The Better Liar(5)

Mary flinched, and I rushed to say, “I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I can’t—”

She took the lighter from me. “It’s okay. I’ll do it. You all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. She lit the cigarette easily and handed it back to me with two delicate fingers. “Thank you.” I sucked in smoke and tried not to cough. I had never smoked a cigarette before, but it seemed to calm other people.

She eyed me. “You really needed that, huh? Trying to quit?”

“I needed a drink more,” I said, “but I have to drive.”

“Aw, you could have one,” she said. “My boyfriend comes here all the time—that’s why I was sitting on his car—well, I thought it was his car. I passed by and saw it and I thought I’d surprise him.” She ducked her head. “They make a real good martini here, if you’re a gin drinker.”

I shook my head. “I don’t really drink much.”

“Cheap date.”

    There was a pause. She didn’t look like she was about to leave, and I wasn’t finished with the cigarette. “Do you work around here?” I said, for lack of anything better.

“No, it’s just on the way. I work over there.” She tilted her cigarette in the direction of the city. The sun had dropped below the roofs of the buildings, sharpening their outlines from behind so that now the skyline seemed only feet away, like the backdrop of a stage.

“Oh,” I said. Mary squatted to stub her cigarette out on the pavement. “At a casino?”

“Sort of,” she said, getting to her feet. “The restaurant attached to it. I serve a lot of lobster.” She made a face. “I hate waiting tables, but I don’t hate it the way the other girls hate it, so I feel like I should keep doing it, you know?” She glanced at me and I nodded.

“What would you rather be doing?” I asked after a moment.

“I want to move to LA,” she said, dragging out the last syllable for comic effect. “I want to act. I’ve been saving up to move out there for forever. I want to have enough money that at least if I end up working in the service industry again, I’ll be able to pick and choose a little, you know? Not worth it to move and make less than at the Strip. I’d feel like it was for nothing.”

“I think you’ll make it,” I said, trying to be nice. “You look like an actress.”

“Stop it,” Mary said, grinning. She had rippling lines bracketing her mouth, which were invisible otherwise. “What do you do? Are you in the city to gamble?”

My laugh surprised me; it sounded hoarse. “I’m actually,” I said, trying to compose myself, “I’m actually in the city to see my sister.”

“Oh yeah?” Mary asked. “How’s that going?”

“She’s dead,” I said, forcing back an idiotic, nervous smile. “She just died a few hours ago.”

“Oh my gosh,” Mary said. “I’m sorry. Wow.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I was just a couple hours too late. Isn’t that crazy? And I really—I really needed to see her.” I tried to take a drag, but it went up my nose and I teared up. “She owes me money.”

Mary took this in. At last she said again, less kindly, “Oh, well, I’m sorry.”

    “No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to explain all that. Thank you for giving me this,” I added, holding up what was left of the cigarette. “That was really nice of you.”

“Yeah, sure. Listen, I’m going to go text Paul and see where he’s actually hanging out, but if you come by Letourneau’s in the city tonight, flag me down and I’ll sneak you a couple of shots.”

“You mean come to where you work?”

“Yeah, off Harmon. It’s pink, you can’t miss it. Well, you can, but don’t.” She patted me familiarly on the arm.

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to…” I made an inarticulate gesture.

She watched my hands. “Well, if you end up dropping by,” she said, and didn’t finish.

I got into the car and started it. Something touched my leg, like a finger; when I looked down, I saw that it was the cigarette butt, which had fallen from my hand.





4


    Robin


Why don’t more people walk away? I have always wondered this. Sunk cost, maybe. Fear of the dark. Or guilt; some families run on guilt, like gasoline.

No—men know how to walk away, even men who never do it. The instructions are right there: Go out for cigarettes and never come back. Start a second family in Florida and raise the kids on Tropicana. Make sure your grandchildren find out about each other when you die, your final gift to them, so they know love is a cat in a sealed box, that if they took the heads off their husbands and looked in, they would see nothing, a bottomless drop.

I guess what I’m asking is why don’t more women walk away?

The night I left home, it had just stopped raining. Leslie was back from college for the weekend, asleep in the next room. On the other side my father was out cold in a sleeping-pill daze. It was two years until his diagnosis, but he’d already developed a wet cough that took all his energy to repress. It felt like he slept all the time; it felt like I never slept. It woke me up in the middle of the night, the feeling that I was supposed to be moving toward some prophesied future. That it was waiting for me, and that lying there in bed in a medium-size town in New Mexico was only stalling.