by Kasia Fox
“Or you’ll be on your ass on the floor and everyone in here will be laughing at you.” Cal surveyed the room. The regulars turned back to video poker. “Take it outside,” the bartender cautioned. Dread clutched at Tessa. If things got out of hand, if Cal got hurt, her own pigheadedness was to blame.
“C’mon, Tony,” the drunk woman squeezing the pool cue pleaded, pulling on the guy’s arm.
“This isn’t going any further,” Cal said. As he turned, the drunk guy took a swing. Cal spun around and blocked the blow. With hardly more than a gentle push from Cal, the drunk tripped backwards over his own feet until he landed hard on his ass. His woman ran to him. Cal pointed a finger at him and said, “Don’t follow me out there, you hear?”
“He won’t!” the drunk woman cried.
They went outside. “I’m sorry,” said Tessa.
Cal unlocked her door and held it open. Instead of going in, she wrapped her arms around him and leaned her head against his chest. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “You were right. This probably isn’t the best place for a girl to hang out alone.” Then she sighed. “I hate being wrong, especially after I’ve climbed so high up on my horse.”
Cal laughed. He held her tightly and kissed her head. “That right there is why I don’t drink.”
Once he was back in the driver’s seat, Cal asked where they were going.
“This is your town,” Tessa said. “I’ll go anywhere as long as I don’t have to talk about my dad.” She eyed the door to Angry Roddy’s, expecting to see the drunk man burst out with a snapped pool cue.
Cal put the car in gear. “I have an idea. Keep an open mind. It might get a little weird.”
“Just so you know, in case you’re immune to it now, everything about Las Vegas is weird.”
The neighborhood Cal drove to was in an old part of the city. Its streets were lined with one-story, mid-century modern homes with flat roofs and carports and towering palm trees or cute ranch-style houses with yards full of cacti. Out the window, Tessa saw a sign that proclaimed the area a historical neighborhood. The car stopped in front of a white house straight out of the sixties. It had a slanted roof, a huge white-washed stone chimney coming up the middle and an ornate ironwork screen painted lime green covering the front entrance.
The Stratosphere casino loomed above the rooftops. The tower felt close enough to walk to; as Tessa had learned about everything in Las Vegas over the last three days, that was probably an optical illusion. Around her, the architecture, landscaping and happy colors were like no neighborhood back home. Unlike Spanish Palms, guards in Stetsons weren’t checking driver’s licenses because there was no gate. Just houses, cars parked on streets, people smoking cigarettes in the yellow light of open garage doors.
“So where are we?” Tessa closed her car door.
“My brother’s house,” Cal said.
“Jay?” Tessa smiled. She’d liked him when they’d spoken on the phone.
“Jay lives in New York. This is Danny’s house. Danny and his wife Benita are… they’re kind of kooky. But great. Every week they have these Monday game-night type things. Parties. I don’t know what to call them exactly. It’s different every time. They’re always trying to get me to come. Brace yourself for a funky crowd.” As they followed the little cement path to the door hidden behind the green ironwork, Cal muttered, “Let’s hope tonight isn’t a costume party.” He reached for the doorknob and paused before turning it. “Oh, and one more thing: Don’t eat anything Benita offers you. She’s great. Love her. But seriously, a jar of her pickled onions sent my mom to the ER.”
They stepped into a crowd of people in a living room, every one of whom turned to see who was coming in the door. The crowd released a roar when they saw it was Cal.
“Are you kidding me?” said a guy whom Tessa assumed was Danny, given that he looked like an older, skinnier version of Cal. Danny had Cal’s freckled complexion, same sandy colored hair and stubble, except he was dressed like he was getting ready to go to Burning Man: a pair of loose pajama pants in an Indian print and an off-white, tight fitted ribbed shirt. The brothers hugged and Danny patted Cal roughly on the back which turned into some kind of horseplay. A tiny Latina woman with muscular shoulders and arms, a pile of tightly curled black hair atop her head and a flowing purple dress embraced Cal and kissed him on each cheek. “I said that there was special energy tonight, didn’t I, Danny?” This had to be Benita.
