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.
“But won’t you inherit her half, if she owed you?” I said. “Now that she’s, you know…”
She turned her odd colorless eyes on me. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “That was a dumb thing to say. I didn’t mean it like that.”
She was still looking at me, that half-present blankness on her face. I wished she would stop looking at me like that.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” I blurted out.
“What?” she said, seeming to come out of her daze.
I sucked on my cigarette. “I think people think I’m dumb,” I told her. “I think maybe I just look like I am. I don’t know.”
Leslie let out a hoarse giggle again. “No,” she said, when she caught her breath. “Of course not.”
I frowned. “I might be. You don’t even know me.”
“Everybody has talents,” Leslie said, her body loosening a little.
“Does this count?” I took the cigarette out of my mouth and did cauliflower tongue. She laughed, and I put the cigarette back in my mouth. “No, but I can read palms, though. I’m really good at it. Here, I’ll show you.”
She curled her hand up against her chest. “No, no.”
“Come on.” I grabbed her hand and tugged it toward my knee. “It won’t hurt.”
She relented and leaned toward me, letting her palm rest on my leg. I stubbed out my cigarette and added it to the fairy ring around the bench. “Okay,” I said, “you’ve got this really fleshy Venus mound.” I squished it with my thumb. Leslie made a face. “No, it’s good,” I said. “It means resistance to disease. And your middle finger is the longest. That means you’re an overachiever.”
“Aren’t you supposed to read the lines?” she asked.
“Sure.” I bent her fingers in slightly, so that I could see where her palm creased. “That’s the life line. Yours is really faint.”
“What does that mean?” She leaned in.
“It means you don’t work with your hands…you work in an office.”
Leslie laughed. “What about my love line? That’s one of them, isn’t it?”
“Heart line.” Hers was short and straight, like a cut. “You’re married?”
“Yes,” she said. “Four years.”
“Beautiful. What’s his name?”
“David. Dave,” she said, revealing a slightly crooked canine.
I dropped her hand and took out a second cigarette. She gave me a sidelong glance, watching my hands. “What do your palms say?” she asked.
I let my fingers uncurl on the bench between us. “See that long one down the middle? That means I’m going to be famous,” I told her. My voice echoed a little in the empty lot. “The psychic I went to said it’s the longest one she’s ever seen.” I pulled my hand back and stuck it into my apron, gripping the bills I’d stuffed in there, drawing in a breath through my nose.
“I should leave soon,” Leslie said. “It’s getting late.”
“Thanks for keeping me company.” A car pulled into the lot, washing us in bright, flat light, and our heads turned briefly to look at it. When I looked back, she was already gathering her things. “I hope everything works out with her. Your sister and everything,” I said.
“Robin,” Leslie said. That blankness fell back over her face, like a veil. “Thank you.”
She started to gather her things, but paused. I followed her gaze and saw that the car had parked, and a man was coming toward us with an odd shambling gait.
I said, “You should go—you should go inside.”
“Do you know him?” Leslie asked, her hand half in her purse.
“A little.”
She didn’t move.
Sam was my height, bald, with a reddish goatee. His ears and cheeks were the same flushed, ruddy pink. “Who’s your friend?” he said, coming up onto the curb.
I dropped my phone and scraped my fingers trying to pick it up again. The cigarette fell onto the pavement. “No one,” I said, sticking my index finger in my mouth so it wouldn’t bleed everywhere. “She’s a customer.”