She swam in a warm soup of morphine. Slow, viscous. She could feel her pain whispering, ready to shout as soon as the drug’s power began to wane. Both legs had multiple compound fractures surgically repaired with metal plates and screws. Her scalp had been split open, and she’d suffered a concussion. Her entire body was tender with bone-deep bruises.
She dreamed. Horrible, drug-laced dreams, some kind of hell specially designed for Ruby Wilde. She was the girl in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Red Shoes,” one of the books the Aviator had given her so long ago. In her dream the red shoes were Dorothy’s ruby slippers, but just as in the story, once the shoes were on her feet, they would not come off. They had become part of her, and as long as she wore the shoes, she was forced to dance, nonstop. She danced along the Strip, past neon displays and gawking tourists. She skipped up and down curbs, wove through rows of slot machines, and circled roulette tables, tap-danced past Rose at the reception counter in Caesars. But Rose couldn’t catch her; no one could.
She danced until her ankles buckled, but still her feet whirled, her legs pranced. Finally, she found the Borrero cabin, hidden away deep in the woods. Soft-shoeing on the front stoop, she pounded on the door, shouting for Javier. He was the only one who could do this, she knew. He was the executioner, the one with the ax. Javier would be strong enough to cut off the shoes, to cut off her feet. Without his blade, she’d dance herself to death.
Whenever she started to swim toward the surface of her dreams, whenever she began to see golden light flickering and thought there might be fresh air within reach, she’d remember. She’d remember what he’d done, what she’d let him do. And she’d remember that she carried his child within her. A child who might be just as felonious, just as coldly devious and heartless as his father.
And then she’d stop swimming. She’d stop dreaming. She’d stop trying to reach air. Instead, she’d let her legs go lax, let her arms dangle. She let her body sink once more into the muck of decay. Into rest. Into oblivion.
* * *
—
SHE FELT HIS presence beside her hospital bed. Ruby turned her head away from him, kept her eyes closed. How could she possibly face him? How could she endure the pressing, boulder-heavy weight of her shame?
He took her hand, grasped it firmly, and kissed the back of it. “Lily,” he said, simply, softly.
She bit her lower lip, squeezed her eyes tightly shut.
“I’m here,” the Aviator said, squeezing her hand.
“I know.” She squeezed back.
“I’ll take care of you.”
“He took all my money.”
“I know.”
“How—?”
“Your friends called me. You had my name in your wallet.”
She nodded, still reaching one arm behind her body to keep hold of his hand.
“I want to take you home.”
“Home?”
“My home. Albuquerque. You’ll get better there. Then you can decide what you want to do.”
“I can’t face you,” she whispered into her pillow, not sure if he could hear her.
With his free hand, the Aviator brushed her hair from her temple and kissed her there, where her blood hummed just beneath the thin surface of her skin. “Lily, please look at me. Please.”
He waited. She struggled to find just one more ounce of courage, to face her unutterably altered world and the man whose opinion meant the most to her. Slowly, she turned her head and opened her eyes. At fifty, he looked tired, careworn, and there were strands of gray threading his short, dark hair. But he was still her handsome, steadfast Aviator, and she forced herself to meet his gaze.
He smiled crookedly. “I know a lot about mistakes,” he said. “And, yes, some mistakes have dire consequences. But it’s not as if you killed someone.” He paused so that she’d remember the depth of his sin. “You trusted someone. You loved someone, and he broke your heart. There’s no shame in that.”
Always and forever, he was her guardian angel. She pulled his hand to her lips and held it there as she drifted back into a drugged slumber.
* * *
—
RUBY COULD NOT get over it—the man who flew at supersonic speeds, who regularly broke the sound barrier, was driving a blue station wagon with fake-wood side paneling. It was the funniest thing she’d seen in ages.
As the hospital personnel transferred her from the gurney to the back of the station wagon, she began giggling.
“What?” the Aviator asked, smiling with pleasure at her laughter.
