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Lily snorted. “No.”
“Why not?”
“For starters, we can’t afford it.”
“But you can.”
“Right,” she said, looking at her aunt’s list, the one her uncle had added to in his left-handed, back-slanting cursive: dow nuts, choclut Marshmello cookys.
The radio station was playing the just released Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Lily heard the lyrics of “She’s Leaving Home.” It was as if the Beatles had written the song just for her. The girl in the song stepped outside her front door and was free. Soon, Lily would do the same.
Seeing her distraction, the Aviator said, “Let’s talk in the parking lot.”
Lily sat in the passenger seat of the Aviator’s Thunderbird and double-checked the change the clerk had given her. She folded the receipt and shoved it all into the front pocket of her hip-hugger jeans.
“You’re a bright, bright girl,” the Aviator began, and she could smell his aftershave—a tart, citrus scent. He was wearing camel-colored khakis and a soft, white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled loosely to his elbows. His fingernails were perfectly manicured, the nails buffed—a decided contrast to the decades of grease that accumulated beneath the nails of Uncle Miles’ sliced and diced mechanic’s hands.
“I’m a dancer. Not a college girl.”
“With an IQ of 155.”
“Who says?”
“Your guidance counselor.” He pushed in the cigarette lighter when he saw her shake a Salem from her pack.
“You were talking to Mrs. Holcomb about me?”
“I was.” He held the hot, orange coil of the lighter to the tip of her cigarette.
“I didn’t even know,” she said, rolling down the window and blowing smoke out into the parking lot. “I purposely did not go in to hear my scores.” Lily noticed that the Aviator smoked Marlboros. “Come to Marlboro Country,” she said, using her deepest voice to imitate the commercial. It fit the Aviator—the long, lean, isolated cowboy who was a man in every sense of the word. Took no guff, lived life his way.
He sighed. “I’m trying to have a meaningful conversation with you.”
“I know,” she said, pulling open the ashtray, tapping her cigarette. It didn’t surprise her that the Aviator’s ashtray looked as if it’d been washed clean in a sink. “You’re a bit of a neat freak, aren’t you?” she said.
“I like to do things right. Which is why I’m trying to talk to you.” Together they watched a young mother pushing a baby stroller while trying to pull up the strap of her shoulder bag. “You realize that 100 is average. A score of 155 is in what’s considered the very superior range.”
She hadn’t. All she knew was that when they took the test, she’d finished an easy twenty minutes before everyone else, and not because she’d put her pencil down and decided not to try.
“Let’s go at it from another angle,” the Aviator said, all efficiency and logic. “What is your plan?”
“To dance.”
“To dance.” He sighed. “A girl with an IQ of 155 should be capable of more specific planning. Even if she has been brought up by heathens.”
“You know, that’s what my dad called them. Heathens,” she said, looking at the Aviator, his upright posture, his flat abdomen. She saw something flash across his face—a mixture of pain and memory. “I’m sorry,” Lily said, touching his forearm. “I didn’t mean …”
“Do you see the irony of this?” he pleaded. “You? Apologizing to me?”
A soft rain had begun to fall, dotting the windshield with drops that ran until they randomly joined each other. Is that what people did, too? Lily wondered. Fall and drift until they collided with one another, the way the Aviator had collided with her ten years ago?
As he rested his fingertips between his brows, she realized her hand was still on his forearm, and she kept it there, increased the pressure. “You’ve been good to me,” she said. “Better to me than anyone else. I’ve always known I could depend on you.”
“Then let me help you. Let me help you with college. There’s money,” he said, now earnestly looking at her. “I’ve saved. You have a college fund. Please don’t throw your life away.”
She took back her hand, stared into her lap. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m grateful, really. But if you truly want to help me, then help me get to Las Vegas. To dance. That’s what I want.”
“Vegas?”
“Mrs. Baumgarten says it’s the best place for jazz dance. A place where I can learn from real pros. Accessible,” she said, coming up with the best word she could think of to summarize the perfection of her Baumgarten-assisted plan.
She watched him struggle with the idea, weighing his will against hers. Finally, he said, “That’s what you really want? You’re certain?”
“It’s the one thing I do know,” she said, simply.
“Well then. I won’t stand in the way of your dream.”
You can’t stand in my way, she thought but did not say. No one can.
