“You look great,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. “Anyway, I’ve seen Rio in the office a few times. She’s no delicate tulip, that one. I know I’m loud, too, but at the doctor’s office, you try to keep it cool. It’s sort of an unspoken agreement among us girls. We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of but we don’t want to advertise that we get work done either. We all keep our heads down in our magazines in the waiting room. Everyone wears big sunglasses. It’s all so dramatic! We look like a bunch of Italian movie stars from the fifties. I sort of love it.”
She did not have me convinced that I would want to spend any sort of time in the waiting room of her plastic surgeon. I had already done enough time at the Helping Hands Center to know how I felt about it all.
“But not Rio DeCarlo, she sashays around that office like she owns the joint. I mean, she’s a funny lady, and she’s always nice enough, but she’s just so over the top. She makes phone calls to her manager. She points out pictures of herself in magazines. Once I even saw her offer to give the receptionist her autograph. And she walks in without appointments all the time, which is totally against the rules. ‘See if he can fit me in,’ that’s what she says to the receptionist. Like we all weren’t sitting there waiting ourselves. But she always gets in. She must be in some sort of frequent flyer program.” Valka snorted. “I mean, sometimes it’s just too much. When your eyebrows are halfway up your forehead it’s time to take a good look at yourself. Eventually we all have to get old. Someday I’m just going to be old, Cathy.”
“And you will still be beautiful,” I said.
Valka waved me off with her hand. “Please. I’ll just be happy if I’m still alive. Anyway, one day I was in the office for a checkup on my boob job, and it was packed in there. It was right before Thanksgiving. Packed. Everyone wanted new lips for the holidays. And of course there’s Rio DeCarlo swooping in the door, moaning about how she had to do a screen test, an actress of her experience and stature, wasn’t it shocking, blah blah blah, and she had to have a little touch-up for the next day or she didn’t know what she was going to do. So the receptionist told her to have a seat, and there was only one seat left, next to me. Cathy, she sat down, and she stank, she stank to high heaven of booze. Booze and Chanel. I have to hand it to her, it ain’t easy being cheap and expensive at the same time. And of course she got to see the doctor before everyone else. Although—now that I think about it . . .” Valka scratched her jaw. “I wonder if that’s why they always let her cut in line, that they just wanted to get her out of there because . . . because she was so wasted and obnoxious.”
“Nobody likes a drunk,” I said.
“After my appointment I went to the parking garage to leave and who should I see sitting in her car but the old French whore herself, Rio DeCarlo. Just sitting there. Not starting the car, not moving, not nothing. Just sitting in her seat, her hands holding on to that steering wheel so tight I swear her knuckles were going to tear right through her skin. Staring straight forward, with these enormous sunglasses covering half her head, and this creepy grin. She looked like the Joker in a deck of cards. And every part of her was frozen, her lips, her cheeks, her hands, her body. She was like a creature from beyond.” Valka wiggled her fingers at me and made a ghost noise, and I laughed at her. “I just got the hell out of there and ran to my car. I burned rubber getting down to the exit. And when I was paying my ticket, just when I thought I had escaped, there was Rio DeCarlo, pulling up behind me. I tell you, I never hauled ass so fast through the streets of Los Angeles as I did that day.”
“So she’s a terrible person,” I said.
“No, she’s just a drunk,” she said. “Everyone has their vice.”
I thought about the click-clack of Valka’s pill bottles in her purse.
“That’s why I don’t tell other people’s stories that aren’t mine to tell,” she said. “But the cat’s already out of the bag with this one.”
I was so depressed. I wanted to believe in Rio.
“Don’t look so sad, kid,” she said.
“It is just that I have always enjoyed her,” I said. “I would like her to be as brave as she is in the movies.” I felt my chest clutch as I said this.
“She’s not bad, she’s just damaged,” said Valka. “Everyone’s a little damaged, honey.”
We drove in silence for a while, quietly counting up our own damages. Up ahead the clouds closed in again, and soon we had driven into snow. I had been hoping for an easy return to my hometown but it was just as I had left it. Snow piled up high, snow coming down from the sky, rough roads, rough driving, a freezing, lonely Nebraska winter.
“Where do we go?” said Valka. “Where do we start?”
“We start with the best burger in the state,” I said. And I steered us toward the diner.
21.