Past Vegas

by Ameni Rozsa

The boys are playing cards and Im in the kitchen, taking my sweet time getting the beer. Craig and Rob, big men that they are, are arguing about the rules. They learned it two different ways; they have the same argument every night. While they go at it, old Jim sits patiently and smiles, the way he always does. And Stoolie, he watches the conflict like a hungry dog. Waits for it to turn ugly. I am avoiding the game and I am avoiding the light over the card table. It has a sharpness to it, a matter-of-factness, that makes me shy. Beneath it are these men, guffawing and pounding, muscled things that smell of dust and sweat and want, and I guess I am avoiding that, too. The light, their eyes.

Outside, the desert settles into night, low and calm as an ocean. Craigs daughter Ashley is in bed. Through the tapestry that separates the sitting area from the kitchen, I can hear the conversation perfectly. Rob and Craig go back and forth, all crewcuts and easy, snarky comments. They do this mostly for fun. I know without looking that old Jim is letting his hat hide his raised eyebrows, that in its

shadow he is smiling his strange Buddha-smile into his hand. I know, too, about the tension in Stoolies wiry little muscles, his slow breath and darting eyes. With him, my wariness comes from somewhere between my shoulder blades, somewhere that connects to my brain without thought. Im hoping theyll give it up, decide to watch TV or maybe wash the dishes or something like that. No such luck. Mel! calls Rob, Whatcha doin in there? Hiding? I come out from behind the tapestry, two beers in each hand, their necks cold between my knuckles. I told you guys, I dont like cards. I hand out three and take a long sip of the fourth. Jim sips his cola and wrinkles his face into a grins and snorts, showing a line of small brown teeth. Better learn to like em, sugar. Aint nothin else to do out here.

Out here is what we call this place, because theres no other way to describe it. Were about ninety miles from Vegas. Where we live, it isnt even a town. It doesnt have a name. Theres just these four guys in their four trailers, arranged facing out into the open like a wagon circle. And theres Craigs kid. And theres me. About fifteen years ago, when the phone company came out here to install a line, there was just one guy living here. The company wont come back, so we all share that single line. Jim spliced it himself, hooked up a crappy little phone in each of the trailers.

Listen to the old man, Mel, says Rob, putting his cards face down on the table and stretching languorously. Hes right, you know. I fucking hate cards, but dyou see me complaining? Stoolie giggles and chimes in, Rob, man, you dont hate cards fucken half as fucken much as I hate cards. I fucken hate cards, man. He keeps looking at Craig, to see if hes getting a rise out of him. Stoolie loves to get a rise out of Craig; it doesnt happen too often but when it does, well. Ive been here for a month now. Im starting to see how things work. Generally at this point, theyll either all calm down and keep playing, or else Stoolie will storm off to his trailer and the other three will be forced to call it a night. Craig, he interviewed me over the phone. Wanted to know how much experience Id had with kids. I hadnt had any kids of my own, I told him, but I used to take care of my sisters kids, and that always seemed to go fine. He said Id have room and board, and hed give me fifteen-hundred a month on top of that. He asked could I be ready in two days. Hell yeah, Id said, and he said he had to warn me, wed be living a long way from anywhere. I told him I was sick of anywhere, that a long way from there suited me just fine. Two days later he pulled up outside in an old white Buick, helped me down the stairs with my bags. The four of them all work out here. Im not sure exactly what they do. Craig explained whatever it was to me on the phone before I came but I was distracted, doing the math on my new salary, figuring out how much Id be able to save up. And after a few days of being here, well, by then it was too late to ask anyone what they did each day. Like when you say hello to your neighbor

every day for a year, and then dont know what to write on the Christmas card. Your husband, you can bet hes not gonna know. They watch something, I think, or wait for something. Whatever they do, it doesnt really matter. Craigs kid, Ashley, is ten years old and retarded. Shes been here a month, too got here the day before I did. Her mom claimed she was disturbed, said she couldnt handle her and was going to give her to the state. So Craig asked if shed send her to him instead. I dont think he was ever married to Ashleys mom. Im not even sure he knows the kid is his, but he didnt have any tests done or anything. He told me he thought he was doing the right thing. Craig is all about doing the right thing. I was a little worried when they told me she might be disturbed. But most of the time, Ashleys easy. Being here, thats the hard part.

