by Jess Walter
Bobby’s not here, she said. I’m the only one home. She flipped a sandal up and caught it with her toes. Still feeling cavalier . . . Nick? The way she hung on my name (Nick-ah) I swear it was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard.
Lisa was my first. There was something teasing and irresistible about her. We had to sneak around because she was so young and because Bobby was so overprotective. She’d leave the basement window open at night, and I’d crawl in, lower myself onto the air-hockey table, and go into her bedroom. She always kept her socks on for some reason. The sex was amazing, although, to be fair, I was seventeen and sex was pretty much amazing by definition. Still, this thing between us only lasted a couple of months. She was the one to end it; I think she got bored.
Rausch knows none of this.
A FEW WEEKS before we graduated from high school, I heard a rumor from my sister’s friend: that Lisa Rausch had gotten an abortion. It was quite a while after we finished sleeping together. So it probably wasn’t mine. She was fifteen. I never said a word to her about it. This is another thing Bobby knows nothing about.
IN VEGAS, Bobby insists that we stick and move, stick and move. When I ask why, he says, Because when you’re asking the kinds of questions we’re asking, it’s not long before the people you’re looking for . . . start looking for you.
I can’t imagine the questions we’re asking causing anyone to look for us. In fact, for the first three days, we only ask the one question: Have you seen this girl? We stagger up and down the strip asking our one question, collecting nudie cards from snappers.
Sometimes Bobby wears his flight jacket. People come up to him and thank him for his service.
How’s the war going over there? people will ask.
About to get a lot better, Bobby will say. Then he’ll wink.
One day, out of nowhere, Rausch starts calling us the Dream Team.
The Dream Team’s days begin at 5:30 A.M. It doesn’t matter what time we go to bed, Rausch wakes me at 5:30, yelling, Let’s go, Little Buddy. We go to breakfast, I gamble a little (I’m still on my strange winning streak.) while Bobby hangs out in the room, then we walk to a new hotel, take a nap, start drinking, gamble some more, eat at a buffet, and spend the night collecting snapper cards, looking through the pictures of strippers until, well after midnight, we stagger back to our room. This is when Rausch becomes philosophical. Ain’t no one I’d rather have at my side, you know that, Little Buddy? You and me, we’re the Dream Team, last of the heroes.
It’s August. During the day the temperature hits 110; at night it drops into the high 90s. We move in an endless stream of drunken losers from casino to casino, past the snappers wearing their Day-Glo T-shirts advertising GIRLS DIRECT TO YOUR ROOM and TWO GIRLS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE. Rausch takes a card from each one and rifles through them, looking for Lisa. Every once in a while he shows the snappers the old card with Lisa’s picture on it. You seen this girl?
Si, say the snappers. And they thumb through their own cards until they find a blonde they think looks like Rausch’s sister.
This one, she prettier, eh Boss? says one snapper. He holds up a card showing another beautiful blonde.
I don’t want prettier, Rausch says. I want my sister.
He . . . doesn’t mean that, I say.
Sometimes, Rausch goes crazy non-sequitur bad-cop on the snappers. I’m gonna give you the gist here, pal, he’ll say, towering over some poor Salvadoran. Or I don’t think you’re understanding my gravity. Or Two choices, Paco: number one, the INS runs you back to Tijuana, or B., you tell me who operates your little . . . operation.
But the snappers have no idea who operates their operation. They line up in a vacant lot somewhere and get their cards from some guy in a pickup truck. We might as well grab a migrant fruit picker out of a Florida peach field and demand the phone number of the CEO of Del Monte.
AFTER DAYS of grilling snappers and getting nothing but a stack of nudie cards, Bobby turns our attention to the strip clubs. He shows me a thick roll of singles. This is the only currency these sleaze merchants understand.
I say that’s probably because it’s actual currency.
He slides dollars one at a time into girls’ G-strings. He shows the dancers the old card with Lisa’s picture on it. My partner and I are looking for this girl.
We’re not . . . that kind of partners, I point out helpfully.
