Live a Little

by Madeleine Reiss

  Still, a challenge was a challenge. She allowed herself to be hustled to the microphone, and, prompted by Tina’s meaningful stare and some half-hearted cheers from the floor, began singing along to ‘Just Like A Pill’. She hated Pink’s self-conscious defiance, but despite herself the lyrics did their work, and she soon found she was yelling them as loudly as Tina was. She put her arm around her sister’s waist and they moved together. In that moment, the past slipped away and all the blame for what they had and hadn’t done went too. They were just sisters, jumping up and down in a bar, gleeful and dishevelled, making the most of life.

  Chapter 19

  ‘IF YOU WERE AN ITEM of furniture, what would you be?’ Spike asked. He was sitting in the back of the car, his injured leg protected by a rolled-up blanket beneath and a towel on top.

  ‘That’s such a boring question!’ Tina said. She was hanging out of the car window to vape, because Lottie refused to drive any further if she could hear her inhaling. She said she didn’t want to share the car with Darth Vader.

  ‘I’d be one of those old desks with lots of little hidden drawers,’ Lottie said.

  ‘I’d be a glass-fronted display cabinet,’ Spike said.

  ‘I’d be a bidet,’ Tina said.

  ‘That’s not strictly speaking an item of furniture,’ Lottie said.

  Tina pulled her head back into the car. Her hair had been blown into a mass of tangles.

  ‘OK, if I can’t be a bidet, I’ll be one of those cocoon chairs that swings from the ceiling.’

  ‘Suitably unstable,’ Spike muttered, and then grimaced as they went round a corner and his leg came into contact with Lottie’s wooden horse.

  ‘I thought we were never going to get away from Furnace Creek,’ Tina said. ‘It’s as if the god of road trips had decided we were going no further.’

  ‘Where have you put the world’s worst piece of memorabilia?’ Spike asked.

  ‘In the glove compartment,’ Lottie said, shuddering slightly.

  When they had dropped the tent off at the hire store they had been accosted again by Stacey the trucker. Goodness knew when she actually did any deliveries, because she seemed to spend most of her time hanging around in car parks. As soon as she had seen them, she had scuttled across, her hair incandescent in the morning light, her chest emblazoned with a lurid photograph of Diana looking demented in a tiara.

  ‘I was hoping I’d see you again,’ she said, her gaze fastening itself fervently on Lottie. ‘I’ve got something I think you should have.’

  Despite their protestations that Spike was waiting in the car and that they really had to get back on the road, she insisted on ushering them to her truck. She had scrambled inside and, after a couple of moments, slithered to the ground again holding something wrapped in tissue paper.

  ‘It’s the only thing I have that she actually touched,’ she said and carefully unveiled a small piece of grey rubber.

  ‘What is it?’ Lottie had asked, politely bending over to examine it.

  ‘It’s Diana Spencer’s school eraser,’ Stacey said in a reverent tone of voice. ‘I got it on eBay.’

  ‘How do you know it was actually hers?’ Tina asked. Lottie scowled at her.

  ‘It came with a certificate,’ Stacey said.

  ‘Absolutely authentic then,’ Tina said, and Stacey nodded firmly.

  ‘I want you to have it,’ she said to Lottie. ‘You could be her double.’

  ‘Oh no. I couldn’t possibly!’ Lottie exclaimed, looking dismayed. ‘It’s so precious to you.’

  ‘That’s the reason I want you to have it,’ Stacey said, waving Lottie’s protestations away. ‘It will make me happy to think of it with you. Mind you don’t let it fall, or anything. You’ve got to keep it carefully so her fingerprints don’t come off.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ Lottie said. ‘But can’t I pay for it, or give you something in exchange?’

  Here Tina had given her a scandalised look.

  ‘There is something, actually.’ Stacey reached into her pocket and extracted a Swiss army knife, and Lottie instinctively took a step backwards. Stacey pulled out a tiny pair of scissors from the side of the knife.

