Night Swimming (25 page)

She gathered her suitcases filled with the remaining money and dragged them down to the car. What had she been thinking?

Hollywood, land of dreams. Whose dreams? How crazy was I to think everyone was happy here? Movie stars roaming the streets, Tom Selleck sitting next to me at Barney’s Beanery.

How are you, Blossom?

Fine, Tom, how are you?

Just great, thanks for asking. Oh, you must stop by the set. I’m making a sequel to
Magnum, PI.

Wonderful. I’ll be there this afternoon.

We’ll grab a bite after.

Perfect, Tom...

Am I crazy? What kind of whacked-out fantasy was that in Gorham? What did I think? People just make friends with their favorite stars? Who said dreams come true here anyway?

Blossom put her bags into the trunk and drove out into the still of the night. She passed under plastic reindeer hanging over the streets, swinging in the wind as if they, too, were trying to fly as far away from Hollywood, California, as she was. She passed houses lined with Christmas lights that looked like nothing more than hard candy to her, the type of candy a woman might have stuck to the back of her skirt as she rises from her seat and exits the train. Christmas in California. Fake snow, fake trees, fake everything. Blossom didn’t want this to be the final image of her last Christmas on earth, so she drove. Toward what, she had no idea.

She was driving for about two hours when she saw a sign:
I-15 Barstow, Las Vegas.
Las Vegas! That was it! Yes, she would go to Las Vegas and win money, and then, like Mr. Feingold, she’d leave it to a worthy cause.

This was fate, kismet. These were the good-luck gods, calling her to her destiny. She did not see the irony in spending her last Christmas in Las Vegas. No matter. She believed she was meant to be on this road at five in the morning. She was meant to see that sign and go to Vegas. She was meant to gamble her money in order to win more for the greater good. Yes, Blossom would leave her legacy after all.

It was daybreak when she checked into the Golden Nugget, but people still sat at the tables, bleary-eyed and rumpled, acting as if they’d just arrived. Gamblers who’d been going at it all night were still in their losing positions.

Blossom got a suite with a bedroom overlooking the pool. It was the most beautiful pool she’d ever seen. But she wasn’t here to swim. No, she was here to cash in, to make her money, to make her mark. She grabbed her first fistful of thousands from her suitcase, stuffing them into her bag, her pockets, her bra, until she was literally weighted down with her entire net worth.

As she wandered through the casino, she had no idea how to begin, so she simply asked someone. An obese man with a camera hanging around his neck and wearing ugly shorts explained to her that she needed to buy chips. It was his sixteenth time in Las Vegas, and frankly, he told her, he just couldn’t see going anywhere else on his vacation. He worked for the phone company, and they even had their annual conventions here. Blossom listened politely, but the whole story gave her the heebie-jeebies. It reminded her of Gorham in some indefinable way, and she was happy when he looked at his watch and gasped that he was late for the bus that would take him to King Tut’s tomb.

She got a bucket of chips and walked from room to room, trying to figure out what to do next. Baccarat, roulette, craps, poker, and blackjack all seemed out of her league. She didn’t know the first thing about any of these games. So she decided to start off with the slots. She certainly knew how to pull a lever, and when she gained more confidence, she would move on to one of the tables.

The slots called for bills or coins. She had the bills, and so she began.

As beginner’s luck would have it, Blossom thrived at the slots. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, a fistful of coins would fall her way. One hundred dollars, two hundred fifty dollars. Yes, this was how she’d imagined it going. But faster than this. At this rate it would take two years to make any real cash. But she persevered, losing a little, making a little. By lunch she was up by five hundred dollars. Not exactly high-rolling.

That’s when she decided to wander. She knew that people played for high stakes. She’d seen a whole special on it on cable. She just had to find the room, the table, and the kind of game that promised high wins.

Her attention was drawn to a croupier who was spinning a red-and-black wheel. Around and around it went, until the ball settled into a slot with a satisfying click. Some chips were taken off the table with a stick; some people would jump up and down and spread out more chips on different numbers. It intrigued her, and she watched it for hours. Someone had walked away with fifty thousand dollars, someone with two hundred thirty-six thousand. Most walked away with nothing, but Blossom was not interested in them. They were not even registering in her mind. She only watched the winners.

