That night I resisted him. And for ten more attempts afterward. You must remember my situation. I was quite comfortable in my world, sitting close to the knee of an aging rancher who was playing big or the elbow of a businessman who'd just rolled the dice for the big time. The pit bosses were my friends, and I was loyal, and they knew it. I'd only happened into my liaison with the prince, but it was a perfect arrangement. I liked him, I did not find his touch repugnant, and there was genuine pleasure in our laughing together, but there was no spark from my side. I was in no danger of losing my heart to Rajid. He also only came to town once every few months, so my time was my own for the most part. He paid for an elegant set of rooms in the Dunes, where he sometimes required me to host elegant little suppers for associates. It wasn't a hardship. I discovered those years in the diner had taught me a lot about things, and the years in between, watching the wealthy wives of high rollers, I'd learned a great deal more. I had a talent for making people comfortable.
And I did not lack for girlfriends. There was a showgirl named Jackie, a beauty from the South who'd left a baby and an abusive husband behind in Biloxi; Kitten, the hairdresser who'd come to Las Vegas from Bakersfield and loved the glamour of being backstage with the breathlessly beautiful women who shone on the stages. Kitten showed me how to apply makeup as if it were done by an expert. She adored my rooms and my prince. She was not a particularly pretty woman, but we were of a size, and she loved getting some of my clothes when I tired of them.
Anna was my best friend. We met one night at the slot machines at the Sands, both of us wearing identical creamy white cocktail dresses that suited our redheadedness. She was peeved at first, but I made her laugh, and we had martinis, under the guise of a handsome bartender named Bill who was known to look out for the locals.
Anna was the second wife of a casino executive, a former showgirl who knew the ins and outs of the city. She was the one most horrified when I confessed that Alex had been pursuing me.
“Have you heard all the stories about his wife?” Anna asked me.
“A few. She's jealous and temperamental.”
“And beautiful and possessive and crazy. Most of these wives are good girls from New Jersey. They look the other way when their husbands have affairs. Not her. She's spoiled and haughty and beautiful and her father is a big-time mob boss, so she gets away with murder. That's also how Alex got connected.”
I lit a cigarette. “I get it, Anna. I get it.”
So I stayed away from Alex Morelli. Ten times I ran into him and ten times I eluded him.
The eleventh was a night in full summer, nearly midnight after a show at the Sahara. I was by myself, outside on a little patio where the air was coming cool from the desert at last. I stood against a balustrade, taking tiny, tiny sips of a martini so it wouldn't give me a headache the next day, and listening to the music coming through the open doors.
“It seems,” he said from behind me, “that we are fated to meet.”
His hair was loosening from the way he combed it back from his face, and a lock fell on his cheekbone. Every molecule in me shivered and he saw it. “You are so beautiful,” he said quietly. “Will you just dance with me one time?”
I looked around the open area and there was no one watching. “Once,” I said, and shivered as I stepped forward, as I felt his hands light on my own. I looked up to him and my breath caught. He put my glass down on a nearby table and we stepped close to each other. I felt the front of his thighs along the front of mine, and the brush of his chest in the air just beyond my breasts.
We danced in a slow, easy way, our eyes locked as we moved. At the end of the song, he stopped and I saw him swallow. When I would have stepped away, he said, “No,” and kissed me.
And that, as they say, was that. It was magical, that kiss. Everything in me came alive, as if I had swallowed iridescent paint and it glowed along my ribs and my belly and hips, and came out of my mouth in powdery puffs of barely visible glitter. His tongue touched mine and all the desire I'd never felt for others coalesced in a burning need for this man.
“I haven't slept in six months for thinking of you,” he said, and his hands were big around my face. He smelled of Canoe, a scent I still associate with a shiver down my spine. “I don't know why. It's crazy. But I have to know you.”
