The Leavers(76)

For over a decade, ever since I’d come to New York, I hadn’t left the city. I had gone to Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, to beaches and parks, taken subways and buses in all five boroughs, but I hadn’t gone beyond the city’s borders until now, though nothing had been stopping me except a vague fear of the outside, whispered warnings about how you could be picked up by police, deported. But there was nothing to worry about. The farther I walked from the hotel the darker it got, and when I looked up I could see stars, so many more than I remembered, showering the sky with light. Stars were obscured in the city, but here they were, still bright and beating. The ocean waves, somewhere beyond the boardwalk, crashed and echoed around me, a distant, salty smell. Minjiang.

My feet were sandwiched around a loose plank. An entire country existed, a world. There was another life I should be living that was better than this. Reeling down the boardwalk, I felt it, a small, familiar friend: the pinch of freedom, a dash of possibility. I had become too complacent, accepting.

I walked back to the hotel and went up to the room, hoping Leon had returned so we could fall asleep together in that giant bed. I didn’t want to see him in the casino diminished by the noise and colors, engulfed by his old brown coat. But the bed was the same as I had left it, the covers rumpled, the sheets halfway down. No sign of Leon. I got undressed and pulled the blankets over me, no longer drunk, and fell asleep in minutes.

Morning. The sun was straining through the curtains, and Leon was on the bed.

“Little Star,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I rubbed my eyes, the hotel room coming into focus. It was so quiet. How strange it was to wake up without you nearby. “What time is it?”

“First I won so much, you wouldn’t believe it. Five thousand dollars!”

“Five thousand?”

“I should’ve stopped then.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Okay. I should tell you. I used your money, too.”

“What money?”

“The three hundred and eighty in your wallet. I came back to the room, but you were asleep, and I was on a roll. ”

“That money’s supposed to go to the loan shark.”

“I got greedy. Thought for sure I’d win it back.”

My eyeballs felt like they were swimming in paste. “How could you do that?”

“I’m sorry. It was wrong of me.” He lay down and his face curled. “My shoulder.”

“You can’t do your shift tomorrow.”

“Who’s going to pay rent? The salon treats you like shit.”

“Then who told you to lose my money?” I threw a pillow against the wall and watched it slump onto the carpet. All the fingernails I clipped and sanded, the hours of gluing on rhinestones with tweezers and drawing palm trees and hearts until my wrists ached, to make that three hundred and eighty dollars.

“How could you think we could win money for free?” I said. “Nothing is free.”

WE SLEPT ON THE bus ride back to the city. We unpacked our bags. We went to work.

“Look,” Joey whispered to me from across the manicure table.

I saw one of the new girls spreading wax on another girl’s arms. She ripped it off. The second girl yelped.

Coco had quit. She simply didn’t show up for her shifts. When I finally got her on the phone, she said, “It’s good to do something else.”

Rocky was no longer in the office every day, and whenever I tried to talk to her, she would say she was in a rush, she was out the door, she had to make a phone call. Michelle, a cousin of Rocky’s, seemed to be taking over as manager. To replace Coco, Michelle hired four new girls, which meant our hours were capped. Like Rocky and Michelle, these new girls were Vietnamese Chinese, sullen-faced younger girls who arrived and left together in a van driven by a man with bronze highlights in his hair. The receptionist made no efforts to hide her distaste for them, not bothering to even address them by name.

“Hair removal,” Didi said. “Next they’re going to try Brazilians. Be glad you don’t have to rip off crotch hair.”

“For now,” Joey said.

Four nights after Atlantic City, I told Leon I heard of a good job that wasn’t in New York. “It’s the only Chinese restaurant in town and they want a waitress. Joey told me about it. That Hunanese girl at the salon. She’s from the same village as the restaurant owners. You know how rare it is to find a good waitressing job.”

Leon stood, naked and dripping, in the bathtub after his shower. “Okay.”

I gave him a towel. “So, let’s go.”

He dried his hair off. “Go where?”

The steam was soothing on my face. “Florida. Are you even listening to me?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“It’s a good job. Great money.”

He removed the towel. A drop of water fell onto his shoulder. “It was only a couple hundred dollars.”

“Three hundred eighty dollars of my money. Which you stole from me without my permission. No big deal to you, I guess.”

“Of course it’s a big deal to me. I screwed up. Said sorry. It doesn’t mean you’ve got to go to waijiu. We can make up that money fast.”

Beyond the cities was waijiu, the outside, America’s backwards villages. Everything that wasn’t New York. I bent closer to Leon and inhaled his soapy smell. “Florida has cities, it’s not all waijiu. Come on, you know that new manager is about to can my ass. I can make more in a month waitressing than I would in a year back home.”