Refund: Stories Page 4

  Finally, Ginger’s hand ached and she put down her pen. Scribbling her room number on a paper, she put it in her purse and walked to lunch. She went carefully around the naked ice sculptures of David or Venus that rose, melting, out of bowls of orange punch. Table Sixteen was empty so she sat down, and a silver domed plate floated down in front of her.

  She began to eat her salmon when a young woman slid into the seat across from her. Her hair hung down in long, straight sheets, as though flattened by the heat of her own thoughts.

  “Darlene Horwitz,” she said, holding out her hand for Ginger to shake. She was young, ridiculously young, with the glossy, unmarked skin of a baby. “This is my first cruise.”

  “Ginger Klein.”

  “My parents sent me here,” said Darlene. “They had enough of my moaning.” She looked at Ginger. “Have you ever been on a cruise?”

  “In the past,” said Ginger.

  The girl unfolded her napkin onto her lap. “Are you retired? What did you do?” asked the girl.

  Ginger leaned across the table and whispered to Darlene, “This is what I do. People have dreams that I want to be part of. I say I can make them come true. One gentleman expressed a desire to sample gelato in Italy. Then I just did it for him, but on his dime. That man was in the field of advertising. I thought of him sitting behind his desk, eating a bag lunch, a little sweaty, and I thought he’d be grateful that I could taste that gelato for him.”

  This was Evelyn’s philosophy, really; she had believed that swindling was generous, as it allowed the suckers a moment to dream. Ginger pushed her seat back slightly. She unfolded her napkin and spread it on her lap.

  “I don’t understand,” said Darlene.

  Ginger coughed. Then she said, slowly, “I’m a swindler.”

  “Oh,” said Darlene. She rubbed her face with her hands. Then she laughed. “Should I be hiding my purse? Are you going to steal money from people?”

  “No,” said Ginger. “I don’t need to anymore.”

  Darlene seemed to want to steer the discussion back to more familiar territory. “What does your family think of your job?” she asked, carefully.

  “I haven’t talked to them in over sixty years,” Ginger said. They had lost their parents suddenly, their mother to illness, their father to lust—when their mother died of tuberculosis, their father left Brooklyn to pursue a stripper in Louisiana. He left a note with some train fare and an address for an aunt in Orange Hills, Los Angeles.

  They tried the first phone booth on the street. When the number didn’t work there, they tried another. By the fourth phone booth, they realized that there was no neighborhood called Orange Hills and there was no aunt. At the time, the girls had between them $43.

  “You want to know why I’m here?” Darlene asked. She looked a bit dazed. “His name was Warren. One minute we were finishing each other’s sentences. The next minute he was packing his bags. Now I’m twenty-two years old and afraid I will never find the one.”

  Waiters came out carrying ignited Baked Alaskas. Sparklers on the desserts fizzled, and a faint smoky odor filled the air.

  “I went to my parents’ house,” said Darlene. “Big mistake, they packed me off to the glaciers, to meet people and have fun—”

  Ginger did not want to spend one moment of this week comforting someone else. She folded her napkin, stood up. “Well,” said Ginger, “I hope you have a grand time.” Then she turned and walked across the room. The ship was approaching the first glaciers. Sliding down the mountains the ice was rushed and utterly still. The glacial ice was pale blue, and huge pieces drifted by, like the ruined bones of a giant. She watched the pale ice float by her and wondered when she would forget her name.

  Her awareness had been her great gift: of the best hour to meet the lonely, of the hairstyle that would make her look most innocent, of the raised eyebrow that indicated a person’s longing, and of course, of the moment when she knew that what a person owned would belong to her. Sitting on a train she would feel the money, a roll wrapped around her hip, as she listened to the click of the wheels along the tracks. She wanted to be the imposters she claimed to be: the lost cousin, the secret aunt, the high school classmate, the one who had loved from afar. Glancing at herself in the dark train windows, she sometimes thought she had become this other person; her heart lightened for a while as she imagined what this person might feel.

  THERE WAS A KNOCK ON HER DOOR AT 10:00 AM. IT WAS THE GIRL from lunch. “Remember me?” she said. “I’m your seatmate. I wanted to go to the chocolate buffet.” She clutched her own hands fiercely. “Who wants to gorge on chocolate alone?”

