The Desert Rose (15 page)

Harmony gathered up a few things that Jessie had requested, just some gowns and her bathrobe and some paperbacks. Jessie was a big reader of teen romances, she had admitted to Harmony several times that she fantasized being a teen again and having a wonderful teen romance like those described in the books. She also admitted that nothing very wonderful had happened when she had been a teen. She had kind of got off to a low-grade start, her hometown of Chico, California, had not been exactly full of wonderful guys. Jessie seemed to feel that if she could have got off to a better start she wouldn’t have ended up such a worrier, but Harmony was doubtful, Jessie just basically had a worried outlook.

She herself had not had such overwhelming teen romances, either. In fact her first serious boyfriend, a banker’s son named Teddy, had tried three nights in a row to make her not a virgin, with no success. He finally suggested she ought to see a doctor, he couldn’t face any more failures and had read in some sex book that doctors sometimes had to help out a little. She refused of course but it didn’t constitute such a great start where romance was concerned. Still, it hadn’t made her a worrier, like Jessie.

While she was packing the gown and the books the long-lost Monroe walked in, so greasy that he looked like he must have fallen in a hole full of oil. The sight of him explained why Jessie’s bathroom was full of heavy-duty soap.

“Oh, Monroe, where have you been, Jessie’s disc broke and she shattered her ankle,” Harmony said. Normally she would have hugged him at such a time but she had an aversion to grease and didn’t quite get around to the hug.
Francois didn’t help matters, evidently he hated Monroe, he came running in from the bedroom snarling, which was ridiculous, one kick and he would have been dead.

It turned out Monroe hadn’t been lost, he had just been under a truck that had broken down on the freeway. He seemed tired and kept yawning, despite being upset that Jessie was hurt. He sat down on the couch and looked like he was either going to cry or go right to sleep. The most off-putting thing about him from Harmony’s point of view was that he had so much oil and grease packed under his fingernails that they looked like they could never be cleaned, and they never
were
cleaned. Even when Monroe showered with the heavy-duty soap and made himself presentable his fingernails were still totally black underneath. Probably they had been that way for so long he had forgotten they were supposed to be cleaned once in a while. Sometimes on Sunday Monroe made an effort and took Jessie to a nice restaurant, often Harmony went along and she always found the fact that Monroe hadn’t managed to clean his fingernails very noticeable, though Jessie didn’t seem to notice it, which was odd, after all Jessie could easily spend a whole afternoon just changing clothes and redoing her makeup.

“That woman’s accident-prone,” Monroe said, after a yawn. He wouldn’t have been so terrible-looking, except that his nose was totally flat. Gary once said it looked like someone had dropped a car on it, which could have happened, Monroe spent a lot of time under cars. Also he had a purple birthmark on one side of his neck, it always seemed to be the side Harmony was looking at him from. She knew looks weren’t everything, she had had some strange-looking guys herself, she guessed, guys with plenty of defects but usually a little more appealing than Monroe. The fingernails were a real downer in her book.

“She was worried we couldn’t find you,” Harmony said.

“Well, I’ll marry her, I been trying to anyway,” Monroe said, as if that were the only possible solution now that Jessie had shattered her ankle. Harmony didn’t know about that, it seemed to her Jessie ought to come and recuperate at her house and keep her options open a little longer, anyway Myrtle would enjoy the company.

When she got back to the hospital Gary said Jessie hadn’t even blinked. He was exhausted from worrying so much and said maybe they should go to his house and get a little sleep. That was fine with her, she often slept in Gary’s guest room if there was a party or something. But when they got to his house she didn’t feel sleepy. Gary said fine, you can borrow the car if you want to go home and change or something, but one of them definitely had to get back to the hospital before Jessie went in for her operation.

She thought maybe she’d go home, but once she got in the car she didn’t feel like it, she was in sort of an unusual mood, she felt like a little company and it was still too early even for Myrtle to be up so if she went home she wouldn’t get any and she didn’t feel like just putting on her sleep goggles and lying there. If she did that she would just start thinking about Denny. It was the most in love she had been for a long time, it was just too bad he didn’t love her too. He had seemed to at first but maybe she had been imagining things. Myrtle said she ought to train herself. When he first took off she thought about him nearly every minute of the day or for maybe the first week.

