Читать книгу Catch 26: A Novel - Carol Prisant - Страница 10

Almost three exhausting and thrilling hours later, a buoyant Frannie Turner, clasping her woolen lapels as she leaned across the car seat, checked her image in the rearview mirror one more time. Her hair was so chic, with all these subtle auburn highlights. It felt all springy and soft and … feminine, too. She loved this hair.

What would Stanley say?

Well, if he didn’t like it, she just wouldn’t care. Anyway, Stanley hated change in general: computers, cell phones, new people, haircuts.

She clutched the icy wheel. And if her hair upset him, what, for God’s sake, would he say when he heard about the date she’d made to meet Randi for a drink tonight at the Admiral Casino? Alone?

Oh God. An evening out that didn’t include Stanley was as much unlike her as … this wonderful hair. But Randi had incredibly and generously offered to divulge to Frannie what she called her private arsenal of “age-defying secrets.” And since she was leaving St. Louis the following morning, she’d suggested they meet tonight.

Frannie’s hands were cold. Pulling on her brown-leather gloves, she started up the car, but sat for a minute more, the engine idling. She’d let it warm up while she thought about how to handle this. On the pretext of fixing her scarf, she checked the mirror once again. She’d never be a Randi, but right this minute, she thought she looked, well – pretty great.

Frannie tapped at the radio buttons with fingers that were warming up at last. She’d figure it out on the way home. But right now, she was feeling like a lot of Elvis. Or the Stones.

As she entered the house, she could hear Stanley putting something in the dishwasher and she felt the familiar dull flutter behind her breastbone. She could tell him that Arlene and Marge wanted to meet her tonight to, what? Watch an awards show? That might be good. He’d be disdainful, but he’d find less fault with some “girl thing” than he would with her going to the Admiral, of all places. Would a benefit committee meeting be better? Or … what? The meeting with Randi felt crucial.

He’d heard the closet door close and, frowning, limped out of the kitchen.

“My God, what have you done to yourself?”

“I thought you’d like it, Stanley,” she replied, self-consciously reaching up to touch her hair and pausing at her earring. Frannie managed a grin. “What do you think? All the girls in the beauty shop said they thought I looked terrific.”

“Well, what would you expect them to say?” He turned away, and stiffly she followed him back to the kitchen, where he busied himself with the glasses in the dishwasher.

“You know they’re there to sell you expensive haircuts, don’t you? I mean your hair looks okay, I guess, but have you ever heard anyone say to someone leaving a beauty shop that they looked worse than when they walked in? They’re employees there, aren’t they?”

Why did he have to prick her every balloon? Make her feel ignorant? Was it unintentional, or was it really about him and her? Maybe he just needed to show her, once again, how smart he was. Because it was important to Stanley to be smart, although Frannie knew he was. He’d graduated eleventh in his class at dental school.

“Well, what is it you don’t like about it, Stanley?”

She primped a tiny bit but he wouldn’t look her way.

“It was better the old way. You know I always like things the old way.” Delighted with his own eccentricity, he smiled a lovely smile and readjusted a tumbler. When he smiled like that, she sometimes remembered how much she’d once loved him.

“Anyhow, you trying to look younger or something? We’re neither of us ever going to be that again. You’re not some kid, you know.”

With one unpleasantly damp hand, he pulled her own away from the earring her fingers had stuck on and pulled her into the light. “See those?” His finger tapped what she knew were the liver spots on her face. “And these?” He pointed to the backs of her hands. “You can’t change what you’ve become. Just accept it. Like I do.” He shut the dishwasher hard and yawned. “And that reminds me, Helen Maynard called.”

That reminded him?

“She said not to let you forget that tonight is their party for Norman’s nephew and that she called you about it a month ago and you said we’d come. Have we met him?”

Norman’s nephew. A low bell chimed.

“Oh, you remember, Stanley. He’s the one that’s been staying with them while he’s in law school. And no, we’ve never met him.”

He was about to begin the familiar litany about dumb parties and people they didn’t know, but Frannie broke in. “You know, I really don’t want to go tonight either.”

He turned to her, surprised.

“Well, we’d better. What do you want me to do? Go alone? And anyhow,” he squeezed some hand sanitizer onto his palms and rubbed them together, massaging his fingers and his thumbs “the way Helen sounded on the phone, I got the feeling that maybe a lot of other people have decided not to go. She said, quote unquote, that she needs us. Though what do a bunch of seniors have to say to a law-school student, anyhow?”

“So she’s counting on us?”

“It sounded like it. And anyway, what? You have something better to do?”

His grimace bared his yellowed teeth. They were all his own. He was so proud of that.

Frannie didn’t answer for a minute. He waited.

“All right,” she said, with aching reluctance. “Let me make a phone call. Then I’ll start getting myself together.”

Dragging her handbag off the little hall table, she tucked it under her arm, shut the bedroom door and lowered herself awkwardly into the low Victorian slipper chair. On her dresser, among the photos of Stanley on his boat and Stanley with his golf foursome and Frannie with her mom, was that old, old picture of the two of them, taken a day or so after they got engaged.

Frannie closed her eyes. Randi’s number was right in this purse in her lap.

She didn’t want to make this call.

She opened her eyes to those photos.

He’d been so handsome then, Stanley. She’d almost forgotten. Not handsome, exactly, but cute. At least, that’s what her friends had said: “cute.” He’d been taller, of course – maybe a couple of inches – and he’d had that wet-sand blonde hair (so soft, it might have been a girl’s) and she’d liked the way it grew on the back of his neck. In certain lights, Stanley’s chin had the shadow of a cleft – like Cary Grant’s. Plus, there was a scatter of freckles on his nose that were cute, definitely cute. He’d seemed sexy and unique back then. And so mature. She’d loved the way he dressed: Harris-tweed jackets; blue Oxford-cloth button-down shirts slightly chewed at the collar, yet neat; rep ties; wrinkled khakis. And when, among summer’s long shadows, they’d French-kissed on the lawn behind her grandparents’ house in Clayton, he’d seemed so gentle, so easy to be with, so adult, and yet so interestingly remote in what she took to be a mature and manly way. Okay, a little insecure every now and then – she remembered noticing that – but unquestionably sophisticated. He’d given her a book about Norman Rockwell. He could whistle Carmen. She was sure he knew it all.

Although she knew a little bit as well.

She’d never wanted Stanley to find out, naturally, or to think she was “fast”, but Frances Elizabeth Kaye had, in fact, gone all the way with Arthur, her previous boyfriend. She hadn’t told her friends, or her mother, God forbid, or anyone else at all. Ever. Which may have been why, in her freshly unvirginal heart, her transgression had oppressed her so. And festered. And it was certainly why, if she hoped to save herself from slut-dom – if she hoped to marry and have children and be good – Stanley Turner looked like It.

He was responsible and safe. They both liked barbecue. And Dylan. And crucially, he’d told her that he loved her. Which was why, when he’d proposed after two years of going steady, Frannie, faux-reluctantly, had agreed to have sex before marriage with him. Mainly because Stanley was concerned about whether he would fit or not, an issue that seemed to consume him.

He did, of course.

But Frannie could have told him he would.

She’d thought they’d have babies right away. She was delighted to learn he wanted them too.

But after they’d been married for a year or so and nothing had happened, Frannie grew anxious – a little. She’d always assumed she’d be one of those girls who got pregnant right away. Otherwise, why all those warnings about premarital sex?

It was on their third anniversary that Frannie showed him her hidden stash of having-a-baby books, and the carefully kept ovulation calendar. He was surprised, pleased, and enthusiastic.

But the baby didn’t come.

They tried for months, and then for years. To the point of arguments, silences and eventually – to the grueling rounds of doctors, recommended positions, blood tests, to the rabbits that didn’t die. And every now and then, in those first years, sitting side by side on the sofa watching sitcoms with kids, or in bed after sex, Frannie and Stanley would cry.

So she started on hormone pills. The latest thing.