The strippers don’t know Lisa, or they know a girl who looks like her, or sure, her name is Destiny or Tanya or Flemisha, or they know a girl who looks like her dancing at a club in Phoenix and if we want a lap dance they can tell us more.
Rausch buys lap dances in every place, but he never seems to learn anything. He tells the strippers on break that he’s come to rescue his sister. I think he expects them to be moved by his gallantry, but they never react and we end up sitting quietly, watching girls swing their implants around poles. I’d guess we’ve seen about fifty naked girls. Rausch is running out of singles. My balls feel like they’re going to explode.
It takes away from my sense of chivalry, having a constant erection. It’s been a year since Amanda and I split, and I haven’t exactly been what one might call active, unless one counts oneself. And I can’t even do that on this trip.
But Rausch can do that. All the time. He goes into the bathroom and does that any time he pleases, even with me on the other side of the door. In fact, he rubs one off at least twice a day, quickly and efficiently, morning and night, like brushing his teeth.
I wonder if this is one of the advantages of military training.
After masturbating he always climbs in his bed and wants to talk. First we find Lisa. Then, when I get back from Iraq, you and me should get a place together. A house or something. You and me on the rampage in Spokane? You kidding me?
I breathe heavily, trying not to overdo it by fake-snoring.
You and me, we’re a dying breed, Little Buddy.
MY ONLY respite is blackjack. Rausch hates the game; he prefers slots. At a worn five-dollar table, I asked the dealer what’s going to replace the New Frontier. He shrugs, but another player, a woman with an eye patch, tells me, The Montreux. Swiss-themed. With a 450-foot observation wheel, like in London. The woman tells me she’s from Orem, Utah, and that she has left an abusive husband. She pats the eye patch and drags her cigarette and nods at the dealer for a hit. She busts a fourteen and waves her hand away. I stand on a nineteen, and the dealer busts. Stupid game, she says.
She’s right. It is stupid. All of it. And when Bobby comes back from watching bikini bull riding, I tell him so. What are we doing? I ask. We’re just wasting our time. We’re never gonna find Lisa this way.
You read my mind, partner, he says.
A WEEK before I failed the bar exam, I saw my ex-wife’s engagement announcement in the newspaper. The guy she’s marrying, the guy I caught her with, is eleven years older than me. They’re getting married at the Davenport Hotel. They’re going to St. Thomas for their honeymoon. I’d never seen Amelia look as happy as she did in that picture. I’m not saying that was why I failed the bar exam. Or maybe I am. I don’t know.
APPARENTLY WHEN a casino like the New Frontier is set for demolition, they don’t bother cleaning the carpets anymore. The array of stains is mind-blowing. Listen, Bobby says as we walk back to our room, I know you’re getting unpatient, but we’re close. I can feel it. We’re making some people very nervous.
I can’t imagine anyone getting nervous, other than me, as back in the room Rausch finishes his push-ups, grabs the lotion, and heads for the bathroom to jerk off. It sounds like someone plunging a toilet in there.
HOW WELL do you really know your old high school friends? At Mead, I just thought he was a jock, a guy who listened to country music and knew people who could buy us beer. I’m finding out now my old buddy is a creature of strange habits. Twice a day, Rausch does eighty push-ups and eighty sit-ups. He wears extremely tight, silky T-shirts. He picks his teeth with a pocketknife after meal
s and cleans his toes while he watches TV. He never seems to fully exhale. I imagine he has oxygen in his lungs from 1990. He shaves his balding head and runs his hand constantly over the ridge on top, which looks like the drive train of a pickup. He’ll never get married because I don’t need no ring to get no pussy. I think he’s unaware of the double negative. He tells me he has four girlfriends back in Spokane, two of whom are married. He liked married women because they’re used to being fucked bad. Again, I don’t know if this is preferable because he plans to have bad sex with them or because his superior sex impresses them. When I ask for clarification, he just stares at me.
He seems to like having a sidekick, but is completely uninterested in my life. He only asks about my divorce once, as we lean out over the strip in the Margaritaville bar. I’m drunk, and I tell him the whole boring story: how we got married, how we got jobs in different cities, how we both cheated in our separate cities, and how, by the time I made it to Portland, where Amelia was living, she was already in love with this older guy. When I finish, Bobby is quiet. He stares at the flow of drunks below us, and finally says, Bitch.
