by Joy Preble
Some things happen and they’re forever.
“Vegas Mike’s,” I tell him, heart beating way too fast, body numb. “That’s where we need to go. That’s where he is. That’s where she’ll go.”
Or is going. Or has gone. It could be too late. How could it not be too late?
“You sure?” Max cranks the engine. “Lots of casinos out there.”
But only one where behind the din, just before each half hour, a voice pops up on the PA: Vegas Mike’s Man Buffet. All-you-can-eat wings and fries and beer, served by our Vegas Mike dancers.
This is what I heard when my stepfather answered his phone.
If I could figure out where he is, so could my sister.
We drive. More than once I want to say, “Don’t stop. We’ll head somewhere else. Back to Cali again. Or east, maybe. Hang out in Phoenix or head up to the mountains. Go somewhere I’ve never been. Nebraska. Iowa.”
Max aims the Ranger toward an available space, shoving the car into park before it’s even fully stopped. “How do you know she’ll be here? How do we even know any of what you think is true? Even if it is—why now? Why not while we were on the road?” Max grabs my hand in his and I don’t pull away. His palm is rough in the center, like he’s scraped it on something. “Leo. Come on. Think about it.”
But he sounds unsure.
I know my sister better than anyone. Know her inside out and backward—at least I did.
Now I wonder if we know each other at all.
For the millionth time since all this began, I wonder why Max has stuck with it. I forgive him for his lies. I really do. So he climbs from the truck and I do the same and then we’re standing in the parking lot by Vegas Mike’s, a sea of cheap neon and sparkle flashing over our heads.
There is so much that I want to say to him. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
“Let’s do this,” Max says, reaching for my hand. I understand now that he, too, is a Bose-Einstein condensate. A rare, amazing thing.
But I race ahead of him instead, feet slapping the asphalt, mouth dry as old leaves, not stopping when he calls my name.
Vegas Mike’s is dim and smoky, and there’s a smell of beer and money and sweat. Somehow, my mother senses when I find her. She looks up, cards in her hands, her table filled at every seat. “Leo!” she hollers across the casino, and heads turn as her voice rises over all the other noise. Even from here, I can see she’s torn between running to me and staying put like she needs to because she’s the dealer and the table is crowded with people and money and chips, red and black and purple and green and blue. Dealers cannot leave their tables. Ever.
I wave, arm overhead, in a gesture that I hope says stay put. I am not here to see her, not yet. My eyes drop to the players. None of them is Tommy Davis. But he wouldn’t be there anyway. Mom refuses to deal to people she knows.
I scan the floor for my sister. Maybe I’m wrong.
“Leo!” Mom is calling my name again, the pit boss towering behind her, saying something I can’t hear, his body language stiff and pissed off.
Again, Max catches up with me. There’s a coffee stain on the bottom of the black T-shirt he’s been wearing since we left Vegas. The leather ties of one boat shoe have come undone. He’s a mess right now, Max Sullivan. But when he looks at me, my heart hums, even as my brain says that there is no good ending on the way.
“I don’t see her,” he says, craning his neck this way and that. “Do you?”
I look again, scan this small dump of a casino where waitresses in shorts and skimpy tank tops serve you beer and wings and wear a utility belt of hot sauce choices around their waists so the big tippers can dunk a wing and slip a buck or two in the belt.
Only one room isn’t visible from here in the lobby entrance. The high-stakes poker room by the bathrooms, not far from a bank of popular slots.
I’m half running now, not caring if Max follows. If I am going to lose him for real, I want it to happen fast. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, exposing the wound underneath.
Paris. I repeat it in my head, over and over, like a mantra. Paris. Paris. Paris. If I say it enough times, then maybe she’ll appear. Poof, like in the fairy tales.
What will I do when I see her? What will she do? Will she use Maureen’s gun? Is she even here?
And then there’s Tommy. The reason we are all here in this place that none of us want to be.
When I see him hunched at a Haywire machine, pressing in his bets, I freeze.