“She did!” Danny broke apart from Cal. He was staring at Tessa. Suddenly it seemed like the whole room was staring at her. “And who is this?”
“Hey.” She waved her hand in an arching salute.
Cal broke apart from the group. He put his hand around her shoulder and pulled her body snug to his. “Everyone – this is Tessa.”
“Tessa.” Benita said her name, though her eyes – full of astonishment – were locked on Cal. “In that case, Tessa, we are very happy to meet you. I’m Benita and this is my partner, Danny. Welcome to our home. I hope you like games and Ethiopian food cooked by a Peruvian lady.”
“We have dinner reservations after this,” Cal said quickly.
Benita clasped both of Tessa’s hands. “He’s not very adventurous when it comes to food, poor soul.
“So we’re playing games?” Tessa bit back a smile. “I love games.”
“No games tonight,” Danny said. “A talent contest!”
“But first, food,” Benita said. She gave Tessa’s hands a squeeze and flowed through her crowd of guests toward the kitchen.
“The poor Ethiopians,” Cal whispered, “haven’t they suffered enough?”
Tessa laughed.
People made room on the couch. Tessa perched on Cal’s lap and he told her about his brother and sister-in-law. Benita was originally from Peru and came to Las Vegas to perform as a synchronized swimmer in a circus show on the strip. Danny worked security for Cal’s company.
“He’s always been a work-to-live type of guy,” Cal explained. “And since he met Benita, he’s not like any person I ever knew. He does yoga. Last year he made me a friendship bracelet.”
“And he never wore it,” Danny chimed in.
Other guests came over and introduced themselves to Tessa. The people were as interesting to look at as the house. The walls were painted in jewel tones. Huge paintings on canvas hung everywhere and there were plants on nearly every flat surface. The furniture was low and guests sat on the floor, sipping drinks as a pair of huskies wandered about, searching for food and belly rubs.
Benita came back in the room carrying a tray. Shooing away the dogs, she set plates of food on the coffee table. “That,” she pointed to a dish of raw meat hunks, “is kitfo – a beef tartare with my own special spin on it.” She winked. “This is doro wat, a chicken stew where I’ve replaced the chicken with seitan for the vegetarians.”
“It smells great,” Tessa said truthfully. Cal shot her a warning look.
Danny went to the front of room, where furniture had been pushed aside to make a stage for people to showcase their talents.
“And the first rule is,” Danny said, “everyone has to perform a talent, no matter how small.”
“The second rule is after everyone is finished, you must cry, clap, scream weep, as if you’ve just seen Jesus walk out of the tomb,” Benita said.
A woman with a blond buzz cut volunteered to perform first. She went to the front of the room and pulled out a harmonica on which she proceeded to play a Beatles song. Next was Danny’s turn and he made the two huskies howl on command. After this “performance” Cal protested that that was really the dogs’ talent, not Danny’s. A gangly French Canadian man that Cal described as a “world-famous clown” who worked on the strip performed a strange but mesmerizing mime routine where he blew up a balloon. He became the balloon itself and, when when one of the other partygoers punctured him, he mimed losing his air by zig zagging wildly around the stage. Benita did a series of complicated yoga poses. One woman said a tongue twister
. A bald man in tiny circular glasses told a corny joke that nonetheless was followed by riotous laughter and, like all the other performances, thunderous applause, fake tears, and over-the-top praise.
After nearly everyone else had gone, Cal rose and gestured for Tessa to come up with him. He got down on the ground in a plank position and told her to sit on his back with her knees drawn to her chest. Carefully, she did as she was told. Balancing was awkward, especially when Cal started doing push-ups. Each push-up the crowd counted as if it were a death defying-feat. When he got to fifteen, Cal withdrew one of his arms, grunting. Everybody hooted, counting out four one-armed push-ups as Tessa struggled to hang on to his back. Then she hopped off.
“He is the circus strong man!” Benita cried.