She thought about explaining to him that dance was something she needed. How it purified her body. How, when she exerted herself physically, she felt the strength of her limbs, that they belonged only to her. That for however long she moved to music, Uncle Miles’ proprietary insistence became obsolete. But Lily didn’t explain. She could not pass through that stone wall from shameful shadow to bright sunlight—not even for the Aviator.
The rain came down more insistently, and through her open window it wet the sleeve of her paisley-patterned blouse. “I have to get going.” She used her sleeve to wipe water from the car upholstery. “Or I’ll catch hell.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he said, his voice soft, sad.
Taking the grocery bag into her arms and opening the car door, Lily pretended not to understand.
At dance class the next day, Mrs. Baumgarten delivered one of the Aviator’s books to Lily. It was a gilt-edged 1942 edition of Walt Whitman’s collected poems, and on a plain white strip of paper intended as a bookmark, the Aviator had written “The hungry gnaw that eats me night and day.” I understand this is your need to dance. She saw the line embedded in the poem “From Pent-Up Aching Rivers.” The gift, Lily thought, was not the book. It was his understanding.
IN THE WEE hours of the morning after she graduated as one of the top ten in the class of 1967, Lily left a bouquet of daisies on the dining room table. She set it next to a blouse she’d made for her aunt, along with a card that said Thank You on the front in silver embossed letters. Inside, Lily had written a paragraph of gratitude for taking her in, teaching her, and providing for her. She signed it with love because the other options—sincerely, fondly, best wishes—all seemed needlessly cruel. And maybe—in fact, honestly—she did love her aunt, despite everything. It was no one ’s fault that they were mismatched, just as much or more so than Mama and Aunt Tate had been. And Aunt Tate really had done her best. She simply wasn’t capable of more—or she might long ago have left her husband. Escaped Salina.
Lily didn’t leave anything for Uncle Miles, certainly no forwarding address or information other than that she was leaving Kansas to dance. Then, Lily walked out of the house and climbed into the Aviator’s waiting car.
It was barely after four A.M. when she stood with him in the bus depot parking lot. About her neck Lily wore a fine gold chain on which she’d strung her mother’s engagement and wedding rings—a graduation gift from Aunt Tate. Lily pulled the rings from beneath her blouse, fingered them and thought of her mother’s hands dusted in flour, sewing a button on her father’s shirt, and teaching Lily how to tie her shoes. Had her mother braced those beautiful hands on the dashboard when she saw the Aviator’s car coming?
“I’m sorry I didn’t make you a gift,” Lily told him. “But nothing would have been enough, and I didn’t know what would say goodbye in the right way.”
The Aviator took her chin in his hand. He lifted her face, and for a moment she thought he might kiss her lips. A part of her wanted that. Instead, he slipped his thumb into the cleft of her chin, let it rest there, calm and steadying. She saw that he might cry, and so she took his wrist, closed her eyes, and kissed his beating pulse.
Leaving the Aviator was like leaving her real family, once and for all. The finality of it hit her, hard, and she felt her knees threatening to drop her to the pavement. Instead, she turned and walked into the bus terminal.
AT SOME POINT, every girl in Kansas dressed as Dorothy for Halloween. Pinafore, petticoat, simple white blouse, a straw basket for trick-or-treat candy, demure ankle socks, and red shoes. Goodbye, Dorothy, Lily thought, good riddance to you and all of your “There’s no place like home” bullshit.
Lily remembered when a teacher had told them that Kansas was once a vast inland sea. She ’d hunted fossils with Beverly Ann and tried to imagine how change could have occurred on such a massive scale. She remembered the tadpoles she and Dawn had caught and watched grow. If Kansas could go from sea to prairie, if a frog egg could radically transform itself from an almost-fish with gills to an amphibian that left water for land, then Lily could transform, too.
At the Colorado border Lily decided that her new self deserved a fresh name. Lily Decker would become Ruby Wilde. She thought it worked—her dark red hair, the elegance lent by that extra e, like shoppe.
Lily looked at her palm, studying the lines of influence on her Mount of Venus at the base of her thumb. The lines were said to represent the friends, teachers, enemies, and lovers who change and shape existences. Lily had countless fine lines on her palm, and many of the lines touched, even traveled across her life line. She recognized the deep lines of her childhood: Aunt Tate, Uncle Miles. The Aviator. Her parents. Dawn.
