There in Las Vegas, though, all people wanted to do was drink until they were someone else. I could not believe all the hooting and hollering. It looked like their faces were melting. People were stumbling, running into walls. I was drunk, too, but I was my daddy’s girl when I was drunk: serious with an occasional case of the giggles. Las Vegas did not look like fun at 4 A.M. To me it looked like the end of the world. And Valka, I loved her like a sister already, but I thought maybe she had gone through to the other side. The other side of what I cannot rightly tell you, but if she was not already there, she had one foot in the door.
At first I would only have known it from talking to her. There was nothing out of place, not anywhere on her face, not a hair on that blond wig, not a sparkle on the beautiful blue dress. She had been checking her makeup all night. She knew she still looked good. And she did not slur her words either. Valka was making all her points, thinking in complete thoughts, finishing up her sentences. She used words I did not know a few times. The way she was sitting at the bar, back straight, palms flat on the bar, I never would have guessed she had had anything more than a few drinks.
But there was fire in her eyes, I could see it, shooting up toward the rafters of her mind. And even if she sounded like she was making sense, I knew she was going to places that would not be good for her. She was getting loud. It was loud in the casino. But she was getting louder.
The guys next to us at the bar heard Valka talking, and moved a little closer. I thought they were businessmen, with their shaved heads, dress shirts, and slacks, looking all suited up even though it was 4 A.M. Where was the meeting?
“How come you girls aren’t smiling?” said one. He wore a thick gold watch that dangled a little loose around his wrist. “Pretty girls like you, there should be some smiles on those faces.”
Valka’s face collapsed into a frown and then re-formed into a growl.
“You need a drink?” The other one tried to wave down a bartender. He had a hundred-dollar bill folded between a few fingers. “That’ll cheer you up.”
“Why don’t you worry about yourself,” said Valka. “About your own personal joy and happiness. Why don’t you look deep within and ask yourself, why do I need everyone around me to be smiling all the time? Is there something wrong with my life that I can’t deal with reality? Because reality is—”
“You got a fucked-up nose anyway,” said the first man, and he and his friend got up and left.
“Whatever, bald asshole,” she yelled over her shoulder at him. The bartender came over to our part of the bar and started wiping the counter with a rag and giving us looks like we were trouble. Which we were not.
“We’re fine,” Valka told the bartender. “Sheesh,” she said to me.
“Men. Always wanting you to be something you’re not,” I said. I could not believe I had fallen in with the man-hating. Las Vegas, sucking me in again. It is only for one night, I told myself.
We had another drink. Liquor was fifty percent of me by then. I swear it was replacing my blood. I felt darker than ever, and Valka was with me. She was right there. And the ghost of Peter Dingle hovered near us, too.
“It’s not bad luck, it’s good luck. It’s better to know now, you know?”
“That’s exactly right,” I said.
“What if I had spent the rest of my life with him?”
“Your life is just starting out now,” I said. “A new beginning.” I was talking about her, but I was the one who needed to hear it.
“What if I had spent the rest of my life with a man with a good job and a nice family and who gave me slow kisses in the morning? That would have been the worst thing ever.” She spit a little bit.
“He wasn’t the right one,” I said. “The right one would have stayed.”
“I’m going to be alone forever,” she said.
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
“I’m not and you’re not. Already we’ve found each other,” I said and I meant it.
“You’re like my sister,” she said. “You and I are like the same person.”
We were not the same person, I knew that. And I already had a sister. But there was something we had in common. Our men had left us wrongly. Sure, I had been the one walking out the door, but he had held it open and kicked me headfirst.
“He wasn’t that good, you know.” She practically yelled the next part. “In bed. Peter Dingle was not so good in bed.”
Two guys sitting next to us looked over at Valka when she said that. They had short haircuts, and were not much older than my sister. I thought they were military. I wondered if they had ever killed anyone. That was the way my mind was working. Seeing death in some places. Their gaze was steady on us both, and then one of them said, “Well, just let it out, then.”
Then she screamed it. “PETER DINGLE WAS A BAD LAY.”
And that was when the bartender asked us to leave.