Their Wildest Dreams, page 9
A couple of the men rose and approached the stage. One motioned for her to come closer.
“What do you want?” Mackie said.
“What do I want?” he said. “Just to show my appreciation.” He held up a bill.
“That was just an audition,” Mackie said.
“You passed, to my way of thinkin’.”
Mackie came to the edge of the stage, wearing only the G-string, arms crossed over her breasts.
“What’s your name?” said the man.
Mackie came close to blurting her real name, first, last, middle. “Red,” she said.
“Name’s Bub,” said the man. “I’m a regular here and let me tell you I’m going to be a lot more regular, with you around.”
“That’s very nice, Bub, but—”
Bub leaned forward, stuck the bill inside the strap of her G-string, against her hip. Mackie was so surprised she wasn’t sure the slight scratch she felt was the edge of the bill or his fingernail.
The second man stepped up, stuck money in the other side, eyes, slightly crossed, on her butt.
“Red?” Verna called. “Got a moment?”
Mackie turned, picked up the minidress, slipped it on. The money stayed where it was, unexamined. Never open the envelope like that in front of Auntie Ruth again, Helen— it’s rude. She hopped down off the stage, went to Verna’s table.
“Sit down,” Verna said, both eyes made up now, and heavily.
Mackie sat.
“This is Mr. Samsonov,” Verna said.
“Nice to meet you,” Mackie said. Mr. Samsonov nodded, the muscles in the sides of his neck standing out like cables.
“Mr. Samsonov’s the boss,” Verna said.
“CEO,” said Mr. Samsonov. “Plus managing partner and one hundred percent owner of common and preferred shares.”
“He does all the hiring and firing,” said Verna.
“You are hired,” said Mr. Samsonov.
“Thank you. I—”
“Tell her the rules,” said Mr. Samsonov.
“No sex with the customers,” said Verna. “Sex and you’re fired. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“What about the problem of— what is this idiom, again?” said Mr. Samsonov.
“Hand jobs?” said Verna.
“I will write it down.” Mr. Samsonov opened a leather-bound notebook. Mackie saw two columns, one in English, the other in the Russian alphabet, the name of which she’d forgotten. “It is here that I am enriching my vocabulary,” he said, writing some Russian word and beside it hands job.
“It’s singular,” Mackie said.
He looked up, his eyes, unblinking and almost colorless, on her.
“Hand job,” Mackie said; probably saying it out loud for the first time in her life.
“Ah,” he said, making the correction. “I am loving this expression, hand job. I am loving all things American. You have noticed the front door?”
“Yes.”
“We are very patriotic here. That is another rule. Go on with the rules, Verna.”
“The problem with hand jobs,” said Verna, “is that some of our former girls didn’t realize they counted as sex. You don’t look like the kind of girl who would make a mistake like that.”
“No.”
“We have table dancing, lap dancing, and friction, but they’re not compulsory,” said Verna. “Dane signs off on all the music. No rap, no heavy metal. Drugs and you’re gone. Drinking and you’re gone. G-string comes off and you’re gone. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“I do the schedule— two shifts, early and late, open every day. We expect six shifts a week, minimum.”
“Early would be best.”
“No guarantees,” said Verna.
“That is life,” said Mr. Samsonov. “American life. No guarantees, but the moon is the limit.”
“Agreed?” said Verna.
“Agreed.”
“Any reason you can’t start now?”
“Today?”
Verna checked her gold watch, thick and diamond-studded. “Showtime in ten minutes.”
“I guess that’d be all right,” Mackie said.
Verna held out her hand. “Stage fee’s twenty bucks.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Each shift.”
“Like golf,” said Mr. Samsonov. “Greening fee first, then play ball.”
“I don’t have any money on me,” Mackie said.
Verna laughed, a high-pitched sound quickly cut off, but Mr. Samsonov laughed and laughed, deep and booming, a sound like Henry Kissinger on laughing gas. “I am liking this girl,” he said.
Mackie reached up inside the minidress, under the straps of the G-string, pulled out the money: three bills— a hundred and two fifties.
“This is the girl that goes with the flag,” Mr. Samsonov said, as Verna changed the fifty from a huge roll she kept somewhere down her front. “The All-American girl.”