Theres not a lot to do in the middle of the Nevada desert. We drink and play cards. We drink and play kick-the-cactus. We drink and watch TV. Except for Jim. Hes been sober twenty years, and he does all that stuff, minus the drinking. Some time, I mean to ask him how he manages to not drink, all the way out here, where it hardly matters. I just havent gotten around to it yet. Also, we think about sex. All the time. The problem is that I know I will end up sleeping with one of these men and I know that when I do, it will be bad. They know this, too. Which is why everyone has been on such good behavior, so smiling and polite, for these first four weeks. Which is why they named me Mel, just a blunt syllable, dangling

and harmless as their own names. As if they were afraid of holding my real name, with its dips and curves, on their tongues: Melanie. You dont wind up in the middle of the desert unless you have a problem of some kind. Me, my problem is money. That is my main problem. In between money problems, there have been other problems. The man I married. The drinking. People move to the desert for pretty much the same reasons they move anywhere: because they have problems and in the desert they believe their problems wont be able to find them. Maybe theyre right.

Its getting worse. This week, three nights in a row, the card games nearly come to blows. I know its because of me, and I feel guilty, as if I have broken up a marriage or somehow marred something beautiful. On the fourth night the Buick pulls up and stops and I hear all the doors slamming and footsteps crunching along the gravel. The front door of the trailer bangs shut, but it isnt Craig, its Jim. Ashley is sitting at the kitchen table, coloring. He looks at her, presses his thin lips together, looks at me. I ask him if somethings wrong. The boys and Ive been discussing, well, the, uh, tension around here. Even though I have known this, it feels strange to be told. I wonder if I was being bartered for, assessed, purchased. I am watching Jim. He looks nervous, as if I might fly at him. And? I say. They wanted me to ask if youd be comfortable with, uh, if they brought in some some girls. You mean, girls, you mean prostitutes?

He nods. Theyll come out here? He nods again. Sure, I tell him. Tell them sure. I dont mind. I am not entirely sure that this is true, that I dont mind, but it seems like the fair response. I am living out here with these men. I am doing my best to understand their needs. I am still nodding long after Jim has walked back out the door.

The girls arrive in a beat-up brown car, their makeup greasy from the heat. One of them, the driver, is tall and thin and would be pretty if it werent for the cratered skin of her face. Her hair, dyed copper, is swept up into a bun. From her walk, Id guess she was a dancer. She seems to spill out of the car like water. The other two, peroxide blondes, emerge more reluctantly. Patting at hair, tugging at skirts. One is skinny with improbably large breasts and a little tiny face; the other, overweight and sullen, wears go-go boots and a silver skirt. They hang back as the tall one heads straight for Robs trailer. Shes obviously been here before. The men have been preparing. Theyve bought extra liquor and limes for the beer. Theyve re-filled the propane tank for the grill. The refrigerator is filled with white paper packages of meat. While we were unpacking the groceries, I saw the condoms. Briefly, in the bottom of the paper bag, before Craig had a chance to secret them away. I

deliberately pretended not to see them, and when I looked again, they were gone. Rob is out of his trailer, his arm around the tall one, belting out some song and swinging her around like a doll. Im relieved that he is going to have the tall one. The plan is to make like this is all very normal, to have a barbecue like real people, real human beings who dont live in the middle of the desert and dont pay for sex. To pretend theres no dangerous need, no shame. Craig beckons me out of the trailer. Ashley follows shyly behind. Introductions are made. Their names are Nina and Nadja and Honey. Nadja, the fat one, speaks with an accent and seems puzzled by my masculine name. Nina, the tall one, wants to know if Ashley is my daughter. No, I say, Im just the nanny. They lift their eyebrows at this but do not press further. As Rob chars the meat, the girls and I toss back shots and get rowdy. We turn up the music. Out here, the stereo can never go loud enough, though we do our best to ward off the emptiness with noise. But music in the desert can only surround you so much. Haloed by music, you can always hear the silence just beyond. There is no drowning out that silence. Stoolie is already drunk and out of control, like a teenager at his first keg party. He grabs the girls and rubs against their legs like a dog. Woof! he cries, letting his tongue loll out. They smile stiffly and dance with each other as he hovers a couple of feet away. I decide its time to put Ashley to bed. When I come back, everyone is silent and eating, hunched over paper plates translucent with grease. I take a seat beside Jim, accidentally see Craigs

