Void Moon

16

CASSIE made her way through the still crowded casino to the cocktail lounge off the hotel lobby. It was crowded here as well but the table she wanted was empty. She sat down and looked out across the gaming room but no longer was really seeing it. She was remembering Max and the run they had had, how the Sun and the Review-Journal had called them the "high-roller robbers" and the Las Vegas Casino Association had put a reward up for their arrest and conviction. She remembered how after a while it hadn't even been about the money. It was about the charge it put in their blood. She remembered how they could stay up the rest of the night making love after a job was finished.

"Can I help you?"

Cassie looked up at the cocktail waitress.

"Yes. A Coke with a cherry in it and whatever you have on draft."

The waitress put down napkins, one in front of Cassie and the other opposite her spot at the small round table. She smiled in a world-weary sort of way.

"Is somebody coming or is the second drink to keep the hitters away?"

Cassie smiled back and nodded.

"I just want to be alone tonight."

"I don't blame you. It's a mean crowd tonight. Must be the moon."

Cassie looked up at her.

"The moon?"

"It's full. Didn't you see it? It's burning brighter than any of the neon they've got around here. A full moon always adds an edge to things around here. I've been here long enough. I've seen it."

She nodded as if to cut off any debate on the subject. Cassie nodded back. The waitress left then and Cassie tried to ignore what she had said and concentrate her thoughts on remembering the night six years before when she had sat in the same spot at the same bar. But no matter how hard she thought of Max's beautiful face she could only focus on the bad that followed. She still marveled at how a moment of wonderful joy then could be the same moment that incited so much pain and dread and guilt now.

She was pulled out of her reverie by the cocktail waitress, who was putting the drinks down on the napkins. The woman put down a piece of paper and left. Cassie turned it over and saw she owed four dollars. She pulled a ten from her pocket and put it down.

Cassie watched the bubbles floating up through the beer and forming a half-inch layer of foam at the top of the glass. She remembered the foam in Max's mustache that night. She knew deep inside that what she was going to do this night was as much about Max as about anything else. She had come to believe that somehow there would be a lightening of her guilt, a redemption for all that had gone before if she did this thing right. It was a crazy thought but it was one she had secretly grabbed on to and now seemed to have placed as high as all others. The thought was that if she did this right she could reach back across the tide of time and make up for things, even for just a moment.

She picked up her Coke and looked around to make sure no one was watching. She caught a woman staring at her but then quickly realized that she was looking at her own face in the mirrored wall at the back of the lounge. Because of the wig and the hat and the glasses she had momentarily not realized who she was looking at.

She quickly looked away. She picked up her glass, reached across the table and tapped it lightly on Max's glass of beer.

"To the end," she said quietly. "To the place where the desert is ocean."

She took a sip and tasted the small hint of cherry. She then put her drink down and got up from the table. She left the lounge and walked back through the casino to the elevators.

She followed the ritual. She didn't look back.