A Job Suitable For A Princess
Flicka von Hannover
It was like a sign,
a really big, neon-lit sign.
It was literally a sign.
Flicka strolled down the sidewalk, gripping a manila folder that Indrani had given her to keep her three resumes crisp. Summer sunlight blasted out of the white-hot sun and seared her exposed skin, and the baking sidewalk radiated heat up herlegs.
She had pinned Dieter’s alpine mountaineering pin, the military honor he had received and had remade into golden jewelry for her, into a seam on her skirt for luck. She always carried it for luck.
Above her, high-rise casinos soared into the air. The hotel floors towered above the Strip while the open doors shot rock music and the jingling of slot machines out into the street.
She’d takena few minutes and a few miles’ detour to visit a free clinic that Indrani had also told her about, just to make sure things were finedown there.They’d done an examination and a few tests when she’d told them about her past few days, and the nurse practitioner had been exceedingly kind when Flicka’s eyes had leaked a little. She’d been reassuring, though, and had promised to call her with thetest results.
Indrani had told Flicka that the casino where she worked as a dealer wasn’t hiring and to try some of the smaller ones. The larger ones would want waitressing experience, Indrani had said.
That made sense, so Flicka walked farther down the sidewalk past the last few humongous casinos, down to the establishments that were simply enormous.
One casino’s sign blazed even more brightlythan the desert sun:The Monaco Casino.
It was a sign, a literal sign, she decided.
Well, people equated Monaco with too much money and the flashy, slightly debauched decadence of the Monte Carlo casino. It made perfect sense that Las Vegas would covet Monaco’s aura.
She pivoted and marched inside.
At the front desk, she asked where the human resources office was, proud of herself that sheremembered Indrani’s term for the hiring place.
At the HR office, the man behind the desk looked Flicka up and down, from her long, slim legs, to her shirt tied beneath her rounded breasts, which she had stuffed with toilet paper in her bra to make sure they were plumping out of her shirt.
He asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
Flicka held out her resume. “I beg your pardon?”
“Obviously, there’ssomething wrong with you. Illegal? Heroin addict?”
“I assure you, I’m not addicted to heroin or anything else.” She lifted her chin. “And here is my passport and work authorization.”
She held out Gretchen Mirabaud’s passport and green card.
For the first time in her life, she was aware that her accent was too British. She should have cultivated an American accent. This hiring manager mightnot have even thought to ask her about her employment authorization if she had bamboozled him more thoroughly.
The guy inspected her passport, staring at the photo and at her and then flipping to the green card she had tucked in there. His long, gray hair fell across his face, and she couldn’t see his eyes.
He sighed a long, dramatic whoosh and entered her information into a computer on hisdesk with a scowl. He peered at that, craning his neck to get a better angle while Flicka waited. “Well, you’re authorized to work. Why did you move here from California?”
The computer had told him that Gretchen was in California now. That was creepy.
“I left my husband,” Flicka said. “He shot at me.”
The guy swiveled around and stared at her. “Asshole.”
“That’s what I told him,” she assuredhim.
“I don’t like men who beat up women. Have you ever waited tables in a casino before?”
