B005HF54UE EBOK (12 page)

Chapter 34
The Lunch Counter

That night she made her shift at the Cal Neva. When it was over she decided to take a walk by the river. The morning was cold and she left the casino and went down Second Street as the sun began to come up over the mountains. As she neared the river she looked up from the sidewalk and saw Dan Mahony walking towards her. She looked back down, hoping he would pass, but he had seen her and so had come over to say hello.

He looked tired, his hair disheveled, his face puffy and pale.

‘I didn’t see you in the restaurant this morning,’ the girl said.

‘I couldn’t do it today,’ he said and smiled. ‘I called in sick but then I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Is your eye still hurting?’

‘No, it’s pretty much better. I hear they’re finally tearing down the Harold’s Club and the Nevada Club buildings. I read about it yesterday. It’s not going to happen for a while, but I figured I’d just take another look at them, and then maybe get a bite to eat. Where are you headed?’

‘I’m just taking a walk,’ she said.

‘Would you want to get a cup of coffee?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been around coffee all night.’

‘I’m buying. You can drink anything you want,’ he said and smiled.

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere you say.’

‘Just a cup of coffee?’

‘That’s it.’

‘If we go back to the Cal Neva. At the lunch counter downstairs. I’ll go there,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he said.

They walked there in silence and she ordered a cup of coffee. He ordered a donut and coffee, and they sat at the counter. She knew the cook, and felt better that he was there. He was an older married man who sometimes worked in the restaurant upstairs.

‘I know you don’t like answering questions,’ Dan said, ‘but how are you doing in Reno? It sure ain’t San Diego.’

‘There’s some good things about it here,’ she said. ‘I like the weather better than San Diego ’cause you have seasons. I like that you don’t have to have a car. And my family all lives here now so it’s not so bad. But sure, I guess I miss the beach.’

‘I’ve never lived anywhere else. I’ve driven around a lot – you know, road trips and vacations and things like that – but I’ve never lived anywhere else.’

‘I’ve just been here and San Diego,’ she said uncertainly and stared at her coffee cup.

‘You know I ain’t gonna bite you,’ he said.

‘I’m not scared of you.’

‘You’d be awful damn meek to be scared of me.’

‘You can’t say that,’ she said and looked at him. ‘I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’re like.’

‘That’s why we’re having coffee. I could tell you if you want.’

‘You don’t have to,’ she said.

‘I used to be a plumber. I worked for my uncle, then I got hurt and my left hand was broken. They set it with pins but I couldn’t see that well, so I couldn’t be a plumber anymore. I sat around for about six months then I got the job at the VA. They give me free therapy on my hand and arm.’ He took his left hand and opened and closed it in front of her. ‘See, it works pretty good now.’

She glanced at his scarred hand.

‘Then I got addicted to bingo. For a while I could only work part time and so I began going to the Holiday Hotel for old people bingo.’

‘Why would you go there?’

‘Well, old people never bother you, they’re generally a lot more decent to you than anyone else. Plus they’re too old and tired to do much. There’s never fights or anything like that. Anyway, my uncle owns this little house on Seventh Street. I stay there, I rent it from him. It’s as small as an apartment, but it’s got a yard, and I have a dog named Zipper. He’s a beat-up looking mutt, but he’s a hell of a nice dog.’

‘Zipper’s a funny name,’ she said.

‘I found him on a job site. It was out near Stead and I was working on this new housing development. There was nothing around us at all, and it was real hot out, in the dead of summer, and there he was, just a pup, wandering out in the sage brush. I have no idea how he got there. But I remember seeing something move, and for a while I thought it was a rabbit or maybe a cat, but it was too slow, you know? It was just stumbling around out there. Finally I went to take a look and there he was. His tongue hanging out, about dead. He was the skinniest little pup I’d ever seen. So that night I went over to my sister’s house for dinner and I brought him with me. My niece, who’s just a kid, not even in school yet, started calling him Zipper and so it just kind of stuck.’

‘It’s a good name.’

There was a woman who started screaming. The alarm on her slot machine rang. She’d hit a jackpot. They both looked over at her and watched.

‘Do you gamble?’ Dan asked her.

‘No,’ she said and finished her coffee.

‘I just bet horses if I do anything,’ he said, noticing her empty cup, and he went on talking because of it. ‘I used to have this friend when I was in school, and he was a big kid. He was Italian and he was real hairy. He could grow a moustache by the age of fifteen. So he looked old. When we were in high school he’d play twenty-one at the rundown casinos that wouldn’t kick him out. He’d borrow money from all his friends, take money from his folks, get money however he could so he could gamble. Sometimes he would pay me just to stand behind him. He didn’t like going alone. But afterwards, if he’d won, he’d buy me dinner at a steak house and maybe give me twenty bucks.’

