Liberty Begins (The Liberty Series) (4 page)

“Well, that’s okay, then,” he says gently, and puts his hand under my chin. I feel a jolt of electricity at his touch. “Hopefully, luck won’t have anything to do with it.”

He gives me another crinkle-eyed smile, and I feel myself getting wobbly because his hand is on me and his face, so intense and handsome, is so close to mine. He’s looking at me like he’s happy to have found me. He seems relieved for some reason. None of this makes any sense and my head starts to swim from his touch, his stare and from wondering who he really is, why he hasn’t asked me for a lap dance and why talking to him makes me feel all wobbly. He releases me and takes a step back. His exit from my space feels like a blast of cold air.

“It was nice to meet you, Liberty. I hope we see each other again soon.”

“Um, I’ll be here,” I stutter helplessly. I watch him turn to leave. I want to run after him, give him my address, my schedule, my social security number — anything so he can find me easily. But I don’t. I feel like my legs are made out of jello as I stand and watch him nod to the group of suits that were here with him, for God only knows what, as they follow him out the door and are gone.

“You better finish that,” Alex whispers into my ear, startling me, and I spill some of my wine on my shirt. “You look frazzled.” He wags his eyebrows at me lasciviously and I briefly consider emptying my glass over his head. Instead I take a deep breath, a big sip, and compose myself. I need to calm down. I have to get some rest tonight, and I need to come back and work tomorrow and pretty much every day after that. I need every dollar that’s out there to make, because I have no place but my shabby apartment to go. And now I need to be here as much as I can so if anybody wants to find me, they can. Just in case.

I live in a small apartment slightly north of the strip. I drive my little Fiesta slow, because I’m always looking out for drunk drivers, and also because the Fiesta just doesn’t go that fast. When I say not that fast, I mean I can’t get it to go more than 45 without it violently shaking. I’m also not in a hurry. My apartment is not very welcoming.

“Hello,” I call as I walk in and turn on the lights. I see a bunch of small, leggy black things scramble towards the cracks in the countertops and underneath the cabinets as the lights come on. These are my roommates. As disgusting as they are, they don’t bother me as much as the tales the other tenants have told me of bed bugs. That’s my worst fear — something in my bed. I can’t bear the thought of something in my safe space, crawling on me in the night when I’m too out of it to defend myself or to even know it’s there. My neighbors kept showing me their bite marks up and down their legs and arms. From what I had read, it was only a matter of time until they showed up at my place. I couldn’t imagine that bed bug bites would go over too well at the Treasure Chest. I didn’t want to be attacked by the disgusting bloodsuckers and I certainly didn’t want to lose my job because of it. It was making it really hard for me to get to sleep at night.

I started the water on the stove for my macaroni and cheese; I hadn’t eaten anything today besides a cheese sandwich at 11 am. I was shaking I was so hungry. No wonder that wine had gone to my head; I hadn’t eaten enough today, or any day this week. I couldn’t stop thinking about John. I was pretty sure that some of the shaking was also from adrenaline. Thinking about him made it worse.

While I waited for the water to boil I performed my nightly ritual. I had already washed all my makeup off at work, because they had every sort of industrial makeup remover known to man and I had nothing that good myself. So I took a one-minute scalding shower in my disgusting shower stall, holding my breath the whole time and trying not to rub up against the wall. Whenever I accidentally touch it, I think of algae and sewers and zombies — because that’s what the walls feel like — and I yelp. Tonight I’m lucky and don’t touch anything. I get out and spray it down with a mold and mildew spray that does nothing to the stains that were here when I moved in. It smells industrial-grade and makes me lightheaded, but it doesn’t seem to do anything else. Still, it makes me feel better to make the effort.

Then I head for my bedroom, grab my gray sweats and my favorite pink sweatshirt, and head back to the kitchen to put the shells in to cook. After setting the timer it’s back to my bedroom, where I turn on all the lights and proceed to unmake my bed. I start at the top, taking the pillows out of the pillowcases, then taking off the fitted sheet and lifting up the mattress to look underneath. I do it with all four corners.

I’m looking for signs of bed bugs. They say you can usually see little drops of blood.
I don’t know why I make my bed every morning when I just tear it all apart every night. I’d considered leaving it alone, but I couldn’t just leave my sheets and my comforter in a big pile ... it’d looked too inviting, like the bugs would choose to burrow under it, safe and warm. Waiting for me. So I make my bed everyday, like I have since I was a child, craving some order, and come home and undo it. I take the flashlight off my nightstand and look closely near the foot of the bed, where I’ve read they usually like to hide.

Nothing tonight. I remake my bed and happily collect my macaroni and cheese and a glass of water. And as I sit eating, alone at my chipped card table in my plastic orange chair that I pulled out of a dumpster, I wonder. I wonder if there are lap dances ahead of me, and whether I’ll make rent this month without them. I wonder if there is a life for me anywhere out of here, and whether luck really has anything to do with it.

