“Why can’t the drug companies make and standardize the cream in their labs? The FDA could test it.”
“Because drug companies can’t patent natural products. It wouldn’t pay them to make and test a drug anybody who wanted to could make. Charlie, I think your mother should think long and hard before disobeying her oncologist. Cancer’s not to be toyed with. We don’t know that natural hormones react that much differently from synthetic hormones.”
Forget the IRA and the DRIP and the compounding. Charlie decided to die before ever reaching the age of the dreaded menopause. She wouldn’t want people like Richard talking about her that way.
“Are we done with the sweet potatoes, ladies?” Richard asked with severe condescension upon his return. “Any more agency business I should take care of?” He picked up his towel and glasses case. A signal for Charlie to say there was no more business for today.
Actually, the sweet potatoes thing wasn’t the worst. Mitch Hilsten threatened to come to Vegas if she didn’t answer his E-mail. “Evan Black and his project, remember? I’m in trouble, and so is he.”
“Oh, you’re always in trouble. Relax, kid. Catch me later. Got to go now.” He reached a proprietary hand down to Bradone, who took it to rise from her lounge chair.
“I’ll see you later too, Charlie. I have this delicious secret to share with you.” When he’d turned away to the Grecian Spa, she mouthed, “About Richard.”
Charlie looked at the pool, where two kids had cleared out the adults with power cannonball dives. Thanks a lot, Captain Kirk. Where were these security types when you needed them?
She hurried to her room and changed into comfortable clothes instead of answering the office business or checking for more E-mail. To hell with Richard, and Evan Black too. Life was short and unpredictable and she’d never felt more aware of that. She wanted to be like Bradone, who knew how to live life to the hilt.
Charlie, catching herself grimacing at the mirrored elevator on her way down, forced her mouth to grin, and took a shuttle to the blackjack tables on Fremont Street. She had thirty grand to lose, since she wouldn’t live to see menopause and Libby wouldn’t make it to college with her braces off.
* * *
Compared to the ever-raging extravagance of the Strip, Fremont Street had gone seedy and become a refuge for locals. Like organized crime of old, organized corporate America had a finger in most pots, and entertainment in all forms was particularly vulnerable to its ready cash. Gambling was a uniquely profitable form of entertainment, and someone up there had looked down on Fremont and seen a bargain.
The street was now a covered mall, hostile to panhandlers and overt lewdity, its dome a state-of-the-art laser show at night, with enough music and panoramic extravaganza to make your neck ache. The spectacle emptied casinos and shops so locals and jaded people like Charlie could slip in and find single-deck blackjack with few other players and not too many nasty rules. But it was daylight and the casinos were crowded.
Mitch Hilsten threatening to come to town. No word on what Libby and her new boyfriend were up to. Whatever they did, they probably couldn’t do it in the house. Tuxedo didn’t like him. For once, that damned cat showed some sense.
Determined to lose money, probably the easiest thing to do in Vegas, Charlie couldn’t.
Blackjack was the one game where you could supposedly beat the house advantage by paying strict attention. She couldn’t remember lunch, never mind the cards.
Dumb Richard having his way with savvy Bradone. Wild sweet potatoes, for godsake. Probably the CIA and the FBI and the IRS, and the armed response boys—they all had to be in cahoots—were looking for Charlie because she flew over Area 51. With all this, nobody could have concentrated. And still she won.
“Lady, you need a drink or a massage, know that? Here you are winning and yet you are not happy,” said a man beside her. “What’ll it be?”
What would Bradone do in this situation? Lighten up, she could almost hear her new friend say, go with the flow.
“Red zin,” Charlie answered the man, and watched the dealer push more chips her way. The only thing Charlie hadn’t been worrying about was the Thug.
This occurred to her suddenly because the man beside her, at the moment explaining very meaningfully to the cocktail hostess that yes, there was too such a thing as red zinfandel and she’d best get a glass of it here in a hurry, was the Thug.
