I didn’t know what to say. She wrapped a loose thread around her finger, then unwrapped it slowly. “Hey,” she said suddenly, “how did you know your husband was the right one?”
The change of subject caught me off guard. “Um, I just knew.”
Mary smacked me on the arm, letting the thread fall to the bed. “Ugh. I hate that.”
The atmosphere had shifted so suddenly that I couldn’t help laughing. “I mean, I don’t know how else to say it.” The truth was one of those things it was impossible to say aloud: I knew because it terrified me. I had never been in love before, so I didn’t understand what it meant until it happened to me. Early in our relationship, I’d gone through a phase of dreaming that he was dead, then waking in a cold horror, my face soaked. I dreamed it a dozen times or more, all in the middle of a courtship so intense that it had made me feel crazy. I did things with Dave I never would have done with anyone else: skipping classes to stay in bed all day, moving in with him after only two weeks. I didn’t sleep in my own apartment once after meeting him—at the time that had seemed absolutely sensible.
Mad, funny, beautiful days, and then at night, his corpse, again and again. As if, having encountered happiness, my brain had instantly learned to fear its loss.
I would have done anything for him. That was how I knew.
“He keeps calling me,” I said. “Wanting to know how things are going with my sister.”
“You haven’t told him?” Mary frowned.
“I didn’t know how. It’s ruined everything. I needed—we needed that money.”
Mary nodded. “But you’ll get it anyway, won’t you? I mean, eventually.”
I shook my head. “I needed it right away. Contesting the will, going back and forth with Vegas, it’ll take months. A year, maybe. I can’t—I thought I was going to get it before then. I thought I was going to get it this week.”
Mary’s mouth had fallen open a little listening to this. “I could help you pawn your ring.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I’m just saying. I’ve pawned a lot of stuff. It works.”
I turned the stone toward my palm. “No. Thanks, though.”
“Maybe we should pray,” Mary said inexplicably, sitting up and crossing her legs.
“We’re drunk,” I said. “You can’t pray when you’re drunk.”
She fixed me with a reproving look. “Sure you can. I have a friend who does the whole rosary whenever she thinks she’s going to throw up, and then she never does.”
“What are you going to pray for?”
“For whatever we want.” She got up and scrambled over to the other bed, lifting a jagged pink piece of quartz out of her backpack.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing at it as she arranged it on the nightstand between us, right in front of the alarm clock.
“His name is Pop Rock ’cause he’s the biggest one, the daddy. I’ve got littler ones at my apartment, but he’s the best of the bunch. Okay, come down here with me.”
She pulled one of the decorative pillows off the bed and patted it. I stumbled around the bed and knelt next to her, imitating her solemn pose.
“All right. Here we go. Are your eyes closed? Leslie, close your eyes. Dear God and spirits, thank you for all the good things that happened to us today. We are truly grateful.” Mary elbowed me. “Name some good things.”
“Um…” I tried not to laugh. “Quitting jobs. Schnapps. Game shows.”
“Yeah. Now I usually use this next part to focus on what I want out of life. Like really try to envision it. So for me I’m going to say I see myself not being poor anymore and getting out of Las Vegas and finding somebody who loves me, really loves me, and helps me with my goals.”
“That’s a good vision,” I said, nudging her gently with my shoulder. “This is nice. I see why you do this.”
“Okay, now you.”
I closed my eyes again. It took me too long to come up with something. I could feel Mary fidgeting on the decorative pillow next to me. “I want to know what to do when I wake up tomorrow,” I said finally. “I want to have a plan.”
“Perfect,” Mary said. “Now don’t you feel better?” She picked up Pop Rock and shuffled over to her backpack to tuck him away again. I lifted myself off the decorative cushion, slipping a little, and re-placed myself on the bed.
Mary wandered back over to me and sat down, then seemed to change her mind and stood up again. “I have to pee,” she said, and headed placidly toward the bathroom.
She paused as she crossed in front of the television, brushing pieces of crushed peanut off the sole of her foot. The light from the TV turned her two-dimensional, silhouetted like a child’s portrait. There was something familiar about the curve of her forehead. For a moment she really could have been Robin. A more perfect Robin, a Robin the way she should have looked, in another life.
The idea filtered through my disordered thoughts, spreading itself across my vision. A solution. A way out.
7
Mary
“Do you still want to watch this?” I said over my shoulder, picking bits of peanut out from between my toes. “We could find something else.”
“Whatever you want.” Leslie’s eyes looked half-unfocused in the dim light of the bedside lamp. I’d expected sharing a room with her to be sort of chummy, like a sleepover, and for a while it had been, but now the booze was burning off, leaving a sheen of grade-school sweat on her. I was still a stranger, and now we were alone in a hotel room. The intimacy of it was creeping in. I saw her fingers seize and release the coverlet, kneading it like a stress toy.
I picked up the remote and clicked through a football game and two channels of cartoons. American Graffiti was on the next channel, just at the part with Toad and Candy Clark where they play that song, the “I Only Have Eyes For You” song. “Oh, this is good,” I said, faking cheer, turning toward the bathroom.
I stumbled backward. Leslie had appeared in front of me. I hadn’t heard her leave the bed. We were practically nose to nose.
“Mary,” she said, grabbing my arm. A sour smell rose off her, liquor and something stale, like when you’ve slept too long. “Do you want to come to New Mexico with me?”
Even drunk, I still had my waitress’s reflexes; I reacted to her invading my space by letting my muscles go gluey under her fingers. “What?” I said, laughing, letting the drunkenness carry me along.