Cal rose, red with exertion, and said, “I’d like to thank my beautiful assistant here.” He grabbed Tessa and dipped her and kissed her to the delight of the cheering party guests. When she was righted, Tessa was flushed.
“Tessa goes next!” Benita demanded.
“She doesn’t have to,” Cal said.
“Is that your way of implying that I have no talent?” Tessa teased. “I’m not just an assistant, you know.” She stood at the front of the room and took a deep breath. “Okay, so, who here has a place, a place that is special to them maybe from childhood or maybe it’s somewhere you used to live or maybe it’s someone you don’t get to see anymore?” she said.
Silence. Benita raised her hand and gestured for her guests do the same. A few additional pity hands went up.
“Thank you for humoring me,” Tessa said. “For my talent, I will recite a poem by A.E. Housman.” She cleared her throat. “From memory.”
“Into my heart, an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”
The room was silent. No applause or cheering. Tessa shrugged. “That’s it,” she said.
“It’s so sad,” said the harmonica player.
“Eh. Poetry’s a hard sell.” Tessa shrugged. “I can also curl my tongue in three loops.” She showed them. The party applauded and whistled and cheered. Tessa bowed.
✽✽✽
We had a baby girl. The nurses took her to the nursery. I gave birth and my husband left us in the hospital and went out into the night. To “work”. I called my father. I said, “Please come get us. I know I made a terrible mistake. I’m so alone.” It was like he couldn’t hear me. He replied, “You’re a mother now. You’ll never be lonely again.”
32.
As they got ready to leave the talent show, Tessa stopped to use the bathroom. Benita and Danny made straight to Cal for details. He was famously tight-lipped when it came to telling his family about his love life. How much could he tell them anyway? Tessa remained a mystery to him.
“Dude, she’s great,” Danny said. “Bring her back next week.”
“Incredible energy. You can’t fake that with me,” Benita said.
The last girlfriend Cal had introduced to his family was an Instagram model he’d brought to his mom’s sixty-fifth birthday party in Queens. She’d spent the first half of the party sulking over her misunderstanding that the event was to be held in Manhattan and the second half getting drunk and imitating the New Yorkers’ accents in an unflattering way.
“Tell us how you met,” Danny asked, just before Tessa rounded the corner.
“Thanks for having us guys. It was fun,” Cal said and ducked out into the night.
Because they were both, in fact, hungry, he drove to an out-of-the-way sushi restaurant. It was owned by the parents of one of his employees – a quiet place, no see-and-be-seen crowd. Tessa chatted about the party, asking him about different guests, commenting on each talent. Her cheerful mood was a nice change from how he’d found her, despondent in the bar.
When Tessa was unhappy she was reckless. He could tell that already. And for such a smart person, Tessa was naïve. No street sense, no regard for her own safety. That was just what Cal needed – a story about him getting in a fight with some dirt bag at a dive bar. Speculation about what he’d been doing in that kind of place. Yet Tessa thought that because she’d been the one to handle matters with her mom and grandpa she could handle anything. Probably wouldn’t go over well when he told her about the security detail he’d put on her apartment building back home. Who could say? She ran hot and cold. He couldn’t read her at all and it drove him nuts. He was unaccustomed to this feeling of uncertainty about a woman.
Crazy as it was, his feelings about Tessa were fixed; he wanted her to be his. When she’d asked him why he didn’t like Ron, he hadn’t wanted to answer not because he thought she couldn’t handle the truth, but because if she decided not to have a relationship with Ron, she might go back to North Dakota and never want to come back here. There was that poem she’d recited to consider. She said how it might bring to mind a place or a person. There was no chance he could live in Minot, North Dakota and if she was so attached to a place or worse, a person in that place… Cal gave his head a shake. The thought of her pining for someone else was more than he could bear. As they pulled into the restaurant parking lot he could feel her watching him.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Sushi,” he said.
Before they left his car, he put on a baseball cap on the off chance someone in the restaurant might recognize him. He hated being in public and feeling like people were listening in on his conversations.
