“I’VE NEVER BEEN kicked out of a bar,” I said. We were laughing about it later in bed. “I haven’t even really been in that many bars.” We had decided Valka should move into my suite and stay with me for the next few nights, at least until I decided whether or not I was going to go with her back to Santa Monica. She said I could help her out with the flower business. She was always looking for someone she could trust. The high school girls robbed her blind all the time, or they were busy on the phone with their friends. The local mothers had to leave early to pick up their kids from school. She was looking for a woman just like her to help her out. Someone she could bring up in the business. Maybe I could be a partner someday, she told me. If I worked hard, took a few classes in business and floral design. There was nothing to it, working in her industry. You just had to have a good eye and be able to think on your feet, and she could see I had both of those qualities. She would teach me everything she knew and then some.
All of this she said to me on the cab ride home, and all of it I agreed to consider. Maybe it was what I needed. A fresh start, a real career, a friend to call my own. Maybe if I kept going, if I pushed west, I could leave the mess I had made back home behind me.
“I get into trouble sometimes,” said Valka. “I’m sorry. I shoot my mouth off and I can’t stop. That’s what you’ve got to put up with if you know me. Peter Dingle used to love it though. He thought I was the funniest woman he had ever met. Even now when I run into him back home I can make him laugh.” She sighed. “I’m just scared I’ll never find anyone. I’m too old to start over, and yet here I am, starting over. I was happy having a man to call my own. And now, I have nothing. I am sad.” She paused. “Now I am sad.”
I loved her so much in that moment. For being able to holler out her feelings. It made me feel better just knowing it was possible.
6.
The next morning Jenny sent me another video of herself. Valka and I were still in bed, laughing about those bald assholes from the night before. I rolled my eyes at Valka before I checked the phone and she said, “Well, if you feel that way about it, don’t answer it. There’s no pick-up-your-cell-phone law. Especially not in Vegas.” She was right, of course, but I could not stop myself from checking. In this video Jenny had her arm in a sling. She mouthed “Mom” at me.
I choked. Thinking again about Mom hovering over the bed when I was a kid. If I fell asleep during her story, she would pinch me to wake me up. Sometimes she would just let her fingers hang close to my arm. Or just move them slowly, so slowly, toward me, while she whispered. I never knew when she was going to strike. That was the worst part. No wonder I rushed into Thomas’s arms so quick. He was my steady. I remember seeing bruises on Jenny also, but she went the other way. She craved things out-of-sorts and hectic. Now she was getting it something good. But I was too far away to help.
“Aw, crap,” I said.
“What’s going on over there?” said Valka.
“Oh, nothing but my family’s white trash roots starting to show,” I said. I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and called Jenny.
“You would not believe the bathroom I’m in right now,” I said when she picked up. I was trying to make things light, to cheer her up. “There’s a phone. And a TV. And I think it’s made of gold.”
“I am so happy for you,” said Jenny, but of course she was not. She did not have time for bragging, or any games at all.
“Are you okay?” I said. “Can you handle this?”
“I can’t tell,” she said. “I can’t tell if it was just an accident because we were arguing and she grabbed me the wrong way or if it was for real, and Mom’s going crazy and is going to like, stab me in my sleep.”
I thought about it for a second. “No, she would not do it while you were sleeping. She would definitely want you to be awake for it.”
“That’s comforting,” she said.
“Well, how else would you get the point?”
We both started laughing, but it was a little moan of a laugh that drained out of our throats quick.
“Call someone,” I said. “Go somewhere. Go stay in my old apartment. Timber would let you in.”
“I feel like I can handle it,” said Jenny. “And anyway we’re all snowed in. Dad’s completely checked out at this point, and won’t dig us out of the driveway.”
“Will you just call Timber?”