Seven, twelve years went by and she didn’t conceive. Despondent, now, they made the trip to the office of the famous Chicago gynecologist who, having subjected her to a weeks-long sequence of questionnaires, blood tests, x-rays, and painful exams (slumped in her slipper chair, Frannie caught her breath) he’d announced she could never have children.

Frannie hauled herself up out of the chair and leaned against the wall beside her “Primavera”.

After that, Stanley had changed.

He went to bed early.

But she was sorry, she’d said.

Rolled over when she slipped in beside him.

But she was sorry, she’d told him again.

Avoided her goodnight kiss.

Oh God, she was so sorry.

He slept in the guestroom for a long time after that. Left the house without a goodbye. Picked at her about her clothes, her lateness, her smile. (Her smile!) And why hadn’t she filled the gas tank? Did they really need another new painting? Wasn’t she supposed to walk the dog? And just what did she do all day?

Early on, she’d thought he was having an affair with the hygienist. Gradually however, she understood he no longer liked her.

So she’d asked.

Once.

They’d been driving home from a party at the Hargreaves’, the same party where a sweaty Peter Hargreaves had danced her into his mother-in-law’s empty bedroom and kissed her wetly, his mouth a wash of gin and weed. Where Frannie had shocked herself by kissing him back, pulling him to her, yanking at his belt.

Peter had moved away from her a little, thrilled.

“Do you want to?” he’d asked.

Days later she thought that if he hadn’t asked.… if he hadn’t asked, it would have all gone well. Because she liked Peter. Liked his sweet-smelling pipe and his pocket watch. His seductive grin. If she’d been honest with herself – which she mostly tried to be – of all their male friends, he was the one she most often thought about in bed. Still, his question brought her up short.

Adultery. Her?

But that night at the party, her body burned for him, and moving to the open window, she slid its filmy curtains aside and leaned her elbows on the sill, pretending to look out, but really, offering Peter her, um … ass.

If he comes over here now, if he touches me and, all right, even if he outright asks again, she told herself, I’ll do it.

She heard the bedsprings sigh behind her.

No! He’d just sat down!

She turned to face his shadow on the bed.

“So do you want to?” he asked huskily. “Tell me if you do. I’m right here – ready.” He’d unzipped his fly and although it was very dark, she was fairly sure he was waggling his penis at her.

Why hadn’t he just “taken her”, the way they did in books? She’d been hoping to be taken in adultery.

“Damn it, Peter. Why ask? Why make me say it? Why not just do it?”

And all at once, she found the wine was wearing off, so that before he could zip his fly or open his mouth, she’d rushed past him, back to the party, panicky and ashamed.

It was on their way home that she’d asked.

“Why don’t we make love anymore?”

Oh God, here she was, outright asking, just the way Peter had. She should just have reached over and rubbed him some. He used to like that.

But now she couldn’t stop.

“What’s the problem with us, Stanley? I’m nice-looking. People tell me that. Other men think I’m attractive.”

The pleading in her own voice made her start to weep.

She dashed away the tears, drew herself up on the seat beside him, and wooden and rigid, she stared through the windshield into the dark, one eyelid twitching helplessly.

She needed to know.

“Why don’t you sleep with me anymore?”

Stanley’s eyes flicked her way before fixing again on the road. He’d raked his still-fair hair and pinched his nostrils between thumb and forefinger, a familiar, pre-outburst gesture.

“What’s the point?”

Frannie froze.

“What do you mean?”

His hands, the tendons taut, slid higher on the steering wheel.

“Truth?” Stanley asked.

She sat frozen as he fumbled at his breast pocket for his cigarettes, held the pack to his mouth, lipped one out, pushed the dashboard lighter, and stared into the oncoming lights. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

“It isn’t ‘what’s the point’ at all. It’s that, really, I can’t help it. And I know you can’t help it, either. So I’m sorry. I am.

“But it started after you saw that doctor in Chicago. I started not, um.… not to want you anymore. It was as if I’d, maybe unconsciously, needed a point to our lovemaking, I suppose. I know that’s not how most men feel. But I always wanted a family. Kids. You know?”

He turned toward her in the darkened car. The onrushing streetlamps illumined a kid-like smile.

Frannie forced her eyes back to the road. Hot with agony and stiff with rectitude, she sat there, breathing in, breathing out, until after several wretched minutes, she felt something weighty shifting in her chest. Something shocking.

He didn’t want her.

In her bedroom now, she looked away from all the photographs: from his remote eyes, and – she saw it now – her own, naive smile.

She could have left him then. Should have.

She turned the radio off and, carrying her purse to the closet, took two hundred-dollar bills from the toe of her worn navy heels.

Stanley was nodding in his leather chair.

Frannie cautiously turned the hockey volume down and, almost giddily, slid into the Ford and drove a little above the speed limit down to the Mississippi. Where the casino boat was docked.

On a deserted industrial street just below the Arch, she slipped the little car into a legal spot a mere two blocks from the river. Lucky lady, she thought; lucky start to a, hopefully, lucky night. Locking up, she headed towards the river where a silvery bus was disgorging shuffling, silver-haired groups of two and three. Were they gamblers?

Emblazoned on its side was “Senior Access,” and just beside the bus, bundles of old people sat round-shouldered in chrome wheelchairs or leaning clumsily on aluminum walkers. And it came to her then that silver was the geriatric hue.

Frannie smiled and gave her newborn hair a tiny pat.

The old sidewheeler had been anchored here since the thirties. From it, a covered gangplank extended to the double-glass doors of the boat which opened then into a dreary hall studded with fluorescent ads for singing groups and private parties. As Frannie neared, she could see that the slow-moving clumps of seniors were being folded into a long stream of hopeful casino-goers, while, beyond the doors, shirt-sleeved greeters, young and impossibly polite, idly checked their IDs. From the fast-moving line, she could see elevators brimming with the infirm and a staircase just beyond that hopefully led to where the action was.

But in her good black St. John knit, Frannie felt uncomfortably out of place. She’d only been to the casino twice before, both times with visiting cousins from Elmira. That was because neither she nor Stanley were risk-takers. He was a terrible loser and she had always felt that gambling was a particularly seedy form of entertainment. The décor here, too – if you could call it décor, she thought – seemed down at heel in a sad, flashy way.

She passed through the lobby finally: a lobby so dim that despite the deck-facing windows all around, despite the spider-like chandeliers and the late-winter moon, she could barely see the stairs. It grew darker as she descended, until what little light there was had faded entirely away. Both hands on the railing now, feeling her way, Frannie could hear the insistent ping of bells and chimes, the stutter of talk and … was that Lawrence Welk? A tinkle of glassware floated above the slot machine beeps and chimes.

On the bottommost step, Frannie paused to get her bearings. Stanley had once told her that casinos were set up with the penny slots in the corners because they were much less likely to be played out there. The better- paying slots were at the entrance, where the tempting bells and whistles of a win could be easily overheard. From where she was standing now, however, it looked as if every machine in the room – penny slots, too – was in on the action. And playing them all were very large people on too-tiny stools. Not that everyone was large. There were also scores of the slight and stringy Ozarks poor: along with, of course (and still making their slow way in) the crippled and the aged – the silver bus set. Scores of determined-looking women caught her eye, too. Probably her own age, she thought, and looking really hungry. There were young people, she saw now. Most of them wearing their ubiquitous jeans, but also couples in matching Cardinals caps.

The elderly minded each other’s canes while they played. No jeans on any of them, Frannie noticed. On us, she amended. And everyone here was smoking. Inhaling, or thoughtfully exhaling deadly blue cigarette smoke. The burning ash fell on the swirl-patterned crimson carpet. This was all like that painting, which seemed to be stuck in her head.

Carefully, she took the last step and was caught up in the crowd – an expectant, greedy swarm that swirled and surged around her, sloshing free scotch on the rug, signalling for more, sweeping her on. She hated this, she thought, struggling against the current. She had to get out. It was like Hell … riverboat Hell.

