she could protest, he disappeared and she could hear him in the kitchen, opening and closing drawers, then the fridge, turning the tap on and off. Ramona would have said he was stealing the silverware or drugging her drink to have his way with her, but Ivy felt at ease listening to him rummage around her kitchen. She wasn’t even particularly nervous about Frank coming home and finding Jeremy here. It just felt natural, she guessed, to be cared for by him. She lay back down on her pillow and put a hand on Lucky’s belly to keep track of his movements, then closed her eyes and waited.

  He returned to her room carrying a yellow tray she’d forgotten they owned. It held a poached egg in a small white bowl, a plate of sliced cantaloupe, and a glass of tomato juice. Ivy sat up and scooted against the bed’s headboard, then accepted the tray on her lap and took a bite of the egg. “This is wonderful,” she told him.

  Jeremy sat beside her knees, not touching her but looking as if he wanted to. His hair wasn’t spiked up today and a black strand fell across his forehead. Ivy noticed for the first time that a thin stripe of gray traveled through the black. She also noticed that the pendant on his necklace was a turtle, not a marijuana leaf. This struck her as a good sign. Lucky crawled over to her tray, and she fed him a piece of cantaloupe, then handed a piece to Jeremy but he shook his head.

  “At least she’s alive,” he said. “That’s something.”

  Ivy nodded. “You’re right.”

  The specter of Jeremy’s own dead parents rose up between them, though neither mentioned their presence. They had died in a car crash while Ivy was in college in Wisconsin. She had sent him a note, but that was all. It now struck her as a meager offering. She had loved Jeremy once, and he had become an orphan in one night. Didn’t that warrant a phone call at least?

  “Where is everybody, anyway?” he asked, looking around.

  “I’m not sure.” She knew Frank was shopping somewhere and would be home soon, and she’d expected Ramona and Jane to show up this morning, but it was already edging toward noon. Even though she’d told everyone to go, that she was fine, Ivy now felt left alone. Once again, the only person around was Jeremy.

  This wasn’t fair, of course. Frank had been with her through many difficult times—her father’s cancer scare two years ago, the ultrasound predicting birth defects that led to a very stressful amnio, the birth itself. All those essential moments, however, faded away now, and the morning of her mother’s disappearance was all that remained. She worried that Jeremy’s presence at that crucial moment in her life would link them forever, in a way she didn’t want to be linked to him.

  The doorbell rang and they both jumped.

  “I’ll get it,” he said, rising.

  “No,” she set the tray aside and quickly stood, feeling the blood rush out of her as tiny stars appeared in the blackness before her eyes. Th
en her vision returned and resettled and she sat back on the edge of the bed. “Light-headed,” she explained.

  Jeremy left the room and she heard him speaking softly, then he appeared in her doorway and said, “Some guy named Rex looking for Jane.”

  Ivy frowned at this news, then tightened her robe and tried rising, more slowly this time. The room held and she felt okay, so she picked up Lucky and brushed past Jeremy on her way to the door. Rex stood leaning on the doorframe, almost needing to duck beneath it due to his extreme height. His white hair was wet and combed into neat grooves against his skull, and he wore a black polo shirt and khaki shorts. His clothes were too preppy, too nicely pressed, and Ivy had a hard time believing they actually belonged to him. She imagined him raiding one of the houses of her neighbor’s on the way over, maybe the tax accountant on the corner who golfed every weekend.

  “I’m sorry, but Jane’s not here,” she said. “Can I help you?” She propped Lucky against her hip and bounced him lightly, waiting for a response.

  “Will she be around later?” he asked. His voice was warm and lazy, and she actually liked the sound of it.

  Ivy shrugged. “Not sure. But you can leave a message with me if you like.”

  “Well, I just wanted to see if she’d like to swing by later and check out some constellations. The sky is supposed to be really clear tonight from all the wind yesterday. You and your husband are welcome to come too, of course,” he said, then nodded over her shoulder. She turned to find Jeremy a couple of steps away.

  “Oh, he’s just a friend,” she told Rex, uncertain why she was bothering to explain. “And I just got out of the hospital, so I can’t make it. But thank you.”