Lady Luck's Map of Vegas

by Barbara Samuel

  Although, really, she seems just fine, doesn't she? Maybe it just made her tough.

  When I wander back into the bedroom, drying my hair, there is a sound of highway traffic and nothing else. I suddenly feel very far away from everything I care about—no Jack, no Gypsy, no Dad. I think about calling Hannah, but the whole thing seems so bizarre that I don't know what I'd say. And she'll sense that I'm hiding something—the pregnancy—and I don't want to talk about it with anyone yet.

  I'm not really a talker, have always been accused of being too private, but I'm not sure how other people find it in themselves to tell you everything. It makes my skin crawl with horror to imagine it. Maybe it's being a twin. Maybe it's being my mother's daughter. Whatever. I can't stand it.

  I poke my nose through the curtains, and wish I was looking at the burly shoulders of my mountains, of Pikes Peak. Instead, there is only the neon sign, glowing thinly against the dark.

  I wonder again where Gypsy is tonight. Is she sleeping under a bridge with the Indian veteran to keep her warm, or has she found a place with a cot, a place to wash her face and hands? She's faithful about carrying a battered army backpack, and I have often loaded it with things she might need under these circumstances. Hand sanitizer, tampons, and Kleenex; pens and colored pencils, file cards, Carmex; phone numbers in case she forgets or gets hurt.

  It's something, anyway.

  To avert my creeping depression, I turn the clock radio on to a local station playing Top 40 hits, then turn off the light and open the curtains so I can see the road and the blue neon swallow on the sign. I remember, so clearly, being here with Gypsy. The two of us curled up in the chair together, our bodies tangled like a pair of kittens. There was no space where mine began and hers ended, not until quite a bit later. We slept in a double bed at home. Her smell was as familiar to me as my own.

  That night in 1973, we were waiting for my mother. She'd been gone a little less than an hour, and we had strict instructions not to go anywhere at all, not even outside. Eldora went next door to the café, and we could go get her if there was an emergency. She'd written the number on a pad of paper beside the phone.

  We rolled our eyes. “Mom,” Gypsy said. “We aren't babies.”

  I didn't like it, though, being left alone in a strange place with no familiar smells or sounds. I wanted my father's pipe smoke, the sound of him turning the pages of his newspaper. I wanted my mother to be scrubbing dishes in the kitchen and humming a show tune under her breath. At the very least, I wanted her in the room with us, smoking by the open window and tapping her nails on the table.

  But Gypsy was always much braver than I. She was the aloof one, bold and sturdy, heeding only the directives of her own heart. I was the scared one, the worried one, the one who watched out for the bad things that might happen. I knew how to get out of the house in case of a fire, how to call the police in an emergency, what to do in case a rattlesnake came out of the brush. That night, waiting for my mother to come back from the diner, I checked my mental lists for what to do in case of a fire (out the front door if it started in the back, out the back window if it started in the front), or if a bad man came to kidnap us (kick him in the ankle and run really fast).

  I was entertaining the horrible possibility that a truck could lose control, careen off the highway and smash into our room, killing us both instantly, when Gypsy turned to me and said, “They told me crosses are signals to other worlds.”

  “What?” I said. At first I thought she meant something to do with trucks.

  “Crosses. Like all the ones we saw today? They're message stations to other planets.”

  “Like The Forgotten Door?” It was a book we'd both read in a gulp recently.

  “No.” Her voice was disgusted. “That's made up. This is real. There is a little thing inside the crosses that sends information into space.”

  I tugged on the end of my sock. “Who told you that?”

  “I just know.”

  “That's stupid, Gypsy.”

  “It's true, India. There's a thing inside of them that sends out messages, and the other planets get them and send them across the galaxies to others, so everybody knows what's happening on Earth, which is the center of everything.” She chewed on her fingernail, and I didn't do anything about it, even though I was supposed to remind her not to do it. She gnawed her nails down to skin and then some, even when my mother put pepper stuff on them. “I didn't know until today that the crosses were how they did it, though.”

  I looked through the window at the stars. “Do they ever come here?”

