Casino Moon

10

HER STOMACH STILL HURT where that other girl hadbeen kicking her all night long.

As she looked in the dressing room mirror, she saw parts of her face were bruised too. That bitch. Who told her to throw anybody around like that for sixty dollars a night? You made more getting your ass pinched serving drinks at the casino. At least there the black-and-blue marks didn’t show.

There were two knocks on the dressing room door. “The sign says do not disturb,” she called out. “The bathroom is downstairs.”

She wriggled out of her bathing suit and put two sticks of gum in her mouth. Pain shot through her jaw as soon as she started chewing and she had to spit it out right away. The whole time she was married she never caught a beating like this. But then that was all mental torture, after he closed up inside. Long stony silences over dinner and mornings shooting up in the bathroom. She still remembered waiting for him in bed and staring out the window at a gray sky where the seagulls looked like eraser marks.

It was awful to abuse yourself like that. Not that she’d mind a drink herself, her jaw aching like it was. But everyone was on her to watch her weight these days. It was bad enough she had the cesarean scar showing when she wore a bikini. She told the shift manager, just let me wear the one-piece. But he said, no, fuck it, wear the bikini, the customers are too drunk to notice the scar. But watch the cellulite, he told her. A customer wants to see cottage cheese thighs, he can go home and look in the mirror. Maybe she could get herself one of those Richard Simmons exercise videos and a can of Ultra Slim-Fast.

What did they all want from her anyway? She was the only girl over thirty on her shift and as far as she knew the only one with a kid. So for all that, she didn’t look too bad, did she?

There was the knock at the door again. A little more urgent this time. Probably some drunk trying to use the bathroom.

“Sir, are you hard of hearing?” she called out. “The john is downstairs.”

She pulled on her blouse and jeans and began brushing her hair up while looking in the mirror. She was starting to hate these little in-between moments. They gave her too much time to think about how things were going.

On good nights, a secret dream of moving out west and finding a new career kept her alive. On bad nights, she’d pretend her life was happening to someone else.

Tonight, she wished she’d brought her Walkman. That way she could listen to her own music and block out everything else: the crap they were playing on the speakers outside, the things men would say in the parking lot. Who needed the aggravation? Sometimes she wished she had a Walkman on all the time. That way she could take care of Kimmy, her mother and the two jobs without any distractions.

She finished teasing her hair, put on her sneakers, and went out to the bar, looking for some ice to put on her cheekbone before it started to swell up.

The place was almost empty now. A blue etherish light reflected off the smoked mirrors and an old Hall and Oates song played over the loudspeakers. The drunk who’d been pounding on her door was stumbling out into the parking lot, probably looking for a good Hyundai to piss on.

The guy totaling up receipts behind the bar was the cute one she’d noticed before. With the dark brown eyes and the longish hair he could’ve pulled back into a ponytail. Anthony, she’d heard someone call him.

“How about some ice, Anthony?” she said, hearing her mother’s arch, almost formal sound in her voice. “I’m turning into a cyclops.”

“Yeah, you might want to put a slab of meat on that.” He smiled and gave her a glass full of cubes. “Or how about a drink? You look like you had a rough night up there.”

“Don’t tempt me. I’ve got to get up with my kid in the morning.”

He tapped a couple more buttons on the register and put down his receipts. “You got a kid?”

“Yes. Is there something wrong with that?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged and she decided he must be eight years younger than her. Probably the nephew of one of the goons who ran this place. “It’s just surprising, that’s all. You don’t expect somebody who does what you do to have kids.”

“Well I could say the same about you,” she said with a crooked smile. “I thought everybody who worked behind the counter here had something to do with the mob. But you don’t look like any gangster to me.”

He winced, just a bit.

“So what are you anyway? The hired help or part of the Corleone family?” She glanced back at the booth where Teddy usually sat.

“Just trying to pay some bills.”

“I hear that.”

She took out her wallet and showed him a picture of Kimmy smiling that guileless toothless four-year-old smile that made her feel teary-eyed and fiercely protective at the same time.

“She’s beautiful,” he said. “I’ve got two of my own. I’d kill for them.”

“All I have to do is wrestle other women.” She crossed her legs and showed him the bruise down by her ankle. “Every time I get one of these, I tell myself I’m paying for braces.”

“You sound like someone else I know.” He leaned over the bar to look down, seeming to take in the smell of her. “Another fighter.”

She decided he was sweet, even if he was the nephew of a Mafioso. Too bad about the wedding ring he was wearing, though.

“That’s the life of the single parent,” she said, letting her hair fall back. “Everything’s do or die. Half my paycheck goes for insurance. They ought to have a Purple Heart for mothers.”

“So maybe I can help you out one of these days.”

“And how are you going to do that?” She lit a Merit, enjoying the attention without taking it too seriously.

A gruff-looking older man with unruly gray hair was watching them from the other end of the bar.

“Well, you know.” Anthony glanced at him once and looked back at her. “Something could come up,” he said in a quiet voice you’d use to tell your best friend your deepest secret.

“Like what?”

He looked from side to side again and then peeked under the counter, like he was expecting to find a surveillance mike among the dirty glasses. “Remember Elijah Barton, the old middleweight champion?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Was this a boxer he was talking about?

“Well I could be getting a chance to co-manage him in a title fight this fall. At one of the casinos.”

“Oh. Huh.”

“Maybe I could get you a little work on the side, you know. Something a little more kinda dignified.”

He suddenly stopped talking, as if he was worried about offending her. She decided she really did have a little crush on him. Even if he was full of those silly dreams people talked about after-hours. She’d once dated a bartender who thought he was going to be the next Engelbert Humperdinck. He ended up stacking records in a jukebox.

“So why are you so anxious to help me out?” she said, humoring him. “You don’t even know my name.”

“It’s Rosemary. Right?”

“Rosemary Giordano.” She gave him her hand. The warmth from his palm went right up her arm and into her heart.

“Well, Rosemary,” he said, letting go of her hand and sitting back on a stool behind the bar. “You seem like the kind of person who’s had a couple of bad breaks in life.”

“Whatever. I guess so.” She checked her watch. Half past twelve. Her mother would be asleep by now. Too late to pick up the kid. Rosemary would have to sleep over there herself, with the noisy old fan in the window and the neighbors arguing next door.

“I’ve had a couple of bad breaks too,” Anthony was saying. “So I figure us bad-break people ought to stick together.”

“It’s a deal.” She stood up, making sure her handbag was closed. “As soon as you get your fight together, I’ll be there to sing the national anthem with bells on.”

“Now you’re laughing, but you’ll see. This is going to work out with the fight. I’m going to end up helping you.”

“And what did I do to deserve such luck?”

“I don’t know,” he said, suddenly turning serious. “There was something about the way you fought tonight. With so much heart.”

She looked hard at him again to see if he was kidding, but couldn’t catch a glimmer of a smile.

It was time to go. The song on the sound system had changed to a hit from a few years back. “Every time you go away, you take a piece of me with you,” it went. She didn’t want it to mean anything, but it made her think of the good times when she was married, before the eraser-mark skies and the syringes in the sink.

“The way you fought,” Anthony repeated. He touched his chest with his fist as if to say he was out of words. “I’ll never forget it.”