‘I’ve never heard of a kid like that. What’s he do now?’

‘He works at a wrecking yard,’ he said and laughed.

The cook came by with a pot of coffee to fill both their cups. Dan glanced at her to see if she was going to take another, and when she did, he relaxed.

‘You from a big family?’

‘I guess,’ she said and put sugar in her coffee. She stirred it with a plastic fork.

‘I have a sister in Fallon. She married a guy in the military out there. He’s a pretty all right guy even so. I mean, he treats her nice and everything. I don’t see them much even though they’re only an hour away. They have a couple kids. She’s older, she’s ten years older than me.’

‘I have a brother and a sister,’ the girl said. ‘My brother’s a police officer. He lives just up the street from me with his family. My sister’s in Mexico with her boyfriend. I don’t know anything about Mexico. She hardly ever calls, and when she does it’s only for a couple of minutes. I hope she’s all right down there.’

‘Where in Mexico?’

‘Down near Puerto Vallerata.’

‘I think that’s a real tourist sort of place. You ever been out of the country?’

‘No,’ she said and shook her head. ‘I’ve been around Southern California and Arizona and that’s about it. My dad takes us to the Grand Canyon every year. He grew up on a ranch near Flagstaff and every summer we have a huge family reunion. My sister and I, we always lived together, and now I just have roommates. I’ve never been away from her this long. She always makes everyone feel optimistic about things.’

‘How about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Are you an optimist?’

‘I try,’ she said, ‘but I’m not like her.’ She paused and took a drink of coffee, then put the cup down and stared into it. ‘To be honest I’m probably the opposite. I have the worst thoughts. I really do. I always think I’m gonna get run over by a bus or get murdered. That I’ll get a terrible disease or go to jail forever. And the crazy thing is when I think those thoughts, sometimes it makes me happy. I don’t know if happy is the right word. Maybe relieved. I don’t know, but she doesn’t have thoughts like that.’

‘I get thoughts like that. Everyone does, I think. Maybe it takes the pressure off. If something like that happened, then you’d be done. You wouldn’t have to try anymore.’

‘Maybe,’ she said and suddenly stood up. ‘I never thought of it like that. But I’m talking too much.’

‘I don’t know if you ever could,’ he said and finished his coffee.

After a while she put on her coat. ‘I’m sorry but I don’t want a boyfriend,’ she said to him.

‘Me neither,’ he said and smiled. He stood up. ‘I just think we should go play bingo some time. At the Holiday. During the day. We could meet there. You could bring your roommates, or bring your family.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think so.’

‘All right then,’ Dan said. ‘That’s okay, too. At least we had this cup of coffee.’ He put on his coat, said goodbye, and walked away. She watched him as he wandered through the rows of slot machines, then sat back down and ordered breakfast.

Chapter 35
The Girl in the Checkout Line

There was a young woman with a child standing in line in front of her at the grocery store. Allison had just gotten off shift and was dressed in her work uniform. It was eight in the morning, there was only one clerk working and she was buying bacon, ice cream, the
National Enquirer
, and three glazed donuts. The woman in front of her had a baby boy in her arms. He was playing with her hair. The line was long and slow. The woman had diapers, frozen dinners, milk, jars of baby food, and boxes of cereal in the cart. She was young, she didn’t even look twenty. She had brown hair down to her shoulders and was dressed in jeans and a sweater.

The boy took a barrette from his mother’s hair. He held it in his hand then threw it to the ground in front of Allison. The young woman turned around.

‘I’m sorry, did that hit you?’

‘Oh no,’ Allison said and bent down and picked up the barrette and handed it back to her. ‘He’s got a good arm, though. Maybe he’ll be a baseball player. How old is he?’

‘Two,’ the woman said

‘Is he yours?’

‘Yeah,’ she said and rolled her eyes. ‘All mine.’

‘He looks like you.’

‘Yeah, he does, doesn’t he? Isn’t this line taking forever? I have to take the groceries by my place, then drop him off at my mom’s, then I got to go to work, all in an hour. My husband’s out of town for two weeks and it’s driving me mad.’

‘Good luck,’ Allison said and smiled.

‘Thank you,’ the woman said and turned around and the line slowly crawled forward.

In the parking lot she watched the woman load her groceries into the bed of an old pick-up truck and then put her son in the cab, in a car seat, and drive off. As she walked down Wells Avenue towards her apartment she began to cry. She sat down at a bus stop bench at some point and it wasn’t until later, when she arrived home, that she realized she had left her groceries there, on a bench more than a mile away.

She sat at her kitchen table and took the only beer from her fridge and opened it. She took the notebook from her purse, opened it to an empty page, and started writing.

