The Immortalists(52)

She can be the bridge.





19.


The billboard outside the hotel has changed. Tonight, it reads. The Immortalist, with Raj Chapal. The show won’t begin until eleven o’clock – a New Year’s Eve special – but the entrance is already overflowing with tourists. Raj parks the Sunbird in the employee lot. Usually, she carries their bags and he carries Ruby, but tonight Klara won’t let go of the baby. She’s put Ruby in a red party dress that Gertie sent for Ruby’s first birthday, with thick white tights and black patent leather shoes.

They walk through the lobby. Fish glow and scuttle in the fifty-foot aquarium. The tiger habitat is swarmed, though the animals are sleeping, their downy chins flat on the concrete. Raj and Klara turn toward the elevators. This is where they’ll part: Raj will bring their bags to the theater, and Klara will bring Ruby to day care.

Raj turns to her and puts his hand on her cheek. His palm is warm, calloused from work in the shop. ‘You ready?’

Klara’s heartbeat trips. She looks at his face. It’s beautiful: the swan’s neck of each cheekbone, the angular chin. His shoulder-length hair is in a ponytail, as usual; the makeup artist will blow it out and add silicone to make it shine.

‘I want you to know that I’m proud of you,’ he says.

His eyes are glossy. Klara inhales in surprise.

‘I know I’ve been hard on you. I know things have been tense. But I love you; I love us. And I have faith in you.’

‘But you don’t believe in my tricks. You don’t believe in the magic.’

She smiles. She feels sorry for him, for how much he doesn’t know.

‘No,’ he says, frustrated, like he’s talking to Ruby. ‘There’s no such thing.’

Families surge toward the elevators, moving around Klara and Raj, through them, and Raj drops his hand. When they’re alone again, Raj puts it back where it was, but it’s harder, now, his palm cupping her jaw.

‘Listen. Just because I don’t believe in your tricks doesn’t mean I don’t believe in you. I think you’re great at what you do. I think you have the power to affect people. You’re an artist, Klara. An entertainer.’

‘I’m not a show pony. I’m not a clown.’

‘No,’ says Raj. ‘You’re a star.’

He drops his bags and reaches for her. With his arms around her back, he pulls her close and squeezes. Pressed to Klara’s breast, Ruby squeaks. Their family of three. Already they feel like ghosts, like people she used to know. She thinks of the days – they feel so long ago – when she thought Raj could give her everything she wanted.

‘I’m going upstairs,’ she says.

‘Okay.’ Raj makes a fish face at Ruby, who giggles. ‘Wave goodbye, Ruby. Wave goodbye to your papa. Wish him good luck.’

The woman who runs the day care cracks the door when Klara knocks. The suite behind her is filled with the children of stagehands and performers, receptionists and line cooks, managers and maids.

‘Nuts tonight.’ She looks like a hostage, her face haggard behind the bolted chain. ‘Happy fucking New Year.’

Klara hears the crash of glass and a series of whooping noises.

‘Good God,’ shouts the woman, turning. Then she faces Klara again. ‘Mind if we make this quick? Hello, you.’

She unbolts the door and wiggles a finger at Ruby. Klara clutches the baby. Everything in her that is rational resists letting go.

‘What, you’re not dropping her off tonight? Don’t you have a show?’

‘I am,’ says Klara. ‘I do.’

She smooths Ruby’s cowlicky black hair, cups her soft fatty cheeks. She only wants the baby to look at her. But Ruby squirms: the other children have distracted her.

‘Goodbye, my love.’ Klara puts her nose to Ruby’s forehead and inhales the milky sweetness, the sour sweat – the essential humanness – of her skin. She drinks it in. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

When she gets in the elevator again, it’s as though Simon’s been waiting for her. She sees him in the glass, his face waving rainbow like an oil spill. She rides to the forty-fifth floor. She only wanted to see the view from the top, but luck’s on her side: when she steps into the hall, a housekeeper comes out of the penthouse suite. As soon as the woman enters the elevator, Klara lunges for the door. She catches it with her pinky and steps inside.

The suite is bigger than any apartment Klara’s ever seen. The living room and the dining room have cream leather chairs and glass tables; the bedroom sports a California King as well as a TV. The bathroom is as large as the RV, with an extra-long Jacuzzi and two marble sinks. In the kitchen, there’s a steel refrigerator with full-sized bottles of alcohol instead of minis. She takes a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and Johnnie Walker Black Label, a Veuve Clicquot. She rotates between them, coughing on the champagne before she starts the cycle again.

She’s forgotten to look at the view. The thick, folded curtains, also cream, are closed. When she touches a round button on the wall, they slide open to reveal the Strip, glowing with electricity. Klara tries to imagine what it looked like sixty years ago – before twenty thousand men built the Hoover Dam, before the neon signs and the gambling, when Las Vegas was just a sleepy railroad town.