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‘I told you I would,’ he said and worked his way through side streets until he came to a large lot with an old yellow double wide trailer parked in the center. There was a dying cottonwood tree behind it, with its broken and dry branches hanging limply over the trailer’s roof trying to give it cover. There was a small patch of grass near the front door circled in chicken wire.

  ‘This is my place,’ he said and pulled into the drive and parked the car. ‘It ain’t much but what are you going to do?’

  He found a pair of vise grips on the floor boards and handed them to her. ‘You got to use them to get out. These cars are pieces of shit, all the handles broke off in the same year. You can come in if you want.’

  ‘I’ll just sit in the car,’ she said.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said and got out and disappeared inside.

  He came out of his trailer a half hour later dressed in black pants and a pink short-sleeve dress shirt. He’d showered and shaved. He was carrying a small cage with a ferret inside and a paper sack. He walked to the car, opened the driver’s side door, and put the cage and the sack in the back seat. He got in, shut the door, started the engine, and backed onto the street.

  He lit a cigarette. The stereo was still playing and he began to sing along with the song in a quiet, broken voice. When it ended, he took a drink off the nearly empty wine bottle, looked at her, and said, ‘What do you think of her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The ferret.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘I didn’t really notice her.’

  He gave a faint whistle. ‘Come to me, little Emily,’ he said. ‘Come here to me, little one. Show this lady your stuff.’

  He called again as he drove, this time in a louder voice. The ferret began making noises and pacing back and forth in the cage.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ the girl asked. She turned around in her seat and looked at the animal moving about in its cage. ‘She’s running around so fast. Is she upset?’

  ‘Come on, Emily,’ he said again. ‘Come on, little one.’

  He kept talking to her. The same thing over and over. The ferret began pacing quicker, its noises grew louder. The girl sat back and faced the road ahead of them.

  ‘There’s nothing to be scared of. She’s harmless,’ he said and laughed. ‘We’re just playing.’

  He got them back on the main road.

  The girl heard noises in the back and turned around again only to see the cage and the small latch door on it open. The ferret wasn’t there, but she could hear it wandering around the floor below her making its way through the magazines and papers and bottles.

  ‘She’s gotten out, I think.’

  ‘Has she?’ he said and turned off the music. He looked in the rearview. ‘Did you get out? Jesus, Emily’s good if she did that.’

  ‘She’s out,’ the girl said nervously.

  The man pushed up the speed of the Eldorado, and moved them into the left lane.

  The girl got more worried and grabbed the pocket knife that lay between the seat and the door and opened a blade. She lifted her legs up onto the seat.

  ‘Could you pull over?’ she said finally. ‘I’m sorry, but that thing scares me. I can walk from here.’

  Justin eased off on the gas, moved into the right lane. ‘Hell, I was going to see if you wanted to keep her. She’s my favorite one.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the girl said, her voice cracking in fear.

  ‘Emily,’ he said. ‘Come here, little one.’

  The ferret moved slowly underneath the seat and climbed up and moved to between his legs. He pulled the car off the road and onto the shoulder. She set the pocket knife on the floor, and with the vise grips opened the door and got out. She didn’t say anything at all. She just walked away from the car as fast as she could.

  He sat there in his car for a long time, holding the ferret and watching the endless rows of cars pass him. He could feel his depression slowly creeping back in, just with that ride, just with seeing the way the girl almost cried. His eyes began to water, he took a drink off the wine bottle, then looked in his rearview for a space, and got back on the road.

  Chapter 14

  The Lamplighter

  The girl walked two blocks before she stopped on the shoulder of the road to look back and make sure he was gone. A clock on the bank across the street read nine-thirty. It was too late to go to work. In her purse she found another stick of gum. She figured she was only half a mile from the Lamplighter, so she’d go there, get a drink, and figure out what to do.

  She made the walk there, and inside ordered a vodka and 7UP. She looked through her purse, found a pen and the new pad of paper, and when the bartender sat her drink down, she finished it in three swallows, and began to write names of cities on the paper. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boise, Houston, Reno. She wrote their names over and over, each time with more uncertainty.

  She ordered another drink and went to the bathroom. When she came back, she finished that drink, then looked in her purse, and counted her money. She ordered another and lit a cigarette. She’d calm down first. Calm down as much as the $17.50 in her wallet would let her, and then she’d decide where to go.

  Chapter 15

  Leaving

  She was drunk when she closed her bank account, and drunk when she got on the city bus to her mother’s house. Sweat dripped from her face as she sat on the plastic bus seat. She stared out the window and the city passed before her. With each building she passed, she was more certain.

  She got off at her regular stop and walked to her house, opened the chain link fence by the garage, and walked into the backyard. The Hulk was laying under the picnic table, and she bent down to pet him, then unlocked the back door, and led him inside. She turned the A/C on high, took off her clothes, went into the bathroom, and took a shower.

  She dressed, then found her mom’s old suitcase. She threw her clothes inside, along with her Patti Page and Brenda Lee tapes. Her framed picture of Paul Newman she wrapped in an old sweater and surrounded it with clothes. She went to the bathroom and took her toiletries out. Then she cooked hamburgers from some frozen patties in the freezer for the dog and her.