  “Sure. They're Indians, silly. You knew that.”

  We spied my mother coming across the parking lot then, hurrying in her high heels—she always wore high heels. Her hips shifted side to side in a way that made me want to look away, and I wondered if she knew her breasts bounced a lot when she hurried. How embarrassing.

  But she brought in pieces of pie for us. “You are such good girls,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed and damp-looking. “Gypsy, I got you pecan, and India, yours is cherry. How's that?”

  “Yum!” We dug into the pie. “Can we call Daddy now?” I asked. My heart was hollow with being so far away from him. He missed us, I knew. I could think of him sitting in the living room all by himself, and it made me want to cry.

  “Not right now, honey,” my mother said. “He went to the Elk's Dinner tonight.”

  I licked my fork and thought of him in his funny hat, with his friends from the Elk's Club. At least he wasn't alone. He was probably having a good time. Which didn't make me feel any less lonely. I carried my pie over to the corner and stared out the window, wishing I could be in my own room, my own bed.

  Thirty years later, I'm sitting in a chair with bare feet, a towel around my head, watching eighteen-wheelers and low-riders and ordinary Tauruses whiz by on the road time bypassed, and I'm feeling just as hollow. I wish I had my cell phone.

  In the odd, weaving way of grief, tonight I miss my father, his calm wisdom, his easy humor. He had a big nose that seemed to get bigger every year, and bright blue eyes and long ears. He taught me to cook and how to tell jokes and change spark plugs in my car. I am grateful that he didn't have to suffer, that he died as he lived, but I still miss him.

  And I miss the sense of my sister's presence in the world. It's a hard thing to explain to a nontwin, that sense of being able to just reach out and touch her mind, or spirit. Essence, maybe. We do it as a matter of course when she's stabilized, but I can't find her when she's delusional, and it makes the world too empty. One of my greatest fears is that she'll die and I'll never be able to feel her again.

  I eye my laptop. I miss Jack most of all. I'm aching to sign on to e-mail to see if he's left a note, but I'm terrified I won't find one.

  It irks me that I'm feeling so stirred up about it. About him. All these years, I've been so good about keeping myself safe from people, making sure I never got too tangled. It was the art form at which I excelled.

  How is it that Jack slipped under my defenses?

  That first night in Manhattan, Jack took me back to his apartment, a prewar building in Hell's Kitchen that was, I would discover, incredibly spacious by New York standards, with good long windows that let in plenty of light. In the living room, he turned on a lamp and took my coat and asked me if I wanted a drink. I folded my hands. “Sure.”

  “Guinness?”

  It warmed me that he remembered. “I hear it doesn't travel well.”

  He remembered, too. “But you're being served by an Irishman, so it'll be fine.”

  He headed for the fridge and I made a circle of the room. It was more cozy and cluttered than neat. A long sofa piled with pillows and a cast-off throw and a book sat against one wall. Papers and magazines and books were stacked hither and yon. Bookcases overflowed, double stacked, triple stacked. Framed photos crowded every surface and lined the walls, along with magazine covers from many many travel publications, some in English, others not. “A
re these all yours?” I asked.

  He handed me a heavy pint glass, filled to frothy fullness with dark stout, and nodded. He pointed to several photos, “Portugal, Madagascar, South Dakota. Oregon.”

  “Madagascar! Is that the island off Africa?”

  He sipped his drink. Nodded. “This is Galway,” he said, pointing to a strip of houses and a slice of sea. The sky was low and dark over them, threatening rain. A lone girl with an umbrella walked in the street.

  “They're lonely, your photos.”

  “Are they?” He frowned in surprise, looked at them. “Not really. The idea of a photo for a magazine is to show the scenery, right?”

  “But you don't just show the scenes, do you?” I pointed. “There's either an empty chair or a lone person in most of them.”

  He was quiet for a long moment. I wondered if I'd said something wrong, and moved a little away, feeling awkward. He caught my hand. “Wait. Let me look at them a moment more.”