But then, over there … her coppery hair and moon-white skin all alight with some innate and curious glow … over there, she saw Randi. On each side of her there were men: young, bald, suited, shirt-sleeved, paunchy, unshaven, all sorts of men, all lounging and talking and smoking. More than a few women, too, she saw now. But Randi sat completely alone in a curve of the serpentine bar. How were they not noticing her?

Seeing Frannie, she beckoned, and Frannie fought her way toward the bar. She needed to shout to be heard.

“Hi. Hi!”

Safe, but dazed, she almost yelled, “I’m so glad you’re here first. I was feeling a little bit lost in all this.”

“Well, hello, Mrs. Turner … Frannie. You don’t mind if I call you Frannie, do you? Don’t you look … nice?” Randi stroked the hem of Frannie’s black jacket. “Pretty.”

Thrilled and shy, Frannie bobbed her thanks.

“I guess this must seem to you like an unusual place to meet, but when I’m in St. Louis, I always feel comfortable here. Though I don’t gamble at all. Do you?”

“No, we don’t either. My husband and I, that is.” Frannie looked around for a barstool and seeing none, leaned awkwardly against the bar. Standing next to Randi once again, she felt homely and lumpy and the drab one again, despite her hair. “But have you been waiting long? I left a little late, although I was lucky and got a good parking spot. Oh, and of course, call me Frannie.”

“I’ve been here a while, actually. Want a drink?” Randi was toying with a half-full glass of something tomato-y.

“What are you drinking?”

“It’s a Virgin Mary. I drink it because the color matches my hair.” She laughed. “No. Really, because I like the name. Though, to be honest, I’m not about alcohol much.”

“I’m not either, but I’ll join you,” Frannie replied, turning towards the seamlessly materialized bartender. “I’ll have a Bloody Mary. A double, please,” she added. She was unpracticed, but excited to be on her own.

Turning back to Randi, she noticed the adjoining stool was empty now and easing her bulky body down, Frannie surprised herself by spinning on it twice, and giggling. I’m already lightheaded, she thought, and I haven’t even touched any alcohol. Any time she was with this woman, it seemed, she got foolish and wanted to drink.

“Hair looks good,” Randi commented, flashing dimples.

(Dimples too. She’d missed that this morning.)

Her companion reached over and tenderly rearranged an errant lock. Frannie smoothed it herself.

“I just love this hair, you know. Thank you. Thank you so much.” She paused. “My husband didn’t, though.” She made a wry face.

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” Randi smiled, and took a small sip from her glass. “But I told you this morning – the hair is merely for starters. There’s so much more we can do. Because I have some amazing suggestions for you, Frannie. You really have no idea how totally you can be transformed.”

“I can’t wait. Tell me.” She looked around her. There were only men right nearby. “Can you tell me now? Do I need a pen and paper?” She opened her purse and began to root through old tissues, hard-candy wrappers, aspirin, loose change.

Randi put out a hand to stop her.

“No, I don’t think you do.”

She tilted her beautiful head and studied Frannie’s face. Her hair swung to one side – a curtain of glorious flame. Randi wet her glossy lips.

Candy apple lipstick, Frannie noted with surprise. Randi was wearing lipstick this evening, in a color that matched her slim red skirt and carmine heels: four full inches yet again. Nothing she’d have ever had the nerve to wear.

Randi was inspecting her. Top to bottom, it felt like. Her neck, her breasts, her varicosed calves. Was she looking for something in particular?

Perhaps Frannie had misunderstood this date? Her breath caught in her throat. Maybe Randi wanted to … what was the expression? Hit on her? She took an uncomfortably large swallow of her just-arrived drink, coughed hard, and was just starting to calculate the distance to the stairs when she pulled herself up short. Oh, stupid. Stupid. If this, this … real, live Venus (“Primavera” spun past her mind’s eye and danced away) … if she actually preferred women, what in God’s name would a Randi want with her? What was she thinking?

Frannie composed herself and faced her friend. (Yes, indeed. Her new friend.) “I’m dying to hear your suggestions.”

If her companion had sensed her confusion, she was ignoring it.

“You know, I don’t mean to embarrass you, Frannie,” she began pleasantly enough, “but I want to reassure you about something. Which is … well, what we talked about this morning really wasn’t anything I haven’t heard before. Hairdressers are like psychiatrists, you know. Only our clients, I like to think, are a whole lot less guarded.”

She grinned at her quip and laid a ringless hand on Frannie’s knee.

But why all this touching? She edged her leg away. The place where she’d touched her felt warm.

“But what did I say? I hardly remember. That I wanted to be young again? Have a decent body again? I mean, sure.” She heard herself laugh – unconvincingly – and hurried on. “Well, what woman my age wouldn’t? Lord, as long as we’re at it, I guess there isn’t anyone who would mind being beautiful, either, if they had a choice.”

Randi seemed not to be paying attention again. Actually, she was eyeing the bar girl ferrying drinks and cigarettes. Frannie smoothed her jacket lapels nervously. She hadn’t misread this, after all.

Still, she was grateful not to be looked at. It allowed her to go on.

“But okay, if I had it to do over again, what I’d really like would be to find – what are they calling it now? – my soul mate.” But now, feeling shy, she spun on her stool until she was facing the indifferent room. She wasn’t even sure Randi could hear her, but didn’t care. “You know. That man I’ve always known was out there somewhere for me, even though I’m married, even though I’m sixty-six years old. I mean, you never know, right? Maybe he’s still out there. Waiting for me right now. Still.”

‘Though you know what else?” she went on, a little elated by her admission and swiveling happily back now to fully face this splendid, useful, new friend, this successful franchise-owner, who was finally paying attention, who was leaning in closer, smiling expectantly, “I think women like me blame themselves when they discover they haven’t married Mr. Right. I think they think they’ve done something wrong. But well, really, I’d like to know. Are there actually soul mates? I’d like to know that, wouldn’t you? Is there one perfect man for each of us, do you think? I don’t. Probably.” Frannie peered into her perplexingly empty glass. “And hey,” she chuckled, feeling clever suddenly, “I’m not even sure that men have souls!”

Randi didn’t smile.

Oops, Frannie thought. Not clever. Her own out-loud musings thrilled her nonetheless. Surprised her, actually.

“Except that after all these years,” she went on, “I know I’d make a better choice. So let’s not call him a soul mate. Okay? Let’s just say he’s the perfect man for the woman I’ve always been inside. That’s the man I’d like to meet. Wouldn’t you?”

She glanced at the ringless hands.

Randi barely blinked, her lashes dusted rosy cheeks. She didn’t move and didn’t reply.

Pleased with herself, with her summation, plus the buzz of that tall, spicy drink, she made up her mind that she just wouldn’t care. This was bar talk, anyway. And it had been so long since she’d sat at a bar.

“And I suppose it’ll sound naïve to you,” she was swiveling right and left on the seat now, “but in my heart, I believe he’s out there still. I married so young. I was barely twenty, and my husband was the first man I’d even considered marrying. So you might say I never ‘shopped’.”

She giggled, and Randi came to life, offering a high-pitched, rock- concert whoooo.

Unaccountably, Frannie felt elated, too. And a little scared. One drink?

Encouraged however, she burbled on.

“Maybe that was my problem, do you think? I ‘bought’ the first boy I thought I loved? And all right, I’ll admit I’m sorry about that sometimes now. I am. But more than all that, Randi,” – the alcohol appeared to be mixing with the unfamiliar warmth of being … understood – “more than some made-in-heaven match, I’ve missed having had a child. I told you that this morning, I know.”

And right then, right out of the blue, Frannie decided that she simply loved this perfect person sitting here, this beauty queen, who seemed to be listening so non-judgmentally, so compassionately. Was this what therapists did?

Leaning in, so that she almost touched the gingery hair, she dropped her confession into the well of noise.

“I couldn’t, you know. I wasn’t able to. And my husband. Stanley? He never forgave me.’

