Sin City (73 page)

“Three?”

“Well, Norah. I feel sort of responsible, since it was me who dragged her out here in the first place. Would you mind if she came with us?”

“N … No. Of course not. But …”

“But what?”

Victor's leaning against the wall, as if he can't support himself; looks rigid, almost paralysed. “Carole, I've got to get this straight. Are you talking about us …” He swallows, seems to find the word impossible. “Marrying?”

I don't answer for a moment. The word's difficult for me as well, full of dangerous memories, betrayals. “Not necessarily. And certainly not yet. Not on the rebound, as you put it. I think we ought to wait. It's like the … sex thing. I want us to recover first. From everything. From Reuben and the brothel and Vietnam and …”

Victor's sounding dazed still. “But marriage is for ever. You can't mean …”

“So you don't want me then, for ever?”

“It's not that.” His voice is cold suddenly, cold and even hard. He's moved away, right up to the door as if he's trying to escape me. “Look, Carole, we've been over this before. I'm twenty-four years older.”

“So? They can gossip about that, instead, in Bardstown. I'll have to move in any case. Otherwise I'll never live my past down. If we stay on here, they'll tattle about you living with a tart. God! That reminds me – d'you realise you're still paying Carl a fortune to keep me here at all? Even yesterday, he was gloating when I phoned. You could almost hear him totting up the hours, working out his profit. I'd better phone again, tell him you drove me to Angelique's last night and I've been officially off-duty since then.”

“
I
'll call him, Carole.” Victor still sounds cool. His face is closed, defensive. He doesn't want me, obviously. He's not even looking at me, just staring down, as if regretting all the things he's ever said.

I march over to the phone, snatch up the receiver. “I'll make my own calls, thanks.” I'm praying that he'll follow, tell me he still loves me, that he's thrilled by my idea. He doesn't speak, doesn't move at all.

“Damn,” I say. “I misdialled.” There's a recorded message babbling on, some cheerful smarmy female I could murder.

“Carole, let me handle this. You could land yourself in trouble. Carl's a real tough guy. He may want you back immediately, insist you go on working there.”

I shrug. Who cares? Okay, so it's back to oafs and rotters, pricks and perverts, but rather them than bloody hypocrites who pretend they're crazed with love for you until you actually let on you'd like to live with them. I steal another glance at Victor – face still shuttered, eyes not meeting mine. Fine for him to act the great romantic so long as he imagined it was all a fantasy and he could make his exit quickly if things became too real. Okay, so he still wants to “save” me from the brothel, but nothing else apparently, nothing permanent. And it's “Carole” now, not darling, honey, sweetheart – “Carole” twice.

I jerk back to the bookcase, lob out half a dozen heavy books, leave them scattered on the floor, retrieve my cigarettes. I ram one in my mouth, search round for a match. I threw away my lighter as a symbolic gesture yesterday. Symbolic bilge! All that stuff about love and sacrifice is just a load of claptrap. You're always disillusioned in the end. Better to stay tough, grit your teeth and accept that men are shits.

I can't find any matches. I push past Victor, slouch out to the passage, search the bureau there.

He follows me this time, asks me what's the matter, what's he done. As if he didn't know. I don't bother to reply, just doodle with my dead cold fag on the hard unfeeling wood.

“Look, why don't I phone Carl from my bedroom? Then you won't have to listen if it bugs you.”

I swing round to face him. “Forget the bloody phone-call. If you don't want me yourself, Victor, I may as well go back to Carl. At least he values me. He was saying just last week that I'm …”

Victor grabs my shoulder. “Don't want you? Are you crazy? I want you more than anything I've …”

“Yeah, and the minute I suggest we might shack up together, you go all cold and distant, can't wait to get away. What d'you think I felt when … ?”

He takes me back to the sitting room, sits me down, tries to calm his own voice as he crouches on the carpet at my feet. “Of course I've thought of marriage. I've been dying to ask you if you'd be my wife, had to try and stop myself at least a dozen times.” He turns away, frowning, stares down at his hands. “It simply isn't fair.”

“Not fair?”