Tommy Davis. My mother’s husband. My stepfather. Dressed like always—in jeans and boots and a tight white tee, Camel between his fingertips.
“Leo?” Max says. Which is when I realize he doesn’t know and so I say, “Tommy.” Then I ask Max for his phone. My hands are shaking so hard, but I press in Paris’s number and start to leave a message. “I’m here at Vegas Mike’s,” I say.
My brain is reeling. Everything is imploding, each dream folding in on itself, collapsing and collapsing, pulling pieces of my heart with it.
I’m still speaking into the phone when my stepfather turns around.
He gets up from the Haywire machine and starts toward me, head cocked and eyes narrowed. That’s when I hear her.
“Stay away from her,” Paris says, hand in her pocket. She’s walked out of the ladies’ room. She’s wearing jeans and a baggy hoodie I’ve never seen before and her hair is pulled back, tight, in a single braid. She looks thinner than two days ago and exhausted but otherwise the same.
“No,” I say. “Paris. Don’t.” The hoodie pocket looks heavy, sagging. My heart rockets. Maureen’s gun?
But I run to her anyway, leaving Max, ignoring my mother, swerving around my stepfather, whose eyes have that slightly unfocused look from too much time staring at the electronic slots. Something huge is about to happen, but it doesn’t matter. The only important thing is Paris.
Her eyes dart from me to Tommy and then to me again.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says, voice soft and pleading. “You’re in LA. Why the hell aren’t you in LA?” She sees Max then, and her voice catches, just a little. “You said you’d take her. Why didn’t you make her stay away?”
I cross the carpet, grabbing for her, ignoring everything else. “Are you okay?” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “You should have told me. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shakes her head, gaze sliding back to Tommy. Her hand has not moved from that sagging pocket.
“Tell me,” I say. “It’ll be okay, Paris. Don’t worry. I’m back. I know you. . . . I’m back. I’m here. He’s not going to hurt you anymore.”
I slide my gaze to Tommy. “How could you?” I say, but I don’t think he hears me.
He takes another step, looking from Paris to me and then over my head toward Mom’s blackjack table. I do not turn around.
“What the hell are you girls up to?”
I should have known. I should have stayed. I should have figured it out.
Around us, the casino noises continue. People betting and drinking and laughing, the smoky air thick as fog. Someone shouts joyfully as a slot starts ringing.
“He’s not going to touch you again,” I say. “You don’t have to . . . I’m sorry, Paris. I thought because . . . I never would have . . . But I figured it out. . . . Paris, please. Don’t.”
“You were supposed to stay away,” my sister says.
I pull on her arm, but she shakes me off. “Let’s go,” I say. “We’ll go somewhere. Wherever you want. Don’t look at him. Just look at me.”
But my own gaze returns to Tommy anyway. Locks in and holds there. For one small second, I think I see fear.
“Leo?” Max is on the other side of me now.
“I don’t want you here, Max,” I say. “You can’t be here anymore.” I know none of this makes any sense to him.
My sister turns to face our stepfather.
“I want you out of our house,” Paris says, voice like ice, but she reaches her fre
e hand and somehow, without looking, finds mine. “You are not going to come near us ever again.”
“What’s this about, Leo?” Tommy steps toward us. A muscle ticks in his thin jaw. His eyes are dark and wide. He doesn’t think I’ll say it. Why would I now?
“It’s okay, Leo.” Paris tightens her grip on my hand, but does not remove whatever is in her pocket.
The fear inside me pulses stronger, making my fingers feel numb.
“C’mon,” I tell her, voice cracking. “We can’t stay here.”
“Paris,” Max says. “Let your sister help you. She knows what you asked me to do. It’s over now. Whatever . . . You don’t have to . . . It’ll be okay.”
“Shut up, Max,” Paris says, tightening her grip on me again. I tug to free myself, but my sister is very strong.
A Vegas Mike girl appears as if out of nowhere, bee-lining to Tommy, a tray of wings and fries and two beers in her hands.