  I stood there and looked again, seeing if I'd perhaps been too quick to comment, but each one showed the same thing, over and over: an empty chair or bed or bench, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes only a spot in the far distance, or a single human.

  Jack looked down at me. “You're right,” he said, and did not sound happy about it. He took my glass from my hand, set it on the table. He put his down, too, and took his time turning to face me. A quiet pull moved along the lower end of my spine as I anticipated him coming closer, the smell of him, the taste. He put his hands on my face, touched my cheeks, looked intently in my eyes. “I am going to make love to you unless you stop me,” he said, and I liked him for plainly saying it.

  “I'm not stopping you,” I said quietly, and put my hands around his wrists, then his back as he bent in and settled that hot mouth on mine.

  It's so hard to put into words the difference I felt in kissing him. It wasn't so much that the actions were so different. We did the same things as any new couple. Our lips touched, our tongues danced; his hands moved down my back, pulled me tighter to him, and I wrapped him closer to me to feel his body my breasts tight against his chest, our hips crushing closer. But it felt to me like I'd always kissed some other entirely different species before this: cats, say, or antelopes.

  And it was the same as we moved to his bedroom and shed our clothes, and moved our skin into full contact. It seemed new, different, strange, magical. The sight of his white skin, the dark hair over it, his sex, his thighs, his long shins, his beautiful hands that knew exactly how to touch me. His mouth, and the heat of his tongue on my breasts. His hips, which fit my hands just right.

  All newly made.

  I barely remember the meetings the next day, but I remember every instant of that night, the first one we spent together. It snowed. We drank Guinness naked. We lit candles and talked. We kissed until we'd chapped our lips. We slept, tangled together.

  In my room at the Blue Swallow, in Tucumcari, New Mexico, I wrap my arms around my middle and prop my feet on the windowsill.

  All these years, I worked so hard to keep everyone at a distance. I built my life into something out of a book, maybe, all the pieces glittering and lovely. Pretty dishes, pretty rooms, pretty clothes. A cool job. Cool friends. A cool address. Even a cool boyfriend—is anything more cool than an Irishman these days?

  And I liked it that way. Nothing too serious, too involved, too dark. I was not one of the women I knew who ached for a baby and a husband. I shuddered when I walked by fields of five-year-old soccer players and the mothers with their sweaters and tennis shoes. I would rather die than need to drive a mini-van or mini-wagon or even a four-door, for that matter. The idea of living in the suburbs, where the topic of discussion was property taxes or the best buy on kid's coats, made me feel claustrophobic.

  One of my girlfriends, who married happily at thirty-four and had three toddlers by the time she was forty laughed at me. She said I couldn't pretend to be twenty-something forever.

  And I guess that's how it appears—that I don't want to give up my youth—but that's not it. I am perfectly all right with getting older, with being a sixty-something single, trotting the globe with my aging lover. What I can't stand thinking of is being sixty and sitting with a man who has told me everything in his entire head, a man who has lost interest in my thoughts, so we sit on that beautiful cruise with nothing to say to each other. I can't stand the idea of being a wife, instead of a lover.

  Which is weird, considering my father flat-out adored my mother every minute of my life.

  With a sigh, I get up and open a bottle of red cream soda I brought to the room with me. There are modems in the room, and I plug in my computer, fire it up, and wait for the machine to bring up the screen.

  While I'm waiting, I call my voice mail at home to make sure there is nothing from Gypsy.

  Jack.

  The electronic voice says, “You have no messages.” There is a cruel emphasis on the “no” part. With a scowl, I hang up the receiver. I dial the voice mail on the cell phone. Still nothing.

  I want to be angry, but I'm just bereft. It's possible he's been very busy all day, so I plug the phone line into my computer, dial in to my service. The connection is slow, and the laptop is ancient, so the combination means a long, long wait.

  I lean against my pillows and sip the cold, unbelievably sweet cream soda. The taste takes me back to summers in childhood, when my dad would bring home six-packs of flavored pop for Gypsy and me. I loved red cream soda and root beer. Her favorites were, ironically, orange and grape.

