AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How much longer will he be in Vegas?”
“Unsure. Anyway, your sister made it crystal clear that she wants nothing to do with the idea.”
Betsy had discovered that she loved the lights on the strip: their flamboyance and ostentation, the way they mocked propriety and reveled in their garishness. She thought of the lyrics from “Downtown” and heard her sister’s voice in her head—“the lights are much brighter there”—and felt a pang of sadness when they veered toward the residential neighborhood where she and Marisa lived. That world was drab. If Las Vegas was Downton Abbey, she was living with the downstairs help.
“Besides,” he said, as they accelerated after a red light turned green, “there are others who could do whatever Tony had in mind. You could do it. It’s not like your sister is Meryl Streep. She’s a cabaret impersonator of a woman who was known for dying in a tunnel in Paris.”
“First of all, my sister is very talented. You saw the way the crowd adores her. There were people there who’ve seen the show six or seven times. Second, Diana was known for a lot more than that horrible car accident. She was beloved.”
“You sound like Crissy—and I like that! Trust me, dye your hair, spend a few weeks with an accent coach, take some singing lessons, and you could be Diana, too.” He’d said that to her before. Was he really that confident? Betsy knew that she wasn’t, and she couldn’t decide whether his faith was founded on how much he thought of her or how little he thought of her sister. Either way, for her to do what he was suggesting was familial treason of the highest order, even if she only resurrected Diana Spencer in Grand Cayman.
“Well, that’s never happening.”
“I got it. I’m just saying: you and Crissy look crazy alike.”
“You were saying more than that.”
He took his hands briefly off the steering wheel, raised his arms in surrender, and said, “I promise. I’m letting it go.”
She thought again of his Vegas associate Rory O’Hara. Rory, like Frankie, was from Long Island. Rory carried a gun. He was a Futurium lawyer. She’d never met a lawyer who walked around packing heat. Frankie defended him by saying this was Nevada and, yes, Rory was a bit of a gun crazy, but lots of people here were. She recalled their moment in his California king, when he’d told her about Futurium’s connections to the Mastaba. He’d reminded her that while the Mafia deserved credit for creating the fantasy island that was Las Vegas, organized crime was now a bit player, bought out years ago by the likes of Howard Hughes or evicted (and sometimes imprisoned) by the RICO Act. “Vegas is very corporate and mostly above board. Not totally, but even Ivory soap isn’t one hundred percent pure,” he had said to her just that morning, though they both knew that Vegas still had deep veins of venality and vice.
When they reached the apartment, he slid the Tesla into a parking space. They all climbed from the car and he kissed her on the cheek and fist-bumped with Marisa. Betsy thanked him for getting them the tickets, but he merely nodded and said he’d better hightail his ass to the Bellagio.
When she and Marisa were inside, Marisa observed, “Frankie really is Tony Lombardo’s bitch.”
“Okay: where did you learn to use words like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, don’t use bitch that way. It’s demeaning to women.”
“Sorry,” she said. “What word would you use?”
Subservient, she thought, but she didn’t say that. Sycophantic, maybe. But she didn’t say that, either.
Later, while she was getting ready for bed, she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She had to admit, despite the absurdity of Frankie’s belief that she could do what Crissy did, she didn’t have to squint and it didn’t take much imagination to see the face of Diana “Squidgy” Spencer gazing back.
* * *
One afternoon when she and Marisa were at Frankie’s house and Marisa had parked herself in his pool with her tablet exactly the way she did at the pool at their apartment complex, Frankie leaned forward in his deck chair underneath one of the palms and said to her, his voice hesitant, “This isn’t the time or the place, but someday…”
“Go on.”
“Someday, if you ever wanted, you know that you can tell me about your mother. How she died. And your father and stepfather. I know there’s a lot more to the stories. You know I get that, right? Look, you don’t like to talk about it, especially your mom, but I read the newspaper stories online again the other day—”
“Why were you bothering? No one got it right. I told you everything,” she lied. “You know the truth.”
“Shhhhh,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset,” she said, though she was.
“I just meant that now that we’re here, away from whatever the fuck went down in Vermont, if you ever want to share anything, I’m a better listener than people think. Okay? That’s all.”
“Thank you,” she said, hoping to end it right there. Marisa was too far away to hear them, but for a thousand other reasons she didn’t want to discuss the details of how her mother had died or what she knew about her stepfather. Whatever the fuck went down in Vermont. Frankie knew the basics. That was all anyone needed to know. She moved her chaise so she was back in the shade from the palm fronds.
But Frankie wasn’t prepared to end it right there. Or he was, in fact, a terrible listener and hadn’t heard in her tone that she wanted this conversation over. “I mean, you know the traumas in my family. You saved my son’s life,” he went on. “You did that. But there is so much unsaid between you and me. Your sister—”
“My sister is a mess for ten thousand reasons.”
