Melissa Senate (15 page)

“We can’t let him just walk out, never to be seen again,” Stella said. “We have to follow him.”

Feeling very Hollywood, I threw some bills on the table and Stella and I hurried after them. But between the crowds and the waiters carrying huge round trays piled with fifty-dollar steaks and twenty-five-dollar drinks, we were too slow to get to the door and the couple was gone.

S
TELLA WAS ON THE VERGE OF TEARS
. “I
CAN’T BELIEVE IT
. W
HY
did I hesitate? How could I have let him get away?”

I glanced all over the hallways and lobby, and thanks to Jake or Jason or James’s date’s glittering gown, I spotted first her, then him, among a crowd by the elevator bank.

“Ruby, there they are!” I said, gesturing. I felt like shouting “After them!”

We raced over on our own high heels. Because this was Las Vegas, no one paid the slightest attention to us. We got to the elevator bank just as J and his date disappeared into one of the twenty or so elevators. Stella stuck her clutch purse in the door, and it opened slightly, but then shut again. Stella pulled it out, and a few beads fell to the carpet.

“They were in there alone,” I said. “Let’s just watch to see what floor it stops on.”

Please don’t stop at a bunch of floors,
I prayed. If it did, it would mean people were getting on and off and we would have no idea where J was going.

The elevator was an express. It stopped at the sixteenth floor. And then started coming back down! Which meant the father of my niece or nephew was somewhere on the sixteenth floor.

An elevator pinged open and we rushed in and hit Sixteen and then Door Closed just as another couple was about to step in. I shouted a “Sorry!” and willed the elevator to go faster.

The elevator door opened on the sixteenth floor. There was a long hallway, hundreds of closed doors. To the right was a nook with a huge ficus tree and a window, the glittering lights of Vegas stunning at this height.

And behind that huge ficus tree was a couple having sex. I heard the moans first, then saw the flashes of movement. J and the redhead were going at it. He was behind her, her dress up around her hips. Both their hands were braced against the wall. Given their inability to wait until after their meal had been served, it was no surprise that they’d been unable to wait to get inside their room.

In the space of about two weeks, this was the second time I’d witnessed a couple having sex in a public place.

“Oh, God,” Stella whispered, her hand flying to her mouth. “I’m going to be sick.”

“I’m really sorry,” I whispered back.

We could hear him moaning. We could hear her breathily saying, “But someone could see us,” over and over again with feigned concern. Clearly they enjoyed the possibility.

Was I supposed to discreetly cough? Was Stella supposed to say—while he was in midthrust—
Oh, excuse me, didn’t we meet in New York three months ago? Remember when it was us going at it all night long?

Stella backed into the slight enclave of a doorway. “I guess we have to wait till they’re done, then pretend we just came out of the room.”

“Oh, oh-oh,” the redhead woman moaned. “Someone might see us. Ohh.”

Stella was close to tears. I was tapping my fingers against my hips. You’d think they wouldn’t be so
leisurely
in a public hallway. Stella stared at her feet. “This is the father of Silas or Clarissa?” she whispered to me. “How could I have been so stupid?”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” I whispered back.

I heard a giggle, then a woman’s voice say, “What a lovely view of the strip!”

I glanced over. Glitzy and J were now looking out the window. He appeared to be adjusting his shirt back into his pants, and she was fluffing her hair.

“Okay, Stella, now or never. Let’s just act like we’re coming down the hall, then you stop and do a double take and tell him he looks so familiar.”

We headed down the hall; they came straight at us, their faces flushed, their hair mussed. As we were about to pass, Stella stopped and stared. I saw her almost lose it, but she immediately regained her composure. “Excuse me,” she said to J, attempting to smile. “You look so familiar. I think we might have met in New York. Maybe a few months ago? Yes—three months ago on the Upper West Side?”

He smiled. “Sorry, but I haven’t visited New York in a couple of years.”

She stared at him. “The resemblance is just uncanny,” she said, and I could see she was struggling not to fall completely apart. “Georgina’s restaurant? I’m so sure it was you!”

“Wait, three months ago?” the redhead said. “We weren’t back from Greece yet, were we, baby? We rent a villa in Ios for a few months every spring.”

“Hmm, Ios,” the man said, and started trailing kisses up the woman’s neck. Then they kissed their way down the hall and into a room, the door clicking shut behind them.

“J had brown eyes!” Stella said, grabbing me by the arms. “He had brown eyes! I remember that now. ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ came on the jukebox at the Irish pub we’d stopped in, and I’d started singing, ‘my brown-eyed man’ and trying to get him to dance! That guy—” she pointed at the door the couple had disappeared through “—had blue eyes! It wasn’t him!” She slid down against the wall onto her butt. She took a deep breath. “Thank God it wasn’t him.”

