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“Hey, Ki,” he said, managing a smile. “Work good?”
“What are you doing home, Dad?” I didn’t have time for this today.
His smile faltered then fell away entirely. “Sit down.”
“No thanks, Dad.”
In point of fact, I desperately needed to sit. My legs were screaming from over-exertion, my feet howling with the pain of heels — even small heels hurt, just for the record.
Nevertheless, I stayed standing.
My father gave up. “Okay. Ki, we’ve gotta talk.”
“Yeah, I figured. I don’t see you unless you need something.” The words were piercing but true.
He grimaced. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Just say it. I have another shift soon.”
“I’ve… Lady Luck has been unkind lately.”
My father, despite his decades of training, wasn’t much of a gambler. He loved the game too deeply, was too afraid to lose. He played not with his brain but with his heart. And if his rashness wasn’t enough, he was so familiar in Dazzlers that everyone knew his tells — like I said, the furrowing of his brows. I’d tried to tell him this before, but he had, of course, ignored me.
“I’ve had a rough streak,” he continued.
“Your last rough streak burned through my college fund, Dad. How bad are we talking?”
That’s right, the reason I didn’t go to college was because the tens of thousands of dollars my dad had set aside for me, compounded with the thousands of dollars I’d managed to save through after school jobs, had been spent by him at the poker tables. Instead of getting the fuck out of Vegas, I’d been stuck here, trying to compensate for his “rough streak,” trying to teach myself basic business tools at night, and stealing moments through YouTube videos and online PDFs. It wasn’t enough — I’d never make up for the lost years of learning.
“How much is it this time?” I pressed. “Just give me the number.”
He inhaled a raggedy breath. “One hundred thousand.”
“Dollars?”
“Yes.”
I found myself sitting on the sofa, head between my legs, as my world was swept up into a hurricane of whooshing light before falling away into pitch black, like tar smeared across the insides of my eyelids.
“Kiki?”
“One. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars?”
“Yes,” he whispered before bursting into tears.
It was the sound of his soft, pathetic sobs that snapped me out of it. I sat up and stared vacantly at the wall, unwilling to meet his gaze.
“I’m so sorry,” he moaned.
“One hundred thousand is almost three times what I make in a year, and that’s assuming tips are good,” I whispered.
I wasn’t sure I was speaking. It was like a ticker tape was clicking out of my mouth, announcing the numbers running through my head, a familiar loop of income and taxes.
He blubbered on. “I can’t help it, the gambling. It—it’s like it controls me.”
“I’ve tried to get you into Gamblers Anonymous, what, five times now? Maybe six?”
“But at least now I’ve hit rock bottom, now I can start to get better. I mean, isn’t that what we both want, for me to get better?”
I’d heard these lines before. I shook my head and rose. “I wanna believe you, Dad, but I just can’t.”
“Where are you going,” he cried, tilting forward in his chair. “We’ve gotta figure this out, together.”
“This is all Dazzlers’ fault,” I murmured. “If only you’d never stepped foot in that fucking place.”
“Sit, we can—”
I laughed, a frightening noise that silenced us both. “I’ve gotta go back to Dazzlers. Somebody around here has to keep food on the table.”
“But—”
With that, I left my simpering father alone in the living room, returning to my safe haven.
I braced myself, ready for another wave of dizzying nausea, but none came. It was like the life blood had been sucked out of me, and now I was running on automatic fumes, the distant echoes of full-flung emotions.
Slowly, over the sound of my dad’s sobs that reverberated through the walls, I stepped out of the sweats and into the new costume, pulling the Spandex past my thighs and onto my hips. I straightened out the edges before taking a deep breath and turning to look at myself in the mirror.
The woman in the mirror was a shock. The red of the costume against the red of her hair was so vibrant as to nearly shatter the glass. The entire outfit amounted to a crimson bodysuit with a sweetheart bodice and a gold tinsel fringe around the waist that covered exactly nothing. There were red patent leather booties to match.
I didn’t recognize myself, but for the first time, I didn’t mind that. It’d be nice to live in this hot stranger’s world for an evening, letting my curves fill out the fabric, tossing my hair without a worry.
I threw on my customer work trench coat and belted it around the waist before taking up my other supplies and once again leaving my room.