  It was the tyranny of the normal, the attempts of regular people to energize their lives. It was ten in the morning, and she could hear the rapid footsteps of the other passengers as they rushed to fill their mouths with sweetness. The girl was insistent, and Ginger found herself in the long winding line. All of the passengers appeared to have risen for this experience. To maintain order, a waiter walked through the crowd, doling out, with silver tongs, chunks of milk chocolate to eager hands. Another waiter, dressed as a Kodiak bear, was offering cups of hot chocolate spiked with rum. There was a radiant excitement in the air.

  Darlene was chatty. “After this I go on a diet,” the girl said. “A major one. Celery and water for weeks . . .”

  Ginger knew that she herself would never go on another diet. She pressed her hands to her waist, her hips. She wanted all of the chocolate, now. She moved quickly, placing truffles, chocolate-dipped potato chips, macaroons, chocolate torte, mousse, fudge on her tray. She was so hungry she was in pain.

  When they sat down, she looked at the girl and she wanted to convince her of something; she wanted to shout into Darlene’s ear.

  “I’ve had better than this,” she said. “1959. The Academy Awards party at the Sheraton. Truffles everywhere. I said I was a waitress. I said in my off-hours I was working for Cary Grant’s father, who I said was dying of cancer, and could they please contribute to a cancer fund—” She paused. “They were a nice bunch. Generous. I actually have a high opinion of mankind—”

  “Did anyone get mad at you?” asked Darlene.

  “Mad?” asked Ginger.

  “When they realized that you had taken their money—”

  Ginger rose halfway in her seat. “Why would I care?” asked Ginger. “Look. You go to a regular job. They tell you what you’re worth. Or you love him and he leaves you and you feel like you’re nothing at all. Darling, I don’t have to tell my worth to anyone.”

  Darlene looked down. The longing in the girl’s face was like a bright wound.

  “What was so good about him anyway?” asked Ginger.

  “He said my eyes were pretty,” Darlene said. “He also liked listening to the Cherry Tones. He liked to put his hands in my hair—”

  This was the material of love? “So fool him into loving you.”

  “How?” Darlene stared, desolate, at slices of chocolate cake so glossy they appeared to be ceramic.

  “What did he want? Pretend to be it,” said Ginger.

  “He wanted a million dollars.”

  “So say you’ve won the lottery,” said Ginger. She bit into a truffle.

  “But I didn’t.”

  “No one knows what they want until you show them.”

  Darlene’s face was flushed, excited. “But I want him to love the real me—”

  “Who do you think you are?” said Ginger. “No one. We all are. That’s what I do, notice no ones—”

  “I’m not no one,” said Darlene, huffily. “I come from a nice suburb of San Diego. My father is a successful pediatrician—”

  “So? That’s all temporary,” said Ginger. “But the noticing, that’s yours.”

  Ginger had never allowed herself weakness, never told anyone how it felt to walk into a new city, how she chose her new name just as the train slowed down. Everyone rushed by, gnarled and worn down by the burden of thwarted love; she was free of t
hat, new. She would wash up in the station bathroom and walk out, erased of her secrets: the fact that everything she did with a man was faked, so the only way she could feel pleasure was to give it to herself; the fact that her broken right hand had healed crooked because she couldn’t afford to see a doctor to fix it; that she often ate alone on holidays. In empty coffee shops on Thanksgiving, Ginger looked at the food on her plate, and she knew a strange, burning love for the things the world offered her, real and surprising, again and again.

  EVELYN AND GINGER RENTED A ROOM IN A SALVATION ARMY, AND Evelyn began to weep. She curled up on the hard, stained mattress and cried so hard she screamed. Ginger sat beside her sister, a hand on her shoulder. Sometimes, she had an urge to laugh. Other moments, she wished she could put her hands around Evelyn’s throat and strangle her. She was shocked by the private nature of her emotions. Evelyn seemed to believe she was comforting her, and Ginger was surprised that she could.

  During the day, they walked down Hollywood Boulevard, trying to decide what to do. Their breath smelled, darkly, of bananas. In the light, Evelyn talked rapidly; they both listened with hope to the sound of her voice.

  “We will be cigarette girls,” Evelyn announced one afternoon.

