Black Eyed Susan Read online

  Damn her! I put on my best panties and prepared to leave a farewell message, so I pressed record on my answering machine. I didn’t feel like sugar-coating it. “Can’t come to the phone right now because I’m either dead or, as they say, sowing my wild oats. Carpe fucking diem.”

  I threw some clothes in a suitcase, grabbed my recording of “The Rainbow Connection,” and headed for the door. My beat up Datsun was unreliable (and out of gas), so I took a cab to my parents’ house, knowing they were at their store. Using the key under the fake azalea plant on the front stoop, I let myself in and stole the keys to their Audi.

  When I pulled out of their driveway, I had no idea where to go, so I turned on the radio for inspiration. Lonny must have been feeling better because he wasn’t playing Springsteen anymore, but I could hear loneliness in his voice and it made me feel guilty. We’d worked together for almost a decade and he wasn’t used to sharing the studio with anyone else but me. The station manager must have brought in our intern Claire to temporarily cover my shifts, because I heard her droning voice talking on air at Lonny. Claire was a high school student with aspirations of becoming a depressed, elitist disc jockey because, as she put it, “the world is shit and music is the only real thing left.” I liked her.

  She dragged out all her words as only an eighteen-year-old girl can. “So … Lonny … Anderson,” she said with the enthusiasm of someone about to nod off, “guess … you’re … outta … here. I’m … totally … in … a … Tom … Waits … kind … of … mood. How … ‘bout … you?”

  I don’t know if it was the five consecutive Tom Waits songs or my recent string of bad news that made me want to do it, but I took the 101 to the Golden Gate Bridge and pulled into the public sidewalk area. From an article I’d once read, I knew it would take me exactly four seconds to hit the water, and that I would reach seventy-five miles per hour before it was over. It didn’t sound all that bad.

  Besides, hundreds of other people had done it in the last few years—an average of two per week. I had to be sure to go in headfirst because several of the attempters, who made the mistake of going in feet first, survived. Can you imagine having to conduct interviews about your botched suicide attempt? What could be worse than that?

  So I walked to the outermost edge and waited for my life to flash before my eyes. Nothing happened. I made myself think about a couple of grade school memories and a birthday party or two just because it seemed like the right thing to do, but it felt completely forced. No dreamy reflections for me. In fact, the more I grasped for memories, the more I wanted to jump, so I lifted my leg up onto a cold hunk of metal. The wind was strong, and it seemed I would have no problem falling, but I started to get concerned about the feet-first thing, partly for fear of being a colossal failure, but mainly because I didn’t want to be live shark bait.

  Growing up in landlocked Minnesota, I’d had a lifelong fear of sharks, and the bay was full of them—even great whites. In fact, I avoided both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge whenever possible because of the shark factor. I’d seen Jaws at a tender age and subsequently became terrified of sharks. The opening scene with the hyperventilating, bit-in-half girl was so vivid in my mind that whenever I saw ocean water, I damn near had a panic attack.

  As I looked at the water swishing below, I thought about my other persona—you know, that better me. Everyone has one—a cooler version of yourself that is scared of nothing. My other persona would swim with sharks, as if to say “fuck you” to impending death. But my other persona was nowhere to be found, and I was left with my chicken-shit self. So I decided to concentrate on diving head-first to avoid a conscious run-in with jabber jaws.

  Just when I was thinking how surprisingly easy it was to hurl oneself off a major landmark, I felt a tug at my shirt and heard a mean voice.

  I turned around just enough to see a well-groomed woman with a high-tech aerodynamic jogger stroller shake both her head and her finger. She was petite but buff, and I could tell she was going to try to muscle me down. “Oh, no, no, no. Not today you’re not,” she said as she continued to run in place.

  “Excuse me,” I said in my snottiest voice, “but if you haven’t noticed, I’m a little busy here.”

  She wasn’t impressed. “Yeah, and I’m a little busy trying to have a nice morning here with my daughter, and you’re about to ruin it. Do you know what a day off means to a working mother? I have a small window of opportunity here to get some fresh air before Story Time at eleven o’clock and Power Kickboxing at noon.” She stopped to look at her watch, then stomped her foot. “Damn it, I’m four minutes behind now.”