CHAPTER 10
WHEN IT CAME, the red zin tasted exactly like the ubiquitous house burgundy, sort of like your well wine. Charlie didn’t mention the wine problem to the man who’d nudged poor Patrick Thompson under the wheels of a car. Charlie wondered if that car was a black limo like the one that took out Officer Timothy Graden. Or maybe the same one. How many cars had run over the hunk pilot before Charlie made it to the curb to view the result? How could the people in that first car have missed seeing the act in progress? Or were they looking over their shoulders at the volcano?
No, Charlie didn’t think she’d complain about the wine.
Still, she kept winning. Maybe it’s better not to concentrate—which she certainly wasn’t. And every time she looked up, some people at the bar waved in her direction. Charlie wanted to cash in and get out of the Golden Nugget. She’d have been happy to give it all back to be able to leave for free.
The Golden Nugget, unlike most casinos, did not rely heavily on the color red. Colors here were a soothing plantation white—read cream—with gold trim. Latticework and mirrors. Taupe upholstery. If not for the presence of the Thug, Charlie would have felt comfortable here, would have calmed down, enjoyed herself. And if not for the strange people over at Claude’s Bar who continued their unnatural interest in her. An overweight man and two women of girth.
“What you’ve got to understand, Mrs. Greene,” the Thug said kindly, “is that the odds are against us all.”
Mrs. Greene. Did that mean he knew about Libby? After the battering motherhood had taken—people still thought of mothers as “Mrs.” Charlie took a slug of the official wine of the nonastute. Now it tasted like ashes.
The expanse of his shoulders would make more than two of Charlie’s. His suit was gray, his manner overpolite. His dark hair, streaked with gray, hung in curls to those shoulders. Something mesmerizing about the thick lips and uneven teeth. Charlie wondered what Evan Black would think of her conspiracy theory now.
“But here you are, Mrs. Greene, beating the odds. And not enjoying a minute of it. It’s obvious, right?” he asked the dealer, who remained noncommittal and nodded at the two cards dealt Charlie. The dealer showed ten.
Charlie waved away a hit without bothering to look at what she had. The three other players scratched for a hit.
All went bust.
Mr. Thug took Charlie’s cards and laid them out. The ace and the jack of spades. Charlie smelled a setup.
She would have to talk to Bradone about how to lose. If she lived long enough to make that necessary.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” The overweight gentleman waver appeared suddenly at her side. He wore Bermuda shorts. Yes, they were plaid. Yes, he wore bifocals and a baseball hat and a grin to tear a face apart. “I hope you’re not offended, but we”—and he motioned to the two well-stocked women grinning at her from stools at the bar—“wondered if you’re that girlfriend of Mitch Hilsten or just a look-alike? I mean, we already seen four Elvises in two days.”
Charlie tried to decide whether the setup was Bermuda Shorts or the Thug. Or the dealer dealing her such treasure. Somehow, Bermuda Shorts didn’t seem a likely tie to the other two.
“It don’t matter. I’m Ben Hanley, and they’re my wife and her sister. We’d like to buy you a drink anyway. When you finish your game. We been watching you and wondering. And finally Betty figured out where we seen you before. On television. You know, when you and him fell off that cliff? Mitch Hilsten, I mean.”
“How nice. I’d love to join you and the ladies,” Charlie gushed, and turned, to find the curly
-haired thug no longer at her side.
* * *
The Ben Hanleys and her sister not only bought Charlie a drink but accompanied her to Binions and the Las Vegas Club, helping her lose some of her winnings from the Nugget. She didn’t see Mr. Thug again that afternoon, but he could have set a stranger on her tail. And there were still all those government types getting ready to pounce.
The type of people Charlie would usually avoid, Ben, Martha, and Betty, the sister, were reasonably good company for shields. They may have saved her life or her kneecaps, and she hoped she wasn’t putting theirs in danger.
She took them back to the Hilton and treated them to dinner at the Baronshire. Betty and Martha, motherly types, soon had Charlie talking about her life and her relationship with Mitch Hilsten.
Charlie didn’t want to be alone—even in the crowd that was Las Vegas. These people, unintimidated by the dark room and the formality suggested by the decor, were flying back to Wisconsin tomorrow and she’d never see them again.
