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“Don’t listen to him,” Rose said. “Sometimes, Daddy can be such a square.”
“Realist,” he countered.
“No imagination.”
“No delusions.”
Ruby sat back, halfheartedly listening to the father-daughter banter while she reveled in the fact that she’d done it. She’d escaped. And now here she was, in Las Vegas. Scallywag’s stubborn determination had paid off.
Soon, the neon lights were spaced farther apart and the shouting edifices gave way to intermittent empty lots. Rose pulled into the Bombay Motor Court, and a reassuring neon arrow above a facsimile of a Moorish arch flashed VACANCY and FREE TV, HEATED POOL, IN-ROOM PHONES.
“We ’ll stay until you’re checked in, make sure everything’s set, all right?” Rose asked, and Ruby didn’t bother to protest. She felt some of her misgivings return as she thought about facing it all alone. But the room was clean, with a bright pink bedspread and white walls stenciled in gold with images of East Indian statuary and twining vines. She was able to get a room right by the pool, and she imagined how refreshing it would feel to cool her burning feet, to float and let the ripples and sun relax her.
“We ’ll call tomorrow,” Rose said, taking her father’s hand to tug him away. “Not because we think you need us,” she added quickly. “We ’ll call you because Daddy is a worrier, right?” She smiled at him.
“Right,” he said and then gave Ruby a brief hug. “I kinda feel responsible for you, kiddo.”
“I owe you,” Ruby said. “Big time.”
“You don’t,” Rose stated firmly. “It’s what people should do for each other, that’s all.”
Ruby waved to them from the doorway, and then she broke the paper strip across the toilet, peed, unwrapped the thin sliver of pink Camay soap, and took a long, hot shower before falling into bed. Feeling profligate, she dropped a quarter into the box next to the bed, and the Magic Fingers started up. “Ahhhhhh,” Ruby said, keeping her mouth and throat open so that the vibration of the bed made her voice waver wonderfully.
At last, it was her future to define, to take. Her life belonged only to her.
RUBY WALKED OVER to the motel office and bought a pack of cigarettes from the machine, along with a copy of the Las Vegas Sun and two postcards. Seated in the sweet morning air beside the pool, she read that the war in the Middle East might be coming to an end and that the Monkees had appeared at the Hollywood Bowl. She went through the newspaper’s want ads, found three promising-looking dance auditions, and circled them. Then she addressed the postcards. One, of a jackalope—some mythological jackrabbit with an antelope’s horns—she sent to Mrs. Baumgarten, and the other, a sun-drenched pool scene with huge fringed umbrellas and women strolling in bikinis and carrying cocktails, she sent to the Aviator. She signed them as Lily, and she gave the Aviator her temporary address and the motel’s phone number. Then, after going through the dollhouse cabinets of her kitchenette, she made a grocery list: coffee, cigarettes, cereal, milk, fruit, and a category she labeled actual food. Just after ten, she put on a pair of cutoffs and a cotton tank top and climbed onto the empty bus. She took a seat in the front, near the driver.
“Am I the only person who gets up before noon?” she asked the man, whose curly dark hair and bass-drum gut reminded her of Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden.
“Just you and me, honey,” he said, looking at her in his rearview mirror. “Just us early birds.”
Ruby tucked her hair behind her ears, looked out the streaked window, and saw her first palm tree. The bark reminded her of the rough diamonds of pineapple hide. She craned her neck, looking for coconuts.
“First time?” the driver asked, although it was obvious.
“Just moved here.”
“Gonna work in the casinos?”
“I’m a dancer.”
“Oh,” he said, and this time he looked at her much harder, longer. “One of those dancers?”
Ruby wasn’t sure what he meant. “Like the June Taylor Dancers,” she said.
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “With your looks and all, I just assumed you’d be one of the other kind.”
What on earth? Did he think she was a stripper? Was that it? “I’m the kind of dancer who keeps her clothes on. A professional dancer,” she added for emphasis.
“Beg pardon.” He touched the back of his hand to his cap. “No offense intended.”
In the long run, he turned out to be helpful, pointing out the grocery store, a Laundromat, and a drugstore where she could buy stamps. “Watch yourself,” he advised as she left the bus. “Lotsa crazies out there, even before noon. Leftovers from the night before.”
Why did everyone keep telling her to be careful? If there was one thing she’d long ago learned, it was that no one could be trusted.
After a few hours of exploring on foot and trying hard not to look like a tourist, she found slot machines lining a section of the grocery store and decided to try her luck. Ruby loaded ten pennies and pulled the lever. On her third pile of pennies, the three reels landed on the same image: a yellow bird. She smiled as the hopper filled with coins—a whopping three dollars. Feeling lucky, Ruby climbed down from the stool and stopped while she was ahead.
She ’d never eaten TV dinners—Aunt Tate thought they were too expensive and designed only for self-indulgent, lazy people. Ruby bought a Swanson fried chicken dinner with mixed vegetables, another with chopped sirloin and French fries, one with sliced turkey and gravy, and another that had shrimp with cocktail sauce. She even bought Jiffy Pop—another forbidden extravagance—along with small jars of mayonnaise and mustard, and bologna for sandwiches. As she made her way down the cereal aisle, she caught herself humming Dean Martin’s “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” and dancing the quickstep.
This, Ruby realized, is what happiness feels like. Freedom. Bubbling champagne, yellow birds, music and dance and neon and possibility. Ruby grinned at everyone she saw—the cashier, the women with bristled curlers and miserable, snotty-faced toddlers, the gawky boys stocking shelves, and the heavy-jowled butcher weighing out three pounds of ground chuck. She made her way back to the motel, put away her groceries, practiced her dance steps until she rained sweat and felt the cathartic release of physical effort, and then she did stretches beside the pool. She took a quick, late-afternoon dip before heating up her shrimp TV dinner, lifting the foil when it was finished and salivating over the six tiny battered shrimp. She turned on the color television that was not pinned under Aunt Tate’s milk glass collection, and through her open window listened to kids released from the backseats of station wagons, mileage markers, license plate games, and highway rest stops, as they shrieked and played Marco Polo in the pool. Later, when the sun had gone down and the temperature relaxed below 95, Ruby sat on the lawn chair outside her room, savored a cigarette, and watched insects congregate beneath the lamps that lit the pool deck.
Tomorrow’s audition was at noon. She was nervous, but she reminded herself that nothing worth having comes without effort, without overcoming fears and doubts. And this was all about her dream, the talent and hard work that would take her away from all that had been. She fell asleep lying on her side, watching the slit in the curtain where pale moonlight shone through.
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