She paused and drank from the can of beer. Her anxiety welled and again she began to cry. She stood, then walked to the kitchen. She took a worn out steak knife from a drawer, and stood over the sink and pressed the knife into her wrist. Blood slowly began dripping into the steel sink. She stood there trying to push it in harder, but there was too much pain and she couldn’t. She sat down on the kitchen floor, crying, and held a dish towel on her bleeding arm.

Chapter 36
Dessert

It was past nine and the two women left the Curt Vacuum office and walked towards the Eldorado Casino and its dessert buffet. It was a cold evening with a storm threatening. They were both smoking cigarettes and wearing winter coats and hats. The streets were nearly empty and they walked in silence.

Penny led her through the casino, past the tables, the endless rows of slot machines, the bars, up to the second floor and the dessert buffet. She ordered a slice of chocolate cake, an éclair, a dish of soft serve vanilla ice cream, and three chocolate chip cookies. The girl stood behind her and ordered a cup of coffee and two éclairs. They sat in a booth and ate and watched the gamblers pass in front of them.

‘Hon, you got to try this cake,’ Penny said and cut a piece with her fork and set it on a napkin in front of the girl. ‘You do like chocolate cake, don’t you?’

‘Everyone likes chocolate cake,’ she said and put the cake in her mouth.

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Next time I’ll get that.’

‘It’s one of their mainstays. They have it here all the time,’ Penny said and noticed the white bandage wrapped around the girl’s wrist.

‘Have you had that bandage on all night?’

‘Yeah,’ Allison said.

‘What happened?’

‘I was busing a table ’cause we were short a busboy and I cut myself on a knife.’

‘Must have been one mean knife,’ she said and looked at the girl in the eyes. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Good,’ Penny said and put her fork down. ‘I’m eating too fast.’ She took a drink of water and lit a cigarette, ‘Hon, I don’t mean to pry, but how’s your love life?’

‘My love life?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I mean after that video clerk. You had another boyfriend, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah, I did but I don’t have a love life now.’

‘I haven’t had anything in three years. You just split up with number two, is that right?’

‘A while ago.’

‘Was he a good one or a bad one?’

‘A bad one.’

‘I don’t want to pry, but still.’

‘I guess he had some good points. He was strong, he was pretty good looking, too. He made me feel safe a lot of the time. I guess I needed that. At the beginning I did. That was something he had. But he was an asshole. He could be really mean.’

‘How mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ Allison said. ‘He used to get in fights all the time.’

‘He ever hit you?’

‘Yeah,’ she said and her voice got quiet. She quit looking at Penny.

‘My guess was something like that.’

‘Why would you say that?’

‘You just got that skittish way about you.’

‘He used to get mad ’cause I’d get too drunk and embarrass him. But he liked to drink all the time, and he wanted me with him. We were always going out. I’m not very good at being around a lot of people. It makes me nervous and then I start drinking to calm down, and before you know it I’m in trouble. The problem with him was I never knew what would make him happy or pissed off. Something that had always made him happy all the sudden would make him mad. You never knew. Sometimes he’d get so mad and there was nothing I could remember doing wrong. Then a bunch of horrible things happened and so I left.’

‘Left Las Vegas?’

‘Yeah,’ she said and took a drink of coffee. ‘You’re not going to tell anyone anything we’re talking about, are you?’

‘No, hon, I don’t operate that way.’

‘I would never tell anyone anything we talked about. Usually the only person I talk to is my sister, but she’s gone and I don’t know how to get hold of her.’

‘She’s in Mexico, right?’

‘Right,’ Allison said.

‘Does your boyfriend know you’re here?’

‘He found out,’ the girl said. ‘He gave a letter to my mom and she sent it to me and it said he was coming to find me here.’

‘You think he will?’

‘He might, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Now every time I see a guy that sorta looks like him, I get nervous.’

‘That’s a hard way to live. You should contact the police. Get a restraining order against him. At least call them and tell them your situation.’

‘I know,’ she said and looked down at her plate.

‘You know what you got to do,’ Penny said and put out her cigarette. ‘You gotta do something nice for yourself. Get your GED. That would be a step. It would give you confidence. In the meantime get your hair done. You could be a pretty girl if you got that hair out of your face. I know a woman, I’ll give you her name.’

‘I’m gonna sign up for a class to get my GED.’

‘I could loan you the money.’

‘I couldn’t take your money. I have enough in savings.’

‘Then will you at least get your hair cut on me? Sometimes you gotta eat and sometimes you got to buy clothes and sometimes you got to get your hair done. That’s the only sound advice I can give you tonight.’

‘Okay,’ the girl said.

‘You promise?’

‘I promise,’ she said.