She sat up straight on the bar stool.

“So that’s it. That’s my story. I’m just going to get older and die without, you know, without ever having been loved.”

It had come out of her so off-handedly.

But then, without the slightest warning, this hollow ball of pain blew open in her chest and seemed to be swelling and swelling into a great balloon that was growing so large that it finally burst. And when it did, it scalded her eyes and her heart, so that in the blurry reflection behind the bar, Frannie could see the thing she dreaded most: a crying, self-pitying, useless, housewife.

Was she drunk?

But wait, wait, said some inner voice: a voice with a drink in its hand.

Wait!

A housewife with gorgeous hair!

Oh yes, she was drunk.

“You know, you’ve pretty much told me all that,” Randi said gently, sliding the tip of one pointy red shoe under the barstool’s bottom rung and, as Frannie had, swiveling back and forth, back and forth. “And you know, because we’re friends – and I’d like you to think of me as a friend –”

“Oh I do. I do!” Frannie dabbed away her tears.

“– I just have to ask. And I don’t want to offend you, because I am your friend, even though we only met today,” Randi said, “but listen. Why didn’t you just divorce your husband years ago, when you were younger and could look for someone else?”

In for a penny, Frannie thought.

She gulped her new drink (when had that arrived?), which made her cough once more. By the time the coughing ceased, she had just about gathered her thoughts.

”You know, it’s not that I didn’t think about it, Randi. Often, over the years. But I didn’t divorce Stanley for a lot of reasons, some of them kind of embarrassing, I suppose. And it’s going to sound funny, I know, but well … okay.

“I felt sorry for him, first of all. I mean, we’re not close anymore, and he hasn’t always been kind to me, or considerate. Or a friend, even. But I’ve always imagined he needed me in some way. And then, even more, I guess, well, I guess – to tell you the truth – I didn’t want to lose the security. That’s the embarrassing part. Because after all, I was married to a successful professional man, so I’d never had to work. Never even considered working, in fact, even after working became okay and some of my friends were doing it. Even though nowadays, to tell you the truth, I think I would have liked using my education. Loved doing that, probably. But I was planning to be the Donna Reed lady. The pretty home. The adorable kids? You know.

“But then later, when it became obvious I wasn’t Donna,” Frannie inhaled, but it hurt, so she took another swallow. “Well, it was already too late to do anything. I had no way to support myself. No talent. No money put away. If I’d worked, of course, I might have had a little now. Although,” she went on, musing, “I wouldn’t have made a good librarian, or a secretary or a nurse. And, of course, there’s not a whole lot you can do with art history. Also, I’m not actually very pretty.” Her hand moved to her neck. “I just couldn’t know if I’d make it out there, to tell you the truth. Unless I met someone new. Two of my girlfriends tried that,” Frannie frowned, “and they were so much prettier than I was. All confident and sure, they left their husbands in their thirties. And they’re still alone today. Would you believe it? Though, you know what?” She straightened and added indignantly, “lots of my friends are alone because their husbands left them. For younger women, of course.” She searched Randi’s face for confirmation. Randi nodded knowingly while she hiked up a bra strap. “So sometimes,” she continued, the anger melting away, “sometimes I think I’ve been more or less lucky. Less, probably …” she finished weakly.

Frannie drank off the remainder of her Bloody, caught some ground pepper in her throat and started choking yet again. At last, with watery eyes and a rueful smile, she tapped Randi on the arm. “Anyhow, isn’t there that old saying about the devil you know being better than the devil you don’t?”

“Ha!” Randi tossed back her head, her impossible hair glinting in the gloom, and laughed so shrilly that Frannie cringed and looked around, embarrassed a little for her friend.

It hadn’t been that funny. She hadn’t meant to be funny at all. Was this woman laughing at her?

Then, all at once, because she felt vulnerable and odd and exposed and ill at ease, she realized she was seriously annoyed.

“What are you laughing at? I don’t see anything all that funny in what I just said.”

“No, I wasn’t laughing at you, Frannie. Really.”

The soothing voice – the combing voice.

“It’s only that I’m confused, and a little astonished, maybe,” Randi went on, “that you don’t seem to understand that what you’ve been calling ‘love’ – what women think of as ‘love’ – is … I can’t think of another way to say it … isn’t something fine. It’s this miserable, lifelong affliction. ‘Love’!” She barked another harsh “Ha.” “You know, I’ve made a lot of friends through my work, Frannie, and like you, there are so many women who haven’t tumbled to the fact that love is sacrifice by this other, prettier name. It’s more than sacrifice, even. It’s self-immolation, I think. Sometimes I even ask myself,” grabbing a paper napkin, she wiped furiously at a wet ring on the bar, “are women just crazy? Giving their souls away to men? To children? Neither of which is remotely aware of the magnitude of their sacrifice. Let alone, grateful.”

“Only look at yourself,” Randi put the napkin in her purse and went on more quietly. Frannie had to lean in to hear. “You’ve been married for years and years and you’ve been a good wife and a good housekeeper and a good buddy and all those good things and here you are – after how many years – wondering if he loves you or you love him, as I understand it. ‘More or less lucky’ you said? Oh, definitely less, Frannie, my friend. A whole lot less. Which is why I need to ask. What even makes you think there is any man – anywhere on earth – who might actually be what you’ve told me you want?”

For a few more moments, purse dangling from her arm, hands in her lap, Frannie sat there enthralled. Not just because of the power and terrific sense of Randi’s argument, but also because … it felt as if the most popular girl in her high school had not only noticed her, but liked her. Liked her enough to have this serious heart-to-heart.

But where was it going? Again, she had that testy, gypped feeling. She hadn’t come out this evening to this awful, gaudy place to discuss the meaning of love. Not her marriage, either. Not for a second time today. So what about that beauty advice? All those life-changing tips?

These drinks were making her fuzzy and, besides, she was really feeling it now, a little sick. Things had gotten out of hand.

Frannie unclasped her hands, put her purse on the bar, and purposefully, pushed her third (third!) new drink away. Randi was just a stranger, not a friend. She hadn’t even known her yesterday and here she was confessing her innermost longings to this suggestively dressed, probably not-ever-married woman, who was laughing at her foolish confidences and presuming to advise her on her life.

But she’d be polite. Manners were important.

“How did we get so sidetracked, Randi? I was sort of expecting makeup tips or clothing tips or complexion tips or something, not marriage counseling.” She was hoping to sound playful, yet she heard the words fall flat. “Frankly, I don’t know exactly what I thought. But instead, you keep wanting to know about my personal life. And I know, yes, I brought it on myself. But basically, we don’t know each other well enough for this. And I don’t think I want to tell you any more about myself. So you know what?” She surprised herself by standing. “I think I’m going home.”

“Don’t go, Frannie. Please. I’m so sorry.”

Remorsefully, tenderly, Randi touched her arm. “It’s only that I wanted to know more about you. To know you better. You’re interesting to me. I’m so sorry if I’ve seemed intrusive. I didn’t mean to be.”

Frannie’s attention was caught by that “interesting.” Interesting? Her? Okay. She’d find out why, then she’d go home.

To Stanley and TV.

Leaning so near her breath stirred Frannie’s hair, Randi seemed to whisper, “Would you mind very much if I asked just one last question? Then we’ll talk beauty tips. I promise.”

For a minute, Frannie studied the impossibly beautiful face, the skin, those lips, that voice. This woman was courting her. She was. And that was kind of thrilling, in a way. Because she hadn’t been courted in years and, okay – a lesbian flirtation, or whatever this turned out to be – might be … what? Fun? Life-changing? Terrifying? How could she even think of going home before figuring out what this was really about? Not to mention whatever there might be to learn about making herself prettier or less invisible before she grew old.

“Well, as long as we don’t talk about this morning again.”

Randi straightened up on her stool.

“I won’t. I promise. As I said, Frannie, I like you. A lot.” She searched Frannie’s face.

“Would you consider a deal?”

“A deal?”