“In terms of poker, I've got a dead hand. There's that great age gap to start with, and the … scars and …” He pummels his thighs, as if furious with them suddenly. His voice is low, embarrassed. “And I'm not sure I can have kids. You didn't know that, did you? It isn't certain. The doctors couldn't say. They just said wait and see and …”

“Who said I wanted kids? I'd be a rotten mother anyway.” I grin. “Always blowing my top.”

“I'd love kids. Your kids.”

“So you expect me to have them out of marriage, then? Poor rotten little bastards.”

He shifts position on the floor, so that now he's almost kneeling at my feet. “Carole, will you marry me?”

“No, I won't,” I say. “I asked you first and you said no. Typical male pride.” I'm laughing, almost crying. “Oh, Victor, d'you think we really dare?”

“It's settled.” He gets up, starts mixing two martinis. He needs a drink even more than I do. The gin's missing the glasses, spilling on the sideboard. “We'll go back to Bardstown like you said, and get married in the church where my parents had their own wedding. It's a lovely little church – plain wood painted white, with trees outside and …”

“No, wait. Don't go too fast, Victor.” I'm the one who's scared now, backing off. White dresses, wedding chapels, police cars, screaming sirens. “I … I'm not sure.”

“Yes, you are. We both are. Absolutely sure.”

“Well, just a simple wedding.” I hear my own voice peter out. I'm remembering all my childish dreams: the big white fancy wedding, froth of pink tulle bridesmaids, six-tier cake, huge marquee; the young and handsome bridegroom, jet-black hair, tanned and muscly torso, film star looks. The pictures fade and shrink. The church is strange – and tiny. No marquee, no crowds. Not a soul I know. The groom is greying, lined; his lower body scarred beneath his neat and boring suit.

I get up, walk slowly to the window, keep my back to Victor. It's silent in the room; only the throbbing of the aerators, which seem to mock me with their contented steady purr. I could still change my mind, return to England, forget Victor and Las Vegas altogether. Better that than say what I don't mean, kid myself again. I haven't said “I love you” all damn day. Deliberately. I've got to know exactly what I'm doing. No lies this time, no fudging, no rainbow fantasies. I find my crumpled fag, unlit. It's like a warning, proving just how hard love is, what guts it may demand. I squash it in my palm. I'm scared of my own weakness, the way I grab and winge, my stupid sulks and tantrums. I'm not one of Victor's “heroes” – truckers and commuters, nurses with those lunch trays, battling on through thick and thin without a moan or groan. I grip the windowsill, stare out into black.

He's there, behind me, accepting me – moody selfish me – arms around my waist, refusing to let me go or let me fail, insisting we go on. “We'll get married in our trench coats, his and hers, okay?”

“Okay.” I try to grin. “And Norah can wear her new blue men's pyjamas.” I turn to face him. “Victor, will you really not mind if Norah comes to live with us? I know you said yes, but you didn't sound that thrilled.”

He presses closer. “I was simply stunned by the fact that I might actually live with
you
.”

“She's nowhere else to go, you see, and …”

“Sure she'll come. I'd like that. She can help us choose the house.”

I'm so choked I'm close to tears. Norah's never had a home before, and Victor's so damn generous. A lot of men would bitch about a threesome, close their hearts to Norah. “Can we take the fish?” I ask, looking at them now with Norah's eyes; the magic rainbow colours, the paradise of plants.

“I wouldn't dream of leaving them. You can send them air-freight, in these special insulated cartons. It'll cost a bomb, but …” He shrugs. “It's worth it. You're right, you know, honey. I have missed my home town. I was no one in New York – just half a line of print in the telephone directory and a social security number on the IRS's file. And Vegas is a mean town which rates you by your bankroll, not your personality.”

I walk over to the fish tanks, lure the shyest of the clown fish from its bolt-hole of green weed. “If we have a garden, can Norah have a bit of it, a patch all to herself? She's never grown a bloody dandelion.”

“I'll teach her to grow orchids.”

I take his hand, put a kiss inside the palm, close his fingers over it. We glance at one another. “Let's go and tell her. Now,” I say. “This minute. Before we've even changed. I want to tell everyone.”

