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