Refund (5 page)

One day, she took the wrong bus home. She looked out the window and was staring at a beach that she had never seen before. The water was bright and wrinkled as a piece of blue foil. Surfers scrambled over the dark, glassy waves. Ginger felt her heart grow cold. She had succeeded for over sixty-five years as a swindler because she always knew which bus to take.

She had actually intended to pay the doctor if the news had been good. He asked her a few questions. He held up a pair of pliers, and she had no idea what they were. She returned to the office twice and saw more doctors who wore pert, grim expressions. The diagnosis was a surprise. When he told her, it was one of the few times in her life she reacted as other people did: she covered her face and wept.

“You need to plan,” her doctor said. “You have relatives who can take care of you?”

“No,” she said.

“Children?”

“No.”

“Friends?”

His pained expression aggravated her. “I have many friends,” she said, because she pitied him.

She listened to him describe the end of her life and what she should expect her friends to do for her. Then Ginger had to stop him. She told the secretary that her checkbook was in the car and left the office without paying the bill.

S
HE TRIED TO COME UP WITH A GRAND SCHEME THAT WOULD PAY
for her future care, but her thoughts were not so ordered, and each day, she lost something: the word for lemons, the name of her street. Peering out her window at the lamplights that pierced the blue darkness in her apartment complex, she imagined befriending one of her neighbors, but her neighbors were flighty college dropouts, working odd hours, absent, uninterested in her. Ginger did not want to die in a hospital or an institution. Dying in this apartment would mean that she would not be discovered for days; the idea of her body lifeless, and worse, helpless, was intolerable.

She was watching television one evening when she saw an ad for a Carnival cruise. Many years ago she had sat with a man in an airport bar. He had been left by his wife of thirty-six years and was joking about killing himself on a cruise ship. “Someone finds you,” he said, on his third bourbon, “A maid, another passenger. Quickly. It's more dignified. You don't just rot.”

He was on his way to the Caribbean, desperately festive in his red vacation shirt festooned with figures of tropical birds. “What an interesting idea,” she had said, lightly, deciding that it was time for a game of poker; she got out her rigged cards. When he stumbled off two hours later, she was $150 richer and certain she would never be that hopeless.

Before she went on her cruise, she wanted to buy a beautiful purse with which to hold the last of her money. Three public buses roaring over the oily freeways led her to the accessories counter at Saks. The red purse sat on the counter like a glowing light. It was
simple, a deep red with a rhinestone clasp; when she saw it, she felt her breath freeze in her throat. The salesgirl told her that it was on hold for someone.

“It's mine,” said Ginger, her fingers pressing so hard on the glass counter they turned white.

Perhaps it was the hoarse pitch of her voice, or the pity of the salesgirl toward the elderly, but the salesgirl let her buy the purse. In it, Ginger put her cash and also two bottles of sleeping pills. The Caribbean was sold out this time of year, so she spent most of her remaining money on a cruise to Alaska.

S
HE WOKE UP EARLY THE FIRST MORNING OF THE CRUISE, RESTLESS
, trying to remember everything she had ever known. The facts of her life flurried in her head: names of hotel restaurants, the taste of barbecue in Texas versus Georgia, the aqua chiffon dress she had worn at a cocktail party in 1959. She sat at the table scribbling notes on a pad:
Fake furs on Hollywood Blvd., 1966 cloudy, blue fur hats from the rare Blue Hyena from Alaska, lemon meringue pie at the cafeteria on W. 37th St., New York, 1960s, the seagulls flying on the empty Santa Monica beach at dawn, how much money I made a year, $37,000 from Dr. Chamron in 1977—

Magnolia in Los Angeles
, she wrote. She remembered the scent of magnolia as she and Evelyn stepped off the train in Los Angeles when she was fifteen years old. She remembered her sister Evelyn's walk—Evelyn just seventeen then—her walk her first successful con; stepping hard onto her feet, shoulders lifted, she tricked Ginger into believing that she knew what to do. It was 1936, and they walked off the train into Los Angeles, two girls alone, armed with an address for an aunt they would never meet.

Finally, Ginger's hand ached and she put down her pen. Scribbling her room number on a paper, she put it in her purse and
walked to lunch. She went carefully around the naked ice sculptures of David or Venus that rose, melting, out of bowls of orange punch. Table Sixteen was empty so she sat down, and a silver domed plate floated down in front of her.

She began to eat her salmon when a young woman slid into the seat across from her. Her hair hung down in long, straight sheets, as though flattened by the heat of her own thoughts.

“Darlene Horwitz,” she said, holding out her hand for Ginger to shake. She was young, ridiculously young, with the glossy, unmarked skin of a baby. “This is my first cruise.”

“Ginger Klein.”

“My parents sent me here,” said Darlene. “They had enough of my moaning.” She looked at Ginger. “Have you ever been on a cruise?”

“In the past,” said Ginger.

The girl unfolded her napkin onto her lap. “Are you retired? What did you do?” asked the girl.

Ginger leaned across the table and whispered to Darlene, “This is what I do. People have dreams that I want to be part of. I say I can make them come true. One gentleman expressed a desire to sample gelato in Italy. Then
I
just did it for him, but on his dime. That man was in the field of advertising. I thought of him sitting behind his desk, eating a bag lunch, a little sweaty, and I thought he'd be grateful that I could taste that gelato for him.”

This was Evelyn's philosophy, really; she had believed that swindling was generous, as it allowed the suckers a moment to dream. Ginger pushed her seat back slightly. She unfolded her napkin and spread it on her lap.

“I don't understand,” said Darlene.

Ginger coughed. Then she said, slowly, “I'm a swindler.”

“Oh,” said Darlene. She rubbed her face with her hands. Then
she laughed. “Should I be hiding my purse? Are you going to steal money from people?”

