Sin City (61 page)

Suzie corrects him. “Adorée.” She gives the name a veneer of quiet contempt. She always thought it ridiculously pretentious, and for a fright in a yellow plastic bath-cap and a grubby bathrobe three sizes too big, it must seem quite inane.

“Are you two long-lost buddies?” She's enjoying my predicament. I can't even take the cap off, not with pink foam padded rollers underneath.

“No.” “Yes.” Our two voices overlap.

What in God's name is he doing here? Perhaps he came just to buy a tee shirt. Some men do – drive five hundred miles or more just to waste their money on a trashy bit of merchandise: Silver Palm bumper-sticks, or a baseball cap with “WHOREHOUSE” round the brim. No. Not him. Impossible. He always dressed so formally, would never sport a silly hat, or make himself ridiculous by appearing in a sweatshirt with “LAY AWAY!” or “SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL HOOKERS” on the front. And anyway, he was holding Suzie's arm, coming from the direction of her room.

“Jan, I … I've got to talk to you.” He moves towards me, slowly, like a convalescent in a state of shock.

Suzie steps between us, takes his arm again, as if to show who owns him. “Well, I'm afraid you can't talk here, hon. If you've changed your mind and want to stay, then I'll take you to the bar.”

“No.” He raps it out, obviously alarmed, turns to me again. “Is there no place we can talk, Jan? Somewhere private?”

Suzie answers for me. “I'm sorry, Alvin, honey, but that's not on. You were booked with me, and our time's up anyway. I can't just turn you over to another girl. But if we go back to the office, you can have a word with Carl and …”

Alvin? So he's changed his name as well, bloody booked with Suzie. Rotten hypocrite! He always posed as the shrinking violet, the bashful modest guy with no interest in sex. And now I find him buying it – and from a girl whose speciality is whipping – walking through a brothel as bold as brass. Suzie is a toughie, deals with all the “naughty boys”, the ones who need strict discipline. She's also given tricky clients, guys with hang-ups or perversions. She's trusted to stay cool, handle anything, trusted not to tittle-tattle. So what's “Alvin's” special vice? I don't want to know, don't even want to talk to him.

“I'm afraid I haven't time, Alvin.” I give his name the same contemptuous emphasis as Suzie gave Adorée. “I'm about to have a bath, and after that I'm … booked.”

I see him wince. The fraud. He's just had it off with Suzie, and he dares to look so pained.

“Goodbye,” I call, as I stride off down the passage, back the way I came. I sit trembling in my room. I don't know why I feel so overwrought. This man's nothing to me. I only knew him for a brief two days. Just a pick-up, a holiday romance – not even much romance. Okay, so he's discovered I'm working in a brothel. Is that any worse than my knowing he's a client? I snatch my bath-cap off, glimpse my naked face glistening in the mirror. God! I look a slut. And he's only ever seen me glamorous and gift-wrapped. Who cares? It was Suzie that he screwed and
she
looked good enough in that tight blue dress with side-slits. I start ripping out my rollers, scrubbing at my face. Someone knocks.

“Who is it?”

Suzie barges in.

“I didn't say ‘come in', Suzie. I'm not dressed or …”

“That didn't seem to worry you before. Jeez! I was embarrassed. You looked like shit. And that's a new important client you insulted. We try to grab new business here, not scare it off. Don't you know the rules yet?”

I brush my hair violently, tearing at the roots. “I thought it was another rule that we don't bring clients down here.”

“Don't tell me my job. Alvin wanted total privacy, so I arranged with Carl to take him out the side way. You can always do that if your client's famous or concerned about not meeting anyone.”

“So your Alvin's famous, is he?”

“No, he's not, but if you really want to know he's quite some guy. He …”

The phone cuts through her words, Carl's internal phone, which starts hectoring me as well. Am I dressed? Is my room a tip? Alvin's paid for time with me. Yeah, Carl knows it's my free hour, but the crazy guy's paid double and he only wants to talk. Yeah, he's sorry, but I'll have to use my room. Nowhere else is free and the guy wants privacy.