“A station wagon?” Ruby grinned. “You?”
“I’ll have you know,” he said, helping Geri, the private nurse he’d hired, to adjust the blankets around Ruby, “this is a Chevrolet Kingswood Estate wagon.”
“Oh, an estate wagon. Well, then.” Ruby smiled.
“It has a 350 V8 Turbo-Fire engine.”
“Ha!” she laughed.
“You wait. Once we get out on the highway, I’ll show you what this car can do.” He squeezed one of her big toes where it emerged from thick white plaster.
Vivid, Rose, and Dee arrived just then. Vivid stalked to where the Aviator stood, her heels putting her at eye level with Ruby’s rescuer.
“First we said champagne,” she announced. “Then Rose—ever the voice of caution and reason—said we couldn’t do that, that you couldn’t mix painkillers with booze.” To this Geri nodded. “Flowers are out, because they’ll just die. And you got enough of those from all of your admirers.” She smiled.
“Balloons wouldn’t do, either,” Rose added. “Bumping around in back with you all the way to New Mexico.”
“So we did this!” Dee shouted, no longer able to bear the long, drawn-out introduction. She passed a large wrapped box to Ruby where she lay propped up on pillows against the rear of the backseat. “Open it!”
Ruby tore into the paper and pulled the lid off of the box. Her fingers touched it before she actually saw it, and she stopped, looked out the back end of the car toward her friends. “You didn’t,” she said.
“That rat bastard took all the others,” Dee said.
It was a silver fox fur, calf length, nearly identical to the one Kyle had given her. “Oh, lord.” She sighed with pleasure, feeling the soft fur in her hands. She shook her head. “You know I’m going to say you shouldn’t have. This is terribly extravagant.”
“Of course we should,” Rose said, and Ruby knew that for Rose, the cost had been budget-breaking.
“This way you won’t forget us,” Vivid said. “Or Vegas.”
“As if I could.” Ruby ran her hands along the coat. “You know it’s the one I most regretted losing.”
“We know,” Vivid said, smiling. “Cosmic sex and all.”
Ruby glanced quickly at the Aviator, but she couldn’t tell if he’d heard Vivid. “There is another gift I want,” she said, noticing that the lining of this coat was not pink as Kyle’s had been, but instead a lovely aqua blue.
“Aren’t you the greedy little bitch,” Dee joked. “What else does Her Highness want?”
“A promise,” Ruby said. “That you’ll come see me.”
“It’s already in the works,” Rose assured her. “We’ll be talking with this lovely man,” she said, putting her arm around the Aviator’s waist and with surprising familiarity pulling him in until their hips touched. “When he says you’re ready for a visit, then the three of us will take a road trip.”
“But I’m only coming if he promises to take me up in one of his planes,” Vivid said, flirting.
Ruby saw the Aviator’s cheeks flush beneath his sunglasses.
“We’re still going to call you Ruby,” Dee said. “I can’t get used to Lily.”
“I’ll answer to just about anything,” Ruby said, still stroking the fur coat. “I’m going to miss you li
ke crazy,” she assured her friends.
“I’m going to check the trailer,” the Aviator said, diplomatically removing himself for their final goodbyes. He’d rented and packed a U-Haul trailer with what he, along with Vivid and Rose, had decided were Ruby’s essential possessions. They’d sold what they could, including her Ghia, and Ruby had a thin envelope of bills in her purse.
Vivid crawled into the back alongside Ruby, careful not to jostle her. “Did you decide?” she asked, and Ruby could smell Vivid’s subtle Arpège perfume.
“Not yet,” Ruby said as Rose, too, climbed in to be closer to Ruby.
“You call if you want to talk,” Rose said.
“Call no matter what,” Vivid said.
“Does he know?” Rose asked, indicating the Aviator.
“Not unless you’ve told him,” Ruby said. “Or maybe the doctors said something to him.”
“Geri knows,” Vivid said. “So he probably knows, too.”