He took me to a hotel toward the north end of the Strip, not as often frequented by his crowd, the Thunderbird. There, we made love for the first time, and long into the night, we drank champagne and talked. We talked about everything, about big dreams, his and mine, about the hard-luck tales that brought us here—his not so different from mine, nor his way of managing it. He was from a bad world in Newark, New Jersey, and left school at fifteen to makes his way up the ranks of numbers runners. He seduced his boss, emotionally, and then his boss's daughter, physically. He used his wits and his good looks, just as I had.
He was straight with me. He told me he could never leave his wife, that not only would his career be over, but probably his life. He said it with a smile, but it put a knife through my heart.
“I'm not as worried about your father-in-law as I am about your wife.”
Alex, lying with the sheet tangled around his waist, nodded. “That's why we have to be careful. She's crazy, and I don't mean like the kind of crazy that makes you have a fit or throw things. She's the only person who really matters to herself, you know what I mean?”
I nodded. “We'll see how it goes, then, huh, lover?”
He swallowed, his nostrils flaring. “No. This is for us.”
And I knew it, too. I tasted my soul mate on his lips. It made me weep, and when he made love to me and kissed away the tears on my face, licking them away, one by one, I knew I had lost myself to him.
Chapter Thirty-three
India
And suddenly, here we are: Las Vegas.
I've seen it a thousand times in pictures and on television and in movies. The desert sun has sunk low in the wide sky by the time we get there, and the lights are just beginning to stand out against the dusk. It looks both exactly the same and not at all what I'd been expecting— both more overwhelming and less tacky than I'd imagined. The sheer scale of the hotels is overwhelming—they ramble for the length of city blocks, one after the other rising into the violet-stained sky thousand and thousands and thousands of hotel rooms. We pass the New York, New York and I think of the first time I flew to the city to see Jack, and how entranced I'd been. The casino makes me laugh at the delight and absurdity of it. It's a marvel of design.
When we first spied the Strip, miles and miles away—a sudden sprouting of buildings visible from a very long way away—my mother said, “Everything is so tall!” Since then, she's been absolutely silent.
It's easy to find the Flamingo and find a place to park. We enter from the eastern side, and my mother has on her cat-eye sunglasses. She takes them off as we approach the doors. “Now, there,” she says, gesturing with an earpiece toward a three-story wing of rooms with a George Jetson Design Approval rating of 8.5, “that's what the old Las Vegas looked like.” Her eyes follow the rise of the towers all around us with awe. “Gawd. Imagine how much money is pouring into this town.”
“Can't go wrong capitalizing on vice.”
There is such a huge amount of money and the hotels are so gigantic that I am expecting the usual Hilton-esque spirit inside. That hush of soft good breeding, invisible service, sleek operations. And the tone of the doorman is quite the same, but inside, everything is different.
It's a slam of noise and light. We have to walk quite a distance to the check-in desk, following a path woven into the carpet. It loops through acres and acres of slot machines, all binging and clanging and ringing. There's a funny electronic undernote I hadn't expected, a happy sort of sound that makes me want to walk a little more jauntily, and I wonder with narrowed eyes if someone has done research into the sounds humans find appealing.
Of course they have.
As we pass a de
ck of machines, an alarm goes off and a light on top of a slot machine starts flashing red and white. An Asian woman with heavily lined lids and expensive shoes turns without much excitement to look for an attendant.
“She just won big,” Eldora said. “The light goes off when the payoff is too big to pay with quarters.”
It's dizzying and disorienting, and even as I think it, I know it's supposed to be, that the sounds and the lights and the artificial darkness of no windows combine to keep people dropping money into those little slots. The machines stretch in beeping silver splendor as far as I can see in any direction. Zillions of them, and in every casino, there are zillions and zillions more. Slot machines into infinity, and people feeding pennies, nickels, quarters, dollars into them. It's more than my mind can take in.
Next to me, Eldora has slowed, her eyes narrowed as she looks at one machine, then another, and another. “Here's my favorite,” she says, and stops in front of one with Mylar-looking diamonds on it. “Hold on for just a minute, will you? I'll just play a couple of dollars.”