“Yes. An unusual sort of deal. One you may even have heard of, because it’s a kind of a special deal that I can offer every now and then. To women of a certain age.” She smiled warmly. “To people like you.”

Frannie felt bitter disappointment. Was this it? Some kind of “senior special”?

Oh, money, she realized, reaching for her handbag. Why on earth hadn’t that occurred to her? Advice didn’t come free. Randi probably had a line of cosmetics to sell: miracle creams; avocado masques.

“How much is it?”

“Oh, money.” Randi echoed her thought, leaning even nearer, smiling. “Money’s beside the point. We never take money.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

Had she misheard? It was unbearably noisy in here. The slots, the music, this hectic jangle of loss and desire.

Then all at once all the noise fell away and left Frannie sitting there, transfixed.

Because Randi had just laid her arm on the bar and with her index finger, was delicately circling the rim of her glass. So compelling was the movement that Frannie almost missed her other hand – the one that was now extracting a filter-tipped Marlboro and a gold lighter from her scarlet-satin clutch. Almost missed it as, thoughtfully and deliberately, Randi slipped the cigarette between her lips and with her other hand, flicked the little wheel. She watched as, after drawing on it deeply, Randi exhaled a lungful of smoke upward toward the invisible ceiling and, instead of returning the lighter to her bag, lifted her hand from the rim of the glass and at last – eyes on Frannie all the while – made a fist, raised her middle finger and held it to the flame. “I can do things like this. See?”

She had stopped smiling.

Aghast, Frannie watched the slender finger turn deep pink, then red, then brown. She watched it bubble up, blacken and crisp until the smell of burning flesh made her start to gag. And still she couldn’t look away. At last, when there was nothing but a stump of charred and crusty bone, Randi dipped it into Frannie’s drink.

She heard it sizzle.

“See?” Randi repeated, thrusting her hand toward Frannie’s face and holding up her middle finger – unburned, all long and pink once more. “I’m flame-resistant, pain-resistant. Kind of immortal.” She dimpled once again. “And because of that, dear Frannie, I can arrange for you – sad old lady that you are – to have anything you want in the world. Love? Beauty? Youth? A man? All yours.” She put the finger in her mouth and sucked the Bloody off.

Frannie leaped to her feet with a speed that shocked her, and staggering, she vomited, splashing cheesy curds on the bar, the carpet, her shoes and, oh God, the trouser cuffs of the large man sitting to Randi’s left. He recoiled in instant revulsion, simultaneously spilling whatever it was he’d been drinking down the front of his yellow shirt.

“Shit! Watch it, will ya?” Livid, he jumped to his feet and turned furiously on Frannie, who was wiping at her sour mouth with the back of one hand while she cringed and tried to move away. But she backed instead into a second man who’d been handing beers around. Foam geysered from the glasses in his hands and drenched everyone in beer.

The men reacted with animal rage.

“Godammit!” yelled the beer guy, “Watch where you’re going, lady! What’s the matter with you, you dumb old cunt?”

Into Frannie’s head popped the idiotic thought that for the first time in decades, it seemed, men were actually noticing her.

Stammering and hoping to make it all right, she was still trying awkwardly to back away when she felt Randi just beside her. Randi had drawn herself up to her full, impressive, height, and before all their astonished eyes she’d turned fiery and potent and strong. Sparks flew from her body so that the group of furious men, frightened, shrank away. Randi leaned across Frannie, grabbed a thick handful of bar napkins, knelt, and began to mop up the mess. And as she kneeled there, expertly wiping the floor and their shoes, the globes of her perfect breasts dropped cleanly into the sling of her low-necked black tee. She held the pose for half a minute, then sat up on her knees and, looking amused, threw back her shoulders for the fullest effect, widened her emerald eyes and purred, in a darkly silken voice:

“I’m so sorry, gentlemen. I’m afraid my friend hasn’t been feeling very well this evening. She might even be coming down with something, um … preternatural. Please let me finish cleaning all this up and I’ll stand you all to a fresh round of drinks.”

They’d gathered about her, spellbound.

“Oh, please don’t bother,” Mr. Yellow Shirt murmured. “It’s all right. Really. No kidding.” Feeling behind himself for an empty stool, he dropped onto it hard.

“No, no, we’re fine,” they spoke over one another, childlike in their bedazzlement. “Let me help you up.” “Let me.” Elbowing and jostling each other out of the way, they competed to help the far-from-helpless Randi to her feet.

Arising gracefully all on her own, Randi bestowed her most brilliant smile on her worshippers and then, slipping her arm through Frannie’s, drew her away and through the crowd to a secluded booth, very far from the bar.

“I like to think of this as my office when I’m in town. It’s quieter here than it is over there. Not as dangerous, either!” Randi grinned. “Sit.”

Fighting nausea still, and stunned, Frannie bumped her way across a curiously patterned velvet seat and dropped her purse on a black-marble tabletop. The marble felt cool, and there was better light here, which felt fine. More than fine, because she needed light to study this person, this Randi; to examine her … flawlessness? What in God’s name was she?

But Randi had become her everyday self now, while beside her, Frannie felt she had transformed into someone tipsy and imbecilic.

And she’d been worrying about a lesbian pick-up.

“Want another drink?”

“Want”, not “would you like.” A sign.

“No,” she whispered, noting her drink was here on the tabletop. How had that happened? “This one will do.”

“So, what do you think, Frannie?” Randi asked companionably.

The woman could read her mind.

“What are you? A devil or something?” She tried for a smile. “I always thought the devil was a man.” She eyed the other woman apprehensively.

“Oh my God, how boring. No, I’m not the devil. I’m her gatekeeper. Her intermediary, you could call it.”

“Her? HER!” Frannie was startled. “And there’s a gate to Hell?” (How drunk am I, she wondered?) “Not a pearly one, I suppose.”

“Not remotely pearly. You were standing there this morning, in fact.”

Frannie had to struggle to remember where she’d been this morning.

“Oh, you mean The Hair House?” She pondered that for a moment. “You mean a beauty parlor is the door to Hell?”

“We like to call it a portal.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Those of us who own Hair House franchises.”

“You mean there are more of you? Of them?”

“I mean there are hundreds, all over the world.”

“Oh my God!” she said, before catching herself. “Oh, I’m sorry!”

“You don’t have to be sorry. God knows all about us. We suspect she sometimes sends us clients.”

Was she having this conversation?

Surreptitiously, she glanced at Randi’s fingers again. All ten were intact.

“And who owns these places?”

“Just ordinary women like us. Like you and me.” Randi paused. “Or maybe, more like me. Women who longed to look like movie stars or celebrities. Women who were born quite plain, some of them. Or disfigured. Women who’d grown sick and old. Women who were unhappy with themselves.”

“And you are one of those?”

“I was.”

Was she actually taking this seriously? That had to have been a stupid magic trick and Randi, a crazy person. But somehow, she needed to hear more. So maybe she’d finish this drink. Or order another, because this drink had – oh, God – quenched that terrible finger.

“So how does it work?” she asked, hoping to sound convincingly interested. She didn’t want to make this madwoman mad.

“Well,” Randi began, looking pleased and settling in, “it’s fairly simple. In exchange for making us look like I do and/or making us immortal, Mrs. Andros, our founder, sets up a Hair House in a city that doesn’t have one. In return, we find her souls.”

Really? Frannie thought. That easy?

She studied Randi’s face in the half-light. The woman didn’t look delusional (whatever that looked like) and she’d explained the “arrangement” in such a casual way, as if she’d done it many times.

“All of them want the makeover or the do-over, but not everyone wants the immortality thing. So we’ve learned to create ‘custom deals’,” she made quotation marks with her fingers. “Like what I did with those men tonight, for instance. Sexual power was a big part of my own personal deal.”

Frannie was silent.

“Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that, too? Have them just drool over you? Want you to the exclusion of everything – everything – else? Be blind to everything else but you? Blind to, oh … sports and religion and politics. And money? I’ve got to tell you, I just love it. I love it like napalm in the morning.”