  The screen times out, and with exasperation, I try it again. While it crawls to life, I find my hand resting on my lower belly. A weird sense of shifting reality steals over me. Below my hand, beneath my skin, cradled in a sac of fluid and flesh, is a new life.

  No, that keeps the distance. New life could be a seed pod, a fern, a star, bursting to life in the heavens.

  This is an embryo. A human child. I close my eyes and try to sense it, the shape and presence of it. Arms, legs—or is it still at the tadpole stage?—a too-big head and eyes sealed shut. What color, I wonder? Blue like my mother's sapphire? Dark like mine and Gypsy's?

  Gray like Jack's?

  In my imagination, I can suddenly see Jack's face clearly. His forehead, slightly creased with puzzlement, his dark, thick lashes. I think of his white belly, hear his voice in my ear, murmuring something wicked down the phone lines as we sit in the dark, thousands of miles apart. With a shiver of heat, I see his face, his eyes closed as he bends over my breast and touches his lips to the tip. Slow and delicious. Such a rich and decadent imagination.

  I think of the dark things he's told me of his childhood, the bully who waylaid him and beat him up in a lane on the way home from school one day. He had pretended to his mother that he'd fallen, and plotted revenge for two years. When it came, Jack nearly killed the bully, and would have if someone hadn't pulled him off. I think of how hard he is working with the Galway tourism commission to build the tourist trade in the town.

  I think of our fantasy house on the sea, and my Jack and a dog and a cat.

  But he's never wanted children. Doesn't particularly like them, so I'll be doing it on my own. Unless I have an abortion.

  In which case, he'll be disapproving, too.

  Bastard, I think. How dare he? I didn't get pregnant by myself, and I've never wanted children either, but I sure as hell don't want to raise a child on my own!

  Panic rises, and I take a deep, long, slow breath. Just breathe, I think. It'll be fine.

  Maybe it's the vision of the house on the sea, but I feel suddenly tender toward the developing child within me. Protective. How terrible could it be, really, to be a single parent? So I'll give some things up—that fancy apartment in Denver, the late-night parties. I'll trade silk for cotton blouses that won't get ruined by spit-up.

  Drowsily I imagine the floppy-soft weight of a warm baby against my neck and shoulder, the milk-sweetness of untainted baby-breath. The
silkiness of baby hair. The unbearable smoothness of baby skin.

  When I start awake, the laptop is too hot on my legs. I glance at the clock and realize I've been soundly asleep for more than forty-five minutes. The connection timed out. Rousing myself, I click the button to sign on again, and realize I'll just fall asleep again. Instead, I turn it off, click off the light, and surrender to the ocean of sleep.

  I dream of a baby girl with black ringlets, dancing on a rocky coastline, of a border collie and a man in the distance, walking in the wind with his hands in his pockets.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Eldora, 1973

  After India goes off to bed, I make a second cocktail—bourbon and Coke—and sit in the chair right outside my room. It's a pleasant evening, with a nice breeze blowing off the desert. It smells of something spicy and clean. I light a Salem and lean back, tucking my sweater closer around me, to blow the smoke in a thick line into the air. Cars whiz by along the street, and the blue neon swallow on the motel sign buzzes faintly. I stare at it a long time. I wonder if that damned bird is a curse for me.

  Or maybe I'm my own curse, which is more likely. My own luck, all the way around, bad and good.

  Wonder, wonder where my baby girl is tonight. At least it isn't cold. That kills me, when she's gone missing and it's wintertime and she might have sandals on in the snow, or not have any place to sleep.

  India doesn't remember why Gypsy comes here, but I have my suspicions.

  I hadn't intended on stopping in Tucumcari that time with my girls. What was it, 1972? Must have been 1973. The girls had just had their eleventh birthday. Don and I bought them new bikes, with banana seats and tinsely plastic ribbons that fluttered off the grips.

  It was India who loved Route 66. She'd seen something about it somewhere, and just went into collection mode, which she always did. She'd just get a passion for something and go crazy with it. Route 66 had been the thing that whole winter, and she'd been nagging Don and me to take them on a vacation down the highway.