Vegas Girls

by Heather Skyler

  “It won’t actually be a wedding cake,” Ivy said.

  “Where are we going to stick a candle?” Frank wanted to know, peering at the petit fours with a frown.

  “In one of those,” Ivy told him, then turned to Jeremy and said, “They’re really beautiful. Thank you.”

  “Those are cool,” Adam added, joining the circle.

  Three against one, Jeremy thought, waiting for Frank to say more, but he merely nodded, then moved to pour himself a glass of water from the tap.

  JANE

  Jane managed to avoid Adam until guests began arriving for the party. When she got home this morning, he was asleep. Then she took a nap, and when she awoke he was in the shower, then she was in the shower, and before she knew it, it was two o’clock and guests were knocking on the front door in a steady flow, as if they’d decided to walk in procession up the sidewalk and then into Ivy’s house in two-minute intervals. Most of the people were friends Ivy had made at baby yoga and the library or teachers and administrators from Frank’s school, but Jane recognized a few women from high school, a girl named Naomi who’d been on the volleyball team with Ivy, Patricia from the quad, Delilah from the apartment complex.

  There were more babies than Jane had expected, at least five or six who were the same age as or a little older than Lucky, but so far they were all on good behavior, looking sweet-faced and complacent in the arms of a parent. Ivy was holding Lucky by the front door, bouncing him lightly and smiling as she greeted guests. She wore a bright green wraparound dress and her hair hung loose down her back. Lucky’s T-shirt was a matching green. Jane watched her friend and felt an unfamiliar anger building. If Ivy hadn’t let Adam in, if she hadn’t welcomed him with wine and open arms, then Jane wouldn’t be forced to go and talk to him right now, as she knew she had to do.

  She found him in the kitchen, leaning against the sink, drinking a beer. Jeremy was fussing with a tray of food beside him, arranging it just so, and Adam was watching him and talking softly, telling him, Jane realized, about their kitchen in Wisconsin, the way it always smelled of barbecue, no matter how much they scrubbed it down. “It’s like it used to be a rib joint or something. I can’t figure it out.”

  “There are worse smells than barbecued ribs,” Jeremy mused.

  “True,” Adam agreed. “But I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Oh, well, then that’s rough,” Jeremy agreed.

  The two men had never met before, but they seemed a perfect set, with their ruffled hair and laid-back postures, and Jane was caught off-guard by how at home Adam looked in this kitchen. That was one of his talents, she understood: slipping into any environment with perfect ease.

  “Hey,” Jane said, forcing herself to step closer to Adam than she wished to be.

  He turned and his face brightened, then clouded briefly before he smiled and said, “Jane.”

  Her name came out coated in kindness, even love, but he made no move to approach her, and she felt relieved, not wanting just now to be wrapped in his ambiguous embrace. She ladled out a cup of sangria from the punch bowl on the counter, sliced rounds of orange floating on the liquid’s rosy surface like mini-inner tubes. “Would you like one?” she asked Adam.

  “Please,” he said, and accepted a glass with his free hand. He took a sip of the sangria, then a long pull from his bottle of beer.

  “What about me?” Jeremy asked. “Am I just the hired help now?”

  Jane had forgotten his presence, he’d been so silent fussing over his tray of food, and she wordlessly ladled out another cup and handed it over.

  “Cheers,” Jeremy said, lifting his glass.

  Jane and Adam clinked cups, then looked uncomfortably at each other, both acutely aware this was no occasion for a toast. There was a building pressure between them, and when Jeremy turned and left them alone in the kitchen, she felt the pressure become denser, viscous, and yellow. “The kids should be here any minute,” she told Adam. “We all stayed at my parents’ last night, but I came over early to help with the party.”

  “I didn’t see you help with anything.” He smiled, but the words were meant to rile her; she could feel this in his tone, in the relentless arrow of his gaze. So he’d flown all this way to start a fight. She guessed it was about time.

  “You’re right,” she agreed. “I didn’t do much to help out.”

  “So what have you been doing here?”

