she drinks it anyway.
It was stupid of her to blow $10 for a psychic reading she didn’t even get. It means that tonight or tomorrow, she’ll need to pick up a john. The thought makes her gulp the rest of the wine. She orders another and feels her options whittled down. A headache creeps into her temples, throbs along a fault line that splits the front of her forehead. After this second glass she’s down to $9, and that’s if she skimps on the tip. Tonight then. She should start looking for her next date. Some girls sleep with the manager of the Sunset Motel—Robert—in lieu of paying their room bill, but she’s prided herself on always being able to cover that much, at least. It’s a small thing, but she likes knowing she still has some kind of code.
She pictures Robert’s stained Hanes T-shirt, always riding up to reveal a round, pale slice of belly, the acrid and stinging smell of his sweat, the compulsive way he licks his lips. She can tell he loves having something to hold over them—even a crumbling motel room that goes for $15 a night. Once, when she came upon him at the desk, his eyes were closed, and as she stepped closer she saw he had his hand on the back of a woman’s head, his fingertips tense with pressure. He smiled up at her, pleased with himself, as though to say One day I can demand this from you, too. As she walked away, she imagined how the threadbare carpet must have bit into the woman’s knees.
Thinking of this, of course she shouldn’t have had the drinks, but she needs the buzz, the thing that makes the world go a little slant, so she can pretend that this new life is a fever she’ll wake from, that one day she’ll be returned to herself—whoever that is anymore. Sometimes she puts a little money into the slots because it means free drinks: the waitresses will come around and bring you cheap liquor, wine, or beer, but she’s afraid she’s too familiar now. Most of them have caught on that she only plays a buck or two, then milks it for four, five drinks at a time. Worse, they could call security or even the cops, if they know she’s here picking up men. When she thinks back on the past few months it is through the warped haze of a hangover, a blend of discomfort, disgust, self-hatred, but one that also feels slightly unreal.
Maybe that’s why she ran away from the girl in the fortune-teller’s shop. At first the card had made her smile. The cheesy illustrations, moons with eyes, the punny name. Clara Voyant. But as she held it in her hand, it seemed more and more like an invitation. Since she got to Atlantic City, she had avoided thinking about the future, beyond what she needed to do to cover her room, get a bit of food. But when she sat down with the fortune-teller, that girl, suddenly the prospect of having to reckon with the consequences of her decisions seemed like the most terrible possibility in the world—more terrible than the smell of strange men on her skin, than the motel room where she has heard gunshots ring out from the parking lot, where roaches scuttle out from the shower drain.
The slot machine nearest to her stops at two halved watermelons and a lemon. She’s been here for three months and doesn’t know what this means—it’s as though if she refuses to learn the language of this place, then it can’t claim her. She thinks about how real fruit is bruised, never as good as it looks. Or when it is, she can’t think past the fact that ripeness is only something close to death, a few days, or sometimes hours, away from rot. The baby must have known this, too. Must have known to reject all these images that the world hands you, the ones that are meant to tell us we are safe, that we’re all okay. Just sign on the dotted line for this mortgage rate. Just wear Ann Taylor and eat your free-range eggs and drive your Toyota and wash your clothes with Tide. But then your life can split open, your body, too. After the birth her husband reported to her how there had been so much blood. She didn’t know whether that was true, but the sound of excitement in his voice confirmed