SIXTY-THREE

‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked.

The apartment was very large, but still could have fit into a Sands suite. She went into the kitchen and opened the freezer.

‘Sure.’

‘You like vodka?’ she asked. ‘I keep it really cold.’

‘That’s fine.’

She set the bottle on the counter, then opened the frig itself.

‘I love fruit juice with it,’ she said. ‘Grapefruit, cranberry or orange?’

‘Orange.’

She made me a screwdriver and then added cranberry juice to her glass. She came around the counter, out of the kitchen, and handed me my drink.

‘Here’s to truth,’ she said. ‘I assume that’s what you’re here for.’

‘The whole truth and nothin’ but,’ I said, and we clinked glasses.

How we ended up in bed is still fuzzy to me.

Somehow, with the gambling addiction, Adrienne seemed a little more real to me. Before that she was different from the other girls in Vegas, something I hadn’t seen before, outside of my world. Somehow, that had made her both desirable and unattainable. But when her feet of clay showed she came crashing back down to earth, where I lived.

And we ended up in bed, rolling around with our feet of clay tangled up . . .

She lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling.

‘You want one?’ she asked.

‘No, thanks,’ I said, lying on my back. ‘I used to smoke when I was a kid, but I quit.’

‘I’d like to quit, too.’

I turned my head and looked at her. She was sitting up with her back against the headboard. Her red hair was down, covering her shoulders and partially hiding her pale breasts. She had her left arm folded beneath her breasts, the other hand up, holding the cigarette. Her lipstick had been rubbed off, and her eye make-up smudged. The room smelled like sex.

‘Why would you quit?’ I asked. ‘On you it’s sexy; dead sexy.’

‘Sexy,’ she said, ‘yeah, right.’ She picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue with the last two fingers of her right hand.

I sat up and looked around the expensively furnished bedroom.

‘Adrienne,’ I said, ‘how did we end up here?’

She looked at me and said, ‘I was wondering the same thing. You were telling me about Phil being dead, I started to cry, you held me . . . here we are.’

‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘For what?’ she asked. ‘I took advantage of you. What is it about death that makes you want to feel alive?’

‘Adrienne—’

‘Come on,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘let’s go back into the living room. We can’t talk here. We’ll end up fucking our brains out . . . again.’

Her bare buttocks twitched their way across the room where she grabbed her robe and put it back on.

‘I’ll have drinks waiting,’ she said, and left the room.