As Pauline stepped away, Tiffany turned her shoulders as if to watch a passing car and rolled her eyes for Mark’s benefit.
“Thanks for the tip,” Mark said to the woman. “Take it easy now.”
Today, however, Tiffany apparently had second thoughts. She said, “Honey, I know you came up here to fish, but could we not go back to the lake, just stay in town and do the slots and shows? I mean, I know gambling you can take or leave, but look what I won last night, and I don’t see you complaining. You said you wanted to see those cars…”
“The vintage automobiles, yes.”
“What car was it you said you wanted to see?”
“Duesy,” he said. “A perfect specimen among the eight hundred cars at the Imperial Palace Hotel. Ever hear someone say ‘It’s a doozie?’ Means something superb, something you wouldn’t believe. From Duesenberg, one beautiful Roadster made in the late twenties. Howard Hughes and Wayne Newton used to own the one that’s in the collection now.”
“Somehow I can’t see those two together,” Tiffany said, teasing.
“Sure, it would seat them and Elvis and his ham sandwiches too.”
“So we can stay?”
“How ’bout we compromise. Two days in town, one more on he lake. You first.”
“Oh, good,” she said. And Mark knew she was thinking naybe he’ll change his mind about that last day too.
He said, “So, are you going to win us a million dollars? What would you do with a million dollars, sweetheart?”
Without a pause, she said, “Fix Grandma.”
“Fix what?”
“My grandma is the sweetest, gentlest, kindest person in the world. She scrubbed other people’s clothes and washed their dishes and took care of their kids when she had four boys of her own to do for. Now she’s the one needs care and tending.”
“But she’s in a nursing home, isn’t she?” He hadn’t been going with Tiffany long. He didn’t have that much of a grip on her family.
Tiffany answered, “And she doesn’t remember her name.”
“Baby, you can’t fix that,” Mark said. “Even Mrs. Reagan couldn’t fix that. A whole president on her hands, and she couldn’t fix that.”
“It’s my money. I’ll do what I want,” Tiffany said. She went over to the small fridge in the room and pulled out a mocha milk.
Mark was right there behind her when she turned around. He took the bottle from her so he could open it and help her not ruin her nails. “I thought we were a team,” he said. “We move as one.”
“My money is your money then?” she asked. “My money,that I win fair and square on the slot machines, you not dropping any coin?”
“If I won, I’d let you have half. Come on.”
“But you aren’t even going to win, because you don’t really want to play, you want to go be sleeping with the fishies, or whatever.”
“Just let me finish shaving, get dressed, we’ll go. Hey, you know what? C’mere.”
He held out his arms, and she came to him with her fists balled up under her chin, as if in protection or supplication.
Tiffany said, “Know what? If I won a million dollars? I mean, what if? Like, who would’ve thought I’d even win a thousand? Well, I’d first want to give Grandma something to walk up and down the halls with. A teddy bear.”
“Uh, we don’t have to win a million dollars for that. Seems manageable, you know, without winning the big one.”
“But see, the patients in those hospitals, they’re all so bewildered. They don’t know where they are but they do know something’s not right. The ladies carry empty purses around. That’s some comfort to them, a purse. They can still recognize a purse. Some of them have soft toys, but they go missing.”
“Go missing.”
“Yes, well, maybe staff takes them home to their little kids, who knows? I mean, those people are paid less than minimum wage, so you might expect it. Or maybe five stuffed animals wind up in one room, one of the women thinking they’re all hers. Sometimes staff puts the toys up high so the patients won’t get them, won’t squabble, but can only look at them, not reach them, and that’s terrible to me. What if I bought dozens and dozens and kept replacing them? Like each week, boom, here’s your twenty new teddy bears. Go give them to the ladies. Dozens of clean, fresh teddy bears.”
“Ah, honey…”
“You laugh. But see, I’ve been doing pricing. I’d like to buy some big soft rag dolls, too, that I saw. They stand about three feet high. They sell them at truck stops. I saw one at the truck stop in Jean, when we stopped for gas.”
“I thought you were looking at Indian jewelry.”
“Mostly these, because I saw them first in Barstow when westopped to get something to drink. Guess what? They’re only ten dollars, and they’re, like, huge. I wrote down the name of the manufacturer. I could call, order up a ton. Or some teddy bears. See, I can get them for six or seven dollars, but they’re the bigger ones, the ones that don’t sell out at Christmastime or Valentine’s Day. You go in and ask the store manager for a discount. He’d as soon sell them to you for six dollars, even if they normally go for fourteen, than bother sending them back or keeping them around gathering dust till summertime. I already asked this one guy, at Albertson’s, the manager, and that’s what he said.”
Beautiful little thing, a little on the too-small size, Mark was thinking while he finished up at the mirror. Win scads of money, he’d feed her cheesecake till the cows came home. He said, “Whatever you want is all right with me, Tiff,” and saw that smile come back in her eyes. He turned on the shower, and there she was, in the room with him, unbuttoning her jeans. She challenged him with what he could do with his Duesy. At first he answered like a straight-man: “Drive it down Sunset, Hollywood and Vine. Attract an agent. Next step, I’m a famous actor, just from that one serendipitous event.”
“Fool.”
“That’s why you lub me, idn’t it, baby? I am your lubbin’ fool.”
“Well, serendipitous your Duesy into this, fool,” she said.
In the lobby of the hotel later, they did stop at a slot machine, and while Tiffany plied her luck once more, Mark obtained and delivered soft-serve ice cream and the news that there was a million-dollar jackpot waiting for her at a number of places around town. “Well,” Tiffany said, a light in her eyes, “pick one.”
“Let’s go to Terribles. With a name like that, it’s got to be good. Isn’t that what the Smucker’s ad used to say?”
“If you say so.”
He said, “It’s got what they call a progressive Triple-Seven Millionaire Jackpot. It’s not on the Strip, though. It’s north of town.”
“Nah, nah, nah, nah. You stuck me in this rinky-dink hotel onthe outskirts already. Henderson? Where in hell is that? I want to go where the action is.”
“I thought I just gave you some of that.”
“My boots are itchin’ to go walkin’, baby. I feel it in my bones. I am a winnah tonight!”
Damned if she wasn’t.
Damned if the girl didn’t have a streak of gold built right into her. Make that not precisely 1 million, but 1.83 million. His baby did it! She broke the bank. She had faith. She was anointed.
Mark told her, at four in the morning after the first hullabaloo celebrations were done with, after the first meeting with the casino bigwigs had vouchsafed the truth of it all, after the phone calls to their loved ones, the sex, the promises, the spoken dreams, the tears and spasms of giggles, Mark told her, “Baby, I know you are not likely to believe this after what happened, but if you could erase what all went down tonight, erase the jackpot, put us back in L.A., in that Tujunga bungalow we found together, both of us slinging dishes and searching for gigs, I would just have to ask you to be my wife. You are the one. I knew it from the start.”