Void Moon

10

CASSIE had two hours to kill before her meeting with Jersey Paltz. She thought about going to the Cleo and picking up the package waiting for her at the front desk but decided against it because it meant she would have to leave to make her meeting and then come back. That would mean two extra trips under the cameras. She didn't want to give the people on the other side of those cameras two extra chances at making her.

Instead she stayed away from the Strip. She first stopped at a nail salon in a strip mall on Flamingo and had the manicurist cut her nails as short as possible. It wasn't very stylish but the manicurist, who was Asian, probably Vietnamese, didn't ask any questions and Cassie tipped her nicely for it.

She then drove east on Flamingo out past UNLV and into the neighborhood where she had lived until she was eleven. On the drive from L.A. she had convinced herself that she wanted to see it one last time.

She passed the 7 -Eleven where her father took her to get candy and the bus stop where she was let off after school. On Bloom Street the little house her parents had owned was still painted pink but she could see that some changes had been made in the two decades since they had left it. The swamp cooler on the roof had been changed out with a real air conditioner. The garage had been converted into living space and the backyard was now fenced, just like all the other houses on the block. Cassie wondered who lived there now and whether it was the same family that had bought it at auction after the foreclosure. She had the urge to go knock on the door and see if she could be allowed a quick look at her old room. It seemed that the last time she had ever felt completely safe had been in that room. She knew how nice it would be to have that feeling again. The image of her room as it had been back then made her momentarily think of Jodie Shaw's room and the collection of stuffed dogs on the shelf over the bed. But she quickly dismissed that image and moved back to her own memories.

Staring at the house, she thought about the time she came home from school and saw her mother crying while a man in a uniform tacked a foreclosure notice on the front door. He told her it had to be in public view but as soon as he left her mother tore the papers off the door. She then grabbed Cassie and they got in the Chevette. Her mother drove with reckless abandon toward the Strip, finally pulling to a stop with two wheels up on the curb in front of the Riviera. Yanking Cassie along by the hand, she found Cassie's father at one of the blackjack tables and shoved the foreclosure papers into his face and down the front of his Hawaiian shirt. Cassie always remembered that shirt. It had topless hula dancers on it, their swaying arms covering their breasts. Her mother cursed her father and called him a coward and other things Cassie could no longer remember, until she was pulled away by casino security men.

Cassie could not remember all of the words but she vividly remembered the scene as through the eyes of a child. Her father just sat on his stool and kept his place at the gambling table. He stared at the woman screaming at him as though she were a complete stranger. A thin smile played on his face. And he never said a word.

Her father didn't come home that night or any of the nights after. Cassie saw him only one more time – when she was dealing blackjack at the Trop. But by then he was deep inside the bottle and didn't recognize her. And she didn't have the courage to introduce herself.

She looked away from the house and again images from the house on Lookout Mountain Road intruded. She thought of the drawing on the easel in Jodie Shaw's bedroom. The little girl in the picture was crying because she was leaving her home behind.

Cassie knew exactly how she felt.