  ‘Could I have a little piece of your hair?’

  ‘That’s a bit strange,’ Tina had said, but she was grinning as if she found the idea hilarious.

  ‘I’ll just take the smallest curl,’ Stacey said, and without waiting for Lottie to reply she darted forward and cut off a lock of her hair, which was hanging loosely on her shoulders. Lottie’s hand went instinctively to her head.

  ‘I’m thinking you’re her reincarnation, see?’ Stacey said, and carefully wrapped the curl up in another piece of tissue.

  ‘I’m really not,’ Lottie protested. ‘I was actually born before she died.’

  ‘It could be delayed reincarnation,’ Stacey said, with a cunning look.

  ‘Yes,’ Tina said, smirking. ‘It’s very possible that any day now you will wake up, Lottie, and discover a taste for see-through skirts and guinea pigs.’

  ‘We really must go,’ Lottie said.

  ‘Where are y’all going next?’ Stacey asked.

  ‘Las Vegas,’ Lottie said.

  ‘Well, enjoy! Don’t lose all your money! Me, I’m going home – a place called Chloride, just a few miles away. You should visit sometime.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ Lottie said.

  ‘You do know you’re not actually Diana, don’t you?’ Tina had asked as they walked away. ‘You don’t have to be so bloody polite to everyone. The woman is a bona fide certifiable loon.’

  *

  ‘I think we should call you Diana from now on,’ Spike said now. ‘You are as beautiful as she was.’

  He watched the back of her neck flush at his words. She had tied her hair up to hide the missing lock, and her skin looked pale and delicate. Tina turned and looked crossly at him from the front seat of the car and he grinned unrepentantly at her. She had accosted him earlier that day while Lottie was packing up the car and saying goodbye to Chip.

  ‘You need to ease off now,’ she had said. ‘Lottie’s really beginning to think you like her. You’ve done what needs to be done – which is make her think twice about marrying disastrous Dean – so now you can cool it.’

  ‘Who says I don’t like her for real?’ Spike had said. ‘She’s lovely – and, what’s more, she saved my life. There’s not many people you can say that about.’

  ‘Stop being a prat,’ she had said and stalked off, her nose in the air.

  Spike looked out of the window. There was nothing growing in this landscape and the pale hills were monotonously uniform. Lottie was ballsy and had integrity and, although she tried to hide her body all the time, he found her soft curves sexy. He was sure that she would never treat him the way Tina had – she was far too kind. She was a proper grown-up with none of her sister’s capriciousness. He had enjoyed his years of being single, but increasingly he was feeling as if he wanted something permanent – someone to have children and settle down with.

  His leg ached suddenly, as if it was reminding him of something.

  ‘I can see Vegas!’ Lottie exclaimed, and he looked ahead at the dim sprawl of the city. Without its lights and at this distance, it looked nothing special – a few greyish blocks in the dusty sun, surrounded by desert. They drove slowly, past shopping malls and construction sites and unprepossessing houses. On the strip, the traffic was even denser. They had the chance to see at close quarters the swarms of people who passed along, looking both vague and purposeful, clutching jugs of cocktails, and the reality-defying casino hotels – the MGM Grand, the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace, Treasure Island and the Mandalay Bay Hotel, from which a man on the thirty-second floor had once fired more than 1,100 rounds into the concertgoers below. The monumental buildings were sliced and trimmed and sharp-edged, and yet curiously blank for all their architectural embellishments. In between the wedges and curves of steel and glass, huge screens flickered and f
ountains vomited sheets of thick water into lakes. From the hectic green shrubbery a thousand amplified songs poured out. Some things looked like relics from a less sophisticated time when people were impressed by replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty and the Pyramids. Others were so new that they hadn’t even been unpackaged yet, and shone beneath protective layers of plastic. The whole place hummed with a strange reverberation. It was a little like the sound of the sea, but without the ocean’s rise and fall, only a constant swelling clatter, like the sound of a million hammers hitting a hard surface.