  Wasn’t Power Kickboxing redundant? No wonder she was buff. My guess was that, when she exercised, she listened to Melissa Etheridge (the early-in-her-career pissed-off Melissa) and to her husband’s dismay, she sang along to the Indigo Girls when they ate sushi on Tuesday nights. Also, she probably swam with sharks for a respite from her high-powered job.

  I tried to sling my other leg onto the metal plank to continue what I’d started, but she grabbed both pant legs and jerked me to the ground. Eye-to-eye with concrete, I muttered, “Well, that was humiliating.”

  Now running in place again, she felt the need to respond. “You should be humiliated. Your little stunt could’ve meant hours of therapy for my Sierra.” When she said her daughter’s name, she became a different person for a split-second—a person who spoke in baby talk and pinched little cheeks. But then Scary Lady came back. “Whatever it is, get over it. Persevere. Snap out of it.” She was getting really worked up, and I thought she might slap me, but she just shook her head and said in a biting tone, “What would your mother think?”

  Then she powered off. So much for the compassionate voice that calls people back from the ledge. That’s another thing that only happens in the movies. So I’d discovered something worse than a botched suicide attempt: getting verbally bitch-slapped by a soccer mom.

  What would my mother think? Great question. Which one? My fake mother would have been too oblivious to notice my suicide—she didn’t even realize I was really, literally dying—and my real mother? Where was she, and would she even want to see me? I pondered all this as I got back in my car and drove to the tourist viewing area on the other side of the bridge. I got out and looked back toward the city. It seemed even more colorless than usual. I inhaled the brisk air and tried to feel thankful for the time I had left, but instead I felt cold and alone. When I looked up, I felt a kinship with the sun, which was struggling to shine, and I wondered if she too felt alone, with no one in the sky to keep her company.

  “Leave it up to chance,” I mumbled. “Look for signs.” It was just the kind of flaky advice I was afraid I’d get from my parents. But they weren’t my real parents, and I did not want to die without having met the woman who gave birth to me. I would need money for the trip I found myself pondering, but I’d rather chum the bay with an oozing self-induced wound than ask my parents for a road-trip fund. If I was any kind of responsible adult, I’d have some sort of savings account, but anything left over from each paycheck was always spent on music, so now I had yet another dilemma. If I was going to try to find my real mother before I expired, I was going to need some food and gas money. Fast.

  On the way back to my car, I tripped on a crack in the concrete, and as I was gathering the loose change that had fallen from my pocket, I noticed a flyer tacked on a large board in the middle of the viewing area. Bold writing asked the question: “Need a new lease on life?” I nodded. “Want your life and your wallet to be as rich as it can be?” I nodded harder. “Come to a place where time stops.”

  Precisely what I needed. I moved closer. And it was suddenly clear. The next two lines gave me the direction I needed.

  One word …

  Vegas.

  FIVE

  After ten and a half hours of driving, I arrived at my destination. As I approached the famous Vegas Strip, it became clear I was in another world. The sun was setting and the
city lit up the desert sky with millions of custom-made neon stars. Like animals ready for the hunt, the streets teemed with feral bodies clad in what looked like the world’s entire supply of sequins and glitter. Gone were my familiar dread-locked locals lumbering around in Birkenstocks. In their place were unapologetic, bronze-skinned tourists parading around in matching bags and tube tops, basking in the anonymity they came here for. Even the homeless were glitzy, and it was hard to tell if they needed a handout or if they were just dancers in a local show.

  I drove slowly and rolled down my window so I wouldn’t miss anything, but after a few blocks, the sights and sounds seduced me, and I grew distracted, thinking about all the money I was going to win. Within seconds, I heard people in front of me hollering, so I slammed on my brakes. But it was too late.

  My car crashed into the bungalow in front of me—a half-house on the back of a truck. It was a cross-section, covered with plastic so you could see inside it, X-ray style. When my car hit it, the see-through half-house jarred loose from the framing that kept it stable, and whoever prepared the shoddy rig must’ve been drunk, because without much of a budge, one of its corners just slipped off the trailer truck like a blob of ice-cream sliding off a piece of cake. I heard a screeching metal sound, crunching wood, a thud … and then a scream.

