The Better Liar

by Tanen Jones

“You mean come to where you work?”

  “Yeah, off Harmon. It’s pink, you can’t miss it. Well, you can, but don’t.” She patted me familiarly on the arm.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have to…” I made an inarticulate gesture.

  She watched my hands. “Well, if you end up dropping by,” she said, and didn’t finish.

  I got into the car and started it. Something touched my leg, like a finger; when I looked down, I saw that it was the cigarette butt, which had fallen from my hand.

  4

  Robin

  Why don’t more people walk away? I have always wondered this. Sunk cost, maybe. Fear of the dark. Or guilt; some families run on guilt, like gasoline.

  No—men know how to walk away, even men who never do it. The instructions are right there: Go out for cigarettes and never come back. Start a second family in Florida and raise the kids on Tropicana. Make sure your grandchildren find out about each other when you die, your final gift to them, so they know love is a cat in a sealed box, that if they took the heads off their husbands and looked in, they would see nothing, a bottomless drop.

  I guess what I’m asking is why don’t more women walk away?

  The night I left home, it had just stopped raining. Leslie was back from college for the weekend, asleep in the next room. On the other side my father was out cold in a sleeping-pill daze. It was two years until his diagnosis, but he’d already developed a wet cough that took all his energy to repress. It felt like he slept all the time; it felt like I never slept. It woke me up in the middle of the night, the feeling that I was supposed to be moving toward some prophesied future. That it was waiting for me, and that lying there in bed in a medium-size town in New Mexico was only stalling.

  I was sixteen and so beautiful that taking my body into the world was like ferrying around a stolen luxury car: just the having of it implied action. You should do something with that, I was told again and again. It was like my body was something separate from me; even the thirties-ish men who hit on my body seemed to resent the person inside it, the way you might disapprove of an eleven-year-old driving a Beemer. You don’t deserve this, their faces said, even as their mouths said, Baby, come here…

  But this is what was actually special about me: I knew that I did deserve it. And that night, dragging my bedroom window closed behind me, leaving damp handprints on the glass like goodbye waves, I took my body out.

  In the house, Leslie went on sleeping. I left her there, swaddled in the bed we used to share, thinking I was burying her. She’d take care of Daddy until he died, then find a husband and take care of him until he died, and then maybe if she was lucky somebody else would help her piss until she kicked the bucket at last. Poor Leslie, I thought as I ran through the backyard that night, through the pools of the neighbors’ porch lights, toward my ordinary death.

  5

  Mary

  I went back to my car and sat in the shadows of the parking lot’s single tree. If I craned my rearview mirror to the left a little, I could see her. Leslie. She was sitting in her car, just letting it idle. Twisting one of her earrings in her ear.

  Why was she just sitting there?

  I took out my phone and texted Paul.

  I have something to tell you…xx.

  I tipped my phone back and forth, watching the glitter in the case drift from side to side, like the tide going in and out. Then I tried to find something good on the radio while I waited for Paul to reply. I went past a dozen commercials and Christian sermons before I finally hit on a man’s voice announcing P. P. Arnold singing “Angel of the Morning,” which is just about as good a song as a person can make. I knew the whole thing, including the part where she pauses right before she says It was what I wanted now—that’s the best part.

  All the glitter in my phone case had descended to the bottom. I glanced in my rearview mirror. The Honda was gone.

  Ordinarily before my shifts I went to the Park 2000 shopping center off Sunset and Eastern to sit with Shea, who was forty-four years old and a busboy at Letourneau’s because his parents made him get a job for tax reasons. I hung out with him because he shared his weed with me for free in exchange for being able to look at my face up close for a period of thirty minutes. Sometimes he just took a photo of me and looked at that on his phone even though I was still right there in his car with him. I never wanted to ask why. We usually got real high and watched the planes take off at McCarran from across the street. You could see the wheels retracting from where we parked. Shea called us ornithologists.

  Today, though, I really had to see Paul. I picked up my phone, causing a small tsunami in the case, and texted him again.

  where are you xxx. I have news :)

  He hadn’t replied to my last seven texts either. I thumbed up the screen until I could see his last message to me.

  See you tonight sweetheart

  Maybe he was at home. He worked from home sometimes, although he spent more of his time at one of those freelancer offices, where people who didn’t know one another could rent desks in a big sunny warehouse and make small talk at the coffee machine, just like at a real cubicle farm. One time I’d asked Paul how come he didn’t want to work in the gorgeous three-bedroom in the Lakes that he was renting at a discount from his brother, and he said it was too comfortable, so I laughed, and then he was mad that I laughed.

  I fixed the rearview mirror and checked my makeup in it, using my fingernail to scrape off the eyeliner that had gathered in the corners. Then I started the car, slouching a little so that the jetstream from the air conditioner hit me right in the face, making my teeth cold as I mouthed along to P. P. Arnold. “Just call me angel…of the morning, baby…” I whispered to myself as I turned onto the beltway.