  Tina had rung ahead and booked a penthouse suite at the Wynn, fortunate to secure the room after a last-minute cancellation.

  ‘It’s only one night, so we can have a touch of luxury. Besides, I need a decent massage, my back is killing me.’

  At the entrance to the hotel, they took their cases from the car. Lottie handed the keys to the valet, feeling grand but just a little guilty. The man was sweating in his grey waistcoat and he had something wrong with one of his legs, which gave him a strange swaying walk. Inside, the hotel had left no surface unembellished: the floors were mosaic and the carpets were woven with flowers, and there were vast vases of red roses and pink orchids and acid-green foliage. Glass chandeliers and huge mirrors hung everywhere. Their penthouse was creamy and cocooned in thick material; the double bed and the single had generously upholstered headboards, the carpets were springy underfoot like new turf and in the bathroom there were piles of bouncy towels. After the motel near Furnace Creek, this seemed like giddy excess. Lottie felt a bit uneasy about having to share a room with Spike, but the space was big enough to spread out. It wasn’t as if they would be actually sleeping next to each other or anything. Spike put the TV on. Tina ordered champagne. They drank and watched the evening light turn the sides of the Trump International an evil, glinting gold – and then the whole city was suddenly illuminated, as if a massive master switch had been turned on.

  ‘I think we should dress up,’ Tina said.

  After putting his whole head under the tap and shaking himself like a dog, Spike waited in the sitting room for Tina and Lottie to get changed. Tina chose a red, thin-strapped dress and heels, and Lottie – after a great deal of indecision – settled on a pale blue dress that belonged to Tina, and added a purple belt and gold scarf.

  ‘It’s good to see you are embracing colour at last,’ Tina said. ‘I hardly recognise Miss Matchy-Matchy that I set off on this trip with.’

  ‘I guess I’ve changed a little,’ Lottie said.

  Tina gave her an appraising look. ‘Yeah, in more ways than one.’

  Lottie didn’t answer, just stared at her reflection in the mirror. She looked as if she barely recognised herself.

  ‘What are you going to say to Dean?’ Tina asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lottie answered. ‘There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘So, you’re just going to go ahead with the wedding?’ Tina asked incredulously. ‘As if you feel exactly the same about him as you did before?’

  ‘I do feel exactly the same about him,’ Lottie said. ‘He hasn’t changed.’

  ‘But you have. You’ve woken up.’

  Lottie turned round and looked at her sister. Tina thought she looked sad.

  ‘Maybe I’ve fallen asleep. I feel as if I’m in some sort of a dream.’

  ‘You can deny it all you want, but you’re not the same as you were nine days ago.’

  ‘Has it really only been nine days?’ Lottie tightened the back of her earrings – a pair of green tasselled beads that she had purchased in Furnace Creek, which brought out the golden sage colour of her eyes. ‘Mia was sure, wasn’t she? She never seemed to feel any doubt.’

  ‘She said she couldn’t live without Rick, if that’s what you mean by sure.’

  ‘That’s what love is, isn’t it? That feeling that you couldn’t survive if you lost that person.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Tina got up and stood by her sister at the mirror. She put a dark red lipstick on – an almost purplish hue that made her look suddenly harder and more polished. She pressed her lips together to spread the colour and looked at herself dispassionately. ‘I’ve always thought it a weakness to be so co-dependent,’ she said. ‘I think it would diminish me to rely so much on someone else.’

  ‘Mia didn’t rely on Rick,’ Lottie said.

  ‘No – how could anyone have relied on someone as fucked up as him? It was more that she gave herself to him so completely that she lost sight of herself.’