I think you missed the point, I say.
Here’s the point. And he jabs at me with his beer. You and me? It takes a different sort of gal to tame us. We’re desperados. We ain’t exactly your average husband material.
I WOULD just quit and go home . . . but the thing is: I keep winning. In fact, I can’t seem to lose. Blackjack mostly. But also Let It Ride. And a Texas Hold ’Em Bonus game that offers the worst table odds in Vegas, but which I keep hitting like it’s a gumball machine. After a week, I’m up six grand.
Rausch won’t take a dime from me, though, won’t let me pay for the room . . . nothing. Can’t let you do that, Little Buddy, he says. This here’s my fight. He explains that he saved up his leave for this trip, and he has one more week—damned if I’m gonna rest while my sister is having her boobies sold off one at a time.
I have no idea what this could mean. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. On the eighth day, I tell him I’m leaving the next morning, that we’re never going to find her just going to strip clubs and collecting snapper cards.
Bobby is hurt. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he sighs, climbs out of bed, and begins getting dressed.
Look, I say, I’m sorry, but it’s true.
He walks out the door. And the next thing I know he’s shaking me awake by the foot. Wake up. Come on.
I sit up. The clock on the nightstand reads 3:15. I ask where we’re going.
Where we should’ve gone from day one, he says, the belly of the viper.
I follow Bobby Rausch downstairs. In the cab turnout we climb aboard a minivan driven by a Russian guy in a sweat suit. There are six of us behind the driver in the van—two long-haired blond guys who looked like the terrorist twins from Die Hard (Rausch watches them carefully) and two giggling-drunk businessmen in suits. The van heads out into the desert. Rausch is uncharacteristically quiet. He stares out his window. At four in the morning, there’s nothing out here but our headlights.
The brothel is called the Pony Palace. There don’t appear to be any Ponies. The Palace is a small metal building with a half-dozen doublewides flanking it.
We open the door and a bell rings as we step inside a sad little bar. The bartender draws us ten-dollar beers. I pay for the beers, the least I can do. On the ride out I assumed that Rausch had some information that Lisa was at this particular brothel, but when the hookers come out—summoned by a bell—Lisa isn’t there. Rausch chooses a waif: thin and pale with dark hair, a girl who has either her original breasts or a bad plastic surgeon. Bobby pays three hundred dollars for an hour of questioning. I sit on a couch next to the taller of the two businessmen, who has cold feet.
FOR SOME REASON, the reluctant businessman and I feel the need to explain ourselves. The tall businessman says, My daughter is twenty-six, and I just keep thinking: these girls are someone’s daughters.
I say that I’m not over my ex-wife. And as soon as I say it, I realize it’s true. And I feel like crying.
AT DAWN we get back into the minivan: the one sated businessman; the one who didn’t want to sleep with someone’s daughter; the two satisfied blond Fabio terrorists, both of whom chose black women; me; Rausch; and his waifish whore, whose name turns out to be Meilani. She has a backpack and a suitcase.
Can she just leave like that? I whisper to Rausch.
I hope to hell someone tries to stop her, Rausch says loudly to the room.
Meilani explains to me that they can’t stop her. The girls are independent contractors who pay a percentage to the house. After describing other fascinating aspects of her business on the drive back to Vegas (You have to pay for your own STD tests.), Meilani goes to sleep on Rausch’s shoulder.
I’m glad Bobby has found someone to rescue. Now I can go home to Spokane.
Back at the New Frontier, the air conditioning is out. It’s ninety-two degrees in our room. Meilani curls up on top of Rausch’s bed in a pair of panties.
I pack my things, say, Best of luck, man. You keep your head down over there. Come back in one piece.
Rausch is stunned. What? You’re leaving? But we’re getting so close. Did you see how nervous we made those people at the Pony Palace?