  “Swimming with the kids,” Jane said quickly. “Hanging out.”

  He nodded and took a swallow of beer. His eyes were tired, shadowed underneath, and Jane wondered if he felt as exhausted as she did.

  “What exactly are you doing here?” Jane asked.

  He shifted against the sink and sipped his beer, then took a swallow of sangria. Sun burned through the window behind him and rode his shoulders, lit the wavy top of his hair. “I wanted to see you. That’s all.”

  “I’ll be home in two days.”

  “I thought you might decide to stay.” He said this calmly, as if extending her vacation would be an acceptable decision, not a threat to everything in his life.

  Jane was considering how to respond, thinking again of the open house, that empty, white-walled living room looking out on the pool, when two women holding babies swept into the kitchen.

  “Ivy said there’s some baby food in the cupboard?” The one with short red hair directed this to Jane.

  “Sure,” Jane said, moving to stand beside Adam and reach into the cupboard to his right. There was a row of Gerber jars on the second shelf, and Jane read the flavors out to the women—“banana, sweet potato, harvest vegetables, pears”—while taking note of the heat that rose from Adam’s body, thinking she might be repelled by his proximity but feeling instead a familiar pull.

  “Pears,” the redhead requested.

  “Sweet potato for me, please,” the other mother said.

  Jane swiveled and held out the jars, then noticed that the second mother was Delilah, from Ivy’s old apartment building. The woman recognized Jane at the same moment and smiled, revealing overlapping front teeth. “I hear Ivy’s mother’s coming to the party,” she said. “Is that true?”

  Jane shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Jeremy mentioned it was a possibility, but he’s not the most trustworthy person I know.” She laughed.

  “Exactly,” Jane agreed, though it didn’t feel right to talk badly to this person about Jeremy, so she added, “His food is wonderful. Have you tried any yet?”

  “Busy trying to feed this monster first.” She kissed the top of her child’s head, a dark-haired boy wearing a skull T-shirt. “This is Spencer.”

  Adam leaned in before Jane did, smiling at the boy. “Nice work,” he told Delilah. “He’s pretty cute.”

  “This is my husband, Adam,” Jane told Delilah and the redhead beside her. The word husband felt rusty from disuse, but what else could she call him? My husband for now? My husband until I figure out what the fuck I’m doing with my life?

  When the women were gone, Jane leaned against the counter beside Adam with a sigh. “This sucks,” she told him.

  “Yep.”

  His instant understanding of what she meant—the strange sound of the word husband and how she longed for it to sound normal again, to have never sounded strange in the first place—cheered her up a bit. It was not a small thing to be understood.

  “C’mon,” he said, placing a hand at the small of her back. “Let’s go outside and get some food.”

  The party was centered around the pool. Jeremy’s table of hors d’oeuvres was set up nearby, and people milled about holding blue paper plates, talking and laughing. Frank had set up the speakers outside, so that beachy pop music looped through the crowd, and a few couples were already dancing on the covered patio, twirling their children around between them. Jane stood beside Adam on the edge of the pool deck, wishing she were still sitting alone on the side of the Black Mountains, looking out over the city.

  Later, A
dam would likely talk her into joining those people on the dance floor, spinning Fern and Rocky between them like tops, and how would she possibly be able to refuse? Then he would pull her close, into their own separate dance, and the decade they had shared would flare into something bright and intangible, hovering around their swaying forms, and then all thoughts of leaving might just dissipate into the evening air, absorbed by other partygoers, other couples who would later sour and curdle, turning away from each other in bed.

  Adam excused himself to the bathroom, and his absence made her even more uncomfortable than his presence. It was useful to have a husband at a party, she understood, another person to ease you into the unfamiliar crowd. Then she spotted Ivy and Ramona sitting together under the umbrella, and relief swept through her as she crossed the deck and perched on the arm of Ramona’s chair.

  “How’s it going?” Ramona asked her.

  “Not great,” Jane said.

  “He told me this morning,” Ivy said in a low voice, “that you might be angry with him for coming here.”

  “Actually,” Jane said, “I’m angrier with you.”