Mackie made $943 that afternoon, two one hundreds, three fifties, nine twenties, seventeen tens, twenty-eight fives, one two, and one hundred and one ones. She changed it to a money order at a bank Verna recommended a few blocks up Oro: Patriot Frontier Savings and Loan. While the teller counted out the bills, Mackie overheard two tiny old ladies talking in the line behind her. “Waitressing must be good these days,” one said.
Lianne was doing her homework at the kitchen table as Mackie walked in, a few minutes after seven.
“Sorry I’m a bit late, sweetheart,” Mackie said. “Have you eaten?”
“No.”
“Good. I’ve got a treat.”
“What’s that?”
“Thai.”
“Thai?”
“I thought we’d try something new.”
They tried Thai food, both of them for the first time, and liked it a lot. “Was it expensive, Mom?”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Mackie, sitting back in her chair; her muscles a little sore, but not nearly as sore as they were after cleaning for Mrs. Thorsen. “How was your day?”
“Not bad,” Lianne said. “And yours?”
NINE
“What’s your old man all about?” said Jimmy Marz.
“How do you mean?” said Lianne. She ran her finger over Jimmy’s nipple and it got all stiff. What were men doing with nipples anyway?
“Besides the tennis,” said Jimmy. “I know that part. Rags played him a couple days ago. Rags was on the team up at State for a year or so, but he didn’t take a game off your old man.”
“He’s good at tennis,” Lianne said. “He taught Jenna how to play.”
“Who’s Jenna?”
“Nobody.”
They lay on the bottom bunk of the bed in this place she went with Jimmy. Lianne wasn’t sure where it was, somewhere on the edge of Ocotillo Ranch, far from the lodge and the casitas. The dirt road ended miles away; Jimmy drove his motorcycle on a faint track across the desert after that. Lianne liked the view she had lying right there, through the open window: a two-humped mountain that kept changing color as the sun moved across the sky.
“Can we climb up there, Jimmy?”
“That’s Mexico.”
“So?”
“One day, maybe,” Jimmy said. “What’s with your old man— the golf course, condos, all that shit?”
“I guess he’s got ambitions,” Lianne said.
“Me, too,” said Jimmy. “But why fuck up the ranch?”
She rolled on top of him. “What kind of ambitions have you got, Jimmy?”
“This is my ambition,” he said, rolling her back over like she was nothing, him on top now.
When she looked out the window again, the mountain was glowing. “What else?” she said.
“You know,” he said. “Money.”
“What would you do with it?”
“Shit. What wouldn’t I do with it?”
“Be specific.”
“You’re funny, you know that? The way you talk. I bet you get good grades in school.”
“They’re okay.”
“Straight A’s, right?”
“Pretty much.”
“Got a boyfriend there?”
“You know I don’t.” She had a thought. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Got a girlfriend somewhere?”
“Sure do.”
“Nadine?”
He laughed. “Maybe you’re not so smart. The girlfriend I’m talking about’s stark naked right now.”
“Yeah?”
“Down in the South End bunkhouse. And she tastes like honey from the bee.”
Lianne had a feeling at that moment unlike any she had ever known. Pure happiness: it was real. She made a buzzing sound.
He laughed, shivering at the same time; she felt that shiver down his spine. “You’re going to kill me,” he said.
A little later, she said, “Still alive?”
“Barely.”
It was the warmest day in a while. They had the door open now for the breeze. Lianne saw a little dust cloud in the distance. It got bigger.
“I think someone’s coming,” she said.
Jimmy opened his eyes. “Get dressed,” he said.
“Think it’s my father?” Lianne said.
“Not from that direction,” said Jimmy.
“If it is, I’ll just tell him.”
“Bad idea,” said Jimmy. “Anyways it’s not him. The city people don’t know this place.” Jimmy was dressed now, standing on the porch, his back to her. She could picture its contours right through the cotton of his shirt. “Got any ID on you?” he said.
“No. What for?”
He turned to her. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s going to take you for Mexican.”
Lianne zipped up her jeans, went out on the porch. An open-topped Jeep or dune buggy came over a rise, swerved around a cactus, one of those organ pipes, a kind she’d seen only once or twice, and skidded to a stop a few yards away.
“Try taking it easier on the ecosystem,” Jimmy said.
The driver got out, a tall bony guy, bald in front, long stringy hair in back; but any man would look bad next to Jimmy. He had a bandanna over the lower part of his face, like an old-time movie outlaw. “Sorry, Jimmy,” he said, pulling it down and coughing once or twice. “Didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Even when no one’s watching,” Jimmy said. “That’s the test.”
