Page 8 of The Castaways
All the cliches about Vegas were true, and they loved it!
They stayed at Caesars Palace, in the newly renovated tower. They had four rooms in a row on the nineteenth floor. The Kapenash room and the MacAvoy room connected—and Delilah and Phoebe joked that this was because Tess might wake up in the middle of the night and want her mommy. They had all been happy then, but there were still jokes and pokes shared sotto voce. This was the nature of the beast, the nature of women. The four women were two couples: Andrea and Tess, Phoebe and Delilah. Andrea and Tess were a couple because they were first cousins. Andrea had been a nine-year-old girl sitting on a front stoop in Dorchester the day Tess was brought home from the hospital in her baby bunting. Andrea owned Tess; she constantly lapsed into conversations that Delilah and Phoebe couldn’t follow—about Sister Maria Jose, or Aunt Agropina, or Crazy Richard from Harborview Avenue and his plot of marijuana out back amid the basil and spring onions. Delilah and Phoebe had had no choice but to buddy up themselves, to prick their fingers, mingle their blood, exchange vows—best friends forever—although both of them, deep down, wanted to get close to Tess. Wanted to be her favorite. Well, you know, her favorite after Andrea.
They had all been happy then. The Chief and Andrea had kids in elementary school, left behind with Mrs. Parks, the retired dispatcher from the police department. No one else had kids, though Delilah and Jeffrey were talking about it—or, put more accurately, Jeffrey was talking about it and Delilah was avoiding talking about it. Tess and Greg were thinking about it, too; they may even have been trying. They disappeared to their room when they thought no one would notice. Addison had a daughter, who lived with his first wife. Phoebe had no desire to get pregnant. She was into her “business”—she still consulted for Elderhostel and other tour groups for the active aged—and she was into her body.
In Las Vegas, Phoebe jogged along the Strip each morning, all the way down to the Stratosphere and back; she worked out in the gym, she tanned by the pool, she had a bikini wax and a facial and a hot stone massage. She dragged the rest of the girls to Ferragamo and Elie Tahari and Prada and Armani and Gucci and Ralph Lauren. Phoebe was a size 2 and Addison made millions of dollars—why wouldn’t she go shopping? Andrea tired of it first; she would stand in the concourse and call Mrs. Parks from her cell phone to check on the kids. Delilah and Tess hung in there a little longer. Tess could fit in things, but she had no money (teacher’s salary, she moaned). Phoebe offered to buy her whatever she wanted, but they had a rule among the group about no gifts. It was a good rule, Delilah decided, especially since she sensed Phoebe trying to buy Tess’s love. That wasn’t exactly a fair assessment, because Phoebe offered to buy things for Delilah, too, but Delilah had full breasts and a curvy ass that Versace didn’t design for. Eventually Delilah and Tess started going for gelato while Phoebe shopped and Andrea phoned, and when they reunited, they were happy. Tess and Delilah shared their gelato, Phoebe showed off what she had bought, Andrea gave them the lowdown on the kids.
They were happy in different configurations. Jeffrey wanted to see the Hoover Dam. So he and Delilah rented a burgundy Ford Mustang convertible and asked who else wanted to go. Phoebe was a no, and Addison decided to stay with Phoebe. Tess was a no, and Andrea decided to stay with Tess. Greg wanted to go and so did the Chief. The Chief drove because he was the Chief, and Jeffrey sat up front because he had rented the car. Delilah and Greg sat in the back, taking in the sun and the wind and the desert.
The dam was astounding, mind-blowing, 726 feet of concrete holding back a biblical amount of water. Delilah stood in genuine awe. She had gone along because her husband was keen on it and because she couldn’t take any more shopping or smoke or signage, and as they descended down the middle of the dam with a tour guide, she congratulated herself on her fine decision. What if she hadmissedthis?
As they waited for the elevator that would take them back up to the top of the Dam, Greg whispered in Delilah’s ear, “I should have brought a joint.”
Delilah giggled, less out of amusement than out of a sense of conspiracy, because she and Greg were the only two of the group who smoked dope, much to the dismay of their respective spouses.
Jeffrey looked at Delilah sharply—the tour guide was in the middle of a discourse on the WPA—and Delilah felt bonded to Greg even more. They were the bad teenagers disrupting class. Hadn’t it always been that way when Delilah was growing up? She had led boys astray or she had let them lead her astray; she was always pushing the envelope, forever getting into trouble.