  The Lakes is this landscaped community on the west side of the Valley with its own zip code. The whole thing is built around a huge man-made pond that someone dyed turquoise, and all the houses are supposed to look like they’re in Florida. Most of them have their own little docks and boats that are named things like the Desert Rose or the Camel. Paul’s brother Bobby bought the house as a wedding present for him. Since the divorce, Paul’s ex lived in Denver with the kids, and Paul paid Bobby five hundred bucks a month to not sell the house out from under him.

  Paul’s big-ass Honda was in the driveway. Next to it was one of those Tesla cars. Either he was trying to make up for the one by buying the other, or he’d befriended a Democrat. There was nowhere for me to pull in, so I parked across the street. Before I could even reach for my seatbelt, the front door opened and Paul stepped out. He was pink and dripping, dressed in his running clothes, with big sweat patches spreading underneath his arms. He had his baseball cap on backward, like guys in movies from the ’90s, except it wasn’t the ’90s anymore so it sort of made him look old. I still liked his bright blue eyes.

  He leaned back into the house and I saw his mouth move. Then a woman came hurrying down the stairs after him, adjusting the headphones around her neck. She was super fit, with visible biceps, and her hair was in two French braids, starting to frizz at her hairline. A redhead, like me. He kissed her briefly on the lips—fast, instinctive—like he could find her lips in the dark—like he already had.

  For a second I was weightless, watching them. Then Paul glanced across the street as he was opening the passenger door to the Tesla, and our eyes met. I jolted back into my body. I was across the street, staring at Paul through a pane of UV-protected glass.

  The radio announcer came back on. “That was P. P. Arnold singing ‘Angel of the Morning.’ She was only twenty-one in 1967, if you can believe it. We’re taking a short break, and when we come back we’ll begin our commercial-free happy hour, starting with the very best of Miss Dinah Shore.”

  I blinked, and Paul looked away. The other woman hadn’t seen me. They got into her Tesla together, and she backed the car cautiously out of the driveway o
nto the wide, smooth pavement. I watched the two of them all the way down the street.

  After a second I checked my makeup in the rearview mirror. I ran my fingertip around the bottom edge of one eye, then the other. If you want to hear the real truth, I knew the whole time how come he wasn’t answering my texts. But it’s different when you see it. It always is.

  * * *

  —

  Letourneau’s was in the middle of a cluster of pastel-colored mid-range hotels just off the Strip, closer to the UNLV area than to the shops and bars. It was pale pink, with a neon heart on the front door and no other identification, which Freddy had told me was supposed to appeal to women. I told him it made it look like a strip club. If you glanced around the dining room it was wall-to-wall disappointed dudes from Ohio. They always came in with cash, at least.

  The inside was mostly casino, but they’d added on a dining room in the early 2000s, and we did a decent business in steak and lobster. I got dressed in the staff bathroom, stuffing my jean shorts and sneakers into the duffel bag I kept in my locker and changing into a black velvet wrap dress and extra-long string of fake pearls. They looked just like real pearls. They had been my birthday present last year, from me to me. Berna told me not to wear them because they sometimes fell into people’s food when I leaned over, but I always got good tips when I wore them, so I didn’t think anybody really minded.

  Preethi sailed up to me as soon as I got onto the floor. “Somebody threw up in the men’s bathroom,” she said.

  “It’s only, like, eight.”

  She shrugged. “I’m taking my thirty.”

  I waited for her to disappear behind the swinging doors. Then I grabbed Shea by the back of the shirt. “Somebody threw up in the men’s bathroom,” I told him. “Pass it on.”

  He hefted his tray of dishes and silverware at me and shook it to make it rattle. “Hear that?” he asked. “That’s ‘fuck you’ in busboy.”

  “Aw.” I stuck out my lower lip. “Shea.”

  “You stood me up.”

  “I had to see Paul.” I glanced away. “He’s sleeping with some girl again.”

  Shea’s ears perked up. “That’s too bad.” He looked me over with almost clinical interest. “You look nice tonight.”

  “Thank you, Shea.” I paused and added throatily, “Somebody threw up in the men’s bathroom, you know.”

  He shook the tray at me again and headed for the kitchen.

  I continued toward Jordyn at the host stand. The host stand was maybe my favorite part of the décor; it was chrome, with another neon heart on the front and a Plexiglas top that you could draw dirty things on with Jordyn’s pink Sharpies. The rest of Letourneau’s was sort of knockoff Cheesecake Factory, with a big marble bar top, Art Deco pillars getting in the way of everything, and round crushed-velvet booths designed for maximum inconvenience anytime anyone had to get out to go to the bathroom.

  Jordyn glanced up as I leaned on the stand, looking upside down at tonight’s table sections. The neon heart cast a hot-pink campfire glow on the underside of her face.

  “I’m taking over for Preethi,” I told her. “She went on her thirty.”

  Jordyn adjusted her sports bra so that the CK label stuck out more. “Okay. She’s got two two-tops and a four-top. Eight, ten, fourteen. Somebody threw up in the men’s.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said.

  She wrinkled her nose. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know,” I said, grabbing a new pad and pen off the host shelf.

  A couple came up to the stand giggling and leaning on each other for support. I turned to leave Jordyn to it, but she laid a hand on my arm. “There’s some woman asking for you at the bar. Well, she said the one with red hair. I’m guessing that’s you.”