  They walked into sixteen bars before they found one that had jobs for both of them. Every night the two of them strode in wearing black tights and rhinestone loafers, selling cigarettes to heavy, sad-looking men with liquored breath.

  Once, Evelyn told Ginger that she tried not to be afraid for five minutes a day. Ginger was impressed that Evelyn could identify when she was afraid, for her own fear floated just outside her skin, like a cloud; she experienced nothing but a heavy numbness. She watched her sister closely, trying to catch her in those precious five minutes when she was clearly not afraid. In those five minutes, Evelyn owned something mysterious, and even the claim of strength made Ginger ache to experience it, too.

  At home, Evelyn’s grief metamorphosed into a bloodthirsty envy of the loved, the parented. She wanted their expensive possessions: the jeweled brooches, the feathered hats.

  One night, she leaned close to a man clad in a velvet jacket and said, in a husky, unfamiliar voice, “I have a baby at home.”

  Ginger, walking by with her tray, stopped.

  “He is sick,” Evelyn said. “Bad stomach. He needs operation. Look. Please.” She brought out a wrinkled photo of some stranger’s baby. His mouth was open in anguish. “I need just ten more dollars—he cannot eat—”

  “All right,” he said. He dug into his pocket and handed her a bill. His face was haughty with a perplexing pity, and Ginger stared at it, awed.

  Later, Evelyn walked with Ginger down the sidewalk and smoothed the bill, like green velvet, in her hands. “I have a baby at home,” she said, laughing. She looked at the people walking, lifted her hands, and said, almost gently, “Fools.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, GINGER SAT IN HER CABIN, LOOKING THROUGH the nine photographs that she owned. They were souvenirs from fancy occasions, set in cardboard frames so old they felt like flannel. She had kept them because she liked the way she looked in them, as though she had been enjoying herself.

  She heard a knock at the door. It was that girl again. “I wondered if you wanted some company. Can I come in?”

  Darlene was dressed in imitation of a wealthy person. She wore a sequin-trimmed cashmere cardigan that Ginger believed she had seen in the cruise gift shop and a strand of pearls. Her shoulders were thrust stiffly backward, giving her the posture of a rooster. The girl’s earnest quality shone through her outfit like the glow of a light-bulb through a lampshade.

  “Who are you?” asked Ginger.

  “I am his dream.”

  “No,” said Ginger. “Don’t try so hard. Wear your usual and add an expensive piece of jewelry. Make him guess why.”

  Darlene shrugged off her cardigan and stepped forward too purposefully, like a salesgirl trying to close a deal.

  “I can buy you a Rolls-Royce,” she said, her voice too bright, to the air.

  “No, no! Just hint that you went on a trip to—Paris. The four-star hotels have the best sheets. Nothing he can prove,” said Ginger.

  Darlene looked at the photos laid out.

  “So who are these people?” asked Darlene.

  Ginger stood up and picked up a photo. “Here I am on New Year’s Eve, 1959,” said Ginger. “The presidential suite of the Beverly Hills Hotel.” She still could see the way the pink shrimp sat on the ice beds, as though crawling through clean snow. “I lit Frank Sinatra’s cigarette,” said Ginger. “I lent my lipstick to Marilyn Monroe.” She remembered the weight of the sequined dress against her skin, the raucous laughter. “Don’t I look happy?” she asked.

  “I would be happy,” said Darlene.

  Ginger’s mind moved in her skull, and she felt her legs crumble. She grabbed hold of a chair and clung to it.

  “Whoa! Are you okay?”

  She grasped Darlene’s hand and felt her body move thickly to the bed.

  “What happened? Should I call a doctor?”

  “No,” said Ginger sharply. “No.”

  She let Darlene arrange her into a sitting position, her feet up on the bed. Her arms and legs fell open in the obedient posture of the ill. The girl got her a drink of water from the tap, and Ginger sipped it. It was sweet.

  “Thank you,” Ginger said.

  They sat. Ginger picked up another photo. “This was when I met the vice president of MGM and had him convinced I was a duchess from Belgium—”

  Darlene frowned. Ginger realized that it was the same picture she had just described. “They were all at the party,” she said, quickly. “Sinatra and Marilyn and duchesses. It was in Miami. Brazil. The moon was so white it looked blue—”

  Darlene looked at her. “I wish I could have been there,” she said. She reached out and briefly touched Ginger’s hand.

