Kylie Miller had four dollars and twenty cents and her outdated phone in the Coach purse dangling from her wrist as she strode into the Borgata casino in Atlantic City.
Heh. Borgata. It always amused her.
The original meaning of the word borgata was the suburbs around the Sicilian village of Palermo in Italy. In the meaning everybody used now, borgata meant a Mafia family.
Way to advertise their connections there, but everyone knew AC was run by the Philly Mob.
Kylie’s arm was wound through the elbow of Rita Torres, her best friend since sophomore year of high school, who’d been there for her through the worst of times. Rita was Kylie’s rock, her accomplice, the one Kylie ran to when the worst happened. When everything had gone wrong and everyone was dead or had abandoned her, Rita had taken Kylie in. They’d been inseparable ever since.
Inseparable, and more.
Rita’s red-sequined gown clung to her waist and hips and whipped around her ankles as she walked. Its high thigh slit showed off her long, glorious legs. Kylie was wearing a similar silver dress and strappy stiletto high heels.
Some of the guys were already checking them out.
Yeah, they were.
Kylie had found the couture designer silver dress and the purse in a pawn shop over on Atlantic Avenue. Some con artist had probably pretended to run out of money and convinced a vulnerable woman to pawn it and give him the cash until he could win it back.
Because that’s how con artists worked: a few sweet words, a sob story, and a loan they would surely pay back just as soon as possible.
Kylie knew all about con artists.
Their reservation was at the B Prime Steakhouse for eight o’clock. They passed the bouncer where the amber marble floor turned to carpet, and he winked one fleshy eye at them and went back to scanning the milling crowd for college freshmen who didn’t believe they had to be twenty-one to gamble in New Jersey and were trying to crash the blackjack tables.
Slot machines bearing the brand names of TV shows and movie franchises whirred and clanged, setting off flickering lights as they scuffled for the attention of gamblers. Senior citizens in cargo shorts trudged between the slots while rowdy upper-classmen frat boys who’d passed the ID check gamboled toward Texas Hold’em tables. Executives in business suits held comped drinks and strolled between the games, sometimes alighting at high roller tables, sometimes heading toward the sports betting room or one of the five-star restaurants.
A stockbrokers convention was in town.
Perfect.
The maître d’ seated them at a stand-alone table near the middle of the room just as they requested, and Kylie kissed Rita gently on the lips before they sat down. They’d coordinated their scarlet lipsticks.
They each ordered eight ounces of the A5 Kobe beef steak, plus side dishes, which meant their bill was going to be about six hundred dollars. The bottle of wine would bring it to over a thousand.
The steak was truly amazing, the beef practically melting on her tongue before she could even chew it.
When they’d eaten their fill, they toasted each other with their wine glasses.
Kylie said, “To us. Happy anniversary, darling. It’s been an amazing three years.”
Rita looked uncomfortable. “Yes, Gloria. About that.”
Kylie drained her wine and exaggerated how tipsy she was, leaning with her chin on one elbow and unfocusing her eyes. “What is it, Teresa?”
Rita’s shoulders, bare in her strapless gown, slumped. “I’ve got a flight to Los Angeles leaving in forty minutes. I have a new job as a high-power entertainment lawyer lined up there.”
“We’re moving to Los Angeles?” Kylie asked breathlessly, lifting her eyebrows and smiling. “Are you going to be a vice president like you’ve always dreamed?”
“Yes, but not us, Gloria. Just me,” Rita told her.
Kylie looked confused and blinked rapidly. “I—I don’t understand.”
Rita folded her napkin but held onto it. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t working out for me. It’s been an amazing three years, Gloria, but I think it’s time we went our separate ways.”
Kylie gasped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought we were so happy together.”
Rita leaned over the table and shushed her. “Don’t make a scene. People are staring.”
Other people in the restaurant had turned to watch them, especially the table of five men wearing business suits just a few feet away.
Kylie’s eyes burned. Hot tears wavered on her lower lids, turning the chandeliers into wavy streaks of light. “Did you bring me here to this expensive restaurant just so I wouldn’t argue about you breaking up with me?”
“Gloria, don’t make a fuss. I thought we deserved one last great night together, that’s all.”
Tears dripped out of Kylie’s eyes, splashing on her cheeks and then forming mascara-tinged drops on the napkin in her hands. “I don’t want one last great night with you. I want the lifetime you promised me. I thought we were going to be together forever, but it didn’t last even a few days past my twenty-first birthday.”
That got the stockbrokers’ attention. One man elbowed the guy next to him.
Rita hissed, “That’s the problem with us. You’re so young, so naive. I can’t believe you’d come to a five-star restaurant like this and get drunk.”
“I knew that I wouldn’t be enough for you. When we first started dating, I knew that a hot, kinky bisexual like you wouldn’t be satisfied with an unsophisticated waif like me. I should have known.”