If I weren’t so relieved, either, I might have tried to strangle her.

We slept late. For such a loud city that operated twenty-four hours a day, our room was so quiet—and we were clearly so drained—that we didn’t open our eyes until after nine. Hot showers woke us both up, as did a quick cup of the in-room coffee, which Stella made while I was brushing my teeth.

“I’m not going to find him,” she said, pulling on her jeans. “I know it.”

“You might.” I’d say the chances were close to zero, given that she didn’t even know what he looked like. She had an idea only at this point. But his actual face had faded from her memory.

She put on a white tank top with ruffles down the front. “Why’d you even say yes to this trip? You knew we wouldn’t find him, that it was a ridiculous prospect. So why’d you say yes? Why were you willing to drive three thousand miles?”

“To support you,” I said. “That’s what sisters do.”

She nodded, then disappeared into the bathroom again. When she finally emerged, she looked a bit happier, but it might have been the makeup. “If he lives here, he’s probably at work. Maybe we could do an Internet search of all lawyers in Las Vegas named Jake.”

“And James and Jason,” I said.

“It’s a start.”

It was. And so we skipped our two-for-one breakfast in the New York-New York Hotel, and went to a coffee lounge with computer kiosks and Internet access.

I typed
lawyer, Jake,
and
Las Vegas
into Google’s search engine. Two hundred and sixty-three thousand hits came up for my researching pleasure. “We could type in
Las Vegas
and
lawyer
and try to cull a list of Jakes from all the Las Vegas attorneys,” I suggested to Stella, who looked utterly dejected.

“Think we’ll find him that way?” she asked.

“No.” Especially because she wouldn’t even be able to pick him out of a lineup. “But maybe,” I said when her face crumpled.

“Sorry, Silas or Clarissa,” she whispered in the direction of her belly. Then she got up and hurried out of the café.

I slurped the rest of my coffee, logged out, and chased after her, but she was lost in the crowds of the strip. She could probably use some time and space to herself. And so could I.

I headed back to the hotel, stopping to gawk up at the facades of New York City institutions and landmarks as though I was seeing them for the first time, and then went to the room to get my meditation mat. I didn’t know where one could find an expanse of grassy roadside right here in Sin City, but I’d bet they existed.

The little red message light was blinking on the telephone in our room. But it wasn’t Stella. It was Tom. And he was here. In the lobby, under a huge lithograph of the Chrysler Building. He’d left the message a half hour ago. Said he’d wait a half hour, then go explore for an hour and come back and try me again.

Tom was here? As in he was expecting to get married tonight? My heart started booming in my chest and I sat down on the edge of my bed. Blank. Nothing. Nick had once told me that when faced with a tough decision, the only way was to pretend that someone was holding a gun to your head and giving you one second to decide. To pick.

I tried to imagine a gun to my head, but the problem was that I couldn’t imagine who could possibly be holding the gun, so the urgency I was hoping for didn’t materialize. Guess it was a water gun.

I took the meditation mat out of the closet, unrolled it in front of the bed, and lay down. I envisioned Anne on her yellow bike telling me to close my eyes and say the word
peace
seven times. I did what she said, but I couldn’t even get to peace number two. Instead, there were miniature men on each of my shoulders, a Tom and a Nick. Miniature Tom wore his Dockers and a sweater-vest, a maroon one. Miniature Nick wore a black shirt and pants. Both their heads were bobbing like mad. The Tom said,
Marry me! I represent the Nathanials! The good guys of the world. The ones who won’t break your heart and run away. I have an IRA!
The Nick said,
Don’t you want to know what it’s like to be with me?

I opened my eyes. I needed Stella. Not that she would be any help. She would say to choose Nick just because he wasn’t Tom. Just then, the miniature Tom punched the miniature Nick off my left shoulder.

Did that mean I wanted Tom to win? Or that he had won? Was the meditation mat supposed to be starting fights?

I
WAS STILL ON THE MAT WHEN THE PHONE RANG
. I
JUMPED UP TO
answer it, which had to be a sign. “Tom?”

“I hope this is a good surprise,” he said.

“Of course it is,” I told him. “Room 1622.”

I stood in front of the mirror over the bureau to make sure I looked okay, which had to be another good sign. And a few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and there he was, standing in the doorway. My Tom. My Tom in his Dockers, and his sweater-vest (navy-blue) and his clean, shiny blond hair. And those true-blue blue eyes.