  Shit!

  Exactly when I thought my worst problem was crashing into a traveling house mid-destination, I saw everyone run toward the screaming. My own car hood blocked my view of what was going on. Whatever they were looking at was just beyond my front grill, and it wasn’t just the house.

  I jumped out of my car and ran over to where the crowd stood, and saw a woman, face down, in the middle of the street. She was in a perfect Superman flying position, with only her hands buried underneath the rubble.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God. It’s just her hands,” I said.

  A woman screamed at me. “Just her hands?! Congratulations, you’ve just ruined my sister’s life! She came all the way from Boston … Tonight was everything she’d worked for …”

  The victim lifted her head and moaned. “Abby? I see blood. Am I dying?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re not dying,” I said, “You’ve just been hit by a house.” Cranky sister Abby scowled at my comment. “Well, actually, it was only half a house.”

  Abby crouched down next to her not dying sister. “Gabby? It’s okay. I’ll just tell them what happened and they’ll have to make an exception. Maybe they’d let you use a hand double, and you could instruct her through a little earpiece or something.”

  Two things went through my mind: First, who would name their daughters Abby and Gabby? And if she was some sort of spokesmodel, why was she dressed in a bad pantsuit?

  They slowly drove the trailer forward until Gabby was released from underneath the fallen house. Gabby, together with her bloody, mangled hands, was placed on a stretcher, and she spoke to her sister with a tone of finality. “It’s over, Abby. You know WSOP’s rules.”

  Abby jerked her head toward me, and for the second time that day, I was the receiver of a demonic finger-shaking. “Are you happy now? They’ll disqualify any participant with a hand-related injury. You will pay for this!” On her way to the ambulance, she threw a small card at me, and when I picked it up, I added stomach-ache to my laundry list of health problems. Aside from some of the simpleton phrasing, the card appeared to be expensive—high-quality paper stock and lots of white space.

  The words “TRUST ME” in all caps and bold looked foreboding, and convinced me that Abby Westergaard was not only capable of administering a serious ass-kicking, but would do anything to achieve justice. Yet, I had to wonder, what the hell was an “Enlightenment Attorney”? It sounded like an oxymoron to me. To make matters worse, I’d let my auto insurance lapse a couple of months in order to buy The Essential Velvet Underground two-disc set, and I wasn’t covered on my parents’ policy. As I was lamenting the good times with Lou Reed, one of the truck drivers made my day.

  “You’re in a lot of trouble, sweet cheeks,” he said, getting out of the big trailer behind me. It carried the other half of the house—the better half.

  I looked at the crowd that was forming, and back at him. “What’s WSOP?” I asked. “Is it a modeling agency? Can’t I just be her hand double for the night?” I showed him my nail-bitten hands, and wondered if I might have to resort to my just-in-case panties.

  Everyone laughed in unison as he responded. “Sure, you can be her hand double, if you also happen to be the reigning poker champion of the world.” He shook his head like I was an idiot. “WSOP? World Series of Poker? Ring any bells? Two million-dollar prize?”

  I glared at him. “Great.”

  The other truck driver started walking toward me. “We’ll have to call our boss. Boy is he gonna wanna talk to you.”

  I started toward my car. “Yeah, just let me make a quick call, and then whatever you need me to do is fine.” I pretended to look for my mom’s cell phone that I knew wouldn’t work—it hadn’t since the day she got it. As I began to sweat, I started to justify getting the hell out of there. Technically, I hadn’t hit anyone, so they couldn’t say it was a hit-and-run. And I didn’t run. I stayed for a while. Screw them! What were they going to do to me that hadn’t already been done to me in the last two days?

  Not only that, but I was arguably driving a stolen car. And grand theft auto was definitely a felony. I was not going to spend my last days rotting in a jail cell. As soon as I heard police sirens in the distance, I knew it was time to bolt. As I pulled away, I heard one of them holler, “Wait! You’re leaving the scene of a …” but I didn’t stick around to hear the rest. I needed a drink.