Kylie sobbed into her white linen napkin, but she glanced up when Rita stood up from the table. She’d worn waterproof mascara with just a bit of regular on the tips, so her eyes should be slightly smudged like a damsel in distress but not like an evil clown.
Rita said, “I’ve already made my decision.”
“No, please don’t leave me,” Kylie beseeched her. “You’re the love of my life.”
Rita shook her head, her glossy black curls swaying around her slim face. “I had my things moved out of our apartment while we were here in Atlantic City.”
“But I can’t go back to my Fifth Avenue penthouse in New York City without you. It would be too quiet. Ever since my grandfather died and left me the family fortune, you’ve been there with me. Who will I spend my trust fund on if you leave me?”
“Thank you for a wonderful three years, Gloria, but it’s over between us.”
Rita dropped her napkin on her plate and stalked out, her lush butt wiggling under the red beaded fabric of her dress as she swept out of the five-star restaurant.
Kylie covered her face with her napkin while crying quietly, but she left room around the edges to watch what was happening.
One of the guys who’d been watching them from the next table over jumped out of his seat and sprinted after Rita. “Hey! I say, there. Miss, wait up!”
Another of the men stood and approached Kylie, who was still weeping into her napkin.
A man’s voice asked, “Are you all right, darlin’?”
“I’m fine,” Kylie said, crying piteously into her napkin and not looking up.
A man’s suit trousers and shiny saddle-brown shoes stood beside her chair.
He asked, “You sure you’re all right?”
At the edge of her vision, the man wrenched off his wedding ring and shoved it into his pocket.
Cheater.
And that meant he was fair game.
Kylie choked out, “I’m fine. Thank you for your concern, but it’s not your problem.”
“Breakups are rough,” the guy said. “I know when I got divorced, it just broke my heart.”
Kylie nodded, still holding the napkin over her face and letting the tears roll down her cheeks. “It hurts so much, and I don’t know what to do. I just feel so lost. I shouldn’t have had so much to drink.”
“Well, that’s awful,” he said with a Texas drawl.
“I don’t even know what to do tonight,” she said. “I’ve never been to Atlantic City. I just turned twenty-one, and I’ve never gambled before. I don’t know how to play poker or anything.”
The guy crouched down beside her, looking in her face. He looked like he was in his early forties with a calculating stare in his green eyes. “You don’t need her. I’ll show you around Atlantic City tonight.”
The waiter encroached, offering the bill on a silver tray.
Kylie looked up at the man, horror rounding her eyes and mouth. “Teresa always held onto the credit cards. I don’t have one.”
“You can put it on your room number,” the man said.
Kylie stared wildly around the room and clutched the table’s edge like she was on the verge of a panic attack. “We’re not staying at the Borgata. Teresa said we had to stay at the Ocean Resort because it was more elegant.”
The waiter suggested, “You could pay with your phone? Apple Pay or Android?”
Kylie fluttered her hands as if she were panicking. “I’m hopelessly technophobic. Teresa always took care of that. I should have known she was just using me for my money, but I’m so naive sometimes.”
“It’s not a problem,” the man said, smiling at her. “I’ll take care of this.”
He gave the waiter his credit card for the thousand-dollar supper without a flinch.
Perfect.
“Oh, thank you,” Kylie said, dabbing her tears and letting her eyes glisten at her knight in shining armor, and she pressed her hand to his arm. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
The guy hesitated and then asked her, “So, you think you’re a lesbian, huh?”
Kylie batted her eyelashes and touched her sternum when her low-cut dress showed off her cleavage. “I’ve only been with Teresa. I think I like men, but I don’t really know.”
The guy puffed up. “You’re twenty-one, and you’ve never slept with a man?”
Kylie did her best impression of a fawn lost in the woods. “No. I met Teresa when I was eighteen.”
“Well, you probably never met the right man before. It’s a pleasure to meet you, little lady. I’m Butch Crawford.”
Kylie extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Crawford. I’m Gloria Vanderbilt.”
His eyebrows reached toward his receding hairline. “Vanderbilt? You’re one of those Vanderbilts?”
Kylie nodded innocently as she shook his clammy hand. “I was named after my great-grandmother. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”
“The name rings a bell.” He flipped her hand over and kissed her knuckles. “It would be my pleasure to spend the evening with you and show you around Atlantic City tonight. Maybe I’ll even teach you to play blackjack.”
“But I can’t play blackjack,” Kylie said with a little gasp. “I don’t have any money with me. Teresa had the money.”
Butch Crawford patted Kylie’s hand. “Don’t you worry about a thing, little lady. I’ll take care of everything.”
“I’ll pay you back just as soon as I get home to New York City,” she assured him.
Butch Crawford beamed at her. “I’m sure you’re good for it.”
