As I poked at my lunch I thought about how, after my dad’s funeral, the casino had sent a catered meal to my mother’s house, but the timing was off and by then anyone who had been staying with us—my grandparents from Ohio, my aunt and uncle from Arizona—had already gone. Huge silver chafing dishes full of roast beef, pasta in a vodka cream sauce, shrimp fra diavolo, scalloped potatoes, Caesar salad, chocolate mousse, two kinds of cheesecake, and a greasy paper sack of garlic bread for just the two of us. We ate in the living room, so we didn’t have to sit at the table with his empty chair, the rich sauces roiling in our guts.
I studied the rest of the room. Everyone grouped together, according to their jobs. The servers who worked at the steak house. The craps dealers, the blackjack dealers, the poker dealers. The cocktail waitresses, the front desk associates. The pit bosses, the junket reps, the security guys, the fussy cluster of secretaries who brought their own silverware from home. The only other person I saw from the spa was Luis, who brought his tray outside and scattered bits of bread for the birds. He must have clacked the tray down on the table loudly, because the three women smokingunder the nearby awning started and gave him the eye, but he didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he did it on purpose. Maybe he liked the vibration of the impact in his fingers. Maybe it made him feel heard.
I felt a pang as I watched him, a reflexive desire to store away stories and facts to tell Matthew, to pocket and package everything I saw and present it to him later. I wanted to tell him about Luis, to talk about what it would be like to navigate the world in so much silence. Matthew loved stuff like that: stories of extremes. I wondered what it felt like with no noise to crowd his thoughts.
When I came back from lunch, I worked on memorizing the spa menu and its descriptions of services. We were trained to upsell whenever possible, but of course the company never called it that.Enhancing relaxationmeant add-ons to services: an extra exfoliant, a foot scrub.Pampering yourself at homemeant buying products. I had to hand it to the copywriters. They made everything sound like a gift, even when the guest was the one footing the bill.
“What’s the difference between the Swedish Massage and the Premium Massage?” I asked Emily.
“Nothing but the price, I’m afraid.”
“Well, then what do you say when people ask you?”
“I tell them that the Premium includes acupressure and reflexology.”
“What are those?”
“Hell if I know. Most people will want to look like they know what you’re talking about, like they do this all the time, so hardly anyone ever asks. People are always afraid of looking stupid. I suggest using that to your advantage as much as possible. Shame motivates almost every interaction.”
“Okay, Freud,” I teased, but I already felt like she might be right.
“Think about it. How many times do you do something, or don’t do something, because you’re afraid you’re going to be embarrassed?”
“All the time.”
“You and everyone else. If we’re not being fat-shamed, slut-shamed, mommy-shamed, we’re worried about being seen as deficient for not knowing a random term for a scalp massage or a foot rub. It’s bullshit, but it’s true.”
“Emily, can I ask you a question? Why the hell do you work here?” I hoped she understood what I meant. She was clearly brilliant. I knew I only wanted to be here as long as it took to save up enough to get back to the city—three, four months. After all, I wasjust pretending. But what did Emily want? What mantra got her through her days?
She rolled her head in a circle, stretching her neck. As she did, a gold cross on a chain came untucked from the neckline of her shirt, and she reached for it without looking and tucked it back in. “Great question. I didn’t go to college. So this, believe it or not, is the best I can do around here. There are hardly any jobs to begin with, now that everything on the other side of town is shutting down. Plus, it helps me keep up my acting skills. I have to pretend that the people who come here don’t make me want to rip my fucking head off. Present company excluded.”
“I’m flattered,” I said.
“You’ll see what I mean.”
“Lily?” Deidre called. Her voice echoed from the hair salon. “Please come into my office.”
“Time for you to get another lesson in Ass-Kissing 101.”
“I think that’ll make my hangover come back.”
“She can make you feel the misery of every hangover you’ve ever felt, all at once.”
As I walked back to Deidre’s office, I pictured Emily on a stage or a film set. The way her face could shift from one moodto the next, the way she was conscious of how she moved through space, her gestures precise, her posture perfect, the way she so easily pretended to click through the books when someone asked her to schedule an appointment, so that they’d feel lucky and grateful when she managed to book them a space, like they’d received a special favor—all the while I was watching the empty slots scroll by and had to turn my face away so that I didn’t give anything up. Was she like that with everyone? What secrets did she hide with her blunt humor, that quick wit? I wondered what aspects of her life, her personality, she wasn’t letting me see.
ON THEboardwalk I stopped in front of a funnel cake stand, the air full of sugar and heat. I took Clara’s card from my wallet, studied its little misshaped crescent moons, its off-center, faux-gothic text. Why was I feeling so nervous? After all, she was the one who had stolen from me, the one who had done wrong. I crossed the boardwalk to look at the ocean, hoping it would soothe me. There were birds diving out past where the waves broke—my father taught me that meant fish nearby. Sometimes I still tricked myself into thinking he was along the shore, casting a line out into the sea.
In the dunes, the feral cats hissed at one another, prowled through the sand for scraps like desert animals, their fur missing in patches and their whiskers bent from fighting with one another. If this whole town was blasted to bits, the feral cats would outlast us all. They’d go on pawing for scraps among the crackle of dying neon and broken bits of poker chips. The city had tried to spay them, put them in shelters, but it seemed that there were more of them than ever before, their mean, pale green eyes catching mine for a second before they slunk behind a patch of grass.
Clara’s shop was wedged between a store offering cash forgold, trays of pawned rings glinting dully in the window, and a soft pretzel shop, which smelled like starch and salt. There was a chalkboard sign out front of Clara’s.Summer Special, Readings $5.Emily was right—at only five bucks a reading Clara and Des probably needed another hustle in order to eat.
A gold decal of the evil eye stared out at me from the window, which was draped with heavy damask curtains tied with tasseled ropes. The door was propped open, and another cat sat in front of it, licking its paws. I pushed through a tangle of beaded curtains and into the shop, which reeked of incense, the smoke sweet and thick. Along the closest wall, an old jewelry case held crystals and gems, pyrite and amethyst, hunks of quartz, and a pile of polished tourmaline. The glass shelves were grayed with dust. I looked up for cameras—a habit now—and didn’t see any. A leak had spread a urine-colored stain along the ceiling.
“Ah. I knew you’d come.” I turned and saw that Clara had stepped into a room through a door in the back of the shop.
“I just want my bracelet back.”
“What bracelet?” Clara blinked at me.
