How I Spent My Summer Vacation (27 page)

“Baby doll!” Lala called out. “What are you—”

“Stop her!” I shouted. I looked for a guard, even as I realized how futile my request was, how much time and explanation it would require. Grab that incredibly respectable-looking woman? She was everyone’s third grade teacher, favorite lingerie clerk. The aunt the family felt sorry for.

But she had done it, I was positive. Finally, all the jarring details quieted down and fit. She was the one who’d driven Poppy down here. The two of them had known Reese’s escape plans and were following him—probably with murder in mind. And then they saw Sasha and heard, via Frankie’s joke, what room she was in, and the coincidence of hair and place altered the details of their plans. It didn’t take much.

And it didn’t matter much because Norma Evans was gone. Sucked into the casino, a gray invisibility in the chronic glare.

I searched for her inconspicuous, well-tailored shoulders, her demure skirt, her low-heeled pumps.

“Have you gone crazy?” Lala screeched from behind me. “You’ll give us heart attacks.”

That angry voice on the answering machine in Jesse Reese’s outer office—the voice that sounded like metal grating. Poppy had every right to call her husband’s office—but so angrily? And Norma, who’d ignored an earlier caller, had leaped to silence that one.

One thing didn’t yet make sense. Poppy’s motives were easy enough—she’d be financially better off with a dead husband than one who fled the country with his fund, but I didn’t understand what drove Norma Evans.

“Miss Pepper! Tell him I’m okay.” Eric, with Lucky still on his shoulders, was being propelled toward the exit by a security guard, his hand on the young man’s elbow. “This guy’s like accusing me of kidnapping!”

“I never said kidnap,” the guard insisted. “I said—”

“Abducted,” Eric said. “Geez!”

“The little boy’s mother’s in here.” I kept moving, searching for a sign of Norma. “Eric’s trying to help.” Norma Evans was gone, lost in the maze of money machines. Soon she’d be out the door and gone for real and forever.

And then I spotted her. I thought. “See that woman?” I said to the guard. “Get her. She murdered somebody.”

“Miss Pepper!” Eric nearly dropped his grip on Lucky’s legs.

The guard, on the other hand, didn’t even pretend to look. “That’s a cheap way of getting these kids off the hook,” he said. “I’m a little too savvy for the old look-over-there game, anyway.”

“What’s going on?” Lala and Belle arrived together, puffing between words. “Honey,” Lala panted, “if it’s about the phone bill—if you’re afraid we’re dunning you, don’t worry. We only—”

“Either of you these kids’ mother?” the guard asked the two women. His eyes weren’t all that functional, unless he was flirting.

Lala shrieked with laughter. “My
grandchildren
are twice his age!”

“Poor tyke has a boo-boo.” Belle’s voice had gone high and singsongy. “Do you have an itsy boo-boo, little boy?”

Lucky stopped snuffling. “Who you calling a little boy?” he demanded.

Once again I thought I saw gray dim the neon-brights of a slot machine. I took a step away. “Help him find the little boy’s mother, please,” I said to Belle. “She’s gambling in here somewhere. I can’t. I have to—” Their voices faded as I moved toward where I thought I’d seen Norma, past the center row of poker and craps tables. The robotic voices of machines encouraged the players on. The background music softly pulsed out of the walls, and always, from everywhere, was the sound of silver going in and coming out of machines. Above the bank of tall slots an electronic machine tabulated total winnings, a number that escalated even as I glanced up at it.

But I wasn’t a winner. I had lost Norma and the game was over. Doom was setting in with cement hardness. The very worst scenario—Sasha permanently accused—was becoming inevitable. I needed Norma Evans right now. I needed to be able to show her to the leotard girls and the masseuse and Holly while whatever memory they had was fresh. If she left, she would blend into her surroundings somewhere else. She could imitate her former boss’s aborted plans and take the money and run. Take it right now.

In fact, she probably was doing just that.

I had to find her and keep her right now.

And even then I’d have no real proof. A pocketbook that kept reappearing, an overheard voice on an answering machine, and maybe a pearl earring. If I was unbelievably lucky, and she was much dumber than I thought, she’d have kept the earring’s mate, hoping to find the lost one. Great.

