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‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘You just got that skittish way about you.’

  ‘He used to get mad ’cause I’d get too drunk and embarrass him. But he liked to drink all the time, and he wanted me with him. We were always going out. I’m not very good at being around a lot of people. It makes me nervous and then I start drinking to calm down, and before you know it I’m in trouble. The problem with him was I never knew what would make him happy or pissed off. Something that had always made him happy all the sudden would make him mad. You never knew. Sometimes he’d get so mad and there was nothing I could remember doing wrong. Then a bunch of horrible things happened and so I left.’

  ‘Left Las Vegas?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said and took a drink of coffee. ‘You’re not going to tell anyone anything we’re talking about, are you?’

  ‘No, hon, I don’t operate that way.’

  ‘I would never tell anyone anything we talked about. Usually the only person I talk to is my sister, but she’s gone and I don’t know how to get hold of her.’

  ‘She’s in Mexico, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Allison said.

  ‘Does your boyfriend know you’re here?’

  ‘He found out,’ the girl said. ‘He gave a letter to my mom and she sent it to me and it said he was coming to find me here.’

  ‘You think he will?’

  ‘He might, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Now every time I see a guy that sorta looks like him, I get nervous.’

  ‘That’s a hard way to live. You should contact the police. Get a restraining order against him. At least call them and tell them your situation.’

  ‘I know,’ she said and looked down at her plate.

  ‘You know what you got to do,’ Penny said and put out her cigarette. ‘You gotta do something nice for yourself. Get your GED. That would be a step. It would give you confidence. In the meantime get your hair done. You could be a pretty girl if you got that hair out of your face. I know a woman, I’ll give you her name.’

  ‘I’m gonna sign up for a class to get my GED.’

  ‘I could loan you the money.’

  ‘I couldn’t take your money. I have enough in savings.’

  ‘Then will you at least get your hair cut on me? Sometimes you gotta eat and sometimes you got to buy clothes and sometimes you got to get your hair done. That’s the only sound advice I can give you tonight.’

  ‘Okay,’ the girl said.

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise,’ she said.

  Chapter 37

  The Nightmares

  It was weeks later that she had the nightmares about the baby, about Jimmy, about what had happened that night with the Mexicans. They were strange and they twisted the facts and the outcome. They appeared out of nowhere, like blood leaking from a nose. She didn’t know what to do about it. For a while they came every time she slept. She tried to change the food she ate, she tried to sleep with the heat off, with the TV on. She tried everything she could think of.

  Sometimes she’d lay there in a cold sweat, panicking, awakened suddenly from a nightmare. Then as if it played before her on a screen, she’d remember her past and what she had done and what she had seen and who she was.

  The tattoos, the swastika, the WCOTC emblem were inked when she was half passed out in the bedroom of a tract house. Jimmy and his friends Warren, Lou, and Harlan lived together twenty miles east of Las Vegas on four acres.

  They’d have parties there. Bands would play. Lou and Harlan were followers of the white supremacist group World Church of the Creator before it fell apart. They’d hand out pamphlets and have kegs. She’d known Jimmy for six months. Lou was a tattoo artist and one evening he gave each of the four’s girlfriends a tattoo on the small of her back. She remembered she was drunk, laying on her stomach with her shirt pushed up and her pants pulled part way down while Lou worked and Nan and Jimmy watched and drank beer. She wasn’t even sure what a swastika really meant, and all she knew of the World Church of The Creator was that Jimmy liked them and they were against immigration, they were against Mexicans.

  Hours later she lay in the darkness of Jimmy’s room. He was quiet, whispering in her ear. In the background was the party. A band was playing in the carport and people were talking and yelling, but to her it was a thousand miles away. They lay on a mattress on the ground in the dark. There were no sheets, just an old sleeping bag and a pillow. He had lit a candle and put it at the head of the bed.

  ‘I love you,’ he told her. He was drunk and holding her. He was dressed in black jeans and a white tank top. She lay naked next to him.

  He kissed her ear. ‘These guys can be a bunch of morons. Eventually I’ll move out on my own. We can live together and get married.’