  I drove three blocks and pulled into the parking lot of the Luxor Hotel, a giant pyramid made of glass, a beacon of hope in a desert of unfulfilled dreams. As I walked through the regal front doors, polished to a glossy sheen, I felt right at home, like a dying pharaoh entering his tomb. After checking in and dropping off my bag in my room, I decided to change my clothes so nobody from the half-house debacle would recognize me. On my bed was a folded shirt with a note that read, “Compliments of the Luxor Hotel.”

  I slipped it on and checked myself out in the full-length mirror, but I couldn’t keep a straight face. “Vegas, baby,” I said to no one and laughed. A complete departure from my usual colorless, loose-fitting blouses, it was a T-shirt made of ninety-eight percent Lycra that was three sizes too small. I couldn’t make out what color it was, but the word “LUCKY” spread from nipple-to-nipple in curvy-cutesy cursive letters.

  Lucky, huh?

  Oh, the irony.

  I tucked my new T-shirt into my faded Levis and walked out the door feeling like a walking dress-code violation. It was time to do what I’d come here for—make some road trip money, so I could find my mother. I entered the glass elevator and looked out into the city of lights from inside my makeshift tomb. I prepared for my death like any dying pharaoh on the fast track to the bottom—I prepared to drink and gamble like I had nothing to lose.

  After stepping out of the elevator, I grabbed a drink off the tray of one of the many cruising Cleopatras and dug out every last penny I could find.

  After getting all the chips my funds allowed, I headed to the roulette wheel, taking a cue from my new shirt to play a game of pure luck. I could’ve played it safe and placed a street bet or a corner bet with many different numbers, but the payoff would be much smaller, and besides, my whole life was based on improbability, so I decided to embrace it for once. Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” played in a nearby casino bar, and I decided to bet on the color I saw in my mind, the color I’d seen for the first time in my life just that morning.

  I pushed all of my chips to 3 Red in honor of the number of months Dr. Marsh gave me to live. “That’s red, right?” Everyone standing around the wheel cringed at my obvious desperation, and out of nervousness, I stroked my “LUCKY” chest for good luck. I asked the woman next t
o me, “What color is my shirt?”

  After giving me a confused look, she said, “Pink. Hot pink.”

  I crossed my fingers when the croupier announced, “No more bets,” and I waited. The ball toppled in and out of several slots, then dropped, and I smiled, feeling lucky—finally.

  He placed the dolly on 3 Red and cleared all the losing bets. This time, I wasn’t a loser. Providence and fate were for sentimental sissies—I was banking on chance and blind luck. Stevie had stopped singing, so I took a break from red, followed my gut, and placed all of my chips on 29 Black for my birth date.

  Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Land. “29 Black!”

  People started cheering, and now, jacked up on adrenaline, I placed my large stack of chips on 7 Black for the seven colors in the rainbow. In second grade, the mnemonic device Roy G. Biv (“Ratting On Your Grouchy Brother Is Vile”) helped me remember the colors since I couldn’t see them. I thought of Jackie, Kermit, and impending death, and began to feel sorry for myself again. I stared at the wheel spinning, spinning, spinning, and whispered, “I deserve this, damn it.”

  Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Land. “12 Red!”

  A stunned hush came over the crowd, confirming what I already knew. I’d lost everything. What they didn’t know was why. But I knew. I’d committed one of the less talked-about sins: thinking that life’s ups and downs are handed out according to merit. I learned this from my dad’s favorite song, “The Gambler.” Say what you want about country music (I’m not a big fan myself), but one thing is for certain—no other genre spins a sad, depressing narrative like country music. Kenny Rogers, the stand-in narrator, breaks the secret of life down into one succinct, manageable idea: It’s not about the cards you’re dealt, but how you play them. I’d never been particularly good at knowing when to hold, or when to fold, and now that life had given me the worst hand ever, both literally and metaphorically, I was forced to appreciate Kennny’s advice: “The best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.” So I figured I could try to make the best of things, or I could sulk. After some thought, I decided to sulk.