Frannie’s jaw dropped. What? Randi goes to movies?

‘I mean, if I want to get laid, of course, I only have to pull out my phone, but sometimes, a little thing like tonight …” She lit another cigarette. “You know, it’s especially exciting when they try to touch me.” She exhaled at the ceiling. “They regret it, you know. I’m hot.”

She hooted, enjoying her pun.

“Eons and eons have passed and, I’ll be honest. I’ve never gotten used to this thing! Almost makes you believe in Her.’ She looked toward the ceiling again, briefly.

The velvet upholstery swished faintly as she slid a little closer.

“Really. Be honest now. Wouldn’t you like to be Delilah, Frannie? Jezebel? Helen of Troy? Marilyn?” She took a deep, luxurious puff from another Marlboro and picked a shred of something off the tip of her tongue. “Although Helen wasn’t that terrific, actually.”

Randi began reapplying her lipstick without even looking, and Frannie, who was beginning to think she was almost drunk enough to play along with all this, was momentarily envious. The thing seemed so deliciously … possible … just now.

Although, down below the alcohol, below the cerebral, there was something terrible squirming on its belly. And sneering.

Beside her, that husky voice dripped blandishments.

“Stick with me, Frannie dear, and men will ache for you, weep for you. Women will envy you.” (Ah, she did read minds) “You’ll know power and earthly success. You’ll be ravishing. Desirable. You’ll possess all that you’ve secretly longed for.”

Until this moment, Frannie could truthfully say she’d never craved physical beauty. And definitely not power. But here, in this moment, she sensed the tiniest yearning for both; a furtive tug of lust.

She hoped it didn’t show.

“And what do you want in exchange?” Frannie smiled. “My soul?”

“Exactly.”

She slid to the very end of the velvet seat. “You want me to agree to burn in eternal Hellfire?

“Isn’t that the usual deal?”

“Hellfire.” She repeated the word. And, shocking herself, she replied, “Give me a minute to think about it.”

But instead, she was madly thinking: I am so incredibly drunk to be sitting here on a seedy gambling boat discussing selling my soul to a peculiar – no, crazy – hairdresser. Another minute to think? What was there to think about? This discussion was insane.

Her skirt was uncomfortably caught between her thighs and she was mechanically pulling it free and pressing the wrinkles out when her eye was caught by the backs of her hands. Stanley was right. They were wrinkled and veinous and pocked with liver spots. And Randi’s repellent finger appeared in her mind just then, and as it appeared, the slot-machine bells pinged seductively, and then ebbed and faded away and vanished as something terrifying – something cold and sick – clicked on in her brain.

This was real.

Maybe.

Frannie fought back.

“You’re not really a ‘gatekeeper’, are you, Randi? That was a trick with the finger.”

“Aren’t I?”

“Well, okay.” Let’s be fair here, she thought. “Let’s say you are. But here’s the thing … I mean I believe in the soul, I think. I’m not sure, but I think I might. But I’ve never believed in Hell, really. So what I’m trying to say is …” Oh, God, Frannie thought, are we talking religion here? “I don’t think I believe in boiling pits of Hellfire or horned demons. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think I ever have.’

Her companion sat, mute and watchful. Just as she’d been this morning when Frannie had melted down.

“I hope you’re not angry.”

No response.

“And although you may actually work for this … Mrs. Antos, was it?”

“Andros.”

“Who might be a devil, the Devil, even – I don’t think I’ll end up in Hell because, well … there isn’t one. And this thing that seems to be happening now probably isn’t real.”

She took a deep, liberating, breath, quite surprised at herself, although also a little bit proud of her newly hatched point of view. Not to mention this unfamiliar and, evidently, opinionated side of herself. She’d been kind of … leaking … the strangest things all day.

The voice beside her, friendly still, sounded darker, somehow, older.

“You don’t believe in Hell, Frannie? After Man – magnificent Man – has spent all these centuries inventing it, creating it, fleshing it out, so to speak?” Randi grinned, obviously amused by herself.

“Painting it in loving, sadomasochistic detail?” she went on. “Gleefully, gothically, enlarging upon its seductive torments? Sermonizing from altars and in the media about its imminence? Relishing it. Practically rolling in it. Selling the hell out of it.” Randi barked a laugh. “And Frannie Turner – Frannie-sad-little-housewife-Turner – isn’t convinced? Where’s your imagination? Your sense of sin?”

It’s real, Frannie decided.

“I don’t seem to have either, I suppose. Well, okay, sin, yes. I’ve sinned now and then. But not really, um … sinned, I don’t think. Not in your sense of the word.”

Lighting another cigarette from the first, Randi turned conversational.

“To tell you the truth, I understand your reservations. Our old Hell and those old sins haven’t actually been altogether satisfactory for the last few thousand years. We know that. After all, it’s an overheated concept, don’t you think? Not to mention all that inflammatory art!” She snorted delicately. “No. The thing is, we came to realize that people need to completely taste the reality of Hell, to feel its unbearable pain. That’s why Mrs. A has recently started offering these new, call them ‘designer’ Hells. Each one custom-tailored to the individual soul. She’s been tinkering with the idea for the last couple of centuries.”

“What do you mean? Custom-tailored?” Frannie asked, curious despite herself.

“Oh, you know. Take one, rather obvious, example. Your Facebook addicts. More than a thousand ‘friends’ and we condemn them to eternal solitude. And then there are all your lying politicians and on-the-spectrum engineers. They’ve both got to relive emotionally painful childhood events in perpetuity. A sort of reverse-PTSD. For English speakers under thirty, every ‘fuck’ has to be replaced by a three-syllable word, and right-wing newscasters have to interview gay soldiers and transsexuals for Eternity. (We’d teach them how first, of course. On-the-job training, as it were.) And then, of course, there are the super-rich.”

Randi’s eyes were jade now, greenly aglow in the shadows and smoke. Her body gave off a palpable heat (and an odor?). She was genuinely loving this.

“The super-rich are punished by a significant tax on each utterance of ‘my, me, or mine.’ And on every single reference to money. Don’t you love that? Or how about this? Pretentious film critics get strapped down in screening rooms where people text continuously and never turn off their phones. They’re also forced to view The Story of Mankind in endless loops. The screams! The shrieks! Such fun for Mrs. A.!”

Randi folded her hands on the tabletop and grinned. “Although none of this applies to you, really, does it?

She became serious.

“So what do you say, Frannie Turner. Want to make a deal?”

Frannie’s thoughts ricocheted from Stanley in his chair to her cozy house to her friends and to Arlene before racing on to the books she’d read, the movies she’d seen, all the men she’d loved to have loved. Her thoughts paused for a moment at Power, dollops of dissolute power. Elizabeth Taylor floated through her thoughts for a millisecond. So did Monty Hall. She considered the Hell that she didn’t believe in and her eternal soul, if she actually had one. It was a very big thing, evidently, but hers was unbearably empty just now.

“What’s the deal?” She heard her own voice come from low in her throat.

Randi hugged her. And it burned. “Great!”

“But I’ll admit I’m surprised about that Hell thing you mentioned. I was sure you’d be a believer. But, hey, I’m only human.” She opened Frannie’s pocketbook, rummaged through it and pulled out a handkerchief with an elegant monogrammed .

“Is it roasting in here or is it me?”

Pinching one fine nostril at a time, Randi daintily blew her nose into the handkerchief and returned it to Frannie’s purse.

“But if you don’t mind a badly disguised sales pitch and a little more advice, well … here’s the real deal. What I’m offering you is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So just don’t do with me what you did with Stanley, Mrs. T.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, shop a little this time. You shouldn’t decide before you’ve explored your options.”

Those cherry lips. Those chiclet teeth. They knew where Frannie lived.

“Options?” Frannie almost choked on the word.