People come and go, Lily thought. Sometimes they vanish unwillingly, the resulting break adamant, like a sharp slap of the ruler across the palm—decisive, unequivocal. Others leave with as little thought as the tip of the finger that snuffs out the life of an ant crawling across a pantry shelf.
Beyond her window, Lily saw fence posts and dull-eyed cattle. Black hawks circled, eyeing the ground for deer mice and lizards. Clouds coalesced and broke into discrete puffs. It was June 9, 1967, exactly ten years since her family had dissolved like sugar stirred into iced tea. Lily settled back into her seat and relaxed. She’d done it. Ruby Wilde was on her way.
1
She waited until the bus was safely within the boundaries of Nevada before opening the Aviator’s envelope.
June 9, 1967
Dear Lily,
There is more where this came from, but this is a start. It should help you to pay your rent and eat decently for a few months, until you find your place in the limelight. You haven’t seen much of the world, and I don’t know if you realize what an unforgiving place it can be. Be careful and pay attention.
If you need anything, call me.
Yours,
Stirling
Unforgiving? He must be kidding. She had already plummeted into the depths of that word, deeper than the Aviator could ever imagine.
He’d enclosed four fifty-dollar bills that looked as if they’d never seen daylight. She discreetly tucked them into her pink leather wallet, wary of the prying eyes of the passenger next to her. Ever since he’d boarded the bus in Utah, she’d felt him watching her. She refolded the Aviator’s letter and slipped it into her fringed leather shoulder bag.
Although they were excruciatingly close to her final destination, the bus pulled into a rest stop in Glendale, Nevada. After freshening up, she sat at the luncheonette counter, smoking and thinking that even though it was after ten P.M., she needed either a chocolate malt or a cup of coffee.
“Would you mind?” the watchful man from the bus asked, pointing to the stool next to hers.
“No.” She crushed her cigarette and decided her first Nevada meal would be ice cream. She laid down the menu as a signal to the waitress. The man had shaved, and now he smelled of Right Guard and Aqua Velva.
“May I treat?” he asked.
Ruby spun her stool and looked at him. He was probably about forty, forty-five, wore a wrinkled gray suit, a burgundy tie, and a gold tie bar. His face was soft, round, and he was balding, with outsized red ears. The man’s smile was friendly, and she decided to let him be gentlemanly. “Sure,” she said, “but I’m a cheap date—just a chocolate malt.”
“Make it two,” he said to the waitress, who slipped the carbon paper between tickets in her book and jotted down their order.
There was a moment of awkward silence until the man said, “Mason.” He held out his hand. “Mason Maddox.”
She remembered to use her new name. “Ruby”—she smiled—“Wilde.”
“Nice to meetchya, Ruby Wilde.” He fiddled with the long-handled spoon the waitress set before him and unwrapped his paper straw. “Going to Vegas to spend all your hard-earned money?” he asked.
“I’m a dancer,” Ruby said, feeling warm, easy, as she opened into her new self. She had a quick vision of a full-blown cabbage rose—pink, luscious, the scent of early summer before the heat set in.
“My daughter Rose works in Vegas. On my way to visit her.”
“She dances?” The waitress placed two thick malts on the counter. Ruby plucked the cherry from the top of hers and dropped it into her mouth.
“Works reception at the new Caesars. She’s been in Vegas almost two years now.”
“Does she like it? Las Vegas?”
“Loves it. But to be fair, she ’s comparing it to Salt Lake City, and there ’s one hell of a difference.” He laughed to himself, sipped his milkshake. “Mind my askin’ how old you are, Ruby?”
“Eighteen.”
“Tell them you’re twenty. It’ll be easier for work in the casinos. And”—he looked critically at her face—“wear more makeup. It’ll make you look older.”
“Okay …”
“Do you know anyone there? Got a place to stay?”
Ruby hesitated.
“I’m just concerned about you,” Mason Maddox said. “My daughter’s only a couple a years older than you, and the stories she tells … Well, let me just say, Miss Ruby, that I know my Rose isn’t telling me everything, but what she does tell me is plenty. You gotta watch out for yourself. Don’t trust anyone.” He stirred his shake. “Everyone’s on the make. Everyone.”