At nine o’clock that evening, she was ready to put her first bet down on the table. She knew enough to play the game now. An intensity of excitement burned in her belly, the likes of which she’d never known. Some strange thirst was dying to be quenched. The gambling bug had bitten.

“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.”

Her first foray into the game was a straight bet. She put several chips on one number. The wheel spun. She waited anxiously, as if life itself were the wager. And the ball skipped,
click, click click,
over the wheel, finally settling on a number. Hers. She screamed with delight. This was going to be a breeze. And now the sweet addiction began pumping its slow drip into her system. Nothing could stop her now. She was indestructible, bulletproof.

She went for inside bets, split bets, trio bets, corner bets, five-number bets, six-number bets, and still she continued to win. Success wafted around her like the sweet smell of honey, and the bees continued to gather.

Every one loves a winner.

Three hours she played, three hours until she was up so high, the manager came over to witness the carnival.

“Okay,” Blossom said, “I feel lucky. I really feel lucky. I want to wager everything.” Everything was a million dollars. A silence swept the room.

“I’m gonna wager it all...on a straight-up bet. If I win, the house pays me thirty-five to one.”

The crowd gasped. This was just insanity now, but delicious, exciting, the very reason they were all there—to simulate the rush of the forbidden, take a bite out of that apple in Eden, push the limits of this excruciating madness to its inevitable end. The croupier leaned over to the manager to make sure this bet did not exceed the house limit. It did not, and Blossom was good to go.

The dealer placed a token on top of her chips, indicating the value of her play. A complete hush settled over the room. She moved her chips onto the red seven. It was as if she were alone, with only the wheel, her chips, and the dealer in her vision. A blur of knuckles and nail polish unleashed themselves from the rim of the table. All breathing ceased. No one even dared clear his throat. Slowly, moving at half the speed of life, the wheel began to spin. A million dollars all on a single number. Every dime she had won, every nickel she had left.
Red seven, red seven, come on, red seven.
The wheel turned; the ball bounced, jumped from one number to the next, in and out of the red seven, slowing, skipping, slowing, skipping, slowing, slowing, slowing... and then it stopped. Thirteen black. And everything was gone in an instant.

Disappointment echoed around the table. People meandered away, but Blossom just stood there, staring down as if there’d been some huge mistake. She’d been winning all night. What happened? She wanted to retake the shot. That was just a practice turn, like in bowling, when you get a couple of free rolls. But it wasn’t a practice shot; it was the real thing, and it left Blossom standing there without a dime, without a prayer. She was aware and unaware all at the same time. She was numb. A man was talking to her, but she could barely hear him. He sounded muffled and faraway. It was the manager.

“We’ll comp your meals and your room,” he was saying, as if that were a consolation, but she could not move, frozen in her defeat.

“Are you okay?”

And she looked at him, through him, to the door, which she began walking toward.

“Can I get you a drink?”

But she continued walking out into the surreal world of glass and glitter, of bulbs and overblown boulevards. She wandered for hours past the Bellagio, the Mirage, past Harrah’s and the Luxor, all the way down to the Mandalay. These casinos were long distances apart, but she wasn’t conscious of logging the miles between them. Lost in the carnival-like madness of Elvis look-alikes, newlyweds, showgirls and call girls, lost in the glare of amusement rides, fake sphinxes, Eiffel Towers, and Venetian canals, she walked. And she walked and she walked and she walked, but had no sense of having moved at all.

She had lost all track of time. Maybe six months had passed in the last twenty-four hours, and she had died tonight and ended up here, in hell, in Las Vegas.

Suicide, that’s all she could think of right now. It made perfect sense at the moment. No money, no prospects, no life span (which at this point she took as a positive). How would she do it? She wanted a clean, simple exit. All drama kept at a minimum. Pills. But where would she get the pills? And what on earth would she say in her suicide note.