Privacy. Privacy. What about
mine
, I'd like to know? Carl nabbed my one free morning just last week. Free for what, you might say, when I'm still trapped here without a car, but it's the principle which matters. Free to slob around, free not to smile; be sad, or bored, or frigid. And I don't want men in here. My room's become a sort of sanctuary, the only place I dare be really naked. I don't mean without clothes – that's nothing now – I mean without a mask. I can cry here if I want, or tell the walls I'm lonely or plain scared, or make up crazy crappy letters to my father, asking if he's more than simply ashes. All the other girls have to use their rooms for sex, unless the client's booked a special lounge or service. But this room's far too small. It used to be a boxroom before Carl took me on. There's just a bed, a wardrobe, and a makeshift dressing-table with a hard-topped kitchen stool. If we're going to sit and talk, we need two easy chairs. How can we sit and talk? The whole thing's quite impossible. If only he'd just left, pretended not to see me.

Suzie's picking up my clothes, playing martyr like my mother.

“Look, piss off, Suzie. I like my knickers on the floor.”

She flounces out, still nagging, and I start tidying up myself, shovelling all the clutter into drawers. I strip my bathrobe off, spray myself with scent to make up for no bath, then rummage through my wardrobe. Suzie wears a lot of blue. Okay, blue then, Alvin – if that's what turns you on. The dress is halter-necked, shows my breasts almost to the nipples. I struggle with the zip. Another knock. Uncle Carl, no doubt, come to read the riot act. Suzie's probably played the sneak, reported me, like school.

It's Alvin. Shit! Not yet. I haven't done my face which is still shining with the cream, haven't found my shoes or combed my hair.

“Come in,” I say. “Sit down.”

He doesn't sit, just stands there by the door, looking horribly embarrassed. “Jan, I don't know what to say. I …”

“I'm
not
Jan.”

“Honey, why pretend? I'd know you anywhere. I can't call you Adorée. That may be your name here, but I met you as Jan and …” He falters, shakes his head as if still confused, incredulous. “Jesus Christ! I've missed you.”

He sounds almost angry now, gazing at my face as if he's checking every detail, making sure that nothing's changed. I feel suddenly ashamed. I was so involved with Reuben, so mad for Reuben, mad with Reuben, so hurt, stunned, betrayed, I'd forgotten Victor totally – this greying nothing man with his pale tired face and boring clothes, who was so devoted and so kind, who listened to me, cared; who was always so sweet to Norah, generous to us both. Was it just two days we had together? More than that, it must be.

I think back to the poker room, the tournament – blush as I remember sneaking out on him, flirting with Snake Jake, regretting it, escaping; searching for him everywhere, then landing up in Milton's bed, not his. And I'd hardly recovered from that galling non-event, when Reuben bowled me over. No wonder honest Victor got squeezed out. Yet now the memories are flying round my head again, fond and happy memories – Victor ordering extra strawberries for my strawberry daiquiris, Victor teaching Norah crazy golf, Victor driving me to Red Rock Canyon with a flame-red sunset as an extra, which he swore he'd laid on specially; Victor buying chocolates, Victor buying flowers; shy and awkward Victor telling me I'm beautiful.

He's
not
a nothing man. Okay, he's old, and not wildly handsome or wildly anything. In fact, you might well overlook him in a crowd. But his eyes are really beautiful and he's got a lovely generous mouth, and I'm somehow thrown by his solid stubborn presence. It's as if Reuben had erased him, faded him and shrunk him in my mind. I'd remembered him as smaller, even flimsier, without that straight strong back, those lean and muscly hands which seem too real, too male, for the effete and shadowy Victor I'd shrugged off.

He moves towards me, takes my hand in his. Yeah, it's real all right. His grip is really hurting, his laser gaze piercing through my skull-bones. His voice is less assured, though. “I was stupid to … go off like that. I'm sorry.”

“Go off?” I was the one who'd buggered off, I thought.

“I was just destroyed when I saw you with that … that …”

“What d'you mean?” I try and play the innocent, though I'm all too certain what he means. He spotted me and Jake together – must have done. I'd feared that all along. That damned casino was far too small for any privacy; not a great anonymous ant-hill like Caesars or the Hilton, but a cramped and crummy hencoop.

“You know exactly what I mean. I saw the guy.”

I pull my hand away, try to sound offhand. “It was nothing, Victor, honestly. I was just getting a bit bored, that's all. And you seemed so sort of … distant. I mean, once you'd sat down with those cards, you were like someone else completely and I just didn't exist.”