Ruby quietly focused on her malt.
“How about I do this.” Mason eased a napkin from the dispenser. He wrote out Rose Maddox, carefully printed his daughter’s address and phone number, and slid the napkin to Ruby. “Just in case,” he said. “I’ll let her know you might be callin’. She’s a good girl. She’ll help you out, show you the ropes.”
“Thank you.” Ruby folded the napkin and slipped it into her purse. “I mean it,” she said. “You’re kind.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” Mason said, standing. “It’s what I’d want someone to do for my Rose.”
She finished her malt, had one more cigarette, and climbed back onto the bus. Thanks to the ice cream, Ruby managed to doze until the brakes sounded and the bus pulled into Las Vegas just after midnight.
THE GREYHOUND TERMINAL was located within the Stardust Casino, and even though it was the middle of the night, people swarmed all about her. Standing with a heavy suitcase on either side of her, Ruby stalled, overwhelmed.
Slot machines were tucked into every nook and cranny, and most of them were occupied. Women’s hips oozed from the backs of their chairs and flowed like slow, lugubrious lava over the edges of their stools. Their eyes were transfixed, glazed over, as they grabbed the levers. She heard raucous bells, the jangle of coins falling into metal trays, and she saw flashing lights. Men with cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths, neglected ashen tips grown long, rolled up their sleeves, inserted more coins, and waited for the spinning to stop and land on their futures.
Ruby thought she saw hope mixed with despair, longing brushing away reality’s faint protestations. Their faces held an intense desire for something better, something else. She saw homeward-bound bus passengers standing in line with their emptied pockets, the light gone from their eyes. She saw insomniacs who let habit carry them someplace, nowhere.
With sudden clarity, she also saw herself, and she panicked. Her plan was inadequate. She was in the wrong place. This was a mistake. She would be consumed here, disappear like flash paper in a magician’s hands. She’d been a fool to follow Mrs. Baumgarten’s advice.
Moving to a wall, Ruby leaned against it, tried to catch her breath and force the encroaching tunnel vision to retreat. Her heart shouted. She cupped her hands about her nose and mouth, breathed. I’m just tired, she tried to convince herself. That’s all. Just tired, unwashed. Too many hours on the bus to sustain hope and optimism. Don’t panic.
“Looks like you could use a drink.” A sinewy man, wearing a short-sleeved white T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes jammed into one rolled-up sleeve, started to reach for her arm. He had tight hills of biceps and his palms were suffused with blood, red hot.
Ruby pulled back. “No,” she said.
“C’mon. Beautiful newcomer like you. Let me carry your suitcases.” A rose tattoo lurked beneath the thick black fur of his forearm.
Ruby took hold of the handles of her bags, straightened herself. “Please go away.”
“Bet you could use a place to stay. I got room.” He grinned.
He was standing too close. She could smell grease and onions.
“Ruby!”
She heard the name, but it took a moment for her to realize that it was her name.
“Ruby Wilde!” Mason Maddox called again, stepping between her and the insistent creep. “Glad we found you.” He gave the other man a hardened stare, and the man walked away slowly, looked back once, shook his head as if it were Ruby’s loss, not his.
Ruby wished she ’d had something more sustaining than the milkshake, which now left her shaky and needful.
“Girl, this isn’t good. I knew it. Shouldna let you go off all alone.” Mason picked up one of her suitcases and added it to his own. “This settles things.” He turned, motioned to his daughter. “Rose? This here’s Ruby. Ruby, Rose. Now,” he said, nodding at his daughter, “you get her other bag.”
“But—” Ruby tried feebly.
“No ifs, ands, or buts. Rose’s got one of those teensy-weensy VW bugs. We’re gonna squeeze into it like a pack of sardines and give you a ride to wherever it is you’re going.”
Rose was elegant in tight jeans, with a bright red silk blouse, gold hoop earrings. She smelled good—something wistful, floral. Straight, golden-blonde hair was parted down the center and hung just past her shoulders. She had clear, grey-blue eyes that made Ruby think of rainbows and prisms.
“Daddy, hold on a minute. Let her talk.” Rose smiled a warm welcome. “Sometimes you can’t get a word in edgewise with Daddy. What do you want, Ruby?”