I'm curious anyway, and it's not like we have anything to do but this. “Sure.” I settle on the stool next to her.
She feeds the machine a five-dollar bill and punches the button. The reels spin around and around, making that happy, anticipatory electronic music. Nothing lines up. Eldora punches the button again, and gets three bars, which feeds her fifteen coins.
“Nice,” she says.
Hits it again. Nothing. Again, which gives her a cherry and six coins. She's up to forty-three coins from twenty-five. This has my attention.
But then it's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. She gets another cherry along about eighteen coins, and plays a little longer, but before long, she's lost the five dollars and we're walking away.
“I couldn't stand to just feed my money to those monsters,” I say.
“There are some tricks to it. You want to find a machine that's paying pretty regular. Eventually, you'll nearly always lose whatever you've brought in with you, except maybe on video poker, but the trick is to find a machine that'll let you play for a long time on your five dollars or whatever. That one was a little bit cold, but it paid out right away, so it had me going for a minute.”
“The secrets of slots,” I say.
She smiles. “Laugh if you will, but it's been working for me for more than forty years.”
Check-in is fast and easy, and on the elevators to our rooms, my mother says, “I'd like to just wander around a little on my own, if you wouldn't mind. We can meet for supper later on, maybe eight or so?”
“That sounds good. I'm tired.” I'd also been hoping for a message from Jack when we checked in, and I'm fighting disappointment that there's nothing there.
I leave my mother on her floor and go up to my own, and on the way, get lost in the labyrinthine circles of rooms. I have to backtrack twice and finally I'm in near tears when I stop a maid, who gets me pointed in the right direction.
Headed firmly toward my room at last, I wonder how many maids it takes to clean this hotel every day. How many maids in each hotel? How many waitresses to bring cocktails and Cokes to the gamblers, how many more to staff the buffets and restaurants? How many cooks, security guards, cabdrivers? It's dizzying.
With a swipe of the electronic card key, my door blips a green light to let me open it, and I think: What if there was an electrical outage along the Strip, as there was in New York recently. What would happen? How could the people in the casinos find their way out? How could the guests get out of here?
It's making me feel panicky and with a jerk, I open the curtains to give me a sense of space. I'm overlooking another casino, and the street, and in the distance the mountains, limned along the jagged top edge with the last dying rays of the sun.
Breathe.
After washing my face and settling my things, I pick up the phone and dial my voice mail. Nothing from Gypsy. One message from Jack. “Call me on my cell as soon as you get to Las Vegas,” he says.
Which I am more than happy to do. I'm feeling overwhelmed and emotional and even very close to weepy. Is this what pregnancy will do to me? Am I going to be a fainting violet person for the next six or seven months?
No. Because I can't do this, have this baby. As Jack's cell phone rings in my ear, I'm so worn out that I can't even think of the reasons why I thought I could or couldn't. None of it makes any sense.
“Hello, this is Jack. Leave a message.”
My heart plummets. I'd been so wanting to hear his actual voice. “Hi, Jack, it's me. We're in the Flamingo, give me a call. Room Fourteen sixty-two. I'll be around for a couple of hours, then we're going out.”
I hang up and stretch out on the bed, which is big and firm and rather deliciously comfortable. As if the cells in my body have each been holding on to their own tight coil of tension, I feel a sudden wave of release. If it were water, the bed would be soaked.
It seems impossible that it has only been four days since we left Colorado Springs. I feel as if I've been with Lewis and Clark, as if I've seen the entire history of the twentieth century. My hands rest on my belly and I absently rub my thumbs together, thinking of my mother as a young woman sashaying through a casino with her hair in a bouffant style, one of those glorious dresses on her curvy bod. It makes me smile softly.
Amazing.