  ‘Get married?’ she said.

  ‘We’ll save up some money and we’ll leave town. We’ll get a ranch up in Wyoming. I’ll take care of everything. We’ll have a bunch of kids and nothing will bother us.’

  ‘I’ve never been on a ranch,’ she said.

  ‘Me neither,’ he told her. He sat up and took a drink off a pint of Jim Beam he had next to the bed. ‘But we can learn. We can do anything if we try hard enough.’

  ‘I know we could,’ she said and he laid back down next to her.

  ‘No one will fuck with you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not scared if you’re around,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll have a bunch of land and a garden. We’ll have horses and dogs.’

  ‘Can we have a hot tub?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll have a hot tub and we’ll buy land near a river and in the summer we’ll go skinny dipping. We’ll sleep under the stars. None of this bullshit will be there. None of it.’

  ‘What else?’ she said and pulled off his shirt and began kissing his stomach.

  ‘We’ll have a room for movies. A big TV. It’ll be huge and we’ll have all the movies you want. All kinds. You can watch movies, anything, anytime you want.’

  She sat up and took off his shoes then his pants and underwear. She felt his body. His white skin that held no tattoos.

  ‘I’ll take care of you,’ she said to him and sat on top of him. ‘You know I’ll take care of you.’

  ‘I know you will,’ he said.

  Chapter 38

  Vern’s Tattoo Parlor

  The next morning she got out of bed and looked through the phone book for a tattoo parlor. She found a place named Vern’s and called and set an appointment for her day off. When the day came she went to the bank, took two hundred dollars from her account, and walked down Wells Avenue to the address she had written down. The parlor was in a small brick house, and was run by a fifty-year-old man, Vern. Tattoos covered both of his arms like sleeves. His gray hair was greased and he wore thick black-framed glasses. She went to his back room and pulled up her shirt and told him she wanted them covered. They talked of the different things he could do, and decided to make them into black stars. She laid on her stomach and he did the work in silence while they listened to talk radio.

  Chapter 39

  Bingo

  The restaurant was nearly empty and Dan Mahony was her only table. The girl stood in the back, and watched him from a distance. There was the scar across his face and the eye that didn’t work and barely opened. His crippled hand. The way he always ate alone and was always trying to talk to her. She took the coffee pot and went to his table.

  ‘How are you doing this morning?’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ he said and smiled.

  ‘How’s your dog?’

  ‘Same, but he licks a lot. He woke me up last night licking my arm like it was a popsicle.’

  The girl laughed.

  ‘I’ll just take the regular. Let’s say over medium on the eggs, bacon and sourdough toast.’

  ‘All right,’ she said and wrote down the order. She paused, then looked at him. ‘I decided I think I’ll play bingo with you if the offer still stands.’

  ‘Good.’

 
‘Good.’

  ‘We could just meet there some time,’ he said.

  ‘I can go Saturday,’ she said.

  ‘I can go Saturday. It’s at the Holiday. Do you know where that is?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said.

  ‘On Saturday they start at one. We could meet there at one. Outside the Bingo parlor.’

  ‘I might bring my brother if that’s okay,’ she said.

  ‘I like brothers, bring your father too.’

  ‘My father wouldn’t like bingo at all. He’s a football coach. He doesn’t like anything that’s not related to sports.’

  ‘Who does he coach for?’

  ‘The university here,’ she said. ‘My brother’s a cop, but usually he gets Saturdays off. I’ll ask him if he wants to go. We usually go see a movie on Saturday, but maybe this weekend he’ll want to do something different.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Well, I’ll go place your order then.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said and then watched her as she disappeared into the back.

  It was snowing on Saturday. She’d never been in a snowstorm and she was happy as she walked towards the Holiday Hotel. The streets were empty and the snow fell heavily and wet and stuck to the sidewalks.

  Dan Mahony was waiting outside the bingo parlor when she arrived. They said hello he and led her in. They sat at the end of a long row of tables. Across from them sat a group of old women whom he introduced her to. She shook each of their hands and said hello, then took her coat off and sat down across from him.

