The Better Liar(8)

“I couldn’t remember your name.” She touched her face, which was turning pink, and shook her head when I pushed the shot toward her. “I’ve been drinking wine. I shouldn’t—”

“Come on, it’s on me,” I said. “I’m real sorry about your sister.”

She pressed her lips together, staring down at the shot glass. Then she picked it up and sipped at it.

“You never taken a shot before?”

“I have.” She sipped at it again. “I just don’t like the, you know…” She flapped her free hand. “When it burns your throat.”

“No, I’ll show you. Yoga breaths. Think about what’s bothering you, breathe in, and then…” I threw the shot back and sighed. “See? All gone. I’m a new woman.”

She laughed, then covered her mouth, like she’d surprised herself.

I leaned over the bar and pulled on Heather’s ponytail. “My tab,” I mouthed, pointing at Leslie’s head. Heather nodded, and I turned back to Leslie. “I’ve got to get to my tables, but I’ll come back around. I know you forgot my name. It’s Mary.”

“Leslie,” she said, putting out her hand. She had large, squarish hands, softened by a rounded gel manicure. She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something else, then closed it again. I stood there for an extra half second, waiting for her to make up her mind, but there was only a funny silence between us.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said abruptly, and got up and walked unsteadily toward the far hallway.



* * *



—

The kitchen switched to bar snacks at ten, and service slowed. I made almost a hundred dollars off a table of five middle-aged white guys from Kentucky. After they went back into the casino, I slung myself onto the barstool next to Leslie and grabbed another shot from Heather. “I’m getting drunk with you,” I told Leslie, nudging her with my shoulder. “I’m having a really interesting day. Like you.”

    Leslie was sleepy-eyed, clutching her phone. “Nobody’s called me yet,” she said.

“Called you for what?”

“My sister.”

“Were they supposed to?”

“I thought maybe…” She shook her head. “I’m not sure. You’re really very kind. Thank you for…um. Thank you for buying me drinks, and…”

“Anytime.”

She picked up her purse and felt around in it without pulling anything out. “I should go. I should go home.”

“You live around here?”

“No, New Mexico. Albuquerque.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That’s a long drive.”

She let out a nervous giggle. “I have a hotel room. That’s what I meant. Not home-home.”

“Well, I’m about to take my ten outside. Want to come with me? Have a cigarette, sober up?”

She stared at my face a little too long. “I don’t really smoke,” she said finally. “It was only today.”

“Well, you can just keep me company.” I leaned over to dig into my shoe with one finger, where the heel was getting blistered.

Leslie shook her head again. “Okay,” she said, contradicting herself. “All right.”

I led her through the maze of columns and booths, past the black-and-purple wallpaper and the posters of semi-famous people that hung where the windows used to be, back when Letourneau’s had been an office complex. You wanted a casino windowless and dark; it kept people feeling that the night was just beginning. I’d seen guests wandering out of the casino still in full cocktail getups in the middle of brunch service. One guy tried to get his money back from Freddy because he’d missed his flight, saying it was the casino’s fault for not having any clocks in the place.

    “I’m taking my ten,” I said to Berna as I passed her office in the back hall. She didn’t look up. Leslie dragged her fingers over the rows of metal lockers, squeezing the pink rabbit’s foot attached to my combination lock.

Outside, I flopped onto the smokers’ bench next to the door and patted the spot next to me. Leslie stepped carefully over the cigarette butts ringing the bench and sat down, crossing her legs. I stretched out, pointing my toes and digging into my apron for my pack and lighter. “You sure you don’t want one?” I asked her, once I’d gotten the cigarette between my lips.

She shook her head. I shrugged and dropped the lighter back into my apron, glancing at her as she laced her fingers together on her lap.

“What did you mean before,” I asked suddenly, “when you said your sister owed you money?”

Leslie’s head jerked up. “My—my father…” She cleared her throat. “He left us both some money. In his will. That’s why I came down here, to bring her back to Albuquerque.” She unlaced her fingers. “But.”

“Wow,” I said.

She nodded. “He wanted us to talk to each other more. He hated that we didn’t talk.”

“He wanted you to come get her?”

I watched her wedding set flicker in the light from the streetlamp. The rear parking lot was mostly empty, a dozen staff members’ cars clustered along the left side. “He put it in his will, that we had to be there in person, together, at the lawyer’s office. To get the money. That was what he wanted. It took me so long to track her down,” Leslie said quietly. “And I missed her by…” Her mouth hung open for half a second as she stared into space. Then she snapped it closed.