Four hours later, Kylie hurried down the boardwalk, the autumn night air chilling her shoulders as she trotted. Her stiletto-heeled sandals made hollow tonk-tonk sounds on the wooden boards under her feet, and the wind whooshed through the long marsh grasses underneath. Somewhere out in the dark, the Atlantic Ocean thundered on the beach.
The Hard Rock casino’s flashing lights drowned out the stars in the midnight sky.
Shadows huddled in the darkened doorways of shops closed for the night.
Kylie didn’t walk faster. Instead, she kept an eye out, finding the familiar shapes of some of the shadows she knew.
Blind Jake huddled in the door of a tourist tee shirt shop. She gave him twenty dollars. His old bulldog needed canned food because he had no teeth left.
Jane and her teenage daughter Melody were heaped with blankets in the doorway of the closed take-out restaurant that sold Coney Island-style hot dogs. Kylie gave them forty because she hadn’t been able to find them last week and had been worried about them.
She made four other stops along the Atlantic City Boardwalk before she turned off onto a side street and knocked on a car window.
The window rolled down.
Rita was driving. “You’re late.”
Kylie laughed. “It took a while to dodge the guy and get an Uber down to the boardwalk.”
The doors thunked as they unlocked.
Kylie climbed in the passenger seat and hauled the heavy door of the old car shut. She cranked herself around to look in the backseat. “How’d you guys make out after your C-note spending allowance?”
Alma Gutierrez and Priyanka Mehtani were sitting in the backseat, sharing a can of soda. The dim yellow light from the streetlamp beyond the car’s hood crested over the two beautiful women and glittered on their sequined dresses and fake jewelry.
Alma shrugged and passed the can back to Priyanka. “I went for the ‘Oh no, my boyfriend stood me up’ routine.”
Rita had also turned around, bracing herself with the steering wheel. “Always a solid choice.”
Alma pulled a hunk of bills out of her purse. “Eight hundred bucks.”
“Nice,” Kylie told her.
Rita twisted herself harder to look directly behind the driver’s seat. “And you?”
Priyanka shrugged. “Drunk lottery winner doesn’t know how to play blackjack, and my debit card got demagnetized and wouldn’t work in the ATM. Five hundred.”
“Good, good,” Rita said. “Kylie and I did the lesbians breakup routine. The guy who followed the spicy bi Latina domme out of the restaurant thought he was in for the time of his life, so he bought me diamond earrings.”
Alma gasped. “You didn’t sleep with him, did you?”
Rita’s slim nose wrinkled in disgust. “Ew. No. We never sleep with marks, Alma. Never. We don’t even kiss ‘em. They pay us for the pleasure of our company. That’s our code. If we sleep with them, we’d be prostitutes, and there are plenty of those around here without us muddying up the pool. Kylie, how did you make out?”
“Twelve hundred.” Kylie laughed and unfurled a sparkling string dangling from her fingertips. “And a diamond tennis bracelet. He paid twelve grand for it.”
“Twenty-five hundred plus jewelry. I’ll call Vito and see what we can get for the rocks. Priyanka, do the math, please.”
Priyanka Mehtani stared at the ceiling of the car. “Five hundred for Salvatore Grande’s cut, and then four hundred sixty-five dollars for us three, and six hundred and five for Alma.”
Alma had a toddler at home, so she got an extra thirty percent. They’d split the money for the jewelry when it came in.
Rita doled out the cash and gave Kylie the extra five hundred for Salvatore Grande.
Kylie had known Salvatore “The Gecko” Grande ever since she could remember, so she was always the one to pass him the envelope at church over at St. Augustine’s in Philly on Sunday mornings and make sure they were credited for their contribution.
Rita drove them all home, dropping Kylie off at her place first. She lived on the second floor of a fifty-year-old row house on Drexel Avenue. The ground floor was boarded up, and Kylie could still smell the smoke from the grease fire that had gutted the bottom of the house seven years before.
Kylie hurried up the exterior stairs and let herself inside, locking the door and turning on the lights before waving to Rita from the front window.
Inside, Kylie took off the dress and sprayed it with Febreze, hanging it in the bathroom to air out, the poverty version of dry cleaning. She had a few pieces of furniture in her studio apartment, a chair and table over by the corner with countertops and dilapidated kitchen appliances, a desk with a secondhand computer where she worked on her GED homework, and a twin bed with printouts of photos taped to the wall above it.
After showering, because the steam would also help the wrinkled dress, Kylie went to bed because it was almost two o’clock in the morning.
Before she turned out the light, the pictures of happier times on the wall above her pillow seemed to mock her.
Her father, when he was still alive.
Her mother, before alcohol had wasted her body and bloated her face.
Her little sister, Rachele, when she was eight years old.
Kylie snapped off the light and tried to sleep because she had a half-shift as a cocktail waitress at the Tropicana after church the next day.