They stopped for a late lunch at a roadhouse on the way back to Vegas, and Delilah and Greg polished off three Coronas apiece and started telling stories about the sexual mishaps of their younger years. They laughed like fools, spurting beer all over the table, while the Chief looked on with mild indulgence (sex wasn’t against the law, after all) and Jeffrey glowered.
“Why don’t you guys tell stories?” Delilah asked.
They were embarrassed by the question, and Delilah knew why. It was Andrea, the woman they’d shared. The Chief would not tell any stories about other women for fear of disrespecting Andrea in front of Jeffrey. Jeffrey, Delilah knew, had only slept with two women, herself and Andrea, and that sewed that up pretty tight. It was not funny to tell stories about his own wife, nor about the wife of someone else at the table.
Jeffrey motioned for the check; Delilah excused herself for the bathroom.
Twenty minutes beyond the roadhouse, Delilah had to pee again.
“You just went,” Jeffrey snapped.
Delilah had read somewhere that the human bladder could expand to the size of a grapefruit; hers was a basketball, a wobbly and distended water balloon. She had to gonow,she was seconds away from letting the stream go, hot and grateful, all over the backseat of the rental car. She intoned as much.
The Chief pulled over and Delilah climbed out of the Mustang without using the door. She crouched behind the exhaust pipe and lifted her prairie skirt. Her flow ran in rivulets over the hard red dirt. Jeffrey held his forehead in his hand; he couldn’t believe she was doing this, even though it was the kind of thing she was always doing. She climbed back into the car, grinning.
“Okay,” she said. “Ready to go.”
Delilah leaned her head back against the seat, catching the last angled rays of sun on her face. She was happy. The afternoon she went to see the Hoover Dam remained one of the singular afternoons of her life.
Greg and the Chief and Andrea got up early and walked to New York New York for Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Addison and Tess and Delilah went to the Bellagio to see the impressionist collection. Andrea and Addison and Delilah and Greg were addicted to the slot machines; they each walked around carrying a plastic cup of quarters and would stop to play when someone else in the group went to the bathroom. In theMGMGrand, Addison hit it big. The coins splashed down. He won seventeen hundred dollars. Everyone else groaned. Of all of them, Addison needed the money the least! He seemed abashed by the win; he pinkened all the way over his bald pate—or maybe he’d gotten too much sun by the pool with Phoebe.
I’ll buy dinner!he said.Wherever you want to go!
They all agreed this was a wonderful idea, despite the rule of no gifts.
They went to Le Cirque, because they had all heard of it—even the Chief, who claimed to know nothing about the finer things in life. Addison had actually been to the original Le Cirque in New York with his first wife. (She had gone to boarding school with one of Sirio Maccioni’s sons.) Phoebe complained that it was no fun to be the second wife and lead the second life with a person who had done it all—and done it well—the first time around. She complained privately to Delilah as they moved en masse down the strip through the throngs of people, sidestepping the short immigrant men who handed out cheap business cards about massage and dancing girls. Delilah was only half listening. She had had a fight with Jeffrey and could not stop fretting about it.
The fight had taken place as they were getting ready for dinner. Delilah ordered a bottle of Sancerre from room service. It arrived, elegant and cold, and Delilah, wrapped in her white waffled robe, waited as the bellman poured two glasses. She tipped him ten dollars.
Jeffrey was soaking, dutifully, in the two-person tub. The tub was merely atmosphere, it was foreplay. Delilah had it all planned out: wine together in the tub, wild sex either on the impressive acreage of their California king bed or on the plush bathroom rug, followed by a long shower for Delilah. She wanted to get the cigarette smoke and the twenty-four-hour miasma of the casino out of her hair and off her skin. But when she submerged in the tub and handed Jeffrey his wine, he said, “You really disappoint me. You know that?”
It was his choice of the worddisappointthat struck Delilah first. It was such a parental word. “Why?” Delilah said.
“Carrying on like you did with Greg at the Hoover Dam.”
“Carrying on?”
“You were like a couple of kids. The pot joke. The sex stories. And then you lifted your skirt in front of everyone. You pissed in front of everyone. I was embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed?”