If I was even luckier than that, her pocketbook would be full of incriminating money in one form or another.

I rounded one corner, scanned the row, saw only three ancient stone-faced women offering up coins to their machines, and a young girl with orange hair sipping a drink and giggling while her boyfriend—his hair butter-yellow and frizzy and even bigger than hers—popped coins.

I turned and scanned another row, then moved on toward the craps tables, chasing shadows. There were too many corners and possibilities. She could appear where she had not been the second after I left and this could go on forever, until she reached the exit.

I moved toward the door that led to the boardwalk, then backtracked—what if she exited via the casino lobby, instead?

I looked longingly up toward the ceiling where, I knew, everybody—or at least everybody’s money—was being observed nonstop. I wondered what level of commotion it would create if I tried to get up there, to enlist their assistance, to signal from below.

I didn’t have to wonder long, because at that moment I spotted Norma nearing the exit.

“Hey!” I shouted, running in her direction. “
Stop!
Somebody stop her!”

She stopped herself, looking completely innocuous. When I reached her, therefore, she was ready. Her right arm grabbed my shoulder in what must have looked the friendliest of poses, but which hurt. “Shut up, now. Don’t move. There’s a sharp cutting object between your third and fourth ribs,” she said.

I was wearing a green linen blazer, white T-shirt, and tan slacks, none of which offered the protection of, say, a bulletproof vest, so I was immediately able to verify that she was telling the truth. Something pointed was about to do painful acupuncture on internal organs about which I’m sentimental and possessive.

“You’re in big trouble,” Miss Evans whispered.

I’m mortified to admit that my first response was more suitable for Scarlett O’Hara. My knees buckled, my head grew light. But Philadelphia never was a part of the Old South, so I shook myself back to consciousness. It was too late for a swoon.

It was, I feared, too late for everything.

“SURPRISED?” NORMA EVANS SAID, PROPELLING me along. “Blinded by preconceptions about women of a certain age? By your own stereotypes? Call yourself a feminist, I bet. Sisterhood is all—but you still underrate middle-aged sisters. My hair turns a little gray and I become invisible, a non-person, ready to be victimized, right? I’m certainly not an actor, a doer, a person to notice. Who’da thought the old dame packed a knife? Can you pack a knife or only a gun?” She interrupted herself to giggle, which didn’t seem much improvement or much endorsement of her mental health.

“Help!” I squawked.

“Stop sniveling! Act like a
woman
!” She managed to simultaneously clutch my arm tighter and press the knife in closer. I gasped—shallowly. A normal inhale would result in a puncture wound. I tried to contract all my muscles—but the one in my back that was already in a slipknot made any movement tricky.

“’S killing me!” I croaked, conserving my air and rib cage.

A man at a computerized poker game looked my way. “This one’s killing me, too.” He returned to his game.

“No joke!” I pushed out words with the exhale, feeling my sides shrink in. “This woman’s—” I was out of air.

Norma pushed the knife along my newly tightened sides. My skin gave way with the sharp hot rip of shredding nerve ends. My eyes teared.

“People in here don’t
care
about us,” Norma said. “They’re too busy with their own good times. You know that a man once had a heart attack and died, right on the floor—literally, down on the floor, dead. And people walked over him to get to the machines? That I once saw the doctor administering CPR under the craps table—but the game went right on above them? The way those sick people felt is exactly how it feels to be me, all the time now. To be no longer valuable, over-the-hill.”

Was this really the time for polemics? Still, I wondered whether I’d live long enough to experience mid-life devaluation firsthand.

And while I mused and winced and worried, she steered me toward the outer wall of the casino. Her grip on my upper arm was amazingly tight. I tried to shake loose but couldn’t. I used my free hand to claw at hers—but she immediately scraped me with the knife in response. My side was on fire. Surface wound, I reminded myself. Surface.

“Another myth shot to hell,” she said. “I’m strong. I work out. I lift weights. A woman alone has to be able to take care of herself. You aren’t much of a reporter, are you, Hildy? Came to find out about me and you didn’t learn the first thing.”

“I didn’t—I was trying to find out about
him
. Jesse. I never connected you with—”

“Nonsense,” she said.

“Help!” I shouted.