“Just get well. Take care of yourself, kiddo.” Rose gave Ruby an awkward hug. “I love you,” she whispered.
Ruby’s nose stung with suppressed tears. Vivid kissed her cheek, and then both women crawled back out of the station wagon.
“Sayonara, sweetheart,” Dee said, leaning on the trailer hitch and trying not to cry.
Ruby’s friends stood there in the Vegas sun as behind them patients and their families flowed endlessly through the hospital’s revolving door. The Aviator started the car and slowly pulled away from the curb. From her backward perch, Ruby waved farewell.
“You all right?” Geri asked.
“I’m okay,” Ruby said, trying to convince herself. “But let me know as soon as I can have another pill.”
“You’re hurting?”
“On so many levels,” Ruby said, burying her face in the soft, silver comfort of the coat.
The Aviator predicted that they’d be on the road for about nine hours, including stops and starts. Lily spent a good deal of time staring out the rear window at the U-Haul trailer. With her wheelchair stowed in the backseat, the Aviator and Geri up front like Mom and Dad, she felt like a child or inanimate cargo. And although she’d imagined that the altered perspective of riding backward would be fun, Lily discovered that it only made her woozy. Fortunately, Geri fished something out of her medical bag that kept the nausea at bay.
Lily hadn’t felt she had any choice other than to go with the Aviator. Vivid and the others would have tried to take care of her, but it was too much to ask, and they had their own lives. The last thing Lily wanted to be was a burden—she’d had enough of that as a child—but she was also determined to accept the Aviator’s kindness, to remember what it felt like to be cared for, truly cared for. And she realized how desperately he wanted to try to whittle away at some of the guilt he felt over her family’s destruction. Still, she knew she would work hard to become independent, to find a path out of this fearful no-man’s-land in which she’d been marooned.
Lily slept off and on, and aside from pauses for food, gas, and restrooms, the Aviator drove straight through. He hadn’t exaggerated; the estate wagon had a powerful engine that when fully engaged let them fly past nearly everything else on the highway. Their route took them far south of the Grand Canyon, which was just as well—she couldn’t have seen much from her perch.
They picked up and lost radio stations along the way like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs. Lily learned that a slew of hijackings had been orchestrated by a group demanding the liberation of Palestine.
“Is there any good news?” Lily asked, and the Aviator found a station that played Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie,” Eric Burdon’s “Spill the Wine,” and a really sappy song called “Patches.” When Dean Martin came on singing “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife,” Lily was instantly flooded with regret. What was she was doing, leaving Las Vegas? She was running away when she should stay and face things! She was losing her plush world of martinis and high rollers, sophistication, and glamour—and exchanging it for what? Who knew?
She picked up the fur coat and, despite the September heat, buried her face in it. The last thing she wanted was for the Aviator to know her wretchedness, to think that she didn’t appreciate what he was trying to do for her. But misery was gaining on her.
“How about some classical music?” Geri suggested, and the Aviator obliged. Lily sank back into the pillows, listening to a soothing Chopin melody and trying to distract herself by thumbing through the issue of Newsweek the Aviator had bought for her. The cover pictured a joint, smoke curling from the tip, and it posed the question Marijuana: Time to Change the Law? Fat chance, Lily thought.
She laid aside the magazine and closed her eyes, overcome by memories of Javier’s lacy days of San Francisco. The hippies with their ribbons and embroidery, their bare feet. The smell of eucalyptus leaves and the fecund bay. How could he have lulled her into belief in him—a belief so strong she’d been willing to risk pregnancy? Admittedly, Javier hadn’t had to work very hard at it, given her growing misgivings about her life in Vegas. But still—to think of the fantasy she’d so readily bought, hook, line, and sinker.
Drifting behind closed eyelids, she tried to decide if Javier’s actions amounted to purposeful, conniving manipulation. He’d strewn her path with pretty petals of lies, but how much had he planned? How much was effortless, simply part of who he was? Was he a natural liar? A natural thief? Had he ever intended to live with her in San Francisco, to make a family with her? Had he cared for her at all?