“Mitch and I are just friends. We don’t travel in the same circles—I mean, he’s a superstar and I’m a literary agent,” Charlie explained.
“That sure wasn’t what it looked like on the TV,” Betty said, emboldened by martinis. Everybody seemed to be drinking martinis these days. Both sisters did, but Ben stuck with beer. He ate as if there were no tomorrow and all the alcohol had made him quiet and flushed. He looked like a heart attack waiting to happen.
Both sisters wore round trifocals that covered half their faces and made their eyes appear larger than their noses. If Betty’s hair hadn’t been died flat black and Martha’s allowed to stay almost white, they could have been hard to tell apart at a distance.
“Well, okay, we spent one night together in a seedy motel”—Charlie’s unwanted fifteen minutes of fame—“but it was—”
“Just one of those things?” Martha lifted a dripping blood-drenched bite of prime rib to her mouth and chewed it a little so she could talk around it. “On TV, he looked exhausted, as I remember.”
Charlie had met Mitch Hilsten in the Canyonlands of Utah at the wrong time of the month. Poor guy had been a teenage fantasy of hers and didn’t stand a chance. But he took their encounter seriously, couldn’t seem to understand Charlie’s hormonal cycles—which her biologist mother inelegantly termed “estrus.”
“Well yeah, they both did.” Ben Hanley came to Charlie’s defense. “Hell, they’d just been rescued from death on a cliff.”
It had been over a year ago. Charlie’s writers would have killed for that kind of exposure. Hell, she could have been on Oprah. Charlie just wanted to live it down.
She respected and admired the superstar, but, accustomed to years of celibacy at a time, she frankly preferred that blessed state. Life held enough complication. Every now and then, those one or two dangerous days of the month would come along in conjunction with opportunity and a man of easy virtue.
Raising a daughter had always been her excuse to avoid entanglements. What would she do when Libby left home? Much as Charlie longed for that day and some peace at last, she feared it.
She’d even started tracking those one or two days a month on the calendar and, when possible, arranging her schedule so they wouldn’t interfere with her emotional independence. If she believed in astrology, she’d have asked Bradone which of the planets to consult.
But she couldn’t begin to explain all this to three grandparents from Wisconsin. So she studied the pictures of grandchildren, complete with dogs and ponies and flaxen hair. She exclaimed over their beauty, hoping Libby wasn’t out this night making Charlie a grandmother at thirty-three.
These people were so comfortable and safe, she let them a short way into her family. Even admitted to her unmarried state and seventeen-year-old daughter. They clucked and sympathized. “But look what a success you’ve made of your predicament,” Betty said.
Charlie wondered how they would regard her when they got home and the bloody prime rib and buttery lobster, the martinis and the wine, and the sinful glitter of Las Vegas had worn off.
She even blurted out her problems with Edwina and the dreaded hot flashes. Probably because Charlie’s response about the fan kept her guilt close to the front of her thoughts.
“Well, stop right there,” Martha said. “Because my sister’s got the cure for that. Show her, Betty.”
Both women carried purses the size of carry-on luggage. Betty proceeded to fish around in hers and bring out a small white jar. Charlie, who’d imbibed more than enough fat and alcohol herself, was about to make a smart remark about sweet potatoes when a smeared contact lens cleared enough for her to make out the words wild yam on the label.
Seems the widowed Betty supplemented her Social Security and what remained of her husband’s pension by selling the snake oil to hormonally challenged folks in a three-county area.
“She’s everyone’s dealer,” Martha said proudly. “Everyone I know.”
“Supplier,” Betty corrected, and went on to assure Charlie that the Mexican wild-yam root also cured migraines and PMS, as well as high blood pressure and depression, memory loss, bloating, lack of interest in sex, and weight gain, because all were caused by hormonal imbalance.
When Charlie finally bid them good-bye at the ticket booth for the Hilton’s stage show, she felt coddled and mellow, sort of removed from that persistent threat that Mr. Thug or armed guys from Groom Lake lurked around every corner. She decided to laze in the kingsize with TV until she fell asleep.