A knock jerks me out of a doze. “Hang on,” I say, and take in a deep breath, blink hard as I roll off the bed heavily and pad to the door. It's likely my mother, but I really did get the impression she wanted to get out by herself. I peer through the peephole.
And yank open the door to Jack, standing there in his black leather coat, his hair falling in that rakish way across his forehead. Just the sight of him makes me very nearly swoon. I put a hand to my head, and then he's there, with one arm around my shoulders, and his nose next to my cheek. “God, I've been worried to death.”
The smell of leather from his jacket, the perfume of his skin, the exquisitely pleasing sound of his cello voice in my ear slam my senses, and I turn to him, throw my arms around his shoulders. “Oh, Jack, I miss you so much when I don't see you!”
He's kissing me then, his hands on my face, my arms around his neck. It's moments before we are lying on the bed together, moments more before we are naked, kissing, burrowing into each other, closer and closer. It makes me want to cry.
Afterward we lie together in a tangle of limbs, my head on his chest. “When did you get here?” I ask.
“Last night. I was expecting to surprise you then.”
I groan. “Instead I spent the night in grim Gallup, with a snowstorm.”
“I made do by taking a survey of the costumes of various casino cocktail waitresses.”
Chuckling, I raise my head to look at him. “And what did you discover?”
“I quite like the Paris ones, but the Venetian wins.”
“Mmm.” His hand smoothes over my upper back. His lashes are black on his cheeks. I touch his mouth, seeing my girl with black curls tumbling down her back, her little red lips. How did I allow myself to fall so in love?
But I have. It fills me like the water of a stream, rushing clear and honest and true through the heart of me. Resettling my head on his chest, I say, “How do you like it? I know you've always wanted to visit.”
“Dazzling. Everything is so big, so bright.”
“Supersized.”
A small laugh. “Yes, like America.” He slides down, faces me, tugs the cover over our heads so that we're lying face-to-face in a cocoon. “How are you?” he asks quietly.
“Better, now that I'm looking at you.”
“I went mad, worrying.”
“Me, too.”
“What do you want to do, India?”
“Let's not talk about it right now, okay?” I put my hand on his lean, handsome cheek. “Let me just enjoy the moment.”
He kisses my brow. “All right, then.” He pulls the covers from our heads, but we don't get up. “
What's the plan for this evening?”
“My mother wants to see some of the places she used to frequent.”
“I'll look forward to that. She can give us the historic tour.”
I laugh. “Something like that.” I pause, thinking about all she's told me. “What an amazement she's turning out to be. Do you know she had an Arabian prince as a lover for a time? And another great love, a mobster.”
“How exciting.” He tucks a lock of my hair around my left ear, his fingers trailing along the edge. I see the weariness around his eyes, see the fact that he is not young, not by a long shot. “Did you bring along one of those dresses?”
“No, but you will love them, I promise. Next time I come to New York, I'll bring one.”
He nods. “You look tired.”
“I am.”
“Perhaps you should nap a little.”
“I don't want you to go anywhere.”
“No,” he says. “I'll stay right here.”
Chapter Thirty-four
India
My mother is waiting for me by the front desk. She's dressed in one of the cocktail dresses, a blue silk number with a neckline she's draped expertly with a gossamer scarf. Her figure is excellent, full of breast and narrow of waist, those long, long legs ending in naked high-heel sandals. She's smoking a cigarette, perfectly at ease as she watches the people stream by. She looks like a movie star, aging but still gorgeous. People peer at her, trying to figure out if she's someone famous.
She catches sight of me, then Jack, and a smile spreads over her mouth. “Jack!” she cries, and kisses his cheeks as if she's known him forever. “I'm so glad to see you again! What do you think of our Las Vegas?”
“Astonishing.”
“Do you play the games?”
“A little roulette.” He inclines his head, giving her the half smile that slays me every time. “Mainly I save my gambling for the business world.”
“And love?” she inquires, arching a brow.
He winks at me. “That, too.”
Lady Luck's Map of Vegas Page 23