“Testing me?” She gave the knife another jab. Once again I told myself that if she were wounding me seriously I wouldn’t feel it this much, that superficial cuts hurt worse than deep ones because with the latter, the nerve was severed. Therefore, even as I felt the wet warmth of my own blood—therefore, I had to stifle my panic and understand that I had no more than a paper cut on my side. Several paper cuts. That’s why I hurt like hell.

I glanced down, just to check that no vital organs were now on the outside. What I saw was a small but growing rusty stain wending its way between the green linen fibers of my blazer. My jacket’s ruined, I thought inappropriately.

I controlled the urge to bawl.

I was less able to stifle a ridiculous flood of household hints that flashed onto my mental screen. Ought to get this into cold water. Pour baking soda on it—or was it club soda?

I was obviously losing my mind, worrying about laundry problems when I was being knifed.

And nobody turned to look, to wonder, to speculate on what my words—or the stain—meant.

Norma chuckled, a sound that made me shudder. But then, over the mildly insane laughter, I heard an Ethel Merman boom of a voice from somewhere behind me.

“How’m I supposed to find his mother, a woman I never saw?”

“Lala!” I shouted. “Help!” I could almost see my words absorbed by the noise of the machines, the clothing of the players, the distance.

But I had caught someone’s attention. A man actually looked up from something called a Triple-Play. “Need help?” he asked. His eyes, however, were on Norma. Nonetheless, I nodded, vigorously. “She has a kni—” Norma pressed and spoke right over me. “It’s all right.” Her voice was soothing, telegraphing not to worry, all was well, as long as all was in her hands. “She’s had these attacks since she was fifteen,” she said. “Chronic hysteria. Takes time and fresh air.”

The man looked from the great gray and solid woman to me.

“What kind of a mother leaves her little boy alone, anyway?” It was Lala again, somewhere close.

“Lala!” I screamed.

“Lala? Jesus.” The man twirled his finger in a small circle next to his head, using the universal sign for insanity. He whistled softly, then nodded sympathetically at Norma. “I don’t envy you,” he said. Of course. Who was he going to believe? Stability itself or incoherent, screaming, tear-streaked, and disheveled me? Lala’s parents chose a bizarre moniker—and it would cost me my life.

Norma jabbed me again. I was going to look like a scored piece of meat. I was going to
be
a scored piece of meat. “Absolutely no more screams.” Norma’s mouth was close to my ear. “Cut it out, or I will. Get it?” She laughed at her grisly pun. “You’re not even smiling,” she said. “But I, myself, find my wordplay
side-splitting.
Get it?” I felt mildly ill, couldn’t bear thinking about my split side, my injuries, my bleeding, and what they might mean. Not to mention my back, which at this point, all on its own, was enough to paralyze me with pain. I nodded woozily. We must have looked like mildly drunk women, steering ourselves toward the exit.

“I was really surprised to see you—little Hildy Johnson, from McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and formerly of
His Girl Friday
—showing up in a bar in Atlantic City? What an incredible coincidence, and what a stroke of luck. I never thought I’d find you again, although I wanted to.”

“I get around, so what? And why would you want to see me again?”

She pulled the outside door open and shoved me through it. “You stole a
tape
,” she added, as if that act were the very heart of the problem.

I instinctively pulled back, to express amazement, but she had me in her grip too tightly. “It wasn’t like it had state secrets on it,” I said. “The whole world was supposed to see it.”

We were outside now, on the boardwalk. I eyed the crowds.

Nobody eyed me back with any real interest. I felt again how alone a person could be no matter the numbers around her. I knew that if I screamed and Norma remained calm, looking like somebody caring for me, passersby, who didn’t want to be involved in the first place, would happily accept the idea that they weren’t needed and would move on. And then Norma would kill me with her stiletto. It seemed wiser to stay alert and see what she had planned next. Surely she didn’t intend to do away with me while this many witnesses were around. Since they weren’t gambling at the moment, they’d pay attention to a capital crime happening in front of their eyes, wouldn’t they?

She turned and stood in front of me now, as if in intense conversation, and the knife was rerouted to just below where I put my hand when I pledge allegiance to the flag. I tried to decide whether I could pull her off me with my one good arm and my very bad back faster than she could slice my heart.