hand stealing across Ninas thigh. The CD has stopped, the night has billowed over us like a vast blue sheet. I had been expecting everyone to retire after the meal, but the boys are serious about making this a social event. Stoolie proposes a game of kick-thecactus, disappears to his trailer to get baseball bats. Kick the what? says Honey, not bothering to cover up a yawn. Despite its name, kick-the-cactus does not involve any kicking. Or, really, any cactus. This is how its played: you rush out into the night swinging your baseball bat at anything solid. You stumble over the little clots of grass until your eyes adjust to the dark. You make a lot of noise. The Joshua trees -reaching toward the sky, striving to look like real, upright trees -- are the most fun to smash. The first time I saw them play, I asked them didnt they know how long it takes those to get that big. Waiting in the light, my arms folded. By the third time, I was playing, too. But I will not be playing tonight. After a couple of minutes Stoolie is back with the bats and the game commences. The men are quickly out of sight, their hoots and exclamations floating toward us out of the dark. I pick up plates and put them in a garbage bag. Nina makes a show of helping me, grabbing two or three bottles and dropping them in the bag, too. Thanks, I say. You actually live out here? she says. How can you stand it?

The girls left at about ten this morning. Nobody was awake but me. Last night, I lay in my bed, waiting, dreading the sound of Craig and Nina as they

stumbled in. I kicked the blankets off; I pressed my face into the pillow and I tried not to notice how familiar it all felt. And then, nothing. Sitting at the table with my coffee, I saw Nina and Honey emerging from Robs trailer, and I realized that Craig had slept there, too.

When I came here I promised myself I wouldnt drink during the day. But sometimes I smoke pot. When the sun is up, its just me and Ashley and the whole crazy horizon. The guys take the car to work, so were stuck. We bake cookies and sing songs. She doesnt really like books, but she likes television, and she likes my Palm Beach snow globe. Little flamingos swirl all around when you shake it. My husband bought it for me after he smashed an older one in a fight, a real one with a little town in it and a church steeple and flying specks of snow. It had been my grandmothers, and he had looked at me, moving real slow, and picked it up and then just let it drop. I knew what was going to happen but I didnt try to stop it, just watched, just stared, while he lifted it up over his head and then let go. A couple days later he came home with the new one, which he gave to me kind of laughing, like he was hoping Id laugh, too, ha-ha, it was just a silly snow globe, whats the big deal. And I did laugh. I laughed.

Anyway, Ashley likes the snow globe. Except for the occasional tantrum, shes just about the sweetest kid I ever met. All she wants is to be close to me: cuddled up on the couch, hanging on to my dress as I do chores. I have a theory that her mom lied about the emotional problems thing, that she was

just tired of having to keep such a constant eye on her. There is that: leave her alone in the kitchen and shell manage to burn herself on the stove. In the bathroom, and shell try to eat shaving cream. Its pathetic the way I count the minutes until I hear the sound of the Buick. The first couple of weeks, to blow a few hours, I telephoned everyone I knew. Now Im out of people to catch up with. Now, all I can think about is Craig walking through the door, asking me hows it going, the sound of him in the bathroom, whistling in the shower. When he comes, it is like a rescue. When he comes, it is all I can do not to fall down at his feet, clutch his legs and cry.

On weekends, if nobody needs the car, I can take it into the city, get away a little. The first couple of times, I was relieved to see all the people. But already its getting stranger to see people I dont know. To see those strange bodies and just not know who Im dealing with, what it is they might want from me. Usually I go shopping. Except its hard to buy new clothes. Partly because Im supposed to be saving up. Partly because it would seem so silly to wear new clothes out in the desert, to dress up for Ashley and the boys. So I buy underwear. The girls at Victorias Secret have gotten to know me, in every Sunday to buy bras and panties. If they think its strange, they dont let on. But maybe they dont think its strange at all. It is, after all, Las Vegas.

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The boys are always eager to hear what I did while I was gone. I dont tell them. I say, oh, you know, wandered around. Or I lie. Took myself out to lunch. Saw some friends. Hooked up with this guy I know. The new underwear are already taking up one full drawer of my bureau.