“Got your order, T,” she says, smiling, her ass tight in her tiny shorts, boobs spilling from the low cut-tank. “Extra spicy. Miller draft.” She offers the food to him, but Tommy doesn’t take it, which seems to throw her.
“Go back to the kitchen, Crystal.” This voice belongs to my mother, advancing fast, high heels digging into the cheap carpet. She has either left her table or the pit boss has let her leave, but either way here she is, joining the party. Her face is pale under her makeup, which includes so much mascara that even with all this going on I find myself wondering how she will ever get it off.
“But he ordered it, didn’t you, T?”
“And I’m un-ordering it,” my mother says tightly. “Go. Now.”
“Tommy’s leaving, Mom,” Paris says. “Just so you know. He’s packing up as soon as he walks out of here and he’s getting the fuck out of our house and he’s not coming back.”
Mom’s mouth opens and shuts, a fish on a line. “What the hell are you talking about? Where have you been? Both of you?” She looks at Tommy briefly, but her eyes settle on Max. “What have you gotten my girls into?”
“Ms. Hollings,” Max says slowly. “You need to ask Paris. She needs to tell you what’s been going on.”
“Leo,” Paris says. She is still holding my hand, looser now, a casual hold, like we are about to skip down the street. Her voice is gentle and that scares me more. Her hoodie pocket is still sagging with what I know is Maureen’s gun.
“Leo,” Tommy Davis says, voice soft, but I hear something sharp underneath. “What’s going on here with you two? Your mother’s been worried sick.” He holds his hands up like he did the other night in Paris’s room.
I want to be on the beach again, the Pacific stretching out blue and endless, churros frying in that little stand up on the pier, the white statue of Saint Monica waiting for me on the street.
With a swiftness that takes me by surprise, my sister places both hands gently on either side of my face. She leans in. Her eyes are dark, and against my skin the side of her thumb feels ragged, like she’s been chewing on it. This does not make her any less beautiful. Paris Hollings, my strange and fragile and wonderful sister.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because my absence in so many ways has betrayed her, but she shakes her head.
“Leo,” Paris says, her voice a whisper. “You need to listen. He never touched me. But you’re back here now and you need to tell the truth. You need to say it.”
I stand very, very still. The noise and people and even the Texas Tina machine playing a tinny loud country song that absurdly reminds me of Max fade away. It is just me and Paris.
I try to look away. She holds me tight. “The truth, Leo,” she says quietly. Gently. And then she lets me go.
I don’t want to look at Max’s face, but I see it anyway—watch the understanding flicker like a candle barely lit and then burning—and I look away.
Because how could he not know, really? I’ve been telling him in one way or the other since we left Vegas.
I contemplate running, but that’s all I’ve been doing. The panic has filled every piece of me. In my head I see the ocean again, vast and deep and unknowable. I imagine it covering me, sinking below the surface. But I think now it would only spit me out on the sand, naked and exposed.
That’s the thing with secrets. Eventually, something pries them loose for everyone to see.
Mom is staring at Tommy. The one who brought us here to the desert where nothing has ever been the same. “What’s going on?” she asks, directing this not to us but to him.
My mother is many things—not all of them good—but in the end, she is just like the rest of us, wanting to believe that everything will turn out okay.
“It has to stop,” Paris says.
There’s a crowd now, but not a big one. There are many distractions in Vegas Mike’s. We are just a small group of people clumped together, talking, and a waitress still standing with us, extra-spicy wings on her tray going cold.
“Leo,” Max says. He has a way of saying my name that I could learn to like, but this will probably be the last time he says it.
“Just do it,” I tell Paris, wanting it over. “Please.”
I am not sure what it is I want her to do. Or if I am, the words don’t come. I just want it over.
She looks at me, tears in her eyes. “No,” she says.
“That’s why you came here,” I tell her.
“No,” she says.
“Paris,” my mother says. “Has someone hurt you?” She can’t say the rest of it, but I see it in her eyes.