She started to go back to Debbie’s and Marty’s but then if nobody was there to talk to she’d just stuff herself with peanuts or drink too much. What she did instead was drive back to the Stardust. She started feeling very lonely and wanted to stop the feeling, it was a feeling of suddenly not having one single person available who cared that much about her. Of course Gary did but he had just gone to sleep and wasn’t available.

It was late, there were very few people walking on the Strip, which didn’t help her lonely feeling. She thought of stopping at the Amoco station and having a chat with Wendell but Gary’s car was full of gas and that ruled that out. At least the casino was still buzzing, the town wasn’t as deserted as it looked from outside.

It occurred to her that there wasn’t much point in keeping Dave on hold too much longer, Denny was not going to suddenly show up and be nice, she might as well go on and give up, it was sort of unfair to keep Dave waiting. At least he didn’t strike her as the kind of man who would steal somebody’s insurance check. Luckily Dave was still there, he was off in about twenty minutes, he sort of looked slightly taken aback when she showed up and asked him if he wanted to go eat breakfast or something, obviously he had not expected to get taken off hold so quickly but once he got used to the idea he was willing. He said he’d meet her at the keno bar, so Harmony went and sat at the bar right by the cash register and had a word or two with Leon, the main bartender. She also had another vodka tonic or two, hoping they would have an effect on her lonely feeling but they didn’t, they just went down like water.

“How come you never flirt with me, Harmony, you flirt with everybody else?” Leon wanted to know. It was true she had known him for ten years and never flirted with him, he was a short guy and pudgy, though that wasn’t the reason, a lot of guys were short, including several she had developed attachments too, Ross for example and Gary too for that matter.

“Oh, Leon, I’m just saving you,” she said, giving him a smile. Leon didn’t really care. He had just been making conversation, maybe even trying to cheer her up a little.

“That’s awful about Jessie,” he said. “Some people are accident-prone. I remember once she twisted her ankle just getting off a barstool.”

That was true, if there was any way to pick up an injury Jessie would find it. Dave was taking a while, it seemed to her twenty minutes was up and he wasn’t there. She was beginning to wish she had just decided to flirt with Leon for a while, after all he was an old friend whereas Dave was sort of an unknown quantity. Good-looking, she liked the streak of gray in his hair, it sort of made him look dignified, but still an unknown quantity.

Then just when she was trying to decide if maybe she should just vanish and pretend she had got an emergency phone call from the hospital or something, the last person in the world she wanted to see, namely Bonventre, wandered out of the casino and sat down by her. She felt like Pac-Man had made it through the maze and selected her as the next person to eat, as usual Bonventre looked full of energy though it was nearly dawn.

“Harmony, don’t you ever go home?” he said, making it sound like she owed him rent for the barstool or something.

“Jessie’s ankle was shattered, I’m just having a few drinks to calm down,” she said, she was hoping he wouldn’t mention Pepper but of course it was the next thing he mentioned.

“Fine, hang around another couple of hours and I’ll have someone drive you down to the sheriff’s office so you can sign the work consent form,” Bonventre said. “We don’t want to neglect that little piece of business. I want Pepper to get started learning the routines.”

“Jackie, can’t you just forget it, Pepper needs to finish high school,” she said.

Bonventre just snorted and took the Scotch and soda Leon handed him, at which point Harmony noticed Dave. He had been on his way but had sort of stalled at the sight of Bonventre, he was hanging back pretending to be interested in the keno.

“Harmony, you know better than to argue with me,” Bonventre said, stirring his drink with his finger. Then he
licked the finger. It was one of his habits, she had seen him do it a million times.

Harmony suddenly felt pretty depressed at the thought that she didn’t have anyone strong to stand up for her. There was no use pretending she herself was strong. A million people had pointed it out to her that she wasn’t and they were right, she spent large amounts of time doing what someone wanted her to do, such as twenty years doing what Bonventre had wanted her to do on stage. If he wanted Pepper for the understudy he would get her probably. Besides, if Pepper
wanted
to understudy she would do it no matter what anybody said, even Gary’s opinion probably wouldn’t stop her, so what was the point of the argument?

