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“Besides what?”
“People are the real devils.”
But Marisa did love her black eyeliner. She also had a series of chokers, one made of leather, and Betsy let her wear them. She wasn’t critical, because she recalled what she had been like at that age. And, Betsy noticed, for a girl who sometimes wanted to dress like she was going to a heavy metal concert, her taste in music ran more to Taylor Swift and the latest Taylor Swift wannabe.
* * *
On their first Saturday afternoon together, they used all of that good waffle energy to hike up and down Mount Philo, which took about an hour, and the views of Lake Champlain from the top were picture-postcard perfect. Marisa was miserable. She was not, Betsy discovered, a fan of the great outdoors. So, she took the child to the mall in South Burlington, and there she was in heaven. It was April, and so, among other things, Betsy bought her a windbreaker and blue jeans and a light sweater. Marisa gravitated to attire that was black and designed to make grown-ups uncomfortable. Betsy was able to steer her away from most of it, especially the black T-shirts and hoodies with skulls on them, but she caved when Marisa saw a black sundress she liked, even though it was meant for a young woman. It might have been inappropriate on Marisa, but Betsy took comfort from the idea that at least it didn’t suggest she was a roadie for Cannibal Corpse or Black Sabbath.
On Saturday night, the two of them watched television and ate popcorn. Betsy was tired, but she had more confidence than she’d had twelve hours earlier that she could do this. More importantly, she was finding that she liked Marisa’s company. The girl monologued through ancient episodes of Friends, critiquing Phoebe’s fashion choices and Monica’s fastidiousness and Chandler’s belief that he was very, very funny. Most of the time, her eyes were on the TV set as she spoke, but at one point she turned to Betsy and said, “The six of them would have done okay during the pandemic. They would have been a good bubble.”
“I agree,” Betsy murmured. She knew the stories of some of the houses where Marisa had lived her short life. Thank God, she’d been in a halfway decent place during quarantine. A lot of foster kids rarely Zoomed in to their classes, and many missed the state-provided free lunch.
“What’s so cool is that they made their own family. That’s what the six of them are, you know. I guess that sounds creepy since Rachel and Ross and then Monica and Chandler started hooking up, but they’re still like brothers and sisters.”
“They are.”
“How come you almost never talk about your sister?”
“It’s complicated. We’re not as close as we once were.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s sort of an actor.”
“Sort of?”
“I mean, she is. But she has a particular specialty.”
Betsy felt Marisa staring at her, and the child’s eyes grew wide. Betsy was vaguely aware of the sitcom laugh track. “Porn?” Marisa asked, drawing out the single syllable.
“No! Why would you think that?”
“Because she’s an actor and you don’t talk about her. I mean, I think it would be cool to have a sister. A real sister. And if I had a sister who was an actor? I’d be all blah-blah-blah all the time. Unless she did porn. That would be gross.”
Marisa was in her purple lilac pajamas, again minus the bottoms. Betsy was wearing the baggy sweat pants and T-shirt she slept in that time of year.
“What would you like to know about her?” Betsy asked.
Marisa shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe start with why you don’t talk about her.”
When I knew Las Vegas was where we were going to live, you can bet I googled card counting. (See what I did there? Maybe I am more “verbal” than I think I am.)
I could do it, if I wanted. Memorization on the fly. Super easy. The problem was the law. Thirteen-year-olds can’t gamble.
Which makes sense.
Still, I could do it. It’s not as easy as cracking a password. But it’s very doable.
CHAPTER FIVE
Crissy
He had introduced himself as Gene, but he was Yevgeny in my mind and that was what I began calling him. I liked the phonetics of Yevgeny, the inherent mystery that came with the name. I imagined him a tragic character from a pre–Soviet Union Russia. An associate of Dr. Zhivago, perhaps. An aristocrat from a Chekhov short story.
I brought him to the Tower of London pub, the closest thing the BP had to serious posh. He hadn’t planned on ordering a bottle of champagne, but I had asked for a glass and so he jumped in and ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon that cost three hundred dollars and change. (Even the Tower didn’t sell many three-hundred-dollar bottles of bubbly, and so I’m sure the bartender supposed my new friend had just won big. Or, perhaps, that he had no idea what a bottle of Dom Pérignon cost.) Then he ordered himself a Macallan straight up that was going to cost him another thirty.
“Not vodka?” I asked.