  “With me? What was I supposed to do? Turn him away?”

  “No, but you didn’t have to pal around with him.”

  “Well, he’s a friend. We’ve known each other a long time. I’m not going to act like a total bitch to him.”

  “But you have no problem acting like one to me?” Jane had not come over here with the intention of starting a fight, but she felt an inevitable momentum now.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? We’ve been having a good time. At least that was my impression.”

  “A good time,” Jane said in a sarcastic whisper. “My marriage is disintegrating. Ramona’s off searching for her son. And you’re just serving up cocktails, flirting with your ex-boyfriend, and preaching to me how to live my life.”

  Ivy stood up abruptly, knocking her knee against the edge of the table and sending splashes of red sangria all over the white cloth so that it looked as if a bloody scuffle had taken place. “I wouldn’t be preaching if you weren’t screwing everything up. Your life has been too easy, that’s what I think. You’ve always had so much love that you can’t even imagine what your life might feel like without it. Well, let me tell you something: It feels awful. Ramona knows, just ask her. We both know what it’s like.”

  Ramona finally spoke then. “Sit down, Ivy,” she said softly, reaching to touch her arm.

  Ivy looked down at her, as if considering, then obeyed. She lifted her empty sangria glass off the table and peered into its depths, then set it back on the stained cloth and raised her gaze to meet Jane’s. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No, you’re right,” Jane told her. “I don’t know what it’s like.”

  “Jane,” Ramona began. “We just want to make sure you’ve thought this through. I mean, what are you going to do if you move out? You don’t even have a job.”

  Jane nodded. “I have connections. I should be able to find something fairly quickly.” In fact, a friend from the paper had sent her a link to a university job this morning, but she didn’t want to get into the specifics. Thinking about the practical aspects of a separation held little appeal right now, sitting beside this swimming pool in a faraway state.

  “I’m not worried about a job,” Ivy said. “I’m worried about her heart.”

  “My heart is just fine,” Jane told her, but even as she said the words she felt a contracting pressure in her chest as Adam stepped back onto the patio and scanned the crowd. Watching him, she felt the inevitable link between them, pulling her back to what was familiar. “I need a refill,” she said and stood, then slipped around the edge of the tables and through the side door so as to avoid her husband.

  Inside, she wound her way back to the empty kitchen where she refilled her glass with sangria, then leaned against the sink. Through the dining room’s sliding glass doors, she had a partial view of the party outside. A group of women had gathered around Jeremy’s table, where he was holding up a petit four, and it looked as if he were giving a lecture on how to create one. Frank stood close to the pool, holding Lucky and talking to his father. Her own parents would be here soon, along with her children, and seeing Adam would create a feeling of mutual delight and tension in all of them that Jane didn’t think she could bear.

  As if conjured by her thoughts, Rocky ran into the kitchen and clung to her legs with such force Jane staggered back, then crouched down to give him a proper hug. “When did you get here?” she asked him.

  “Right now,” he told her, then said with unblemished excitement, “Daddy’s here! Out front helping Grandma.”

  “I know. I guess I should go help out too,” she told him, but instead stayed where she was, pulling Rocky against her and kissing the warm top of his head. She’d missed seeing him this morning, she realized, missed eating breakfast with him and Fern the way she did every morning at home. Was that all it took, she wondered, just a few mornings off and she was ready for her routines again?

  He fidgeted in her arms, then pulled away and ran outside toward the party. Jane watched him go, then went out front with the intention of finding her parents and Adam, wanting to get any strangeness out of the way and move forward with the day the best she could, but the walkway and lawn were empty, and she was turning to go back inside when she heard someone call her name.

  It was Rex, striding up the sidewalk, waving his long arm and smiling. This was bad, Jane knew, very bad that he was here, but she couldn’t help the sudden thrumming of her heart, the light-headed feeling of pleasure evoked by the sight of him. She met him on the sidewalk, looking over her shoulder for Adam or Ivy, her children and parents, but for the moment, no one was in sight.

