stomach, a sweet thick secret that sickens even as it thrills. How can I do this? Should I do this? Do I love this or hate this?
The first time I ran a grift with Lachlan (a coke-addled action-film producer with a history of sexual harassment and a rare set of Pierre Jeanneret chairs worth $120,000), I fell ill for three days afterward. Vomiting all night, a shakiness that kept me abed. It was as if my body was purging some toxin that had infected it. I swore I would never do it again. And yet when Lachlan called me up for another job a month later, I could feel that the toxin was still there: a hot compulsion, a throb along my veins that made me feel faint. Perhaps it was in my blood.
This, certainly, was what Lachlan believed. “A natural-born con, you are—but of course you would be. It’s in your genes,” he’d said, after we finished that first job together. So this is what my mother feels when she runs a successful con, I’d thought. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. After a lifetime of running away from my mother’s life, it was almost a relief to give up, turn around and run toward it.
And yet, I hadn’t gone looking for the grift; the grift had come looking for me.
The day that I arrived back in Los Angeles, Lachlan took me straight from the airport to the hospital to see my mother. I hadn’t visited her in almost a year, and I was shocked by her appearance: the brown roots darkening her blond hair, the dark circles under her eyes, the false eyelashes peeling away at the corners of her lids. She was gaunt, her skin loose and sallow. The ghost of her beauty still clung to her, but in the months since I’d last seen her she’d gone from looking like someone who could have her way with the world, to looking like someone who’d been decimated by it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She reached out and took my hand in hers. I could feel her bones clicking together in my grip and it was excruciating. “Oh, baby. There was nothing to tell. I’ve been feeling bad for a while but it just didn’t seem that bad.”
“You shouldn’t have waited so long to see a doctor.” I blinked away tears. “You might have caught it before stage three.”
“You know I hate doctors, baby.” This seemed disingenuous. More likely: My mother had the barest minimum of insurance, and was afraid of what the doctor would tell her, and this was why she’d ignored her symptoms for so long.
I looked across the bed at Lachlan, as if he might have some insight into the situation, and he caught my gaze and returned it steadily. “So,” I said. “How do you know my mom?”
“From the poker circuit. She’s a sharp one, your mum.”
I regarded him warily; noting, again, the crisp cut of his suit, the knowing bite to his smile, his lupine good looks, and a watch as expensive as the ones my mother liked to steal. “The poker circuit”—I knew this was where my mother trolled for marks. Was he a mark, himself?
“Has she been like this for long? Why didn’t one of you think to call me sooner?”
Lachlan shook his head, offering a faint smile of apology. “Your mum is a force,” he said, and reached out to smooth the blanket over her legs. “She does what she wants to do. And she puts on a good front, as I’m sure you know.”
My mother beamed up at him with all the wattage she could muster and yet I could see the bravado in her smile, the panic creeping into the spidery lines around her eyes. She looked old suddenly, far older than her years. I thought of what the doctor had told me, of how weak she already was and how fast the cancer could advance. “Yes, she’s good at faking it.”
My mother squeezed my hand. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” she chided. “I’m a little sick. I’m not brain dead. Yet.” I hated the way she laughed at this.