  ‘I’ll go get us a couple games and some markers,’ he said and walked to the counter. When he returned the game had begun and they listened as numbers came up. He won the fourth game and when he yelled bingo the ladies at the other table shook their heads.

  ‘Lucky Dan strikes again,’ one of the women said.

  Dan stood and smiled and walked to the front and got his money, then sat down and started another game. They played four more in silence before their sheets were filled.

  ‘Do you want to watch the snow fall? They have a diner here. We can get something to eat or a cup of coffee. There are booths that sit right next to the window.’

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  He led the girl through the casino and into the diner. They sat near the window in a small booth. The snow was still falling heavy and wind gusts were making it blizzard.

  ‘You drive down here?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a good thing with this weather.’

  A waitress came and set down two menus and poured them coffee.

  ‘Did you have a good time?’

  ‘You mean playing bingo?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dan said and took a sip of coffee.

  ‘It’s funny with all the old ladies. They all know you.’

  ‘I went there a lot for a while. The old ladies, they treat you pretty good. They bake you cookies, things like that. For a long time it was the only thing that got me out of the house.’

  She put sugar in her coffee and stirred it with a spoon.

  ‘What did happen to you?’ she asked.

  ‘Well,’ he said after a time, ‘I was walking home through the college grounds up at UNR. It was nighttime. I was walking home from a party my cousin had. I had longer hair then, maybe it was almost as long as yours. But otherwise, I was dressed normal. Jeans and a flannel coat, I don’t know. It was late, maybe three in the morning, and there was no one around. And then four guys came up. I didn’t know them. I had never seen them before. They were drunk. It seemed like they came out of the air. They started saying things to me. They called me a queer. They kept yelling that at me, and then they surrounded me. I hadn’t said a word and then I just started running. I didn’t know what else to do. There was something going on I didn’t understand. The guys were young. I don’t know if they were in a fraternity or what. I didn’t know what was going to happen. They chased after me. One of them tripped me and I fell, and then they just started kicking me. One of the guys bent down and started hitting me in the face. Then another one did and then another. They had to rebuild my cheekbone. They broke my arm and hand. They broke two ribs, and punctured one of my lungs. I got a concussion and my other hand was completely ruined. One of them stomped on it with his boot a few times. And then they ran off. I don’t know why they did it. I laid there and I was sure I was going to die. I just laid there on the sidewalk. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t get up. Then this couple, a guy and a girl, walked by and saw me.’

  ‘Jesus,’ the girl said.

  ‘I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks. I was stuck at home for over six. I had three different surgeries after I left. One on my face and two on my hand. I couldn’t work afterwards. My hand was in a cast, and the bones were pinned with metal and screws. My bad eye couldn’t focus and my good eye wasn’t that great for a couple of months. I think I told you I used to be a plumber, and I liked it all right. I got to work with my uncle who’s about as nice a person you’d ever meet. I was going to be part owner. But after I got out of the hospital and my mom went back to Denver, I don’t know, it was hard to get out the door. I couldn’t go back.’

  ‘It’s hard to leave the house when things like that happen to a person,’ the girl said.

  ‘But I went half crazy at home by myself, so I got a job at the VA. I answered an ad in the paper. I didn’t even know where it was. I just figured no one else I knew would either. I’ve been there for almost a year now. I’m a fucking janitor. I don’t do anything really. I make no real money. My hand’s better and I could go back to being a plumber and making good money and being with my uncle, but I just can’t. I can’t barely even go to a bar where there’s people my age.’

  ‘Did they ever find who did it?’

  ‘I couldn’t really remember a face. I tried. My uncle and I used to sit outside the college in the main courtyard and watch for them as the students passed in between classes. But I couldn’t remember anything.’

  ‘I’d feel like being around old people too,’ the girl said.

  ‘I feel liked I’m marked, you know? It’s not just my face and my eye. It’s not just that I don’t look good anymore.’

  ‘I feel like I’m marked,’ she said to him.

  ‘I hope we’re both not,’ he said and tried to smile.

  ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Me too.’

  ‘You know what’s crazy is that now when I go to the hospital, with all the bad situations there, I feel more normal. It feels right. There are new guys in there from Iraq and there are guys that haven’t left in years. Old vets. One guy hardly has any face. It took me six months before I could go into his room without getting sick to my stomach. It took me that long just to look at him when I was talking to him. And I saw him every day. Every day I had to go into his room. He’s a nice guy who got his face blown off when he was just done being a kid. He always makes fun of my scar and my eye. It’s pretty funny if you look at it in the right light. There’s all sorts of guys like that. A guy there who only has one arm, no legs. No one visits him. No one at all. He leaves for months at a time but he always comes back drunk and barely half alive. One of the doctors, the one I know, he’s an alcoholic. Some days he looks so rough and raw that you think at any moment he’ll just die. He gets like that, almost crazy, but I understand him, you know? I like him, I feel more comfortable around him than any of my old friends. More than my uncle even. And I never felt that way before it happened. I never would have gotten the job at the VA or any of it. I wouldn’t be playing bingo with a bunch of blue-hair old ladies. Not that I don’t like it – I mean, I do, I’m just different now. I mean, the only reason I eat at the Cal Neva every morning is ’cause the doctor, the one I just mentioned, said he thought I should keep trying to move back into the world. He told me I had to eat out one meal a day and it couldn’t be take out. I promised him. I promised him I’d go in public at least for that. So I eat out so I can try to fit in, you know?’

&n
bsp; ‘Yeah,’ she said.

  ‘Stupid, huh?’

  ‘I don’t have a brother who’s a cop,’ the girl said.

  ‘You don’t?’ he said and laughed.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Your dad a football coach up at the university?’

  ‘No,’ she said and took a drink of coffee. ‘I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him in years, not since I was a little kid. He cheated on my mom with a cocktail waitress and left town with her. The last we heard he was in Atlantic City working at a casino there.’

  Chapter 40

  The House

  She was standing outside on Virginia Street and it was just past dawn and she had gotten off work early. There was ice on the street and the blue glow of the casino lights shone down upon it. It was quiet. Then suddenly there were the sounds of sirens. She looked down the street and saw two fire trucks come towards her. Their sirens were blaring, their lights flashed, and she watched them as they rushed by her. She looked past them to see where they were going. She looked for smoke or fire but she could see none.

  She began walking home, and it was then that the thought of the burning house came to her. The time when Warren, JT, Jimmy, and she were in the car. Jimmy and she in the back. They were drinking from a bottle of Jim Beam, chasing it with Coke, in the darkness of a parking lot.

  ‘When I was a kid,’ Jimmy said, ‘this neighborhood was safe. It was a good place to live. No one fucked with you. Your sister could walk down to the store in the middle of the night. My mom would send me to the store for stuff when I wasn’t even eight. Now she won’t even go there herself. Now a guy that doesn’t even speak English owns it. Allison’s neighborhood’s the same. Now there’s fucking cars on the lawns, gunfire at night. I’d move like every other white motherfucker, but everything in this goddamn city is too expensive. We can’t all move, and why should we? Anyway, how many fucking times does a person have to move? I mean, are we gonna have to go to one of those gated communities like all the other pussies who are scared? This is my fucking neighborhood and I’m not gonna keep giving it to some wetback motherfucker who comes here illegally. We spend a fucking fortune taking care of illegals. We give them better medical care than we even give our own. And now they want everything to be bilingual. The fucking Italians, the Germans, the Polish, the Chinese, they all learned the language, didn’t they? They had respect for the country, for what the country meant. They embraced it, not took from it, not stole from it. It’s up to us to stop it. No one else is gonna do it. The politicians don’t give a shit ’cause they’re getting their fucking houses cleaned and their lawns done by a bunch of illegal border jumpers. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I understand why these fuckers come over. I mean, they’ve fucked up their country, they’ve ruined their homeland, so they come over here and now they’re doing the same. It’s time to stop it and the only way I can think of to do it is one neighborhood at a time.