  Lottie flinched at her sister’s words. They conjured up a sudden memory of Mia a year or so before her death. She and Lottie had spent a rare day together. At that stage Mia had been married for about six months. She had only informed her sisters about the wedding after it had taken place. Rick had sprung it on her without any preparation. Mia had thought they were just going for a short excursion, but it turned out they were headed to Gretna Green. He had said he wanted them to be alone, somewhere far away. She hadn’t understood why their family and friends couldn’t share their happiness, or why he hadn’t given her the chance to wear something special, but she had, as always, fallen in with his plans. She had sent Lottie and Tina a picture of the pair of them standing framed by a concrete stone arch. She in jeans with a wilted flower behind one ear and Rick holding her around her waist with both his arms. I’m so happy, the caption had read. She had used six heart emojis.

  It was very seldom that Mia could slip away, but Rick had been working somewhere out of town and so the sisters had been able to meet in central London. They had done some shopping and had lunch and then taken the tube to Waterloo.

  ‘I want to see the river,’ Mia had said, as if she was thirsty for the sight of water. She had been talkative, almost feverish all day, moving from subject to subject as if she couldn’t settle on anything. Lottie hadn’t seen her for a few months and she had become excruciatingly thin – her collarbones sharp in a round-necked T-shirt, her beautiful hair cut in a new, short style. She had been moving away already then. Why didn’t I see her properly? Lottie asked herself now. Why didn’t I say something? Do something? Instead she had accepted at face value Mia’s story of a new exercise regime and healthy shakes.

  ‘Rick thinks I look like Audrey Hepburn with my hair like this,’ Mia had said, touching her head tentatively, as if it was sore.

  ‘I’ve always seen you as more of a Marilyn Monroe type.’

  ‘Rick doesn’t much like curves,’ Mia replied, and then she had done that thing she always did, diverting attention from herself by asking questions – ‘How’s work?’ ‘How are you getting on with Dean?’ ‘Has he asked you to marry him yet?’ – and Lottie had started to talk about her own life. Mia had listened, seemingly calm, taking her hand at one point and holding it between hers. She had been kind and reassuring as she always was – the vital third leg of the sister stool, the one that kept the edifice upright. Lottie had been able to see in the newly narrow face the same light sweetness it had always had. When they parted – ‘I need to get back home before Rick does’ – Mia had hugged her tightly. She had always been demonstrative, but this embrace felt fierce and different.

  ‘You do love Rick, don’t you?’ Lottie had asked, just before Mia turned away.

  ‘I love him more than my life,’ Mia had answered, smiling, and Lottie had allowed herself to be reassured. She had watched her walk away like a good child, her shorn head neat and her back straight.

  *

  Outside the hotel, the air was warm and foetid. It smelt of petrol fumes and perfume and something unidentifiable but carnally sweet. Things swam in and out of focus like a piece of film shot from the back of a moving vehicle. The neon glare of the signs, so many words – Lady Luck, Cigars, Flamingo, Frontier, Circus, Cocktails, Nuggets, Cleaners, Weddings, Stardust, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Las Vegas – and the fluorescent cocktail glasses, the high-kicking women’s legs, the giant decks of cards and the gleaming dollars – all created a strange
effect. Lottie felt as if she was not in darkness or daylight but another sort of illumination altogether. It was similar to the eerie, electric shine that comes sometimes before a storm and feels a little like the end of the world.

  Although they were walking at a normal pace, with Spike hopping gamely along on his crutches, the distance between them and the next glittering hotel never seemed to shorten. There were so many people going nowhere with them, all looking upwards and outwards as if trying to discover the exit. She saw an emaciated Elvis in a white suit that hung off him as if he was shedding his skin. A little further along the pavement, a girl in a bridal dress was being sick into the gutter. A fountain sprang suddenly into life with a Beethoven symphony and splashing foam that touched her arm as something hot. She had expected a glittering energy, and she felt it in the cars that cruised down the road, men on stag weekends howling like dogs, and in the frenetic, remorseless display of money and muscle and merriment – but there was also a curiously deadened, eviscerated quality to the air that reminded her of Death Valley’s salt flats.