Tommy edges toward me. Or maybe he’s edging away from my mother. I don’t want to look at him, but he won’t drop his gaze and so I stand frozen, the truth too big and too awful and I can’t. I just can’t.
He keeps on closing the distance. I suppose that’s all he can think to do.
Paris reaches back into her sagging pocket. The entire world has burrowed into my lungs, heaving in and out.
And then there is Max stepping between us, his body in front of mine, one arm stretched to press against me. To protect me.
“Get away from her,” he says to Tommy. His arm stays pressed against me, firm and warm. A gift I do not deserve.
This is why I finally end it.
“Paris,” Mom says again, not looking anywhere else. “Has Tommy hurt you?” She skirts around it still, but we all know what she means.
“No,” I say, breaking. “Not Paris. Me.”
“Liar,” Tommy says, his voice furious, but now I can hear the fear in his voice. In my head I see him, and the times he’s come into my room.
Not Paris. Not Paris. Me.
TWENTY
THE FIRST TIME, ALL I KEPT THINKING WAS: THIS ISN’T HAPPENING. NOT in our house. Not to me.
When he was done, he said, “You can’t tell your mother,” zipping himself back up. “You know she won’t believe you, Leo. This stays between you and me.”
The panic rose so fast, I almost threw up.
I lay there as he left my room, knocking into Tiny Tim on his way out. The skeleton—the one I’d showed him so proudly that day we moved in—crashed to the floor. I cradled it in the dark for the rest of the night, both of us broken.
And when he came back, I had no idea how to stop him. Because if I stopped him I had to tell. And how could I tell this? Even to Paris, to whom I had told mostly everything in my life. Paris, who needed the world pretty and perfect. I was the strong one. That’s how it worked between us.
The last time, I nicked my arm on my nightstand, trying to push him off. That was the cut Paris had seen. Somehow she knew. Finally, she knew.
And then she saved me.
Max stands a distance away, watching, shoving his hands through his hair like this will make it all go away. His gaze never leaves me, but after a while, I don’t look at him anymore because it makes me too sad. But I know when he walks over to Paris, stepping close, letting her hand him the gun, which he tucks into his waistband under his shirt. I don’t know what he does with it
after that.
Lots of things happen then: yelling and denial and my mother cries a lot and she slaps Tommy Davis across the face, hard, the side of her wedding ring nicking his cheek and drawing blood. He presses a hand to his face, and I see the tattoo of my mother’s name still etched on his wrist.
Then casino security. Then the cops.
Somewhere in all this, Max leaves. There is no gun for anyone to find. Paris denies there ever was one. For now, that part is dropped. There is enough for the cops to do.
“You’re telling the truth?” Mom asks me like a million times, and eventually I turn away from her, too.
I ride with my sister and mother in the back of a squad car to the police station on Tropicana. We file charges and talk about restraining orders. I sit in the chair and the lady cop asks me questions and brings me coffee and a doughnut as though these things will help.
I force myself to look at Tommy Davis as another cop walks him by to a separate room. If he feels me staring, he does not turn around.
My mother cries a bunch and asks again, her voice high and shrill, if I am telling the truth. At some point Paris screams at her to shut up. She keeps crying.
Eventually, that part is over.
I tell Paris that I want to stay at Maureen’s. It is not the strangest choice, not really. I cannot go back into our house until I am sure that Tommy is gone forever and right now that hasn’t happened. He is, after all, still married to our mother. And as he somehow had a lawyer and it is his word against mine, the police have let him go, at least for now.
More arguing.
But I get my way and so somewhere around two in the morning, Paris drives me—reunited with my phone and money—to Maureen’s little house with its bright pot of flowers on the steps. She’s agreed to take me in.
“I want to stay, too,” Paris says when we arrive.
“Of course,” Maureen says. And for whatever reason, I think of that white saint statue on the beach.
After some more crying and arguing and the moment when I tell my mother that I hate her even though I probably don’t, Paris and I move ourselves temporarily into Waitress Maureen’s spare bedroom until we can find a place of our own. I will not live with my mother again for a very long time. Maybe never.