The other night a rare, no-card-playing night I picked up the phone to call my sister, and Stoolie was on the line already, grunting and yelping. A womans voice in the background. I listened for a few seconds, carefully replaced the phone in its cradle. Ive been here two months now. I finally asked Craig what the story was with Jim. Stoolies always calling him a faggot. But Craig told me Jim had been married and had a daughter and that theyd both, his wife and kid had both been killed in an accident, which was why he didnt drink and didnt go with girls. Dont listen to Stoolie, Craig had said. He lives to stir shit.

I told Craig I was running out of stuff to do with Ashley, so today he and the boys went into the city and came back with a playground kit. They are outside now, drinking and pouring concrete and cursing at each other. Ashley is decorating pizzas with pepperoni and I am trying to make myself wait ten minutes before I open another beer. Later, in bed, I have drunk too much to sleep, so I go outside to look at the half-finished playground. I smell cigarette smoke, and then I see the little orange tip, flaring and fading in the shadow of Robs trailer. I walk over to him, ask him what hes doing up.

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Nothin, he says. Just thinkin. He offers me a cigarette and I take it and we sit in silence for a while. Then I ask him what hes doing here. He asks me what it looks like hes doing, hes smoking. No, I say. Here. And I gesture all around: the desert, the night. Needed to get away from my wife, he says, and I can see the moon flashing off his grin. This is the sort of answer I expected, I suppose, so when he asks me what the hell am I doing out here, anyway, I tell him I wasnt having any luck getting dates in Vegas, and then we are kissing, our tongues rancid with cigarette smoke, and then he helps me up and we go quietly into his trailer.

The next night, the boys arent home by nightfall. I am picturing car accidents or explosions. The only way to reach them is by radio, and even though Craig showed me how to use it, tonight when I look at the thing it is all knobs and grooves and I cant even remember how to turn it on. Ashley can tell I am upset and this makes her upset, too, and she cries, her sobs lengthening into wails so shrill the metal walls seem to vibrate and I want to tear my ears right off my head. I give her a sedative and she finally calms down a bit and then falls asleep, and I pace the trailer wondering if I dont deserve a sedative, too. I open the curtains. I close the curtains. I have never been here alone after dark.

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Around midnight I hear the popping and cracking of the car pulling up, then footsteps and then Craig coming into the trailer. Suddenly I realize I am angry. Where the hell were you? Stoolie left work and took the car. We were stuck. Why didnt you call? No phone, he says. You know that. I was worried sick. Im not sure Ive ever used this expression before, but now its just coming out of my mouth, and its the truth. He opens the refrigerator and contemplates it for a while, then closes it without getting anything out. Rob told us, you know. Told you what? I dont know why I am playing dumb, I just cant think of anything else to say. What you guys did. Oh, I say. So? So Stoolies pissed. Thats why he left us there. Its none of his business. None of yours, either. I press my sweaty palms onto the laminate tabletop, lift them off again, watch my palm prints slowly disappear. Craig ignores this comment. He thinks were sleeping together, too. You and me. He? Stoolie. But were not sleeping together. I told him that. He thinks Im lying.

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Well, I say, thats his problem, isnt it?

Three months.

Rob and I have never discussed what happened that night. For a while we went out of our way to act as if everything was the same, and then one day we realized it actually was the same, that our sleeping together didnt matter at all, didnt make any difference. It didnt change us. Who it did change was Stoolie. He watches us all now, sneering, suspicious. Sometimes he takes the car at night and doesnt come back until morning. He sulks. He broods. One night Jim wins on a bluff and Stoolie is so mad he turns over the table. Kicks it for good measure, slams the door behind him. My heart leaps for a second and then I make it stop; this is something I have learned to do. And we all just sit there, not looking at each other, the silence tightening around us. Kids a sore loser, says Rob, trying to shake off the quiet. Jim whistles through his teeth in agreement. I try to catch Craigs eye, but he wont look up from the table. Later, I wake suddenly to the creaking of my door, see a dark shape of a man standing over my bed. Thinking its Stoolie, I yell, and the man starts crying, and I realize its not a man at all. Its Ashley. She must have had a nightmare or something. I walk her to her room, tuck her in, hum to her until shes asleep. Then I tiptoe back to my room. I have just drifted off when I feel Ashley climbing into bed beside me. Ash, honey, I say softly.