“For example, I’ve been empowered to offer you youth and beauty if you want them. Those come standard. But there are extras, as well. Things like a government position, say? Secretary of State? The vice-presidency? I’m afraid I can’t offer you the presidency yet: might be a tad too soon for that. But if those don’t tempt you, or seem a little much, maybe a simple MD and a cure for one of the lesser cancers? Non-Hodgkins lymphoma, maybe? Thyroid?” She fixed her avid eyes on Frannie’s own and laid a scorching hand on her shoulder. Frannie made a concentrated effort not to squirm. “I suspect you don’t have the stomach for the occasional death, though. Am I right?”

Frannie sat, spellbound. Her mouth felt painfully dry.

“Okay, so I’m right. So then there’s ophthalmology and macular degeneration, possibly. Or what about a doctorate in physics? How do you feel about String Theory? Or money. Do you want money? Not really you, I suspect. Although we’re offering really big sums here. Racing-stables money. Gulfstream money.”

Randi hiked up her skirt. There were scars all over her thighs.

“You could decide to be a man, of course. Though I can’t say I’d care for that myself. Wait, wait, I know! Monets? Rembrandts?” Interlacing her fingers, she winked at her mesmerized prey. “I’m getting warmer now, aren’t I?”

With one thumb, Frannie traced the veining in the marble tabletop. She had to force herself to look at the hairdresser/gatekeeper/fiend.

“Okay, now we’ve hit paydirt – art,” Randi said. “You could own bibelots like rhinoceros-horn cups. They’re supposed to have aphrodisiac properties, did you know? So useful, now and then.” Randi raked long fingers through her fiery hair. “Or jewels? Or pink diamonds? Blue? Klimt? Praxiteles? Fabergé?

“In addition, I’m guessing, just guessing now, that Frannie Turner loves movies.”

Of course she’d know that.

“Or what about your own film studio? You could be a director, Frannie Lean! Frannie Hitchcock. Plumper, but so incredibly cool. Wait. Even better … a movie star! Worshiped! Adored! Having – what’s that line? – ‘A billion shop girls ape you, a billion farmhands rape you?’ ” Randi squinted at Frannie’s face and frowned. “Maybe not.”

‘Okay, then, want to write the next Ulysses? Be a painter, perhaps? Some kind of avant-garde sculptor who suspends dead CEOs in formaldehyde. Now, that’d be a leap! And wait. Then you could sell them to live CEOs and hedge-fund guys for millions.” Randi mused. “I don’t see you as a rock star, though. More like an opera star, I think. Or how about this? The first female quarterback!”

Randi was so excited she lit a third cigarette, unwrapped a piece of gum and put both in her mouth at once.

“You’re getting the idea now, right?”

Beside her, Frannie, a dumpy old doe in the headlights, mutely nodded.

“Is it sinking in now that I can give you anything you’ve ever desired, Frannie? Anything. You can have, be, or do anything you want in this world. As long as you’re ours in the next.”

Frannie turned away from her probing gaze to watch a young couple strolling past their booth, the boy riffling a handful of crisp bills.

“So, you know,” she heard him say, “I thought I’d buy myself a headband.”

The girl seemed delighted.

“You’d have to own it, though,” she said. “Like, you’d have to own the eighties-ness of it.”

Her partner stopped moving, his eyes widening at Randi. The money spilled out of his hand.

“What? I missed that,” he said to the girl, as he knelt to gather his cash.

Randi waited silently until they’d passed.

“See? That’s my thing. I can turn it off, turn it on – at will.”

And if it weren’t for the confusion filling her mind and the really unpleasant smell filling her nostrils (was Randi passing gas?) Frannie thought she’d could probably sit here all night, enjoying her pleasant little buzz and this fabulous nut, who was trying to woo her with a fantasy. She could be whatever she wanted to be. Sure. Miss Make-Yourself-Over-right-now, she thought.

Her sales pitch complete, Randi relaxed into the velvety booth, stretched one perfect arm along its top and flashed her phosphorescent teeth at nothing.

That pungent odor again. Frannie grabbed at her handbag, felt around for tissues and finding none – nor a used handkerchief either – she snapped it shut. Surreptitiously pinching her nostrils, she sat back as well. To think about fame. About money. About this stench. And success. And her soul.

Randi was promising her beauty and youth. But they weren’t what she’d really sell her soul for.

Randi hadn’t even touched on it. Why?

Abruptly, she picked up her glass and downed the dregs. They tasted, just faintly, of char.

Well, Randi, she thought, there were occasional advantages to being a sixty-six-year-old movie buff. After all, she’d seen The Devil and Daniel Webster, plus a lot of old Vincent Price, and she knew – knew beyond doubt – that no one made this particular deal without having a major something in writing. And that was why, if she was going to play along at all – and she was more and more tempted to (Tempted! Ha!) – this would need to be a legitimate business deal. With a contract.

So she’d do it, she decided. Why not? She’d ask for a formal contract. In writing. With a loophole, of course. Because deals with the Devil always had a loophole in them, didn’t they? And while she actually didn’t believe in Hell, or in devils, or, most of the time, in souls – what if this was really real and she was wrong?

Randi had shut her eyes and was nibbling her thumb.

“Randi, I need to know, I mean, okay, let’s say there really are these portals and let’s say – though I may be drunk right now, or at home in bed dreaming this – you’re an emissary, in fact, for Mrs. Anders …”

“Andros,” Randi interrupted her, annoyed.

“Anyway, if I decide to do this, this, um, deal, can I ask for anything I want? And can we put it on paper? I mean I know there’s no court on earth that could challenge a thing like this, but if there really are deals with the Devil, Randi, and if all this hasn’t bubbled up from the Hell of my non-early- Alzheimer’s brain, then well.… there could be a heaven, too, couldn’t there?”

Her companion, truly irritated now, it seemed, looked up at the smoke-heavy ceiling and rolled her eyes. But Frannie plowed on. “Still, heaven does like to write things down, doesn’t it. I mean, take Moses and the tablets, right? So I’d like to do that, too.”

All complacency and charm suddenly, Randi folded her hands on the tabletop again. No nail polish, Frannie saw, but lots of lipstick, still. All juicy and red, as well, and with hair unmussed and cheeks as peachy as a child’s.

“Tablets? You want tablets, Frannie dear? What – exactly – do you have in mind?”

“Okay.” Frannie was encouraged by that “dear.” She grew almost articulate for the first time tonight. Nothing remotely like a suburban St. Louis housewife or a frightened old woman with nothing to lose but nothing to live for either.

“So,” she began, “I’m sixty-six and old, as both of us have pointed out, and recently, well, that’s been getting, shall I say, hard? And yet, in my long – granted, dull – life, I’ve experienced a few of the things that people think make most people happy, but have found that, in fact, they don’t. I’ve also learned that no matter what you have or who you are, everybody’s crazy, and everybody’s hurt. That’s just the way life and things are.

“So here I am, crazy and hurt and not a saint and really unhappy, if I’m honest, and all those accomplishments you’ve been offering, they’re incredibly tempting. And I’m truly appreciative, Randi. I am.” (Would she ever get over being Miss Manners?) “But I think they’re too rich for me. Kind of like lobster, these days. Perhaps if I were younger; perhaps if I were a man. But I’m an elderly woman. And I know exactly what I’d sell myself for. You know it, too. You’ve known it all along.”

No reaction from Randi, who seemed to be eyeing another waitress. Frannie began to feel she’d been talking to herself. Quite possibly, she had.

“So. A child, Randi. That’s my price. And if I’m allowed to ask for two things,” still no acknowledgment, “well, then, I’d want the reciprocal love of a wonderful man. That’s all. Although I guess I’d probably have to be younger for both – and beautiful, too, because beautiful would make the man part easier, right?”

She’d been trying to sound nonchalant, but couldn’t quite carry it off. Her voice broke slightly.

“If you can offer me that, we have a deal,” she said very softly now. “A bargain. A pact. Whatever you care to call it.”

Randi’s silence was unsettling. Her courage was leaking away.

Frannie squared her shoulders and summoned up the rest of what backbone she had.