  When she’d eaten and done the dishes, she went through the yellow pages and found the pregnancy crisis hotline and dialed the number.

  ‘I just turned twenty-two and I’m pregnant,’ she told the woman who answered. ‘I’ve taken four home tests. I’m almost three months now. I’m gonna go to Reno to have it, and I want to give it up for adoption. I need, if you have them, the numbers for any places there that can help me.’

  ‘There are a few good places in Reno where I can direct you. Have you heard of Casa De Vida? I’ll give you their number. Are you in Las Vegas now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have family to help you in Reno?’

  ‘No. I have no family anywhere.’

  ‘No one at all?’ the woman asked.

  ‘My grandparents, the Watsons, used to live near Reno in a town called Verdi, but they’re dead now. I have about three hundred dollars. I could get a job for a while, then I don’t know what I’ll do.’

  ‘There’s a lot of adoption agencies that can help with expenses. Do you have insurance?’

  ‘No,’ the girl said and tears began to fill her eyes.

  ‘Remember there are people who can help. I think St Mary’s Hospital in Reno also has a program set up specifically for women in situations like yours. Adoption agencies can often help, too. The prospective parents will sometimes pay for you to have a decent place to stay if you can’t work and don’t have any family help. I know it’s hard, but try to relax, you’re going to be okay. We’ll find people who can help you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said and wiped her eyes.

  The woman paused, then came back with the numbers and addresses, and the girl wrote them on a small pad her mother kept by the phone.

  ‘When you get to Reno, if you have any questions you can contact the pregnancy cen
ter there or you can contact me – I’m Nancy Collins. Will you please do that? There’s good places up there, and they’ll have counselors who can talk to you about your different options.’

  ‘Thank you, I’ll call them,’ the girl said and hung up.

  She’d phone her mom once she got to the bus station and tell her not to tell anyone where she was going. Not even Evelyn. Then she called a cab and wrote a quick note on the back of an envelope,

  Mom and Evelyn,

  Had to leave for a while, don’t worry. I’ll call and tell you what’s going on. Don’t call Jimmy. And if he calls just tell him you don’t know where I am, that I just left. I’m leaving ’cause of him. I’m sorry and I love you both,

  Allison

  She put the note on the kitchen table, hugged the dog, and left the house. She sat on her suitcase on the sidewalk and waited for the cab. When it came, the driver put her suitcase in the trunk and she got in the back seat and he drove out of her neighborhood.

  ‘I need to go to the bus station,’ she told the driver.

  ‘Where you going to?’ he asked.

  ‘Nowhere, I don’t think.’

  Chapter 16

  Oxbow Motel

  When the bus stopped in Reno it was nighttime, near three a.m., and she sat in the rundown bus station not knowing where to go. The other passengers disappeared and the terminal emptied, and when it did she saw the driver of her bus heading towards a back room and she asked if he knew where the casinos were. He pointed in a general direction and she picked up her suitcase and left.

  She could see street lights in the distance and a few cars passed on what seemed like a main road. She walked in the darkness towards it. She could hear the sound of a river, and as she walked closer to it and the main street, she saw the lights from the casinos. The Comstock marquee appeared, then the Sundowner, and the Sands shone in the distance by itself. She made her way to Virginia Street, the main strip the casinos lined. There were people streaming in and out of the clubs. She walked past the Virginian and the Cal Neva and Harrah’s. There were pawn shops and souvenir stores, and she passed them and finally saw a motel called the Oxbow. A small yellow building with an ox, in neon, on the side.

  The front desk clerk was an old Indian man who spoke poor English. He told her a weekly room was $150. She filled out the card and paid him in cash. He gave her the key and she carried her suitcase up to the room, locked the door behind her, put a chair underneath the knob, and sat on the bed and cried.

  The room had a double bed, a desk, a dresser, a TV, and a bathroom. She’d never been in a motel room by herself, let alone in a city. She’d barely even left Las Vegas and now she’d done so by herself. The crying wouldn’t stop. She shut off the lights in the room and got in bed still wearing her clothes. Pictures of Jimmy appeared in her mind. The time he had gotten them a suite at Caesars, or when they’d go swimming in the lake. Times when he was decent to her, when he was kind. In the darkness she found the phone. It sat on a bedside table and she held it. She wanted to call him, to give in, but she also hated herself for wanting to so badly.

  As the night wore on, her anxieties worsened. She couldn’t sleep. Her body shook. She wanted to die. To disappear. To have the cleaning lady come in and find nothing, not a trace that she had ever been there. Not a trace she’d ever been anywhere or done anything in the world.

  Chapter 17

  Three Months

  The next morning she woke early and walked up and down the small strip of casinos which littered downtown. From a payphone she called her mother and told her she’d left for good, that she’d gone to Reno to get away from Jimmy Bodie.

  Her mother didn’t understand why she’d leave town, why she’d go to Reno of all places. The girl tried to explain it, and finally told her mother of a time when he had locked her in the trunk of his car. She had passed out at a party only to awaken in the darkness of a trunk. He left her in there overnight. In the parking lot across the street from his apartment.