He hadn’t carried her pain for her; he’d multiplied it like breeding bacteria. She shook her head. All those things he’d said. She’d believed him. Why was her vision so imperfect, so horribly nearsighted? The old saying was true, wasn’t it? Actions speak louder than words. Love is not a thief. Love does not bruise and serially, finally abandon. Love doesn’t lie. He hadn’t loved her.
The very thing Javier did to her was what native peoples feared would happen if they were photographed: he took her soul captive. Until now, the nebulous haze of hospital morphine had kept her from feeling it all. And even now, in many ways it still didn’t seem possible or true—that she’d become a veritable buffet of crippled loss. Maybe it would take months, years, or a lifetime to feel all of this, to understand. Not to understand Javier—she was determined not to give him any more of her time or energy—but rather to comprehend why she’d done what she’d done. What she needed now was to learn who Ruby—Lily reawakened—really was.
She opened her eyes to watch the sky peeling away from the back of the car. It was almost painfully absurd that she was forced to stare relentlessly at her past. In the distance, a solid brick of clouds appeared to Lily as though someone had taken the handle of a paintbrush and drawn it through the whiteness like a plow, creating a stark furrow of bright blue sky. It was, she thought, creation through removal—like a sculptor subtracting stone to reveal shape and form.
Her whole life felt like a welter of subtractions. Her family, her innocence. Her dream of being a real dancer. And now her savings were gone. She could forget design school, at least for the foreseeable future. And she would not dance again—the surgeon had been quite clear, even predicting that her legs would be permanently misshapen.
How on earth could she support a child? She’d be twenty-two in several months, but what skills did she have that would help her earn? She put a protective hand to her belly. It wasn’t the child’s fault his father was a deviant. The child had hung in there, survived her flight over the car and her raucous tumble down the street. The heartbeat beneath Lily’s palm was that of someone who wanted to live, to be born. Maybe even to dance.
But to do it alone? In her head, she heard Diana Ross singing “Love Child.” Things were changing, but there was still a huge prejudice against unwed mothers. And she wasn’t going to be living in permissive Vegas anymore, as Ruby Wilde. No—she was, once aga
in, Lily Decker.
* * *
—
GERI WAS SURPRISINGLY strong for her size. “It’s from swimming,” she said, helping Lily into the wheelchair and maneuvering her into a stingy gas station restroom. Lily could only imagine how unwieldy and heavy she must be, with two huge leg casts, but Geri never complained.
In Winslow, Geri and Lily sat in the sun while the Aviator went inside a diner to get them burgers and fries.
“That man’s a gem,” Geri said.
“He’s perfect.” Lily lifted her face to the sky. She was beginning to realize how good it felt to breathe clean, fresh air, to be away from the neon clutter of the Strip. And not to have to worry about sunburns or tan lines.
“I take it you’ve known him a long time.”
“Since I was a little girl.”
“Well, he cares deeply about you. I mean, that man’s devoted,” Geri said, pushing one of her springy strawberry blonde curls behind an ear.
Lily guessed Geri was in her midthirties. Her freckled hands were bare of any wedding ring.
“Does he know?” Lily asked.
“About the pregnancy?”
“Yeah.”
“He does.”
“Okay then,” Lily said.
They both turned at the sound of the door banging. “Let’s eat,” the Aviator said, motioning toward a picnic table lodged beneath a pathetic excuse for a tree. With obvious effort, Geri wheeled Lily across uneven gravel.
Sparrows quickly grew bold and dropped from the tree’s lower branches to scour the ground for crumbs. Lily watched them—indistinguishable bits of brown and black, hopping here and there. It had been ages since she’d watched birds, since she’d luxuriated in the sun or lingered anywhere that included much of the natural world.
All the Beautiful Girls Page 27