‘But here’s the thing.”

“If I’m able to get those things, this agreement is dissolved. I get to go on with my new life: my husband, if I have a husband, my child.’

‘So if I succeed, then you don’t get my soul.” (If it’s true I have a soul, Frannie thought once more.) She watched the milling gamblers hustling by.

‘Everyone hedges their bets.”

Randi’s eyes followed hers. She shook herself a little, then turned to blind Frannie with that smile.

“Okay, my friend. Really nice try, especially the maturity part. But here’s the way it’s going to go.”

The girlfriend was gone.

“You can give it all you’ve got to get that baby and that ‘soulmate’,” an ill-concealed sneer distorted her mouth –“but if you can’t manage to do that, well … you’ll get old again. You’ll get old. Though you won’t necessarily die right away. It won’t be that easy. You’ll age a lot. Get sick. Suffer considerable pain. And you’ll reach the point where you’ll consider sleep to be the best part of your day. Then you’ll die.’

‘And there will be no going back to anything, Frannie. No undoing anything. You certainly won’t revert to this life, my dear. You won’t return to St. Louis – as if anyone would want to return to St. Louis. You don’t pass go. And if you fail, when you do finally die, then you and Mrs. A” – Randi smiled affectionately and toyed for a moment with Frannie’s middle finger – “well, let’s just say, from that day on, you’ll absolutely remember her name.”

Frannie shut her eyes.

“And all right, you want a written contract? Fine. But if you want things in writing, we’re only giving you a year.”

Her eyes popped open.

“Wait. I didn’t say that.”

“I did.”

She turned it over in her mind. The Devil was in the details, but God was in the details, too. And if she wasn’t hallucinating this, then this impossible, ludicrous, crazy, nightmare thing could be a miraculous second chance.

A baby, a soulmate and youth.

All she had to do was beat the clock.

(She was nothing but clichés tonight!)

Though she could still back out.

“Do I have to give birth within a year, or just get pregnant?”

“Whichever you like, my friend,” Randi answered pleasantly, applying an emery board to the pinkly-new oval nail on her middle finger. “We’re easy to get along with.” She looked over at Frannie, filing all the while, “And just to sweeten the deal, within that one-year time period – because we know it isn’t long – whatever you decide to do, how you do it, and who you do it with will be completely up to you. We’re just here to make you young and beautiful and give you your fifteen minutes, so to speak. In all its variants, it’s worked for thousands of years.”

The nail file vanished into the scarlet clutch as she slid one arm around Frannie’s shoulders and hugged her really tight. This time, it didn’t burn. They were girlfriends again. Frannie and the popular girl who could also be the mean girl.

She peered around the corner of the booth. Except for that boy, no one in this stuffy, unwholesome room had even seemed to notice them, or in any way to validate the preposterous transaction that was – maybe? – going to happen here. She had learned the house rules now.

“Okay,” she said.

She was sitting so close to Randi now that she could smell her tomato juice-lipstick breath and it sickened her a little. “I just have to get pregnant within the one-year time frame. I can give birth after?”

Her companion nodded amicably. “Good choice,” she agreed, like some solicitous waiter.

‘So let’s just do this, then.”

Dumbfounded, Frannie looked up to see a piece of loosely rolled, mottled parchment unspool line after line of sepia script upon the tabletop in front of her. From someplace beside her on the bench, Randi had retrieved a miniature bottle of hair color, carefully labeled in an inky Gothic font, Flaming Bosch, and NOW, with three long fingers, she was unscrewing its jewel-encrusted cap. Opening Frannie’s pocketbook once again, she extracted an elegantly worked gold pen along with what looked like a packet of vintage Lady Gillette razor-blade refills.

“If you’re ready then, Mrs. T …”

Flattening the aged vellum against the table with her forearm, Randi dipped the pen’s iridescent nib into the tiny bottle and began to write.

It took her several seconds to fill in the blanks at the top of what appeared to be a boilerplate document, and then she turned to Frannie expectantly.

“Both, or either?”

She needed to think, to consider the question, and yet the roulette wheel’s whicker was so distracting she had to cover her ears till it stopped.

So … she’d much rather have her child with her soulmate, of course. But that might mean having to spend too much time finding him first. And in the real world, a person could easily wait years for the perfect man to come along. If he ever did. But then, let’s say she did find him, then she’d have to get pregnant. But what if she didn’t find Mr. Right until the last four months, say? She’d need to get pregnant right away.

So, if she were to tell Randi she wanted both, she could miss the deadline.

And she wouldn’t risk it. A year felt like too little time to soulmate-shop.

The thing was, in order to conceive with no Mr. Right, she’d have to sleep with more than one man, maybe even two. Or several. A terrifying thought, although thrilling, too. And if she did it that way, even if none of the more-than-two turned out to be her soulmate, she could still have her child.

“I think I won’t be greedy, Randi. I’ll settle for either. If the one doesn’t happen, the other will have to be enough. ”

“Soulmate or child,” the gatekeeper wrote. “Okay. And pregnancy-only within the specified time limit? Not birth?”

Frannie nodded. “Write that down.”

Randi smiled.

“And one year, then?”

A year had been feeling like two weeks lately. She nodded once again nevertheless.

Randi filled in the expiry blank:

“Twelve months,” she breathed the words aloud.

Then she blew lightly on the parchment to dry the ink and passed it to Frannie to read. Frannie smoothed it flat upon the tabletop and read it slowly through.

It seemed straightforward and simple enough. “Young: beautiful”; “Twelve months from this date (March 6) at 8:22 pm”;

Was it only 8:22?

“Non-revocable damnation (eternal).” And then a section of smallish, yet readable print:

Upon default, body, soul and mind of said signatory become the property of Satan, otherwise known as.…

There followed a long list of names.

Could it really be this easy?

But Frannie was struck by a brilliant idea. There would be lawyers in this casino, she thought. She could find and talk to one right now.

“Now,” Randi broke in briskly. “Give me your hand.”

Frannie clasped her hands together in her lap.

“What’s the matter?” Randi asked. “Cold feet all of a sudden? Second thoughts? Other clichés?”

She snapped her fine-boned fingers, and above the booth where they sat, moving slowly through the smoky air, Frannie saw what looked to be a Chippendale mirror, its wavy old glass pocked and rippled like a silvered stream. It settled itself about a foot away from her, and when she looked into its depths, she saw the sag, the lines, the bloat, once again: the loss and disappointment, the emptiness, the ache.

She turned from her own reflection to the razor blade in Randi’s hand.

“That’s not rusty, is it?”

“You’re adorable!” Randi laughed and plucking one hand from her lap, she swiftly and painlessly slit Frannie’s thumb across the ball. For a split second, Frannie imagined she saw her lick up an oozing bubble of blood. But no, as her thumb turned down to the parchment, she glimpsed one crimson bead.

Incredibly, then, it all fell away – the croupiers’ patter, the miasma of cigarettes, the roulette wheel’s tick, the seductive clang of the slots – and within Frannie’s head, a faint susurration – it had begun only moments ago – crescendoed within seconds to a nearly intolerable roar. Her hands flew to her ears. The cut on her thumb pulsed with fiery, close to unbearable, pain. She heard herself screaming.

Abruptly, the noise and pain subsided, and she opened watery eyes to find the room around her … hadn’t changed. She was sitting in a corner booth alone. No one was looking her way.

Randi was gone.

Fearfully, now, she lifted one hand to her eyes and turned it, front to back, back to front. And yes, there was a small dab of blood on the knuckle of her thumb, so something, indeed, had happened. But even within the booth’s dark enclosure, even in this feeble, evil light, she could still see the alligatored texture of her thinning skin, the ridges on her nails.

Frannie clawed at the seat beside her for her purse, grabbed at her compact and held its powder-filmed mirror in front of her face. After swiveling her head left and right, she shakily arose to find a better light.

For there she was. Frannie Turner.

Still old.

Dear God, still old.