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“They were scary. They are scary,” Betsy agreed. “But we still wanted them. Both Crissy and I did. The ring toss was two bucks for three throws. And so he put two dollars down and, of course, missed the pegs with each one. The rings were pretty small. Not much bigger than the pegs. And the game was rigged so it was almost impossible to win. The pegs weren’t on a flat board. It was angled and, if I were to guess, angled in weird ways. Not consistently, like a set thirty degrees, or whatever. I’m sure the board was warped by design. Anyway, after he lost, he smiled at us and shrugged, and we were disappointed because we wanted the dolls and because our stepfather had failed. We thought he was infallible then.”
She stopped for a moment, not by narrative design, but because she was seeing the man again. He’d been gone so long, whenever he came back to her, she found herself studying him. Hating him. But what was an actual memory, and what was a memory she was crafting from a photograph? How did Crissy see him? Because even though she lived a life of denial—or minimization, as if his crimes were misdemeanors—she still saw him. All of him. Had Crissy ever been able to grok the idea it wasn’t her fault? Probably not.
“So, then the guy running the game said…” Marisa prodded her.
“Then the carny said, ‘Why don’t you keep playing ’til you win?’ He was looking at us so sympathetically. He had this Yosemite Sam moustache that was starting to gray, and he seemed like a nice old grandfather. Anyway, our stepfather said, ‘Really?’ And the carny said, ‘Really. Play ’til you win.’ So, he did. We were there for a while, as he just kept tossing the rings, and the carny kept handing him more. And, finally, he won a doll. And as the carny gave it to him, he said, ‘You have two adorable girls. You have to win two.’ And my stepfather said, ‘Oh, they can share it,’ but the guy said, ‘No, no. Keep playing. All good. And it’s not like anyone’s waiting.’ We were the only people there.”
“So, your stepdad kept playing,” said Marisa. Her eyes were closed, and she sunk deeper into the pillow.
“Yes, he did. Crissy was holding that first doll. Of course. Eventually, he won a second doll, so we could each have one. And as soon as I had mine in my arms, the carny leaned in and said, ‘That will be two hundred and seventy-four dollars. I take Visa and Mastercard.’ My stepfather said, ‘But you told me to keep playing until I won.’ And the carny said, all innocent-like, ‘I sure did. But I never said for free. I was just suggesting you should play ’til you win. I never said it was a gimme. It was just a…a recommendation because you have two lovely little girls and I could see they wanted the dolls.’ For a couple of seconds, the two men stared at each other. Then the carny said, ‘Look, I can take back the dolls, and we can part friends. It was a misunderstanding.’ Then he put out his hands so our stepfather could take the dolls from Crissy and me and return them. But that was never going to happen. The carny knew it. He didn’t know my stepfather, but he knew dads generally and he had his scam down. Either a dad was the type who didn’t want to be embarrassed or he was the type who didn’t want to break his kid’s heart. Didn’t matter which. And, like a hundred dads before him, our stepfather accepted the fact he had been played and gave the guy a credit card.”
“The dolls weren’t worth that much, right?”
“They were crap. Carnival crap. They sure weren’t worth one hundred and thirty-seven dollars apiece. They fell apart in days.”
“But your stepdad really loved you two.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t correct the girl, but she didn’t deny it, either. But she did recall how neither Crissy nor she cared when the glass feet broke off the dolls or the dresses tore, or one of the heads cracked and they finally threw them both away. The dolls had become soiled for them because they were symbols of the way their stepfather had been hoodwinked. The lesson for Betsy? Life will fuck over even the smartest among us: people like her stepfather, who—despite what later would happen—had brains. She wasn’t sure what the lesson was for Crissy that day at the fair. But Betsy knew the memory had torpedoed her, too, and the pain of it could only have grown worse a few years later.
Months, she guessed, after they had tossed the dolls in the kitchen garbage bin.
“Were you ever arrested?” Marisa asked. Her eyes were closed.
“No,” she told her. But if she’d finished the thought aloud (which she didn’t), she would have added, At least not yet.
Sometimes I said things just to make people uncomfortable.
But right away I figured something out about Crissy. I could say any outrageous or “inappropriate” thing to her I wanted, and it might drive Betsy crazy, but Crissy would love it.
It was this inside joke between us that neither of us talked about.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Crissy
I continued walking the strip that Sunday night, blending in with the hordes of tourists. I hid beneath a paisley scarf, feeling brittle and pained.
I’d spoken to Nigel, and he was as shocked as I was by the news that Yevgeny was dead, though he was less sure that my sister was involved. He agreed it was likely that someone had murdered him—this was no accident or suicide—given the Morleys and what we were learning about Futurium.
I got as far as Circus Circus before I turned around. And as sad as I was that Yevgeny was dead, there also were these two facts that left me morose: I hadn’t any idea what his younger sister’s name was. And Betsy had been spot-on when she’d observed that she’d been in town mere weeks and had more friends than I did.
* * *
The theater was dark on Mondays, and so I was still in bed when the doorbell to my suite rang the next morning. (Oh, who am I kidding? I would have still been in bed, no matter what.) I peered through the peephole and saw the police were back: Felicia Johnson and Patrick O’Connor. This time they didn’t have a hotel manager with them. Through the door I told them I’d be right there, and went for a robe. It was nine o’clock, the crack of dawn for me. I’d taken an extra half tab of Valium before turning out the light the night before, and so I’d been in a deep slumber. I looked like hell, and the world felt a bit foggy. I understood this wasn’t a great condition in which to speak to a couple of cops, but I wasn’t sure how to shoo them away.
“God,” I said, seating them once more in the reading nook. My vanity chair was still there from the night before. “Did you two get to go home? Don’t you two ever go to bed?”
“Isn’t this the city that never sleeps?” asked Patrick.
“That’s New York. At least according to Frank Sinatra,” I corrected him.
“We’re sorry to wake you,” Felicia said. “But we have some information.”
I put out my hands, palms up, and said, “I can’t wait.”
“We’ve reviewed the camera footage from the welcome center at Red Rocks,” she told me, and then stopped. Just watched me and waited.
“I didn’t even know they had cameras there. It’s rather the middle of nowhere, wouldn’t you agree?” I said. “Or, perhaps, as middle of nowhere as you can be a half hour from Las Vegas.”