“No,” said Ginger. “I don't need to anymore.”

Darlene seemed to want to steer the discussion back to more familiar territory. “What does your family think of your job?” she asked, carefully.

“I haven't talked to them in over sixty years,” Ginger said. They had lost their parents suddenly, their mother to illness, their father to lust—when their mother died of tuberculosis, their father left Brooklyn to pursue a stripper in Louisiana. He left a note with some train fare and an address for an aunt in Orange Hills, Los Angeles.

They tried the first phone booth on the street. When the number didn't work there, they tried another. By the fourth phone booth, they realized that there was no neighborhood called Orange Hills and there was no aunt. At the time, the girls had between them $43.

“You want to know why I'm here?” Darlene asked. She looked a bit dazed. “His name was Warren. One minute we were finishing each other's sentences. The next minute he was packing his bags. Now I'm twenty-two years old and afraid I will never find the one.”

Waiters came out carrying ignited Baked Alaskas. Sparklers on the desserts fizzled, and a faint smoky odor filled the air.

“I went to my parents' house,” said Darlene. “
Big
mistake, they packed me off to the glaciers, to meet people and have fun—”

Ginger did not want to spend one moment of this week comforting someone else. She folded her napkin, stood up. “Well,” said Ginger, “I hope you have a grand time.” Then she turned and walked across the room. The ship was approaching the first glaciers. Sliding down the mountains the ice was rushed and utterly still. The glacial ice was pale blue, and huge pieces drifted by, like the ruined bones of a giant. She watched the pale ice float by her and wondered when she would forget her name.

Her awareness had been her great gift: of the best hour to meet the lonely, of the hairstyle that would make her look most innocent, of the raised eyebrow that indicated a person's longing, and of course, of the moment when she knew that what a person owned would belong to her. Sitting on a train she would feel the money, a roll wrapped around her hip, as she listened to the click of the wheels along the tracks. She wanted to be the imposters she claimed to be: the lost cousin, the secret aunt, the high school classmate, the one who had loved from afar. Glancing at herself in the dark train windows, she sometimes thought she had become this other person; her heart lightened for a while as she imagined what this person might feel.

T
HERE WAS A KNOCK ON HER DOOR AT
10:00
AM
. I
T WAS THE GIRL
from lunch. “Remember me?” she said. “I'm your seatmate. I wanted to go to the chocolate buffet.” She clutched her own hands fiercely. “Who wants to gorge on chocolate alone?”

It was the tyranny of the normal, the attempts of regular people to energize their lives. It was ten in the morning, and she could hear the rapid footsteps of the other passengers as they rushed to fill their mouths with sweetness. The girl was insistent, and Ginger found herself in the long winding line. All of the passengers appeared to have risen for this experience. To maintain order, a waiter walked through the crowd, doling out, with silver tongs, chunks of milk chocolate to eager hands. Another waiter, dressed as a Kodiak bear, was offering cups of hot chocolate spiked with rum. There was a radiant excitement in the air.

Darlene was chatty. “After this I go on a diet,” the girl said. “A major one. Celery and water for weeks . . .”

Ginger knew that she herself would never go on another diet. She pressed her hands to her waist, her hips. She wanted all of the
chocolate, now. She moved quickly, placing truffles, chocolate-dipped potato chips, macaroons, chocolate torte, mousse, fudge on her tray. She was so hungry she was in pain.

When they sat down, she looked at the girl and she wanted to convince her of something; she wanted to shout into Darlene's ear.

“I've had better than this,” she said. “1959. The Academy Awards party at the Sheraton. Truffles everywhere. I said I was a waitress. I said in my off-hours I was working for Cary Grant's father, who I said was dying of cancer, and could they please contribute to a cancer fund—” She paused. “They were a nice bunch. Generous. I actually have a high opinion of mankind—”

“Did anyone get mad at you?” asked Darlene.

“Mad?” asked Ginger.

“When they realized that you had taken their money—”

Ginger rose halfway in her seat. “Why would I care?” asked Ginger. “Look. You go to a regular job. They tell you what you're worth. Or you love him and he leaves you and you feel like you're nothing at all. Darling, I don't have to tell my worth to anyone.”

Darlene looked down. The longing in the girl's face was like a bright wound.

“What was so good about him anyway?” asked Ginger.

“He said my eyes were pretty,” Darlene said. “He also liked listening to the Cherry Tones. He liked to put his hands in my hair—”

This was the material of love? “So fool him into loving you.”

“How?” Darlene stared, desolate, at slices of chocolate cake so glossy they appeared to be ceramic.

“What did he want? Pretend to be it,” said Ginger.

“He wanted a million dollars.”

“So say you've won the lottery,” said Ginger. She bit into a truffle.

“But I didn't.”

“No one knows what they want until you show them.”

Darlene's face was flushed, excited. “But I want him to love the real me—”

“Who do you think you are?” said Ginger. “No one. We all are. That's what I do, notice no ones—”

“I'm not no one,” said Darlene, huffily. “I come from a nice suburb of San Diego. My father is a successful pediatrician—”

“So? That's all temporary,” said Ginger. “But the noticing, that's yours.”

Ginger had never allowed herself weakness, never told anyone how it felt to walk into a new city, how she chose her new name just as the train slowed down. Everyone rushed by, gnarled and worn down by the burden of thwarted love; she was free of that, new. She would wash up in the station bathroom and walk out, erased of her secrets: the fact that everything she did with a man was faked, so the only way she could feel pleasure was to give it to herself; the fact that her broken right hand had healed crooked because she couldn't afford to see a doctor to fix it; that she often ate alone on holidays. In empty coffee shops on Thanksgiving, Ginger looked at the food on her plate, and she knew a strange, burning love for the things the world offered her, real and surprising, again and again.