  “I never got your phone number,” he said, by way of greeting. “And I wanted to ask you to dinner, tonight, or maybe tomorrow?”

  “I can’t,” she told him quickly.

  “Oh, okay.” He twisted the small bun at the nape of his neck and looked to the side.

  “There’s just a lot going on here. That’s all.”

  “Just a drink then?” He reached out and ran his palm down the length of her arm, then caught her hand in his.

  The coolness of his skin calmed her, and she wanted him to pull her along the sidewalk, to lead her back to his house until this party was over. “It’s good to see you,” she told him, wanting to offer something. “Really good.”

  “Jane,” Ramona called to her from the front step.

  She took her hand away from Rex as swiftly as she could and turned toward her friend.

  “Adam’s trying to find you. Sorry to interrupt.”

  “Okay, just a minute,” she told her, then turned back to Rex. In the glare of sunlight, the few lines on his face disappeared completely, and for a second, she could see his younger self, the one she faintly recalled. “I think I do remember you,” she told him. “The palm tree at lunch? You always sat by yourself?”

  He nodded. “That was me.”

  “I admired the way you managed to sit there alone every day without looking lonely or like some sort of outcast. You seemed, I don’t know, happy.”

  “I was happy.” He laughed and shrugged. “I didn’t know any better yet.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “So who’s Adam?”

  “My husband. He just showed up last night, out of the blue.”

  “Oh.” He frowned and rubbed his hands together. “All right. I know how that goes.”

  She wanted to ask him what to do, how to navigate the terrain, but his circumstances were not quite the same as her own. For one thing, he was the one who had been left, and Jane was the one trying to do the leaving. But she knew he felt the same deep ache she did, had the same cavernous hole caused by love’s removal. “Maybe I’ll stop by later?” she said.

  “Whatever you think.” He nodded once, firmly, and turned to go.

  She watched his tall, sharp-angled form retreat down the walk, th
en he rounded the corner and disappeared from view.

  Back by the pool, the party had grown more festive. The patio was packed with dancers now, and the music had grown louder. The sun began to lower and turn golden, casting everyone in a hazy glow that evoked the past, a memory of a party rather than an ongoing event.

  Jane found Adam at the food table, sampling Jeremy’s various offerings and drinking another beer. He knocked a stack of blue napkins on the ground and looked unsteady as he bent to retrieve them. Jane wondered how much he’d had to drink, then decided it was no longer her concern.

  “Here I am,” Jane said. She plucked an empanada off the half-empty plate and took a bite. It was colder than it was supposed to be, but delicious nonetheless. “Yum,” she told Jeremy, who smiled.

  “Oh, hi.” Adam straightened up, then wiped away the salsa on his lip with a blue napkin. “I wanted to dance to this one song you like—I can’t remember the name—but it’s over now, so …” He shrugged and popped a grape in his mouth. “Next time.”

  “Next time,” she agreed. “Where are the kids?”

  He turned toward the pool and shrugged again. “Playing somewhere.”

  Jane searched the crowd, thinking someone should be paying attention to Fern and Rocky’s whereabouts. The pool was empty, reflecting the peachy blue light of the sky. A hearty peal of laughter rose up from a group of teachers from Frank’s school, and Jane watched as they toasted, sangria spilling down their arms. Two women nursed babies on the chaise longues under the palm tree. Ivy was leaning into Frank on the dance floor. Jane’s parents were on the dance floor too, their jaunty, swinging step taking them around the edges of the crowd. They were deft together, as they had always been.

  Ramona sat in a chair near the dancers, tuning her guitar, and then Jane saw Rocky and Fern emerge from behind the palm trees and run over to Ramona, where they leaned their heads to listen intently as she plucked each string. Jane’s muscles relaxed at the sight of them, then tensed again as Adam leaned toward her and said, “I’m going to ask if I can give a toast.”

  The song ended, and the dancers scattered to reveal her husband, holding a microphone that belonged to a karaoke machine. Ivy whispered something to Adam, then nodded and stepped away. He tapped the microphone with his hand. “Excuse me, everyone, I’d like to make a toast.”