We head out into the evening, plunging into a Saturday night crowd that has the same background feeling as New Orleans. I think of the ad for Las Vegas that ran a couple of years ago: “What you do here, stays here.”
Sin City.
Jack offers an arm to each of us, and I admit the evening is pleasant. We take the car farther down the strip, and get out by the Sahara, where Jack can slink through, looking for the movie scenes of his youth. We eat fresh fruits and sandwiches at an excellent buffet, and while Jack plays roulette for a little while, my mother shows me her methodology for finding a “hot” slot machine.
“Everybody gets their special favorites,” she says, gesturing like Vanna White toward the machines. “Your daddy liked the ones with the sevens that line up—sevens felt lucky to him. I tend to like the ones with the doubling points—the double diamonds and ten times wins, that kind of thing. They're not so boring, you know?”
I nod. There is a dizzying variety. “Try a double diamond then.”
“All right, so then we wander and kind of let one call us.”
“Call us,” I repeat with skepticism.
“Yep.” She sashays down the rows, her red-tinted hair gleaming against her white neck, looking at the machines, focused in a way I haven't seen in her except when she's picking fabric samples or paint chips.
Men admire her, taking a second between spins on the machines to get a full look. She sometimes winks at this one, or smiles at that one. She could have a roomful of retirees at her beck and call if she so desired.
For one second, I can see her at twenty, nubile and breathtakingly beautiful, commanding the attention of the men around poker or baccarat tables, capturing the attention of a prince.
But that girl could have nothing on this seasoned beauty. No way she knew anything close to what this one knows. It makes me look forward to my own maturity.
“Here's one,” she says, stopping abruptly. “This one is a double diamond and a ten-time pay.”
“Ah! But why this one?”
She lifts a graceful shoulder and feeds in a ten-dollar bill. “Just feels right, that's all.”
But for the first few spins, it doesn't seem as if it will be any good. She wins nothing in the first five spins, and shakes her head. “And sometimes you're wrong.”
I grin.
“Really. One of the other things you've got to know is when to say when. You get caught up in your ego and hunches and you're doomed. There's nothing wrong with intuition, but you've got to use common sense, too.” She punches the button. “I'll play until I'm down five dollars, then quit.”
The rollers swing into place: a cherry, a cherry, and then a diamond. The little counting noise spins into action, and when it's finished, she has 624 coins—the six dollars she had left, plus the payoff for this round.
Next to her, a man says, “Nice.”
“Thanks.” My mother stands up and gestures for me to sit on the stool. “Now you play. We're not going to blow it all, but you may as well get some of the rush out of it. I have a feeling this is a real nice machine.”
So I settle in and play her slot machines. It's surprisingly relaxing and enjoyable—who knew? I win and lose, and when we're down to 575 coins, my mother calls it quits. “Let's cash this in and go for a little walk, huh? All this smoke can't be making you feel good.”
“Okay. I'll find Jack and let him know.”
“I'll be right here by the money cage.”
Jack is hotly engaged, not in roulette, but in poker. The lock of hair on his forehead is loose and rakish and he should be smoking a cigar. “Is this a good time to tell you something?” I ask.
“Of course!” He takes my hand.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” I ask.
“More than I would have expected,” he says.
“My mother wants to go for a walk. Do you want us to wait, or what?”
He's watching the game from the corner of his eye. “I'm winning just now. Would you mind if I met you back at the hotel?”
“Not at all.”
“All right then, I'll see you there.” He squeezes my hand. Not even in Vegas would he find kissing in public acceptable.
My mother and I head into the night. “I was going to go down and look at the Thunderbird, but the woman in there just told me it's gone.”
“Why did you want to go there?”
She sighs, tugs on the end of her scarf. “For that, sweetheart, I need a drink.”
I point to the cocktail lounge. “There?”
“No, let's get out of here. I think there might be something a little farther on.” She's agitated as we walk, lights a cigarette, fiddles with the ends of her scarf. There's a sidewalk vendor selling soft drinks and hot dogs. Several park benches are arranged around it. “Let's just get a Coke, shall we?”
Her nervousness is making me nervous. “You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, Mom.”
“No, I need to.” We settle on the benches. “The Thunderbird wasn't far from here,” she says, pointing. “I really did want to see it again.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Eldora, 1962
I had never been in love, but I fell head over heels for Alex Morelli. I loved everything about him—the deep timbre of his laughter, the way he sang bawdy little songs in the shower, the sight of his long back when he was asleep.
It went on for three years. And I will say they were a good three years. Our symbol was the Thunderbird, which is a Navajo symbol for “happiness unlimited.” We met at the Thunderbird motel, and he bought me my Thunderbird car, and we even had some special stationery printed with Thunderbirds on it. I kept my rooms at the Dunes, which Alex discreetly paid for through a special account. I still went out with my girlfriends and sat with a high roller once in a while, but mainly I lived for Alex, and he lived for me.
Happiness unlimited.