Cal kept quiet until they’d given a waitress their drink order. When the woman walked away he blurted, “So what was your poem about?” Across the booth from him, Tessa looked up from her plastic menu and smiled.
“That was a dud, huh.”
“I liked it. I’d have to hear it again I guess. You said the poem might remind you of a place or… a person?”
Setting down the menu, Tessa said, “After I sold my childhood home, it made me think of how I wouldn’t be able to go back. Or if I ever did, it wouldn’t be the same anyway because my mom died and my granddad isn’t the person he used to be when we lived there. But tonight, it sort of made me think about Ron, actually.”
“Ron?”
“Okay, so, when I grew up, my granddad was so good to me. A way better father than Ron could ever have been. No question. But. I still wanted a dad to do all the dad things with me. Tell me to stay away from a certain boy. Teach me how to build a fire. That stuff. Not having a dad was like having a floater in my eye. A tiny black squiggle in my vision. Sometimes I saw it and it bothered me; sometimes I forgot all about it.”
“Okay.” Cal frowned. This was why he hadn’t gone to college. Poems were the worst.
“I’m grown up now. I know how to make a fire and fish and I know a good guy when I see one.” She smiled at him. “And now, apparently, I even have a dad. He and I can have a relationship going forward, if that’s what I still want at this point. But I can’t go back to where I was. It doesn’t fix that. The floater is still there. It is my land of lost content. One of them anyway.”
“Why not just say that?”
“Because it doesn’t sound beautiful. Because my ramblings don’t fit in two stanzas and they don’t knife you in the heart like a good poem does. Because my interpretation isn’t really what Housman meant anyway.”
“I like it more now that you’ve explained.”
She stared at him a long time. Cal felt dumb.
“Thanks,” she said and picked up her menu.
The waitress came and took their order. When she left, Tessa sipped her ice water. Her expression had grown troubled and unreadable again. Even the arrival of the food didn’t raise her spirits.
“What are you thinking about now?” Cal said.
“Sushi.” She sm
irked as she poured soy sauce into a little dish. “Kidding. I spent all day trying not to think about you while you were at work, and now here I am obsessing over this whole Ron mess. If you were me, what would your next move be?” Tessa put an edamame pod in her mouth and sucked out the beans.
“It depends,” Cal said. “Do you think he did it?”
Tessa finished chewing before she answered. “I don’t have all the information. The woman whose son was killed gave me the number of the detective who worked the case.”
“So call him.”
“I did. He didn’t answer.”
“So call him again.”
“And if Ron finds out?”
“Ron has had every opportunity to explain himself and he didn’t. You don’t owe him anything.” The sushi chef hit a service bell on his counter. Cal broke his chopsticks apart and rubbed them together.
“Today Ron said he wants me to move to Las Vegas. I can see why he’d hold off on confessing to me, can’t you?”
“So talk to him. If you can’t have an honest relationship, why have one at all?”
The waitress returned and set dishes on the table. Spicy tuna on crispy rice. Yellowtail sashimi. Pinching a piece of yellowtail between the chopsticks in his big paw, Cal lowered the fish into his mouth.
“You’re really not going to eat any of the rolls? Just sashimi?” Tessa asked.
“I avoid white rice.”
“Did you hear a rumor that it has flour in it?”
“Very funny. Are you going to bribe me to eat again?”
“No.”
“Too bad.”
But Tessa wasn’t in the mood to flirt. The conversation ground to an awkward halt. As they ate, she looked around the restaurant. She seemed restless, surveying the restaurant as though she were assessing the cracked vinyl covering of the booths, how the art on the walls was all advertisements for Japanese beer and saki. The place was almost empty.
“Out of curiosity, why did you pick this place?” she said.
“You said you were down for sushi.”
“It’s so far away from your neighborhood and yet it’s not on the strip.” She pointed her chopsticks at Cal’s head. “And when you got out of the car, you put on a baseball cap which I’ve never seen before. If I was an insecure girl, I’d worry that you don’t want to be seen in public with me.”