Eve waited for ten minutes. The dollar was spent, and she looked in her wallet to discover that the next-smallest bill she had was a five. She hated using it—it was like paying to sit on a stool. But she pulled it out and inserted it into the princess machine anyway. She sat, watching the door where Pauline had exited. When it swung open and the manager walked out, she pushed the button for a spin. In a few minutes Pauline was back.
“Everything okay?” she asked the waitress.
Pauline placed a bottle of water next to Eve. “It’s fine,” she answered, not sounding very convincing.
Eve pushed the button again while Pauline glanced around and then leaned back against the machine beside Eve. “This job,” Pauline said, blowing out a long breath. She shook her head.
“How long you been doing it?” Eve asked.
“What? Waitressing? Here?”
Eve nodded.
She hesitated, appeared to be counting up the years. “I’m coming up on my six-month anniversary here. They keep telling me I’ll move into the poker rooms or over to the tables when there’s an opening.” She slid the tray beneath her arm. “But so far, it’s just been the graveyard slots. There’s not a lot of movement right now.”
“What’s that mean?” Eve asked.
“It means girls aren’t leaving their jobs. It means it ain’t so easy anymore to make a lot of money like it used to be.”
“How long have you been in Vegas?” Eve swiveled in her chair to face the waitress.
Pauline shrugged. “I don’t know. Nine or ten years. I came out here to dance.” She looked at Eve. “Dorisanne and I had that in common. And neither one of us ever got much of a shot. We had that in common too.”
“But you stayed,” Eve said.
“Yeah, well, where else you going to go?” She sounded tired. Her voice was flat, defeated.
Eve studied her and wondered if Dorisanne sounded the same. She wondered if her sister was working the same kind of late-night shifts, still dreaming of making it as a showgirl. They spoke so seldom about life in Las Vegas. She didn’t know whether her sister was happy or not.
“Did you and Dorisanne spend a lot of time together?”
Pauline looked at Eve. “Some, I guess,” she replied. “We aren’t best friends or anything like that. Steve doesn’t like Robbie all that much, so he doesn’t want me over there.”
“Is Steve your husband?”
Pauline gave a short laugh. “Boyfriend,” she answered.
“Steve’s not the marrying kind,” she added.
Eve didn’t know what to say.
“But that’s okay. I don’t really want to be married again anyway.”
Eve nodded, acting as if she understood.
“You ever miss dating or having a boyfriend?” Pauline asked. “I always wondered about that with nuns.”
Eve thought about the question. “I don’t think so,” she replied. “I really never dated much in high school, and then in college I was trying to decide about the convent. I just never gave it much thought.”
“Dorisanne said you had a boyfriend once.”
That bit of news surprised Eve. She had not talked about David in a long time. She hadn’t even known that Dorisanne remembered their relationship.
“Once,” she responded, hoping not to have to say more. She turned back to the machine and pushed the button.
There was a lull in the conversation, and Eve suddenly remembered something. She turned to Pauline. “You said that Dorisanne told you something else when you saw her.”
Pauline waited.
“You said that she told you not to let anybody in her apartment.” Eve was recalling the earlier conversation. “Why did she say that?”
Pauline thought about the question. “I don’t know.”
“Did she think somebody might try to get into her place?” Somehow, this information seemed important, Eve thought. This might be a clue as to why Dorisanne had left so abruptly.
“There were these two guys one time,” Pauline recalled.
“What two guys?”
“I don’t know. They weren’t all that social, if you know what I mean.”
Eve nodded, even though she really didn’t know. “Do you think they were trying to collect money?”
Pauline watched Eve. She paused. “You know about that?”
“I know Robbie had some debts, and I know he sometimes couldn’t pay them. Is that who you think those two guys were?”
Pauline shrugged. “I try to stay out of people’s business,” she said. “Steve tells me that I’m too nosy.”
“But you do, don’t you?” Eve pushed. “You think those two guys were trying to get money from Robbie.”
“Yeah, I think that’s who they were.”
“And is that who you think Dorisanne was talking about when she said not to let anybody in her place?”
“Maybe,” Pauline responded. “Or maybe she was talking about Travis.”
“Who’s Travis?”
“The night manager at the apartment. We’ve caught him snooping around before.”
“You and Steve?”
She shook her head.
“You and Dorisanne?”
She nodded.
“At her place?”
She nodded again. “She thought he was working for the men trying to get the money from Robbie.”
Eve sighed. None of this was really helping her figure out where her sister had disappeared to, but she did think that another trip to the apartment was going to be necessary. Maybe Daniel could get something from this Travis guy.
Pauline looked ahead and Eve followed her glance. The manager was coming back in their direction.
“Look, I got to get moving.”
“Wait,” Eve called out.
Pauline turned back toward her.
“If Dorisanne told you not to let anybody into her apartment, that must mean you can get in there.”
There was no answer.
“Do you have a key?” Eve asked.
Pauline didn’t respond.
“I just want to see if she left something, a clue maybe that might help me know where she is. You can go with me to make sure I don’t take anything.”
Pauline pulled a tube of lipstick from the front of her uniform and blotted her lips with the bright red color. She looked in the machine where she stood to see her reflection and placed the lipstick back in the front of the tight one-piece costume. “Come over tomorrow after lunch, about two, and I’ll let you in.” She looked Eve squarely in the eye. “But not before then. Steve works in the afternoon, and he won’t be gone until then.”
Eve nodded.
Pauline turned and left before Eve could thank her. She pushed the button one last time, and, much to her surprise, the bells and whistles she had heard from other machines started blaring from her own. She watched as the screen in front of her lit up. “Well for heaven’s sake,” she said to no one in particular.
“I don’t really think heaven has anything to do with it,” came a voice from behind her. “But of course, you’d know more about that than I would.”