We had a lot in common. Movies had given us a vision of a world beyond where we'd been born. His mother was a drunk, and his father had left them when he was young. We liked cards and cigarettes and martinis served icy cold. We traveled some and I loved that most of all—we went to Palm Springs a few times, and to New York City a couple of times, and once all the way to Vancouver for a secret, weeklong tryst. We said it was our honeymoon. It felt like it.
But Las Vegas is a small town. The secret was bound to come out. Perhaps one or the other of us helped it along once in a while, even, hoping to bring things into the open. A quick divorce, a resolution, a fresh start somewhere else—we dreamed of disappearing in Europe, to Monaco or one of the other gambling meccas we'd heard tales of. With his knowledge of casinos, surely there was somewhere we could be happy and productive.
I'm sure we both knew it was a pipe dream, that our time together, one way or another, would be brief. It lent the days a certain sweetness.
It ended where it began, at the Thunderbird hotel on a February night. Alex was making love to me. We were laughing, though I have often tried to remember why and can't seem to pull the details into my living memory.
His wife, Sofia, burst into the room. Alex jumped up and tried to hide me from her, but she shot him before he could get very far. I squeezed my eyes tight and waited, but she didn't shoot me.
She lowered the gun. A beautiful woman, with lush red lips and eyes like a Moroccan harem girl. I was starting to shiver with reaction, and there was hot fluid pooling at my midsection, and Alex's head was on my knee. His eyes were open, and my hands trembled as I touched his brow. And still, she just stood there, looking at me, the gun dangling in her hand.
There was a strange, whining sound in the room, and I figured out it was me, whimpering, oh God oh God oh God oh God.
I loved him so much, but it was too deep, too wild, too unbelievable for tears. I raised my head and looked at Sofia, who was beautiful and pouty
“Get it over with,” I said.
Sofia shook her head. “No. I want you to live with this for the rest of your life. I want you t
o wake up screaming when you're sixty-five.” She smiled and dropped the gun on the floor.
It seemed that it took hours for the police to come. Hours I sat with my lover's blood pooling in my lap, hours I stroked his face and breathed in the smell of his hair and said my good-byes. The blood was hot, but it cooled quickly. I was a mess by the time the cops came. I don't remember much about the rest of the night, just waking up in my friend Kitten's apartment the next day and realizing I was in big, big trouble.
Chapter Thirty-six
India
“Jesus, Mom. How did you stand it?”
She lifts her shoulder, wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. “What could I do, really? Live with it or not live with it.” Wind rattles the palm fronds overhead. “And there were some more pressing problems.” She looks at me. “This is the last part of the story India.”
I'm afraid when she says that. But she is my mother, and there has been murder and mayhem in her life, and I always thought she was just irritating and cloying. For the last time on this trip, I say, “Tell me.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Eldora, 1962
The murder made the papers, and by morning, my name was mud. One thing a mistress must be is discreet. Having my name splashed across the headlines in connection to such a lurid story pretty much assured I'd never have another patron in Las Vegas again. Sofia was arrested and she'd eventually do some time, but in the meantime, her papa was pretty pissed off. And he was connected enough that he got whatever he wanted. I lost my suite at the Dunes, though the manager was nice enough to give me a few days to pack things up.
Kitten let me stay with her for a week or two, until I could figure out what my next move should be. Not that there were a lot of choices. I did have a small amount of money tucked away, along with the jewels I'd been given and bought for myself over the years.
If not for a certain other problem, I might have just gone back to L.A. until it all died down, or found myself a partner and opened a restaurant or something. Unfortunately, there was a rather huge pressing problem: I was pregnant.
The world is not the same place it is now. Abortions were illegal and dangerous, though I could have found a doctor to do it if I'd chosen to look. The truth is, though, I wanted my baby. I was utterly destroyed by Alex's death, and the only silver lining was the truth of his seed in my womb. I couldn't, realistically do it on my own. That left one option: I'd have to find a man to marry me. Quick.
That weekend there was a convention of engineers in town, and I dressed up in my finest dress, perfumed my hair, and walked straight and saucy into the casinos, looking for the right man. I steered clear of the places where I'd be immediately recognized, the places where my pit-boss friends would hustle me out in three minutes—the Sands, the Dunes, the Flamingo, the Thunderbird. Instead, I cruised the Riviera and the Tropicana, which I'd never much liked. I knew exactly what I was looking for.
The man would be middle-aged, probably from the Midwest somewhere. A good man, one who mowed his lawn and had been working five days a week since he got out of school at twenty-two. White collar. No children—the last was my rule, not part of the marking game. It was one thing to steal a woman's husband. Quite another to steal a father from his babies.
And he would have to have that look in his eye that I'd learned to identify a long time ago, back in Elk City. In those days, I didn't know what it meant. Now I did. It was a recognition of mortality, a slightly bewildered and panicked understanding of the fact that yes, you, too, will die. And you're not a movie star or a bank president or even all that important. You're just another body that'll be forgotten by humanity the second you're in the ground.
Don't ask me why women are not as frightened by this realization when it comes creeping into our heads. And it does, of course. Every thinking person feels it. Most women don't seem to need a new man or a new car or to prove that they won't die. Maybe we're just more sensible.
Most women, anyway.