I start for the door, but then I turn. I tell him that Lisa was the first girl I ever slept with. I say that was why I had agreed to come. Because I felt I owed her.
Bobby blinks twice. Then, no blinking for a while. Then another blink. When?
End of our junior year, I say. I tell him about the open basement window.
Bobby looked disgusted. Those weren’t even egress windows.
I don’t feel qualified to address the window size. I turn to leave.
So, he asks, was everyone fucking my sister?
Can we get some quesadillas? Meilani asks from the bed.
I BOOK A FLIGHT out the next morning and check into my own room at the New Frontier. The air conditioning works in my room. I spread out on the bed and think about Amelia.
When I first got to Portland, I wanted so badly for it to work out between us. I felt awful about sleeping around on her while I was in law school, but I was certain I was done with all of that, and that we could start over. I opened the phone book and found a florist near her apartment, walked there and ordered a bouquet of tulips, her favorite. The clerk said they already had her name and address in their computer. They wouldn’t tell me who had been sending her flowers.
THERE’S A PHONE BOOK in the drawer of my room at the New Frontier. On a whim, I open it. First I try Lisa Rausch. Nothing. Then I remember Rausch’s stepmother’s maiden name was Heitmaker. So I look up Lisa Heitmaker.
I find a listing for Heitmaker Realty.
I call the number.
This is Lisa.
I tell her it’s Nick.
She’s quiet for a second and then she laughs. Come on. Really? She laughs again. Did you drive down here in your Cavalier, Nick?
We meet at the food court of the Riviera. Lisa looks older than the photo on the card. Her hair is short now, brown with streaks of blond. She’s incredibly tan and wears a loose-fitting sundress. She’s also six months pregnant. The father is her new boyfriend, a Vegas developer. It’s complicated, she says. He’s older. And sort of married. For now.
I stare at her little pregnant bulge. I say I have to ask her something. In high school, you had an abortion.
Is that a question? she asks. Then she says she doesn’t know who got her pregnant. Maybe you. Or Billy DiPino. She laughs uneasily. You came all this way to ask about that? Don’t they have phones where you live?
Actually, I say, I came with Bobby.
Her smile fades. Wait. You’re here with Bobby?
Yeah, we came to rescue you from a life of prostitution.
She explains how she’d ended up on a stripper card. Years ago, she did, in fact, date a sleazy photographer. He convinced her to model for some topless photos, a
nd after they broke up he sold the pictures without getting her to sign a release. You guys do know that the women in the pictures are models? They aren’t the actual girls who come to your room. Right?
I shrug as if to say, Of course we knew that, although it hadn’t occurred to me.
Lisa was working for a real estate broker when her picture showed up on the snapper cards. At first she was devastated. But then, with the help of her new boyfriend’s lawyer, she sued. The company that produced the cards, a big LA advertising firm, quickly settled, and Lisa invested half of the money in the boyfriend’s new development project—a neighborhood of Spanish stuccos abutting the desert. She invested the bulk of the proceeds from that project into two others. Lisa is doing very well.
I ask if she could call Bobby and tell him that she’s okay. I say it would mean a lot to him.
I can’t do that, Nick, she says. Then she narrows her eyes. Wait. You don’t know why our parents split up, do you? And then she tells me the rest of the story, the part I feel stupid for not knowing—or for not guessing. There are apparently no limits to the delusions of old desperados like us. We are indeed a kind of Dream Team: Bobby and me.
She was twelve. He was fifteen. They were home alone that summer. It might have been perfectly natural if their parents weren’t married. But when her mom found out, she freaked out and got them all into family counseling. Lisa quickly got over it, but Bobby wouldn’t leave her alone. For the next four years he sulked. He beat up her boyfriends. He followed her. After their parents divorced, Lisa had to get a restraining order against Bobby.
I CALL Rausch’s cell phone, hoping he won’t pick up, so I can just leave a message. But he answers on the first ring.
Meilani? he asks, his voice wavering, desperate.
I say it’s Nick.
Nick? Oh. Hey. His voice became sturdy again. Shit. She cleaned out my wallet. I woke up from a nap and Meilani was gone.