fifteen

AT THE FRONT DESK OF another motel, she explained her situation to another manager. She’d left her boyfriend, she had no money, nothing, but she saw the HELP WANTED sign in the window, and she was willing to work for a room. She was going to look for a job as a croupier tomorrow. Night was falling. Her feet hurt, and she was losing her voice. She had done this at least ten times so far today, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

While she was talking, this manager kept his attention on his computer screen. When she was done, he nodded. “Jobs all over the city.” He put a key on the guest book and moved it toward her. “Sign here.” She took the key, and he watched her sign her name.

“Friend of mine’s in personnel at the Alhambra,” he said.

“Really?”

He wrote a name on the back of a business card and slid it across the counter to her. She couldn’t read it because of the tears in her eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He shrugged. “No need to cry. Everyone needs a hand sometimes.”

The man in personnel was from Buffalo. He knew where the Minnechaug Valley was. He asked her if she could start immediately. They were short-staffed. He said there were opportunities for dancers, as well, but she wasn’t interested in that. Back at the motel, she borrowed an iron from the front desk and laid her clothes out on the other bed, the uniform she’d been given against her first paycheck and panty hose. The last thing she thought about before she fell asleep was the phone call she would make tomorrow after she got the job. She smiled and shook her head, thinking about her friend. No, maybe she wouldn’t call until she started a dance class, which she would do once she had some money. She would start to dance, finally, real dance. What was this feeling, though, this vibration in her chest? Maybe it was confidence. She had always been jealous of her friend’s confidence—what must it be like to walk around with that? It wasn’t really a feeling, it was more like a knowing. It was knowing that if you did one thing for yourself, you could do the next thing, and so on, until it got you where you wanted to go. And she had done it. And it felt good. People would help you, that’s what she’d never realized. Before she fell asleep, she got out of bed and double-checked the locks on the door one more time.

Tomorrow was hers.

She was so tired that she didn’t hear the knocking. It had to penetrate slowly into her sleep. Once she sat up, it took her a minute to remember where she was. She put on a sweater to answer the door. It was his sweater, because she had nothing of her own that was warm. It still smelled like him. She stood in front of the door. The knocking came again.