  Her mother began crying.

  ‘Let me come get you,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t go back there,’ the girl said.

  ‘Where are you staying? You can at least tell me that.’

  ‘I gotta go,’ she said and hung up the phone. Then she went through her purse, found the note with the number of the local pregnancy resource center, and called them for directions.

  It was located in a rundown strip mall. In an office. Two middle aged women sat inside behind a partition. The girl introduced herself and the older of the two ladies took her into a back room with two chairs, a small coffee table, and Christian posters on the wall. The woman gave her a glass of water, and the girl told the woman her story.

  ‘I don’t know who the father is,’ she told the lady. ‘I used to drink a lot. It happened at a fraternity party when I was in college. I can’t remember who it was.’ Adoption was what she wanted. She tried not to cry, but she broke down more than once. The woman was patient and hugged the girl and kept her talking. She would only interrupt to say things like, ‘The child’s welfare is the most important thing. It’s good that you’re here. I can help you, I can help your baby.’

  The woman called two adoption agencies. She set up times for meetings. The girl took another pregnancy test and confirmed her situation, and by the end of the second week they had decided on an adoption agency, a doctor, and had seen folders of prospective parents. It was weeks after that that they finally decided on a couple that both she and the woman thought were the best. She met with the couple just once. They all sat around a table. The girl remained silent while the couple talked to her. They told her about themselves, about what sort of life they would give the baby, what sort of house the baby would live in, what sort of extended family they had.

  The couple paid for medical coverage through St Mary’s hospital. They arranged prenatal care and prenatal classes. The couple gave the girl a fifteen hundred dollar a month stipend and she moved into a prepaid quad with three other pregnant girls.

  The apartment complex was near St Mary’s, on Fifth Street, downtown. It had a large communal kitchen and two bathrooms. Her private bedroom came furnished with a separate entrance, and another lockable door that led into the kitchen area. There was a TV, a single bed and dresser, an alarm clock, and a sink.

  The other girls were in various stages of the same situation. At times they would sit at the kitchen table and tell their stories. When asked, the girl left out Jimmy Bodie, her mother, her sister Evelyn, even Las Vegas, and when asked, only said, ‘All I know is that if my father found out he’d kill me. He really would.’

  At night, when she couldn’t sleep, she’d watch TV or listen to her tapes. She wouldn’t write anything down, and hadn’t since she had left Las Vegas. The other girls would see movies, watch TV together, go shopping, but she never felt comfortable enough around them, and most days she just sat in her room or took long walks through the city. During her fourth month she got a job as a lunch waitress at the Cal Neva Casino. She worked three days a week, and began to sleep better once the job started. She opened a bank account and deposited each month’s stipend and used her tips for food money.

  In the middle of her eighth month she was no longer able to work and spent most of her time going to the library or watching TV. She’d never read much, but met a librarian and asked the woman if she knew where she could get a high school reading list.

  The librarian made a list for her and the girl began checking out books. One by one she read Beloved by Toni Morrison, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. She read John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. Pearl S. Buck and Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walter Van Tilburg Clark.

  Throughout the months, though, her anxiety never eased or slowed down. She had hoped being away from Jimmy would somehow calm her nerves, but they continued as they always had. Most of all she was frightened that her nervousness would affect the baby. Each time she felt a panic attack coming, with her body shaking, her breath s
hortening, she would break down and cry, scared that somehow it would cause the baby to abort or cause some sort of unseen damage.

  Oftentimes in the middle of the night she would lay awake and think about the baby. She felt it was a boy and in her mind thought of him as such. She wondered what he would look like, and what he would become. If he would be a good person. In her heart, she didn’t want to give him away, and some nights she would pray over and over that Jimmy Bodie would be killed before the baby came, and she could then, finally, keep him.

  The few times she called her mother she asked about him, hoping that somehow he was finished. That he’d gotten in a car wreck, or maybe gotten killed in a fight or died in a fire. But her mother would always reply that he had called a few days earlier or had just left a message on the machine.

  As the weeks of her ninth month passed she spent more time in bed and more time sleeping. And then near dawn one morning, she had pain in her guts. She walked into the kitchen and knocked on another pregnant girl’s door and told her that she wasn’t positive, but that she was pretty sure it was her time.

  The other girl had a car and drove her to St Mary’s and sat with her until a nurse came and put her in a room. Then the other pregnant girl disappeared, and she had the baby alone. Only the nurses and the doctor were present, and her labor was long, but by dusk she had a son.

  The adopting couple were led into the room moments after the birth. Allison began crying at the sight of them. The nurse held the baby and she left the room with him and the new family. Allison fell asleep in exhaustion.

  Hours later, when she woke, she tried to get up and leave. A nurse came in and stopped her and talked to her. It was the middle of the night. The nurse opened the blinds and the girl stared out the window at the city lights and wished she was dead. There was a show playing on the TV but she could only vaguely hear it. It felt miles away, like she was disappearing down a long hole. She thought of her son and her heart began to race. Her breath shortened and tears filled her eyes, but as the panic got more intense exhaustion took over, and she closed her eyes and once again fell asleep.