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No, says Craig. My heart feels tiny and frantic, and I wonder if Craig can hear it. I lie still, expecting him to touch me any moment, not sure whether I am hoping he will or praying he wont. He doesnt. He just falls asleep. I listen to his breathing for a long time, and then I fall asleep, too.

It doesnt rain much out here, but when it does, you can see it coming when its still a long way off. You spy the clouds in the distance, a gathering of gray, and then you watch them as they advance across the sky. By the time they arrive, you have readied yourself for battle. Craig and I share a bed almost every night now. We dont have sex. We just lie together, touching very slightly a fingertip, an elbow and sleep. There was a time in my life when men used to suggest this to me. They would say, come on, we can just sleep together, just lie next to each other and cuddle. Even my husband said this once, after Id kicked him out, when his drinking got really bad. I told him what I told them all: that no man and woman could do that. But here I am, sharing a bed with a man in the middle of the desert, and we have never done anything more. We dont talk about it, either. We can almost pretend it isnt happening, as long as we dont address it, dont try to figure out what it means. At the same time, I wonder how long we can go on like this. A few weeks, six months, years? Outside, the rain sheets down and finds the ground and has nowhere to go. It streams down the slide, it makes little rivers that dance along the unyielding earth.

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Its another Sunday how many Sundays have there been, its hard to say now and I am pulling up to our home with my new purchases. I walk into the trailer, calling out my greeting. No answer. I toss my Victorias Secret bag on the kitchen table and go outside again. I knock on Robs trailers door. Nothing. Then I hear footsteps behind me. I whirl around. Its Jim. Melanie, he says, his tongue almost stumbling on my name. Its Ashley. I try to pull my lips into words, try to ask if she is burned or injured, where everyone is. She must have just wandered off, she must have just wandered off. Theyre all out looking. I stayed here, for you and, and in case she came back. I am limp, crashed through with guilt, even as I am trying to justify my innocence. It was my day off. Shes not my kid. Her father should have been looking after her. I dont say these things. I dont say anything at all.

Craig and Rob come back first. Nothing. We decide to call the police. They take more than an hour to get out here, and when they do, Stoolie still isnt back. They find Ashleys body in an irrigation ditch later that night. Only a couple feet of water, but, they explain, thats often enough to drown a child. They are still here questioning us when Stoolie wanders up. Drunk. Singing. Stephen Brodsky, they say, and for a moment I have no idea who theyre talking to. I dont think I ever knew Stoolies real name.

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We all go in to the police station and sit in separate rooms and answer questions. They ask me where I was that afternoon and I tell them about the underwear, explain I have a receipt. They want to know if I had a sexual relationship with any of the men. I tell them about Rob and then about how Craig and I sleep together but dont have sex, and they squint at me skeptically. They ask me if I am aware that Craig has a criminal record, and I say no. They ask me if I am aware that Craig didnt have legal custody of the child, and I say no, I was not aware of that. They are going to hold him, they explain, on potential kidnapping charges. They ask me if I understand he may be a suspect in Ashleys death. They tell me I am free to go. But where do I go?

Its been two weeks since Ashley died. Her mom didnt come to the funeral, but I went. I dont usually pay much attention to priests but that day, when the priest talked about children being closest to God, I felt better because I knew it was true. Or good enough. If anyone was close to God, Ashley was that Im sure of. Craig was released pretty soon after the police spoke to Ashleys mom and she said he was the father and shed told him to take the kid off her hands. There was a little while when it looked like he was going to be charged with negligence, but then I guess Stoolie made a full confession: how hed lured her out back with ice cream, how hed knocked her unconscious, how hed thrown her over his shoulder and marched her out to the irrigation ditch. I think of him out there, arranging her like a doll, face-down in the trickle of water. I picture it again and again: am I trying to feel more, or less?