Dear Dolly and Skip,

I know you’re wondering why I swallowed that poker chip that caused me to choke to death.

Dear Dolly and Skip,

I’m sorry I hung myself from the grand ballroom chandelier, but it was the only one in the hotel I knew would hold me.

Dear Dolly and Skip,

What a lousy place to take a vacation. If you’re planning any sort of getaway, consult a travel agent first, but don’t come here. This place sucks.

How she found herself seated at a second-string performance of Stanoslofsky’s animals acts was a mystery. The stage was small, the cages cramped, the man with the whip, dwarfish and gray. Time and space had no reality. Things were just happening without any rhyme or reason. But she knew she must have met some awful fate to see such beautiful cats in such a bizarre place. Why weren’t they in the forests, sleeping by a stream, or running free under an endlessly blue sky? Why were they here instead, jumping through hoops of fire? The whole world seemed like a distortion. She couldn’t sit there any longer.

With excruciating fatigue she rose to leave, but the glare of the lights and the sound of the drum roll were utterly disorienting. She hadn’t eaten or slept in two days, and when she stood, dizziness overcame her. The last thing she remembered was a man whose hands looked like lobster claws, waving for help. Blossom went down with a thud, straight onto the stage, as if she were throwing herself to the tigers.

CHAPTER 41

A
RE YOU OKAY
?”

“Where am I?”

“Back in your room . . . at the Golden Nugget. You passed out.”

“I did?”

“Yes. The manager who helped you found your I.D. and room key in your bag. That’s how he knew where you were staying. We brought you back here in one of the complimentary limos.”

“How fancy! I’m sorry I missed it. And who are you?”

“The hotel doctor at the Golden Nugget. How do you feel now?”

“When did this happen?”

“About half an hour ago. When’s the last time you slept?”

“I don’t know.” And then Blossom recalled what had happened. “I lost all my money. Every cent of it.”

The doctor looked down. He had seen this before. He could offer no cure for having gone broke in Las Vegas.

“Where are you from?”

Where am I from?
“I don’t even know how to answer that.”

“I suggest you sleep here tonight. Get a good night’s sleep and go home in the morning. You’ll be surprised how much better things can look in the morning.”

“Yeah, right.”

“The hotel can reach me if you have any more episodes.” He stood to leave. “Do you have enough money to get home?”

Blossom looked away from him. How could she have gone from where she was to this? It was inconceivable.

“Here,” he said, putting some money on the table. “This should be enough to get you to where you’re going.

“I don’t know where I’m going. I’ve lost everything. And not just the money. I’ve lost my mother, my father, my best friend, T. J., Tom... everything.”

She began to cry, inconsolable tears, tears filled with the salt of a hundred wounds. Tears that looked like glass fell from her cheeks, breaking to the floor as if a chandelier had snapped from its anchor after years of hanging ever so tenuously.

“I am completely alone, and I just can’t do it anymore. It’s too painful.” Blossom wept. “I want to go to sleep for a hundred years and wake up in another time and place. Can you do that, Doc? Is there anything in your bag that can do that for me?”

The doctor took her in with such empathy, it made him turn around and look in his bag. “This won’t put you to sleep for a hundred years, but it will help you sleep now.”

“What is it?

“A shot of Valium.”

He rubbed her arm with alcohol and injected the tranquilizer.

“I am going to stay with you until you are asleep.”

She lay back and closed her eyes. “Even whales have families...” She was fading now, and her words became slurred. “And they sing to each other.”

“It’s going to be all right.”

“I’m so sorry, so . . .” But she couldn’t finish her sentence. She was swimming with whales somewhere in the middle of the sea.

She awoke in the evening, having slept nearly twenty hours straight.
Oh, my God, what did I do?
Blossom was trying to remember what she had said last night. She was bereft: she recalled that. But what did she say, and to whom? Regret grew in her heart and spread through her loins like a chill, as if someone were walking over her grave. All she could do was get up, shower, and leave. There was no reason to take her suitcases now. They were empty.