you can’t cheat an honest man? Until you give him knockout drugs?”
“You think it’s honest to tell a woman in trouble that you’ll help her out if she puts out?”
I just let that one lay there.
A week later, Marlene asked me if I wanted to go to Las Vegas for the weekend.
“I can’t. Drew invited me on that youth group thing. Remember? Everyone’s going out on sailboats.”
Her face went sour. “Sailboats? Some Christians. I thought it was easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich guy to get into heaven.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Listen, kiddo,” she said. “They’ve got Jesus—I need you.”
Along with boobs and body hair, I was starting to get a bug up my butt about the kind of hustles that worked best when the mark believed he was doing the right thing. Marlene figured this sudden conscience of mine was the direct result of hanging out with those holier-than-thou sons-of-bitches at the church. And maybe it was. I liked those kids. I liked their lives. So I hardly ever came along any more for the hotel games.
In the cab from the airport to Caesars Palace, I looked out the window as the last of the sun hit the crummy old neon signs. “It’s gross here. They make it look so great on TV.”
“Daylight doesn’t become it,” Marlene said. “It’s an inside town. People come here to gamble.”
“It’s a hole.”
In the hotel room, Marlene opened her suitcase on the bed. She took out a pale yellow dress that looked as if it were meant for a large toddler. “Ta-da. Your new frock, madam.”
“I’m not wearing that. The hair’s bad enough.”
“What’s wrong with your haircut? It’s adorable. You look like Dorothy Hamill.”
“Great.” I fell back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “I look like a skating buttercup. I’m fourteen. Why can’t I just be fourteen?”
“Having an innocent child is part of the illusion. There’s nothing innocently childlike about fourteen. Christ, you’re impossible lately. If anyone asks, you’re twelve. Just throw the dress on, make sure it fits.”
Marlene went to the closet, pulled out the ironing board.
I shoved the dress to the side, rolled over and picked around in her open suitcase. There were two little bottles. I pulled one out.
“What’s Ketamine? … equivalent to 100mg per ml.”
“Your perfume. There are two little vials in there. I dumped a couple of old perfume samples. We’ll refill them with Ketamine.”
I read from the bottle. “Caution: Federal law restricts this drug to use by or on the order of a licensed physician.”
Going down in the elevator, I checked myself out in the mirrors. The tensor band she had me wear on my chest was killing. It was supposed to squash my little marbles flat and it was tight as hell. “This dress is brutal.”
“It’s cute.” Marlene straightened the collar. “Christ, I think I can still see boobs,” she whispered, and mashed a hand down over my chest.
“Mom! Knock it off. I’m totally flat. Jill Williams calls me Reese’s Pieces.”
Marlene laughed.
“Yeah. Hilarious.”
“Just round your shoulders a little.”
Marlene led me by the hand through the casino. She sat with me at the nickel slots and ordered Shirley Temples for me. At dinnertime we went to one of the hotel restaurants where the buffet consisted of baron of beef and mountains of crab legs. My mother ordered the buffet. I thought the buffet smelled like vomit-crusted armpit so she ordered me a cheeseburger.
When our food came, Marlene looked me in the eye, poked a finger into an imaginary dimple in her cheek and said, “Lighten up, misery-guts.”
I crossed my eyes at her. The tensor band itched and I rubbed my ribs on the table edge, trying to scratch underneath.
So she leaned forward and whispered a rude joke about two skeletons doing it on a tin roof. Cracked me up.
“Gross,” I said, coughing on my burger.
Then I remembered this joke that Jill had told at school. Jill and I weren’t really friends in those days but I thought she was funny. “Okay,” I said, “Little Red Riding Hood is walking through the woods when suddenly the Big Bad Wolf jumps out from behind a tree and he goes, ‘Listen, Little Red, I’m going to screw your brains out! So, Little Red reaches into her picnic basket—”
“What do you think of him?” Marlene interrupted. She nodded past me. “The big one.”
I looked over my shoulder at two hefty middle-aged guys. Each of them was eating lobster.