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Weve long since given up on cards. A truce, of sorts, or a precaution. In a place this big, weve learned, our conflicts can grown unchecked. When asked about his motives, Stoolie said he was angry because Craig and I were sleeping together and Craig kept lying about it. Said he wanted, quote, that bitch to go back where she came from, unquote. Craig and I dont share a bed anymore. Craigs criminal record, it turns out, is for manslaughter. Its a juvenile record: when he was sixteen, he killed a guy in a drunken fight in a parking lot. The guy was his mothers boyfriend. Jim told me that. Jims praying a lot these days. Walk around a corner and there he is, hands clasped at his chest, eyes closed with his face toward the sun. At the police station that night, he told me he should have guessed Stoolie was going to do something crazy. We all should have guessed, I told him. But the truth is, we had guessed. We just didnt know what to do. Robs got himself a computer and spends all his evenings on the Internet. Whenever I pick up the phone, I hear the modems wobbly screech, that sound of human yearning. I actually miss the cards. Today, I packed my bags. I had to buy a new suitcase for all the underwear. Craig and I havent discussed what I should do. Obviously, theres no reason for him to keep paying me. Even less reason for me to stay. The day after everything happened, Jim asked me what I was going to do and I told him I didnt know. Wed love it if you stayed, he said. And then he said, But well understand.

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When Craig walks in tonight, he sees the bags lined up by the door. He looks at me and gives a slow nod. You got a place to stay? he asks. I tell him Im staying with a friend for a couple nights, that after that I might go to my sisters in Boulder. You tell those guys yet? I shake my head.

In the morning, we wake up when its still dark. We dont say a word as we climb into the Buick. Craig tosses my suitcases in the trunk. We bump along the dirt road and then, at the main road, Craig pulls out and turns in the wrong direction. My heart swoops through the giant empty space in my chest as I realize I might have misunderstood everything, noticed all the wrong things. I dont ask where were going. Craig doesnt look at me, just keeps his eyes fixed on the road ahead. Everything is blue. The dawn sky seems low, as if it is sagging toward us, as if it might fall upon us and we might drown in its milky blue. After about ten minutes we turn off the paved road and onto another dirt one. The sky is starting to lighten, the sounds to stretch out into daytime sounds. We pull up over a slight rise and I see that the road dead ends at a small concrete building. Its painted sky blue and has an enormous satellite dish sitting on top. Theres a generator behind it. The whole thing is surrounded by a high fence topped with razor wire. This, I realize, is where they work.

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Craig stops the car and gestures to me to get out, too. He walks over to the fence and unlocks the chain, pushes a door open. I follow him. The next door is steel. He opens it with a combination lock. Inside there is the hum of machines. Their screens are dark, ghostly with the afterimages of lines and dots. Their keyboards are old and shiny with use. I sense that I should ask questions about all this, but I dont want to know anything more. Then Craig kisses me fiercely, his giant hand cupping the back of my head. Just as suddenly, he lets me go, practically pushes me away. If we stay, it is clear what will happen. I need to go, I tell him. Without looking at me he pushes open the door and we step out into the morning. The sun is just up, and the horizon is orange. The razor wire above our heads sparkles gold. Wild-eyed, Craig turns around, takes me by the shoulders. Stay, he says. We could get married His desperation reminds me of a childs desperation, strained and hopeful, on the verge of crumbling. Craig, I say, and I am not sure, now, whether I have ever used his name before. I try to remember. I cant-- I know, he says, shaking his head and avoiding my eyes. I know. We walk out together, and I stand by the car as he re-chains the fence. His movements are reluctant.

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After hed put my bags in the car, before we left, he paid me in cash. Crisp bills. I folded them up and put them in my pocket. I put my hand to my hip now, feel the reassuring shape of them beneath the fabric of my jeans. The gold has evaporated in the bright white of the day. The razor wire is itself again. I feel my past fill my body, feel it rising within me. I am a flooding house, I am swelling and buckling inside. Craig starts the car. The white car slices through the desert, fast and loud, oblivious to our weight, our silence. Finally we hit the outskirts of the city: the high walls, the shining new subdivisions. Rush hour is starting; cars weave in and out of their lanes like dancers. Sleepy commuters sip coffee and squint into the morning. I imagine the houses theyve just left their unstained driveways, their ordinary hopes. We drive alongside them, we push forward among them, and all at once I feel Ashleys death dislodge, slip, catch the air. Its like being ripped open, but good. Then I feel the rest of my grief pouring out behind it, loosed on the wind, tumbling, and I feel perfect. There are no mistakes. There is only the perfection of beginning, and beginning, and beginning again. I face straight ahead in my seat. In front of us, the cars dissolve into brightness.

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