“Are you crazy? Not exist! I was only playing for you. Every hand I won, I was buying you a dinner – or a diamond. You were my luck, my inspiration, my … I've never played as well before – until I happened to turn round and you'd completely disappeared. I couldn't understand it. I asked the cocktail waitress if she'd seen you go someplace. Yeah, she had …” (another angry pause) “– she'd seen the two of you, sitting drinking Pepsis in the lounge.”

Sod the sneaky bitch. She sounds less like a waitress than a spy. I expect Victor tipped her well, to make it worth her while to track me down. He's still filling in the details, those jolt-blue eyes angry and accusing. He sounds passionate, possessive, as if I'm his steady girlfriend of five or ten years' standing. I'm astonished, almost speechless, yet I must admit relieved. I assumed he'd just lost interest, given me the brush-off. Now I realise he was jealous, madly fiercely jealous; seems steamed up even now. He's pacing up and down, his voice reproachful, fraught.

“My game went down the chute then. I was hardly even looking at my cards. I had this huge great stack of chips, but once I started losing, I just threw the last ones off, left the table. I went out via the lounge, thought I'd check your plans. But you looked far too snug and settled to want to be disturbed.”

Settled? Christ! With Jake? I was crawling up the wall, plotting murder.

“I went straight to my hotel, checked out, scorched back home at a hundred miles an hour. Okay, I overreacted, I admit it. It was childish, stupid.” He sounds angry with himself as well as me; suddenly swings round, voice gentler now, and pleading. “Forgive me, Jan.”

“Please don't call me Jan.” This time I must be real. No masks, no false indentities, especially if he feels so strongly. I almost wish he didn't. Oh, I'm glad he still fancies me – it's ghastly being ditched and I'd suffered agonies running through my faults: my bossiness, my boringness, my total lack of sex appeal. But to move so fast from rejection to devotion, I'm not sure I can cope – not so soon after Reuben. My own emotions are really bruised and raw. I need a rest from any new entanglement until I'm less demoralised, less drained.

“I must,” he says, voice tense still. “I want us to be close again, friends again, not hiding behind trick names or playing silly games. Okay, I realise you're embarrassed, Jan, me stumbling on you here, but – Christ Almighty! – what d'you think
I
feel?” He breaks off, hands gesturing, as if searching for the words his voice can't find. “I still can't quite believe it – to find you in this … this … What happened, for Christ's sake? You said you were on vacation.”

“Yes,” I say. “I was.”

“I was imagining you back home by now – in England. I even went to the airport on the 5th, to see if I could find you, stayed there all damned day.”

“You what?”

“Yeah. From six twenty in the morning – that's when the first plane leaves – to ten past two the next morning. That's the last.”

I'm stunned. I don't even remember telling him the date of our flight back. To have hung around that long for a girl who'd blanked him out, who was mourning someone else …

He's holding both my hands now, and I'm sure he doesn't realise quite how tightly. I feel almost honoured by the pain. I'm not used to such vehemence, such passion.

“Jan, I've got to know what happened, what went wrong – what you're doing here.”

I say nothing. I'm running back in time to the evening I last saw him; all the things which have happened since that night – Milton, Ritzy's, Reuben. I daren't mention any of them, least of all admit that I almost married a man who's now awaiting sentence in a prison cell. It will only quite appal him, and seems disloyal to Reuben, too. And yet I don't want to start the chain of lies again, not with Victor. I stare down at my feet, bare feet. Does he really think I'm beautiful, with grubby toenails and without a scrap of make-up?

He lets me go, still holds me with his eyes. “Okay, honey, you don't want to talk about it. I respect that. But I've got to get you out of here. It's wrong Jan, absolutely wrong – a lovely girl like you working in a …” Again, he's stuck for words, can't seem to hit on one that's disparaging enough. I kick out at the skirting. “Why come here yourself then, if it's such a lousy dump?” He's just another Reuben, getting all his thrills from hookers while posing as a faithful ardent type. Worse than Reuben, in running down the girls who try to please him, condemning the whole set-up as a stews. “It's okay for you, splurging all your cash here, then pretending you despise the place. I
haven't
any cash, Victor. I … lost it all, lost everything, even our tickets back to England.” I flop down on the stool, cringe at my reflection in the mirror. I've still got one pink roller in.