She pushed through to the heat and confusion of the street and found Jennifer standing beside a black convertible, holding the passenger door open. Dolores sank with difficulty into the seat and then had to pull her swollen legs in after her.
She peered at the console once they were moving. “What is this thing?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Jennifer frowned at her. “You’ve never seen a Jaguar before?”
“Um…” Dolores found she could hum under her breath and the sound of the motor masked it.
Within minutes they were pulling up to the shipping entrance to Three Crowns. The woman reached across Dolores’s stomach and pushed the passenger door open. “Out you get. I’ll go and park this thing and then I’ll get the key for you from the front desk.” She checked over her shoulder watching for an opportunity to pull out, but then she appeared to change her mind and reached across again, this time to open the glove compartment. Dolores was stunned. Inside was the biggest pile of quarters she’d ever seen. Jennifer scooped up two handfuls and thrust them into her lap.
“You can play the slot machines while you wait.” She gave Dolores a little shove. “Off you go. But stay in the lobby, okay? That way I can find you again.”
Dolores stumbled out of the car, shoving coins into her pant’s pockets. Several quarters dropped to the sidewalk and she had to stoop down to retrieve them. When she looked up again the car and the woman and all Dolores’s possessions had disappeared.
She stood still for a full minute, trying to make sense of what had happened, feeling the pockets of her yellow knit pants stretch under the weight of the coins. She wanted to sag against the wall and close her eyes but she hadn’t liked that glittery look in Jennifer’s eyes so she pulled herself together and shuffled around to the front entrance of the hotel.
She gasped. A big poster advertising Bryce’s show took up most of the front of the building. He seemed to be looking right into her eyes and she ran her fingers through her hair trying to tidy it. She didn’t want him to see her looking like she’d just stepped off the bus. There were little trees in cement boxes lining the drive and she stood behind one for a moment watching the doorman in his red and black uniform. A limousine pulled up to the curved driveway and the man tugged at his tunic and ran over to open the driver’s door. Dolores could hardly believe it. Jonathan Finn from Las Vegas Nights stepped from the car and handed the doorman the keys. He took the stairs to the entrance two at a time and just before he pushed through he turned and smiled at Dolores. She thought she saw his lips move, saying,“I love you, Dolores.” She had to hang onto one of the little trees for a minute and take a deep breath. What would Leonard say about this? It was his favorite TV show. She waited another minute until the doorman got into the limousine and began to drive it off, and then she sidled through the revolving doors and into the lobby of the Three Crowns. Jonathan Finn was nowhere in sight, but she knew what she’d seen. He loved her. She hummed to herself, hugging this new knowledge to her heart.
She wanted to stop and stare at the colors in the carpet and the impossibly soft sofas and chairs but she knew from last year that if the management noticed her they’d ask her to leave. She spotted banks and banks of slot machines lining the walls and found an unoccupied one tucked away behind a huge potted plant. She watched a man put his quarters into the machine next to hers and listened to the jangly sounds. She was astounded. They sounded a lot like the notes she hummed when she tried to get calm.
Dolores had no idea how long she’d been standing there sometimes shoving quarters into the machine and sometimes staring at the flashing lights. Once she was surprised by a shower of coins but was afraid of the noise the machine made when she won, fearing people would be drawn to it and ask her what she thought she was doing in such a fancy place. Hunger pangs and worry about Jennifer and her duffle bag made her eat the muffin in her pocket and now she was hungry again.
Suddenly Jennifer was there, standing beside her, just as she had been in the donut shop. Only this time she was wearing a scarf, dark glasses and black leather gloves and she was holding out a plastic card with a strip on one side.
“Here’s the key to your boyfriend’s suite.” She pushed her sunglasses onto her head for a moment and her eyes glittering even more than Leonard’s when he was about to do something crazy. “I think you’d better get right up there. Tell him how you feel about things.”
Dolores took the card and ran her finger over the surface. It wouldn’t fit in the little paper cups but she’d keep it anyway. “My bag…?”
“It’s still in the car. I’ll go and get it while you’re going to the room.”
“Where do I go?” Dolores was confused about so many things; all she really wanted to do was lean against the wall and close her eyes.
“He’s on the top floor where the big suites are. The elevators are over here.” She put the sunglasses on and took Dolores’s elbow, pushing her across the thick carpet, past the gorgeous sofas and into a marble foyer with elevators along both walls. “It’s straight ahead when you get out of the elevator.” She seemed to remember something. “You know how to use this key?”
Dolores stared at the floor.
“Okay, you shove it into the slot above the handle with the strip away from you. Bring it out again and when the little light turns green, you can open the door.”
“But my bag? Where’d you say my bag was?”
“I’ll be waiting right here with your bag.” Jennifer was talking very softly now, almost whispering. “When you’ve told him… well, whatever you want to tell him, come back here and I’ll give you your bag.” She pushed something with her gloved finger and the elevator door slid open.
Dolores hesitated but Jennifer pushed her in and reached behind her to push a button inside the elevator.
When the elevator stopped, Dolores peered out, making sure there was no one in the hall. She held the card that Jennifer had called a key but the door across from the elevator was already ajar. She pushed it farther open and stuck her head in, humming the two notes as loud as she could. When no one stopped her she stepped into a light green vestibule with a huge painting of cactus and desert sand on the right wall. She hesitated and then called out softly, “Bryce?” She wished she’d rehearsed what she’d say to him but there was no answer. She walked into a living room, with another of the scrumptious sofas on a pale beige carpet. Two glasses half full of some kind of liquid and melting ice cubes sat on the coffee table. She glanced at the kitchen but it was empty. There was another half-open door leading off the living room. She walked over and pushed it fully open.
At first she thought they were sleeping, Bryce on his back, his naked torso partly covered by a sheet and the girl with her long blond hair spread out on the pillowcase. But then she saw the blood and the hole in Bryce’s forehead where no one shouldhave a hole. And when she leaned over to get a better look, she noticed the girl’s hair was covering a section of her cheek that was red and pulpy and leaking blood.
A gun lay on the counter. She thought for a second about picking it up, but it was much too big for her treasure collection so she left it where it was. She felt sad about Bryce and about the pretty girl too. But she knew in her heart that what Dr. Bradford had said was true. She and Bryce weren’t really engaged. It was just a kind of dream of hers.
She heard a siren and then another and when she looked out the window she saw several police cars pulling up to the hotel’s entrance. The doorman was tugging on his tunic and flapping his arms around.
Dolores decided to take the stairs down. She could stop at each floor and see if there was any sign of Jonathan Finn. He might be wondering where she’d got to and she didn’t like to keep him waiting.