Morning has a way of making everything look better in Vegas. At least for me. I can imagine there are many hung-over visitors who don’t feel the same way, but I love to see the sun come up. No more cockroaches. No more rolling around in my sleep, twitching in fear of bed bugs. Just sun, cereal and coffee, my hair in a ponytail and my pajamas. It felt like the opposite of stripping.

Today I was working the day shift. I had to get to the Chest by ten thirty, to be ready to go out on the floor at eleven. I would be dancing for the hard-core alcoholics and guys who hadn’t gone to bed yet. I never made any money at this shift, but it would give me an opportunity to work on my routine and bug Alex to let me stay and do a double. If I was going to stay just onstage, I needed to work as much as possible. My rent was cheap, but I was still barely making it. Rent, groceries, laundry, gas, car insurance, my business license (which you need in Vegas to strip legally) and anything else that came up, like clothes I needed for work and occasional trips to the hardware store for flashlights and insecticide, had left my bank account flatlining. I had no money left over each month to save. I had no cell phone, no computer, no television. Lucky for me I didn’t have any vices, either, like smoking or drinking, because I wouldn’t have been able to afford them, even for a day. It was no wonder I spent a large amount of my time at the library. Free Internet. Free books. Free magazines. Otherwise I would have gone crazy.

When I left our apartment in Eugene, Oregon last year after my mother died, I had nothing. I couldn’t even pay her emergency room bill. I stole five hundred dollars from Ray right before I left so I could afford the gas to get to Nevada and hopefully have something left over first month’s rent. My mom had been behind on our rent, our cable and her cell phone had been long shut off, her car repossessed. I had worked all through school and full-time after graduation at a grocery store, and I usually tried to pay our bills directly, but it was never enough. She took money from me all the time. I couldn’t get a second job because I couldn’t leave her alone more than I already did.

Sasha was long gone by the time Mom died. I didn’t blame her. She had moved up to Portland and she called sometimes before the phones went. I used to get an email from her occasionally, letting us know she was okay. The social worker from the hospital called her at the last number I had and left a message. I had to hope that Sasha had eventually called her back and talked to her. I emailed her, too, but I never heard back. I hoped she knew. She wouldn’t be surprised. It was a message she had been expecting for a long time.

I told the people at the hospital that we didn’t have the money for a funeral, let alone the medical bills. They said they would call the state and take care of it. It was horrible, but I knew they had done this many times before.

I left her there.

I said goodbye before I went. She didn’t even look like my mother anymore. At forty-seven, she was withered and gray. Ray had turned her onto some drugs that had taken her down under, into a totally different world. It took less time than you might think. I had no idea what she saw down there or why she preferred it to our real world, to green leaves, to fresh air, to chips and guacamole, which she used to love.

These new drugs made her drinking and cocaine habit, the combination of which had always been a horrible roller-coaster ride, look like a spin around a carousel on a sunny afternoon. At least when she drank she still yelled at us and ate occasionally. But in the months before she died she had moved past her need for speech, for food, for sunlight. She only had one need, and as out of it as she was most of the time, she still managed to fulfill it with Ray’s help. In the process she had transformed from Snow White — my sweet, kind, beautiful mother — into the Wicked Queen.

She had been the fairest of them all, but she didn’t care about that anymore. I still didn’t know if it was her body or her mind that wanted the drugs so bad, but whichever part it was, it was ruthless. I had nightmares about her during that time; she was chasing me, she had turned herself into the old hag with the apple and was trying to get me to eat it. She wanted me gone and she wanted all the money for drugs, drugs, and more drugs, every day. In real life, as I stood by and watched, horrified, the drugs did turn her into the old hag. Even Ray stopped going after her.

And she never changed back. She stayed like that, shriveled and ugly with her teeth yellowing, until she died. She had given up everything. Her beauty. The light. She had given up me and Sasha, even though I knew she loved us. She was just so sick.

Looking at her lifeless body, I told myself that she had finally left her prison, her hell on earth. Now she was at peace, and I knew in my heart she would want me to go far, far away.

I left the next day. The landlord had tolerated my mother for reasons I didn’t want to think about, but the same would not apply to me. So I left and Sasha didn’t know where I went, and I didn’t know if she was still in Portland. I emailed her and googled her at the library practically every day but I hadn’t heard or found a thing. She must have wanted it that way. She was smart about those things. I missed her so much sometimes it made my stomach hurt.
One day soon,
I kept telling myself,
I would be able to afford a bus ticket and I would go up there and find her. One day soon.
When I slipped up and let my mind wander, like now, I often found myself wishing that I had gone to Portland instead of Vegas. But I needed to get the hell away from Ray, and from the rain, and from the lush greenery that my mother had loved. I needed to hide. And I would take the desert, the cockroaches, and the stripping over the memories any day.