  I glanced toward the marble-topped bar, which was already crowded with men in baseball caps—casinogoers love to wear hats, especially inside at night, for whatever reason. Among the hats I saw a long pale moon face turning this way and that.

  Leslie glanced up when I plopped onto the barstool next to her. She was still in her wrinkled lavender blouse and slacks from earlier. She looked staticky and slightly sweaty, as if she’d slept in her clothes. “Hi, honey,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s you.” She tilted her head.

  “You sound surprised.” I grabbed a bottle of Cuervo from Heather and poured us out some shots. “I thought you were asking for me. Or did you meet some other redhead who works here?”

  “I couldn’t remember your name.” She touched her face, which was turning pink, and shook her head when I pushed the shot toward her. “I’ve been drinking wine. I shouldn’t—”

  “Come on, it’s on me,” I said. “I’m real sorry about your sister.”

  She pressed her lips together, staring down at the shot glass. Then she picked it up and sipped at it.

  “You never taken a shot before?”

  “I have.” She sipped at it again. “I just don’t like the, you know…” She flapped her free hand. “When it burns your throat.”

  “No, I’ll show you. Yoga breaths. Think about what’s bothering you, breathe in, and then…” I threw the shot back and sighed. “See? All gone. I’m a new woman.”

  She laughed, then covered her mouth, like she’d surprised herself.

  I leaned over the bar and pulled on Heather’s ponytail. “My tab,” I mouthed, pointing at Leslie’s head. Heather nodded, and I turned back to Leslie. “I’ve got to get to my tables, but I’ll come back around. I know you forgot my name. It’s Mary.”

  “Leslie,” she said, putting out her hand. She had large, squarish hands, softened by a rounded gel manicure. She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something else, then closed it again. I stood there for an extra half second, waiting for her to make up her mind, but there was only a funny silence between us.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said abruptly, and got up and walked unsteadily toward the far hallway.

  * * *

  —

  The kitchen switched to bar snacks at ten, and service slowed. I made almost a hundred dollars off a table of five middle-aged white guys from Kentucky. After they went back into the casino, I slung myself onto the barstool next to Leslie and grabbed another shot from Heather. “I’m getting drunk with you,” I told Leslie, nudging her with my shoulder. “I’m having a really interesting day. Like you.”

  Leslie was sleepy-eyed, clutching her phone. “Nobody’s called me yet,” she said.

  “Called you for what?”

  “My sister.”

  “Were they supposed to?”

  “I thought maybe…” She shook her head. “I’m not sure. You’re really very kind. Thank you for…um. Thank you for buying me drinks, and…”

  “Anytime.”

  She picked up her purse and felt around in it without pulling anything out. “I should go. I should go home.”

  “You live around here?”

  “No, New Mexico. Albuquerque.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “That’s a long drive.”

  She let out a nervous giggle. “I have a hotel room. That’s what I meant. Not home-home.”

  “Well, I’m about to take my ten outside. Want to come with me? Have a cigarette, sober up?”

  She stared at my face a little too long. “I don’t really smoke,” she said finally. “It was only today.”

  “Well, you can just keep me company.” I leaned over to dig into my shoe with one finger, where the heel was getting blistered.

  Leslie shook her head again. “Okay,” she said, contradicting herself. “All right.”

  I led her through the maze of columns and booths, past the black-and-purple wallpaper and the posters of semi-famous people that hung where the windows used to be, back when Letourneau’s had been an office complex. You wanted a casi
no windowless and dark; it kept people feeling that the night was just beginning. I’d seen guests wandering out of the casino still in full cocktail getups in the middle of brunch service. One guy tried to get his money back from Freddy because he’d missed his flight, saying it was the casino’s fault for not having any clocks in the place.

  “I’m taking my ten,” I said to Berna as I passed her office in the back hall. She didn’t look up. Leslie dragged her fingers over the rows of metal lockers, squeezing the pink rabbit’s foot attached to my combination lock.

  Outside, I flopped onto the smokers’ bench next to the door and patted the spot next to me. Leslie stepped carefully over the cigarette butts ringing the bench and sat down, crossing her legs. I stretched out, pointing my toes and digging into my apron for my pack and lighter. “You sure you don’t want one?” I asked her, once I’d gotten the cigarette between my lips.

  She shook her head. I shrugged and dropped the lighter back into my apron, glancing at her as she laced her fingers together on her lap.

  “What did you mean before,” I asked suddenly, “when you said your sister owed you money?”

  Leslie’s head jerked up. “My—my father…” She cleared her throat. “He left us both some money. In his will. That’s why I came down here, to bring her back to Albuquerque.” She unlaced her fingers. “But.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  She nodded. “He wanted us to talk to each other more. He hated that we didn’t talk.”

  “He wanted you to come get her?”

  I watched her wedding set flicker in the light from the streetlamp. The rear parking lot was mostly empty, a dozen staff members’ cars clustered along the left side. “He put it in his will, that we had to be there in person, together, at the lawyer’s office. To get the money. That was what he wanted. It took me so long to track her down,” Leslie said quietly. “And I missed her by…” Her mouth hung open for half a second as she stared into space. Then she snapped it closed.