I jumped into his arms and he hugged me tight, carrying me over to the bed, where he lay down on top of me and kissed me. “I have missed you so much,” he said, burying his face in my neck.

I kissed him back, breathing in the smell of Ivory soap. “Me, too,” I said. “I have a lot to tell you.”

“Does it include not wanting to marry me?” he asked.

I don’t know. I’m supposed to know, but I don’t.

“Why do you think that?” I asked, hating myself for it. That was what manipulators did. Made the other person doubt himself, made the other person even more vulnerable. Only so you could lie right in their face.

He tucked a strand of errant blond hair behind my ear. “I thought you wanted to elope, but when you ignored my text about it, I knew something was up. You worried me, Ruby.”

“I didn’t mean to.” For a moment I thought about telling him everything. Tom was so smart, so insightful, and if I could just tell him everything, all about my first day at BLA, about how I wanted to say yes to Nick but didn’t, perhaps he could advise me on whether I owed it to all three of us to give Nick a chance.

Right. Sure, I could tell Tom that. But the story did get better—for him. I had chosen him at every step. Not Nick. Until Nebraska. And now I had a choice to make.

I would not tell Tom all of this. Instead, I would give myself more time, not that this entire trip had brought me one step closer to that answer.

“I’m just so distracted by Stella and her situation,” I said, running my hands through his silky hair. I filled him in on everything we’d been through regarding the hunt for the elusive Jake or James or Jason.

“You two tried,” he said. “She’ll always have that. She’ll always know she went to great lengths to try to find him. And how her twin sister was right there with her.”

I nodded, and he wrapped his arms around me. We sat like that for a moment. “You know, I flew out here sure that I’d be returning a married man. I figured we’d get married in some ridiculous chapel with a Captain Kirk impersonator presiding. But given what’s going on with Stella, we probably shouldn’t be marrying in her face.”

I hugged him. “That’s what I love so much about you, Tom. That you did come out here because you were worried about me. That you were willing to have some stranger in Spock ears officiate at our wedding. And that you care more about Stella’s feelings than anything.”

He cupped my chin in his hands. “I would do anything for you, Ruby.”

I believed he would. “You know, Tom? Now that I’ve been here a couple of days, I wouldn’t want to get married here after all. I thought eloping to Vegas would be special because my parents did that. But we’re not them.”

He squeezed my hand, then kissed me long and hard. “Meet me in my room in five minutes,” he said. “I’ll call you with the number.”

I put away the meditation mat. Being with Tom was suddenly as good as counting seven peaces.

Stella wasn’t answering her cell phone. Stubborn. I’d left a note for her in our room, explaining that Tom had surprised me with a visit and we were in Room 812, but I still hadn’t heard from her. Where was she? Out walking the strip? Sitting alone in some coffee lounge drinking decaf and reading
The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy?
Searching high and low for J?

If I knew Stella, and I did, she was sitting by one of the ornate fountains we’d seen yesterday, like the one outside Spago. Stella loved fountains. She’d often told me that when she had a tough decision—or a wish—to make, she would walk up to Central Park and head to the Bethesda Terrace, which offered her favorite view of the grand stone steps leading down to the Bethesda Fountain with its stunning Angel of the Waters statue. That was where she did all her best thinking.

“I’m going fountain checking,” I told Tom. “I’ll be back in an hour at the latest if I can’t find her. You’ll wait here for her?”

He assured me he would. And so I went in search of fountains, and there were plenty. I checked the dancing fountains at the Bellagio first, the choreographed waters shooting two hundred feet up in the air to strains of Pavarotti. No Stella. Next I headed to Caesars Palace, and the landmark fountain there, as big as a city block, was so crowded that I could barely weave my way through to look for a slight brunette.

There! In a tank top and yoga pants and flip-flops was a woman with her back to me, leaning against a marble column.

“Stella!” I called out and ran over.

But when she turned around, it was someone else. Someone at least fifty years old with one hell of a body.

I glanced at the notepaper with names and addresses of ten other fountains, compliments of a concierge at the New York-New York. I got to four others before a blister on my left foot sent me limping back to my hotel.

It was almost nine and getting dark—well, as dark as the Las Vegas strip could get—and I had no idea where my sister was.

“She’s okay, right?” I asked Tom over dinner. We’d waited until we were so hungry that we couldn’t take it, then ordered room service in my room, just in case she came back or called the room before my cell phone.

“She’s okay. She’s processing. Accepting that she may never find him. It’s a lot to take in. The fantasy probably kept a lot of the fear at bay. And now it’s hit her. She’s on her own with this baby.”

He was absolutely right.