I began to love the ringing of the slot machines. The gentle repeat made me feel comfortable and safe. Valka and I favored the Wheel of Fortune slots. Every once in a while we—or someone near us—would hit a bonus spin, and the machine would play the Wheel of Fortune crowd shout from the beginning of the show, and Valka and I would say it along with the machine and giggle. Then we would both stop and look to see if whoever had hit the bonus round was making big bucks. Someone had won five hundred bucks so far, that was it, the rest of them just picked up twenty bucks here and there. “No luck,” Valka would mumble under her breath. Then we would order another cocktail. I lost count of how many times we had another round of drinks.
Valka was here to see the Hot Stars in the City show, she was telling me. She and her ex—Peter Dingle, was his name, no one ever called him anything but both names together, she said—used to come here all the time to see it. For years, they had driven from Santa Monica for a nice weekend of drinking, slots, and celebrity impersonators. Valka’s favorites were the Beatles. I was too young to know much about them besides that one Beatle being married to the lady with the fake leg from the motorcycle accident. The dim lights of the casino hid Valka’s age from me, but it turned out she was a lot older than I thought.
“My mother saw them on the Ed Sullivan show,” she said. She sipped her Bloody Mary, pulpy bits of tomato sticking to the side of the glass. “And she loved them and used to play them for me all the time. But I didn’t love them like she did. Like I liked them fine. Catchy songs, whatever. But she was crazy about them. And then one day, I think I was like thirteen or something, I stayed home sick from school. Or maybe it was rainy out, I don’t remember exactly. But I was bored and just laying around on the couch, I remember that. And my mom threw this tape of A Hard Day’s Night at me and I was just that bored, to watch something my mom thought was cool. There was this scene at the very beginning where they’re running, all of these fans are chasing them, these teenage girls just screaming for them, and there was something about that moment, the looks on their faces, the way they were all just having a good time, it reminded me of me and my friends. They were so young and free. And I just fell for them. Head. Over. Heels.”
I tried to think of one thing my mother had taught me to love that I had taken to but then I realized there was not anything she liked in our hometown. Everything she fantasized about was somewhere else. Europe. New York. Tiny snails and fish eggs you were supposed to eat like they were delicious and not just snobby. They were all things out of my reach. Why would I care? There was not a thing I was crazy about except maybe my husband.
But you could live anywhere and like the Beatles. After she watched that movie, Valka and her mother would sing their songs to each other all day long. “My mother liked all the layers of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.’ It was like all extreme and complicated. But they don’t play that at the show; they play the sweet stuff, their early pop songs. Real crowd pleasers.” I had no idea what she was talking about but I was excited to see them. “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah,” she sang. She drummed her hands on her lap. She stopped being a lady in a nice dress for a second. She was a kid. She told me Peter Dingle had grown up loving the rock-and-roll life back East. (It was neat the way Valka said “back East” so casually, like it was a real place to her in her head.) Bon Jovi was one of his favorites from the show, but he liked all the imitation heavy metal acts, too.
“There’s an Ozzy Osbourne imitator who rips the head off a bird with his teeth,” said Valka.
“That’s not legal,” I said.
“Legal or not, it looks real to me,” said Valka. She took a sip of her rum and Diet Coke and raised her eyebrows. “Looks as real as you sitting here before me.”
“It sounds like a great show,” I said. “I’d like to see that.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” she said. “Because I have an extra ticket for tomorrow night. So what do you say? You want to be my New Year’s Eve date?”
I was touched like I had not been in a while. Here she was, knowing me only for a few hours, and she was handing over a golden ticket to me. Sure we got along like gangbusters, but still I found myself welling up a bit.
“That is just the sweetest thing ever,” I said. “What do I wear?”
“I’ll loan you something!” she said.
We drank all night, and I felt the hangover before it was over. I did not mind it. I was caught up in the magic of Vegas. We had spent the night walking from casino to casino, through the crowds of drunks, drunk just like us. It was bitter cold out there, and there was a strong wind blowing, but Valka and I faced it. She loaned me a wrap of hers that matched the one she was carrying. “That’s pashmina, you be careful with that now,” she said. It was soft, and I cradled it around my arms like I was getting a hug. Oh, how I needed a hug. I stopped Valka on the street and said that to her. She threw her arms around me and said, “Oh, honey, I need one, too. All the time. Every day.”