Page 41 of The Immortalists

“What are you doing?”

He holds Ruby high on his chest, so that her head is aligned with his. Their eyes loom in the dark.

“Nothing. I couldn’t sleep.”

Raj bounces Ruby. “Why not?”

“How should I know?”

He lifts his free hand—just asking—and recedes into the darkness. She hears him set Ruby down in her crib.

“Raj.” She faces forward to stare at the nailed-over door of the Burger King. “I’m not happy.”

“I know.” He comes to sit in the passenger seat and scoots the chair back until his legs can stretch forward. He wears his hair in a ponytail—it’s been days since he washed it—and his eyes are watery with exhaustion.

“I never wanted this for us. I wanted something better. I still do. For her.” Raj jerks his chin at Ruby’s crib. “I want her to have a house. I want her to have neighbors. I want her to have a fucking puppy, if that’s what she wants. But puppies aren’t cheap. Neither are neighbors. I’m trying to save, Klara, but what we’re making? It’s better than it was, but it’s not nearly enough.”

“Maybe this is as far as we go.” Klara’s voice is uneven. “I’m tired. I know you are, too. Maybe it’s time we both got real jobs.”

Raj snorts. “I dropped out of high school. You never did college. You think Microsoft’ll want us?”

“Not Microsoft. Someplace else. Or we could go back to school. I’ve always been good at math; I could do an accounting course. And you—as a mechanic, you were talented. You were brilliant.”

“So were you!” bursts Raj. “You were talented. You were brilliant. First time I saw you, Klara, that little show in North Beach, I looked at you onstage and I thought: That woman. She’s different. Your dreams were too big and your hair was too long, it kept getting tangled in the ropes, but you spun at the ceiling like nothing I’d seen and I thought you might never come down. I’m not ready to give up. And I don’t think you are, either. You really want to settle down? Get a job shuffling papers or working with other people’s money?”

His speech moves her in deep, buried ways. Klara has always known she’s meant to be a bridge: between reality and illusion, the present and the past, this world and the next. She just has to figure out how.

“Okay,” she says, slowly. “But we can’t keep going on like this.”

“No. We can’t.” Raj’s eyes bore straight ahead. “We need to think bigger.”

“Like what?”

“Like Vegas.”

“Raj.” Klara presses her palms into her eye sockets. “I told you.”

“I know you did.” Raj shifts in his seat and leans toward her over the armrest. “But you want an audience, you want impact—you want to be known, Klara, and you can’t be known here. But people come from all over to visit Vegas, looking for something they can’t get at home.”

“Money.”

“No—entertainment. They want to break the rules, turn the world on its head. And isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you do?” He grabs her hand. “Look. I never wanted to be the star. You never wanted to be the assistant. You’ve always felt you were meant to do something great, something better than this, right? And I’ve always believed in you.”

“I’m not like that anymore. Something’s gone. I’m weaker.”

“You’ve been doing better since you stopped drinking. You’re only weak when you get into your head, when you get stuck down there and can’t climb out. You have to stay up here,” he says, holding his hand flat under his chin. “Above water. Focus on what’s real, like Ruby. And your career.”

When Klara thinks of Ruby, it’s like trying to hold on to a rock in the middle of a river, like trying to cling to something small and hard while everything is pulling her away.

“If we go to Vegas,” she says, “and I can’t do it. If we don’t get hired. Or if I . . . if I just can’t. What then?”

“I don’t think that way,” Raj says. “And neither should you.”

• • •

Vegas,” says Gertie. “You’re going to Vegas.”

Klara hears her mother’s hand muffling the receiver. Then she hears her shouting.