Ruby was tempted to say Rescue, or To get back on the bus, but she didn’t. Instead, she pulled from her purse the AAA guide the Aviator had given her, flipped to the page where he’d starred several entries with a ballpoint pen. “Do you know how I could get to one of these motels?” She handed Rose the directory.
Rose ran her finger down the page. “Bombay Motor Court is the decent one. It’s got kitchenettes and is close enough to let you walk or catch a bus between the casinos. While you look for work, I mean.” Rose handed the book back to Ruby. “Daddy says you’re a dancer. So cool. Why don’t we drive you there? You must be beat.”
“I’d be so grateful,” Ruby said with relief.
“Now, Daddy. Now we can help her.” Rose winked and picked up Ruby’s other scuffed thrift-store bag. “On the way, we ’ll show you a bit of Vegas.”
Outside the bus terminal, stupefying neon displays towered like mountain cliffs, and the superheated desert air burned her nostrils. The Stardust’s marquee featured a globe of blue-and-green neon, surrounded by pink-and-white rays; blue-and-pink stars twinkled off and on. Two times over it said Stardust in white lights, and planets whirled about the earth as if it were the center of the universe. Another brightly lit sign said, ’67 Lido of Paris—Grand Prix 67, and beneath that, a smaller sign read In the Lounge: Kim Sisters, Big Tiny Little, and Lou Styles. Ruby recognized Big Tiny Little as the piano player on Aunt Tate ’s dreadful Lawrence Welk Show, but he also played for Dinah Shore. His fingers flew across the piano as if the keys were electrified. She’d seen the Kim Sisters performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in their tight, satin cheongsam dresses. Maybe she’d seen them with Dean Martin, too. It was unreal. Ruby really was in the land of the famous.
Wedged into what passed for a backseat, her knees bumping the back of the bug’s front seats, she felt her flame reignite like a furnace’s pilot light bursting from a tiny blue maintenance flame to a full bar of fire. She could do this. She could and would dance on the same stage as Big Tiny Little and the Kim Sisters. Ruby smiled. She sounded like the children’s book—the little train. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. Well, there were worse mottos.
Rose caught Ruby’s smile in the rearview mirror. “Feeling better?”
“One hundred percent better,” Ruby said, and looked for a handle so that she could roll down the window, stick her head out, and see more of the neon-filled sky. She found an ashtray but no handle—the VW’s backseat window didn’t open. She sat back, thought about how the neon kept night at bay.
“So, this is the Strip, obviously,” Rose began. “The Frontier and the Desert Inn are behind us. Coming up is the Flamingo, and then across from it, my place. Also known as Caesars Palace.”
The Flamingo had a marvelous bubbly champagne tower that lit up gradually, like neon effervescence. Ruby had never had champagne; it was one of the things she intended to do—to let bubbles tickle her nose, fizz and pop on her tongue. She started a mental list of neverhads: avocado, lobster, baked Alaska.
But it was Caesars Palace that took her breath away. “Oh my God,” she said.
“Pretty spectacular, isn’t it?” Rose turned to look at Ruby.
“It’s giant!” Ruby gasped. A series of huge fountains and marble statues led toward a magnificent semicircle of columns that enfolded patrons in a generous embrace.
“Over thirty acres,” Rose said, slowing down to give Ruby a better chance to gawk. “The theater-restaurant seats a thousand, and there are several dining rooms, two health clubs, even a beauty salon. See the trees? Well, if not, you will in the daylight. Anyway, they’re genuine Italian cypress trees, imported. Several theaters—the Circus Maximus, Nero’s Nook, the Roman Theatre.”
“Good grief.”
“I know.”
“It literally leaves me breathless.”
“That’s what it’s meant to do,” Mason said. “You’re in another world.”
“Beauty salons and health spas?” Ruby asked.
“You never have to leave.”
“Also on purpose,” Mason pronounced, and Ruby heard the disapproval in his voice.
“Daddy doesn’t like Vegas.” Rose paused. “But what he doesn’t seem to understand,” she said, “is that people come here to escape. To get away. To feel a bit of magic for a little while.”
“People come here to be robbed of their hard-earned wages.”
“Isn’t it the place of dreams?” Ruby asked.
“Oh, dear girl,” Mason said, and then let it rest.