  Ginger looked down at the sight of Darlene’s hand on her own. At first, the gesture was so startling she viewed it as though it were a sculpture. Then she could not look at the girl, for Ginger had tears in her eyes.

  WHEN EVELYN AND GINGER BEGAN TO LIE, THE WORLD BROKE apart, revealing unearthly, beautiful things. They began with extravagant tales of woe, deformed babies, murdered husbands, terminal illnesses. They constructed Hair-Ray caps for bald men, yarmulkes with thin metal inside so that in the sunlight their heads would get hot and they would think they were growing hair. They bought nun’s habits at a costume shop and said they were collecting for the construction of a new church.

  She remembered particularly one scam in which she wandered through the cavernous Los Angeles train station with a cardboard sign declaring: HELP. MUTE. HALF-BLIND. When strangers came up to her, she wrote on a chalkboard that had chalk attached to it on a string: HELP ME FIND MY SISTER OUTSIDE. She handed the stranger, usually an elderly lady, her purse, an open straw bag. She let the stranger guide her out the door and carefully fell forward, tilting the bag so that an envelope inside fell out. Ginger did not pick it up. Then there was Evelyn running inside, yelling, “Violet!”

  Evelyn looked in the purse and said, “Where’s your money?”

  IN THE PURSE, Ginger wrote.

  They looked at the kindly woman holding the purse. “Did you take my blind sister’s money?” Evelyn yelled; that was Ginger’s cue to weep.

  “I didn’t,” the hapless stranger would protest, but there she was, holding the purse, with a blind mute weeping beside her; they could get ten, twenty, thirty dollars out of the stranger. When the sucker left, Evelyn would walk Ginger around the corner and hug her.

  “Good, Violet,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Ginger, feeling the solidness of her sister’s arms around her, and she closed her eyes and let herself breathe.

  WHEN GINGER WOKE UP FROM HER NAP THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, she did not know where she was. The dark afternoon light streamed through the mint blue curtains. She shivered and sat up. She flung open a drawer, l
ooking for clues. The room felt as though it were moving. She was not in a hotel. Where were they going? She opened the curtains and saw mountains covered in ice. Her mind was a crumpled ball of paper. She stood up quickly, as though to straighten her thoughts. The phone rang.

  “How are you feeling? Do you want to go to the dinner tonight?”

  Her heartbeat slowed at the naturalness of the question, at the caller’s belief that Ginger would continue this conversation. She remembered that they were on a cruise to Alaska. She also remembered that the girl had said something kind to her.

  The room was decorated to flatter the passengers into believing they were traveling in opulence. There were plaster Roman columns, painted gold, topped with bouquets of roses. The waiters’ jackets were adorned in rhinestones that said: Alaska ’03. Outside the large glass windows, the water and sky, black and clear, surrounded the ship.

  Tonight, Darlene’s hair was slicked up into a topknot and shone, a metallic blonde, in the light. Her eyelids gleamed blue, unearthly.

  “How are you?” asked Ginger.

  “I just want to say . . . I am someone,” said Darlene. She looked dazed. “I am going to graduate with a B average in communications.” She sat down. “Listen.” She closed her eyes. “I left a message on his answering machine. I said, I’ll do anything. Let me. I’ll change.”

  “What?” Ginger asked, alarmed.

  “I tried to do what you said,” she said. “I know how to fool him. I’ll keep calling him. I’ll be what you said, generous, you’re right, I have been selfish—”

  “No,” said Ginger. “That’s not what I meant—”

  The girl stared at her with her reptilian eyes. “Then what do I do?” she said, and her voice was hoarse.

  Music exploded from a band gathered near the stage. The audience clapped along. “Let’s hear where everyone’s from, all at once!” the cruise director called. The room rang with hundreds of voices. Los Angeles. Palm Springs. Ottawa. Denver. Orlando. New York. “Welcome aboard!” the cruise director called. “Time to relax. Shake off those fancy duds. We want to make you a deal. We need a pair of pants. Someone take off a pair! We’ll give you fifty dollars! Come on, you’ll never see these people again in your life!”