“But we're not formally engaged.”

“What d'you mean, formally? D'you have to nick another diamond ring from the five-and-dime before it's official?” I exchange grins with the lionfish.

Victor laughs. “You'll have the best ring in Las Vegas.”

I don't say no. If I love his scars, then I'm allowed to love his money. I know I'm not a saint – I'm greedy for too many things. It would never have worked with Reuben. I'm not a Jew, couldn't be a Zionist, can't change the world or save it. All the same, I'd like a cause.

“Hey, Victor?”

“What?”

“I've just had an idea. If we can't have our own kids, why don't we adopt a few from Vietnam – you know, as sort of … compensation?”

I'm slightly hurt when Victor laughs. I thought he'd tell me I was good again. I like it when he does that, feel capable of anything – Lady Bountiful dispatching crates of rice to shanty villages, or brave unselfish earth mother breast-feeding hordes of slant-eyed commie orphans. I drain my dry martini. I guess I'll have to settle for a less dramatic cause – loving one man, taking in one dear and batty woman.

Victor takes my glass. “You're far too young for kids yet. You ought to go to college first. My old one maybe. I could drive you there and back each day.”

I pretend to bridle. “I know – you just want me out of the house, so you can have some peace and quiet – you and Norah.”

“Yeah, that's right. And a wife with a Master's who can keep me in my old age.”

“You're not going to be old, Victor. I shan't allow it – ever. Well, not till I'm old, too. If we go back to Bardstown, you'll be twenty-two again, like you said you felt. We'll cancel all those horrid years when you were on your own and in hospital and everything.” I run my hand along his chin. “I'd like you with a bushy beard. You could rub it on my breasts.”

He touches them, fingers circling across and round the nipples. I shiver. “And I'll go back a bit as well, cut out that whole summer when I gave up my college place and nicked those things and landed up in Beechgrove.”

He smiles. “You wouldn't have met Norah then.”

I say nothing for a moment. Norah's precious. I can't explain it really. To the outside world she's a pudding-brained old bat, but for me she's become a sort of relative – the nicest, most important kind, who loves you as you are and would give you her right hand without demanding something back or playing martyr. And she knows things, deep things, which other people don't. She may not have the words for them, but that doesn't mean she's thick. And she's perceptive about people, liked Victor from the start, distrusted Reuben.

I pull at Victor's tie. “I wouldn't have met you, either. If I'd gone to university, I'd have been probably far too busy to enter competitions – not sixty-three times anyway, all for the same one.”

“So you can't go back, you see. And nor can I. All we can do, as you limeys say, is simply soldier on.” Victor flicks his tie straight as if he's about to be inspected by his sergeant, holds me with his eyes. “Okay, so you gave up your college place in England, but that doesn't stop you applying here. In fact, we've got a lot more colleges. Not just Louisville, but the University of Kentucky in Lexington and …”

I'm silent. My father was so eager that I had an education, got somewhere in life. Goals again, a purpose; Dad proud of what he called his brainy girl. I can see him in his baggy Fair Isle cardigan, sorting through prospectuses with me, stumbling over words like anthropology, worrying about grants and means-test forms. There won't be any grants out here. Only Victor's bounty, his support. I hug him suddenly.

“Oh Victor, I do wish you could meet him.”

“Who?”

“My Dad.”

“He'd disapprove – of me, I mean. You and me.”

Victor's right. He probably would. All the same, I'd like him there, in Bardstown, in that little white wood church with all the trees outside, giving me away. And Jan – I'd like her too. She could do the flowers, make up my bouquet. Suddenly, I'm missing her.

“Victor, we can visit England, can't we?”

“Sure.”

“And we'll still come back to Vegas sometimes?” I'm missing Angelique now, all the girls. If they're tough and hardened, it's only because they've never had my luck, a guy to bail them out, a second chance.

Victor laughs. “I guess we'll have to, honey, if I'm going to pay for all those transatlantic flights. I'll need a run of wins.”

“Will you teach me poker?”

“Absolutely not. We'd wind up in Cardboard City.”