Anyway, the rest of it is pretty much true as I've told it to the girls all these years. I met Don at the Tropicana, and I saw immediately that he was the one. He filled all the requirements, but there was more: I liked him. His sapphire-colored eyes, and his little chuckle. His hands were badly chapped and needed hand cream, which I wanted to put on him. To my surprise, I didn't have to pretend to enjoy his kissing. It was tender and passionate and his lips fit mine in a good way. He told me he was married before he touched me and I liked his honor. I told him it didn't matter. That I'd never met anyone like him and I just wanted him to hold me.
And I don't tell this part, but Don knew it. When he made love to me in his room, where the air smelled inexplicably of chocolate cake, I wept softly. When he held me, all night, his arms around my body, I wept some more. I confessed that I'd lost someone important to me, and he kissed my shoulder and told me he hoped he could help me heal that wound as much as I'd helped him heal his own.
We spent three days together. Inseparable. We wandered the Strip holding hands and drinking Cokes with ice. He took me to a show. We ate eggs in the morning and steaks at buffets in the night. In between, we made love and made love and made love.
I will admit it was quite pleasurable. He was as good a lover as a kisser.
At the end of his conference, Sunday morning, we held each other and cried. I didn't have to fake tears, either. I was exhausted and pregnant and praying this would work. He was also a big, sturdy man and he knew how to hold me. He loved me, he said, but his wife loved him and would be lost without him.
I said I understood.
He said he would never forget me. That I had changed something in his heart and he would always be grateful.
I said I loved him, too. And oddly, when I said it, I meant it.
I let him go. I wished him a nice life. I told him, with tears running down my young and beautiful face, splashing down on my plump breasts, that if he ever changed his mind, he knew where to find me.
Of course he did not call. I called him once, at his job, and said, “I just want you to know that you are the most wonderful man I ever met.” He choked. “Eldora, I need to see you.”
“I don't think that would be a good idea, Don. You are too good a man. It would ruin you.”
Sometimes I think now, How did I know it wouldn't ruin him? What if he'd self-destructed? What if, in his guilt, he'd fallen to drink or despair?
The truth is, though, I gave him a reason to do what he most wanted to do: I was pregnant. He had no children. He lusted for me most desperately, but he couldn't have left his wife because of lust. He needed a higher motive.
I wrote him a letter and told him I was pregnant. I said I didn't expect him to take care of me or anything like that, but I thought he should know. I said I had a good job as a secretary at a bank and that I'd been wearing a wedding ring since I got there so nobody would think I was a single mother.
He came to Las Vegas three days later. When he arrived at my apartment, haggard but joyful, I promised myself that he would never, ever know that my child did not belong to him. He would never, for one second, believe anything less than I absolutely adored him. I vowed to take care of him for the rest of his life.
And so I did.
Chapter Thirty-eight
India
When my mother stops talking, I say with some sharpness, “Well, except for that one little breach when you stole his daughters and took off across the country with somebody else.”
She bows her head, nods. Cigarette smoke catches on a breeze, heads my way, then zooms off in the other direction as if it is alive. I stand. “Let's go back to the hotel.”
Eldora follows me. Inside the car she says, “I just needed someone to know the whole story.”
Furious, I spit the word: “Why?”
“I don't know.” Her voice is thin. “Maybe I just needed one person on the planet to know who I really am.”
“Who would that be, exactly, huh?” The words are in my mouth, ready t
o fall—slut? homewrecker? manipulating, lying Jezebel?—but I clamp my lips together hard.
“Who else could I tell, India?”
I turn toward her, eyes narrowed. “Don't you dare.” Enunciating each word precisely. “Don't you make yourself into some victim of circumstance. Most of it, I got it, Mom. I got all of it up to where you had to take my father away from me.”
She has the grace to bow her head, studies her hands. Red and blue neon flashes over her palms and wrists. “You might as well hate me for who I really am. You've been hating me all this time anyway.”
“Oh, please. Grow up, Mom.” I start the car with a slammed foot to the accelerator. When she's about to speak again, I hold up my hand. “Not another word tonight. Not one more.”
She's quiet.
But I can't be. “How can you live with it, Mom? All the pain you caused those women?”
“What choice do I have, India? I mean, I live with it or I die.” Her voice is low and resonant when she says, “How can a person undo sins committed thirty years ago?”
Scowling, I say, “I'm forty. Forty years.”
“Yeah, those, too.”
I call Jack on his cell phone and he answers with the sound of slot machines binging and pinging in the background. “We're back at the hotel. Take your time.”
“Is everything all right, India?”
“Fine.”
But of course it isn't. Nothing is fine. And when Jack arrives forty-five minutes later, that's what I tell him: “My mother is a bitch, my sister is crazy and missing, and my father is not really my father.”
He crosses the room, concerned, and puts his hands on my arms. “India!”
I can't stand the touch, and move away, pacing the length of the hotel room. He steps back, leans one hip against the wall. “What's this about?”
“My mother the liar. The man who I thought was my father isn't. So, that's one more thing I thought I had and life has taken. I'm tired of it. What's the point in wanting anything?”
Lady Luck's Map of Vegas Page 24