“Won’t happen again,” said the man. “What I meant was I didn’t want to disturb anybody.” His eyes shifted to Lianne.
“You’re not,” Jimmy said. “Lianne, this is Dane. Dane, Lianne.”
“Hi,” Lianne said.
“Howdy,” said Dane.
He went to the back of the Jeep, unloaded a bottle of water, the big kind that goes on coolers, and carried it up to the porch. “All right to put this inside?” he said.
“Against the back wall,” Jimmy said.
Dane carried it in, went back for more bottles, half a dozen in all. After that, he rested a moment on the porch, mopping his head with the bandanna and scanning the sky. It was empty, clear blue and nothing but. “You from around here?” he said to Lianne.
There was nowhere around here for her to be from, Lianne thought. She said: “Tucson.”
“Yeah? What part?”
“Foothills.”
“Nice.” He stepped off the porch, walked to the Jeep, opened the door. “Got a second, Jimmy?”
Jimmy went over to the Jeep. Lianne backed into the bunkhouse, acting polite. Acting polite, but she had a good view of Dane holding out an envelope.
Jimmy said, “What’s this?”
Dane answered in a low voice. Lianne’s hearing was sharp. “A little payment,” he said.
“We’re all square, far as the money,” Jimmy said.
“Call it a bonus,” said Dane.
Jimmy shook his head.
“The boss wants you to have it,” Dane said. “Buy something for the kid.”
I look like a kid to him? Lianne thought.
Jimmy took the envelope.
Dane turned the key, drove off, not slow.
“The fuckin’ ecosystem,” Jimmy yelled after him.
The Jeep vanished in a dust cloud.
Jimmy came inside.
“Who’s that?” Lianne said.
“Dane.”
“But who is he?”
“Just some asshole. The desert is fragile.”
“How do you know him?”
“From way back. We kind of grew up together, at least in the same town.”
“What town?”
“Arivaca.”
“I’ve never been there,” Lianne said. “I’d like to see it.”
“Nothing to see,” Jimmy said. “We’d better get going.”
“But it’s not late.”
Jimmy gazed at the two-humped mountain. “Late enough,” he said. “And I got work to do.”
They mounted the motorcycle, rode off in a different direction than Dane had taken. Lianne tried to figure out the directions. They were going northeast, she thought, meaning Dane had been headed southeast, or just plain east. But how it would all look on a map was hazy to her; she wasn’t good with maps.
She leaned forward, gave the edge of Jimmy’s ear, the one with the diamond, a little lick. “You’ll have to show me where we are on a map sometime.”
“Sometime,” he said. They were going slow and it was easy to hear; Jimmy drove slow in the desert and stuck to the hardest ground whenever the track disappeared.
“Is all that water for the horses?” she said.
“Sure,” Jimmy said. “And the mules.”
“There are mules on the ranch?”
“Of course.”
“Which is the one that can’t have babies, donkeys or mules?”
“Mules, for Christ’s sake. What do they teach you in school?”
“How to get pissed off.”
Jimmy laughed. “You’re something,” he said.
They bumped up onto the beginning of the dirt road, mountains rising on their left, the sun about a finger-width above the crests. Their shadows— hers, Jimmy’s, the bike’s— stretched far to the right, enormous, racing them across the desert.
“So Dane works for some kind of water company, is that it?”
“No more questions.”
“Why?”
Jimmy laughed, shook his head. “That’s another one right there.”
“I think I figured it out,” Lianne said.
“Figured what out?”
“What’s bothering you.”
“Nothing’s bothering me.”
“You can make good money at the water company, right?” said Lianne. “But you don’t want to give up all this.”
“All what?”
“The wrangling life.”
“The wrangling life? Know how stupid that sounds?”
Lianne let go of him, stopped holding on.
“What the fuck?” said Jimmy, and brought the bike to a stop. He got off, kicked down the stand, faced her. “What’s with you?”
“The way you said that.”
“What way?”
She gazed at him. He was beautiful. Maybe he really didn’t understand.
“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry. The tone, and all. Of course you’re not stupid. Anyone can see that. But don’t ever do that again, letting go.”
The sun sank below the mountain crest, darkening the desert although the sky remained bright. The tone and all— he got it. Jimmy understood her. Who else was on that list? Lianne couldn’t name one other person for sure. “I don’t care whether you’ve got money,” she said.