Pepper and Bonventre were both sort of like bulldozers when it came to going where they wanted to go, the difference being that Bonventre sort of looked like a bulldozer whereas Pepper looked like a beautiful young girl. Pepper just happened to have a will of iron, whereas she herself had a will of Cream of Wheat, as Gary put it when he was in one of his witty moods. It was hard to be a good mother if you happened to have a child with a will of iron, maybe Jessie was lucky just to have a pet. Definitely motherhood had been more fun when Pepper was younger and would sit on her lap and let her do her hair, that was before she developed a mind of her own about clothes and hairstyles and stuff.

“Oh Jackie, why do you want her?” she said. She felt sort of a sinking and wished Dave hadn’t stopped to watch keno, at least he could have sat down by her.

“I want her because she’s got star quality and besides she can dance,” Bonventre said. “Thirty percent empty seats last night, I hate figures like that. Every conventioneer in America has seen Monique by now, it’s time she started a cooking school or something.

Well, you could get rid of Murdo, he
is
the worst ventriloquist in Las Vegas, Harmony thought but she didn’t bother saying it, why make life difficult for Murdo? She finished her drink and paid Leon, there was no point in staying and getting more depressed. As she was picking up her change Bonventre tapped her on the wrist.

“Harmony, don’t get stubborn,” he said. “Pepper doesn’t need high school and if I don’t hire her somebody else will. You should be proud to have such a talented daughter.”

Harmony couldn’t think of any words to say, Bonventre was probably right, actually she
was
proud of it, it was just a shock to think that she and Pepper would be on the same stage.

Bonventre didn’t bother to say anything else, he knew perfectly well he’d get his way and was not interested in a lengthy discussion. Harmony thought maybe he’d have something to say about Jessie, after all she’d worked for him quite a few years too, but Bonventre wasn’t thinking about Jessie, he was thinking thoughts of his own and stirring his second Scotch and soda.

Dave had gotten kind of nervous from being taken off hold so quickly, he didn’t have a lot to say, also he was not quite as reassuring as he had seemed when she and Cherri were at the craps table. Harmony felt hungry, it had been quite a while since her taco between shows. She asked Dave if he felt like hitting the Waffle House but he seemed to think that was kind of extravagant, he said they could have breakfast in his apartment.

Harmony was agreeable, she loved getting a look at a guy’s apartment. Seeing what kind of decorations they had could be interesting, only in the case of Dave’s apartment interesting was not quite the right word, horrible would have been more like it. As Dave himself explained, he got his apartment for practically no rent in return for managing
the other five apartments in a little green apartment building on Charleston Avenue. He candidly admitted that cheap rent was the one good thing about it. Harmony definitely agreed it would have to be that if anything, it was at the back of the building next to a garbage collection center. There was no garbage there but the trucks that hauled it were parked right next to Dave’s kitchen window and smelled about as bad as if they were garbage themselves.

Dave said he hoped the smell didn’t bother her, he couldn’t lower the window because he didn’t have air conditioning, he didn’t believe in it, his theory was that it sort of weakened you and his years in the Marines had convinced him it didn’t do to get weak. One of his kitchen walls was covered with pictures of mercenaries holding machine guns of various kinds or hand grenades or something. Evidently Dave’s reading consisted mostly of magazines for mercenaries because his kitchen table was covered with them.

Harmony definitely began to get the sense that she hadn’t made the best choice in the world. The fact that Dave had been nice enough to show up at the craps table every night just when she had her break could have been a misleading fact. Still, he was sort of trying to be sweet and hadn’t put any rush on her or anything, probably she could just be a good sport and have breakfast. Dave seemed pretty nervous—probably some bacon and eggs would make them both feel better.

But when she opened the icebox there was nothing there but beer, at which point Davd said, “I hope you like K rations.” It turned out that his cabinet had no normal food in it at all, just shelf after shelf of K rations, it was sort of an amazing sight. Dave explained that because of his Marine background he had grown to like K rations and had just sort of stopped eating normal food or anything else, after all they were cheap and there was quite a variety.