But when she opened her door, the message light blinked on the telephone. She was tempted to ignore it. But what if Libby needed her?
An urgent message from Richard. She fought the temptation to ignore that too and punched his room number.
“Jesus, been trying to reach you all afternoon. Big party at Evan Black’s. Impromptu screening. He wants you should wear some skirt with a slit up the side. Said you’d know which one. Bradone’s invited too. You got ten minutes to get beautiful, babe. Gonna be footage of undisclosed areas to knock your eyes out.”
CHAPTER 11
EVAN’S HOME WAS your regular Southern California expatriate stucco and marble—vast in design, limited in imagination. Brand-new, with peeling paint and expensive tile applied with south-of-the border labor, slipping and chipping. Even in home building for the rich, Las Vegas knew how to take the customer.
Half the full-grown desert palms were dead or dying, propped up with two-by-fours. All had come from California tree farms. They were often planted by helicopter.
Charlie had one in Long Beach that would put any of the live ones on Evan’s property to shame. But then, the whole first floor of her condo would fit nicely into his foyer.
Bradone wore a long, low-cut cream-colored creation set off by an allover tan, gold chains, and amused blue eyes with color-matching shadow. Richard glowed in proud accompaniment.
Evan Black, obviously taken by her too, tore himself away to tug Charlie into a pantry with a dumbwaiter and announce, “Hilsten’s interested in the project. Thank you, thank you.”
The producer/writer/director picked up Charlie and her split skirt, whirling around with them at arm’s length like a postal employee with an assault rifle, and managed to tip over a tray of crystal too leaded to break. The sound was impressive though.
“Anything you want, just tell me, Charlie love. It’s yours.” He was actually wearing a suit, black, of course, and without collar or lapels, but the closest to one she’d ever seen him in, The purple shirt sort of demolished the effect.
“You talked to Mitch?” How was it, when Charlie did do something, nobody noticed?
“To his agent and his agent talked to him.”
“Evan, put me down. Now.”
“Charlie, with Hilsten on board, we’ve got Ursa Major tied up. I just know it.”
“Then why are you thanking me?” But she knew the superstar. “You used my name.”
“All I said to his agent was that you were my
agent. Anything wrong with that?” Evan Black had stopped whirling Charlie, now he hugged her. He had a black belt in something or other and a lot more strength than necessary. “Oh Charlie, the sky’s the limit. I owe you one, doll. When you decide what it is, just ask.”
“I’m asking—I don’t want you getting me in any more trouble like that flight yesterday and Mitch Hilsten in none.”
“Babe”—he chucked her under the chin—“you’re not in any trouble. Dr. Evan’s magic is going to fix everything.”
Dr. Evan swept back to his guests, leaving her to face the not-so-dumb waiter who had to pick up all the crystal.
* * *
The screening room had couches and love seats, and recliners that vibrated, instead of theater seats. It had floor cushions, a small screen and a huge screen and a medium-sized one, all movable like stage props. It had two bartenders and small movable tables with round marble tops to hold food and beverages.
The screens moved on wheeled mechanisms—a few of which needed oiling. No buffet hors d’oeuvres here. Caterers in faux tuxes—ultrashiny and ill-fitting—maneuvered among the seated and the sprawled with trays of delights that made Charlie’s overworked system shudder. She grabbed a recliner so she could be alone and accepted a glass of lemon springwater and two crackers to nibble slowly so the wandering servers would leave her alone.
Soon surrounded by people on floor cushions, she felt like a fat Cleopatra on a barge only slightly above the plebeian waves.
“So, uh, you want this thing to vibrate?” A large hand with manicured nails rested on the left arm of her recliner, the index finger poised above one of the buttons on its tiny console. Charlie didn’t want to contemplate what else this chair could do.
“No,” and she grabbed the hand with the impending first finger, only to have it flip over to hold hers. Charlie looked into the patient eyes of Mr. Thug.
He used his other hand to press the button and the chair began to gently quake.
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