Джеффри Дивер: The Best American Mystery Stories 2006

Evelyn looked in the purse and said, “Where’s your money?”

IN THE PURSE, Ginger wrote.

They looked at the kindly woman holding the purse. “Did you take my blind sister’s money?” Evelyn yelled; that was Ginger’s cue to weep.

“I didn’t,” the hapless stranger would protest, but there she was, holding the purse, with a blind mute weeping beside her; they could get ten, twenty, thirty dollars out of the stranger. When the sucker left, Evelyn would walk Ginger around the corner and hug her.

“Good, Violet,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Ginger, feeling the solidness of her sister’s arms around her, and she closed her eyes and let herself breathe.

When Ginger woke up from her nap the following afternoon, she did not know where she was. The dark afternoon light streamed through the mint blue curtains. She shivered and sat up. She flung open a drawer, looking for clues. The room felt as though it were moving. The room service indicated that they were on a ship. Where were they going? She flung open her curtains and saw mountains covered in ice. Her mind was a crumpled ball of paper. She stood up, abruptly, as though that would straighten her thoughts. The phone rang.

“How are you feeling? Do you want to go to the dinner tonight?”

Her heart slowed at the naturalness of the question, at the caller’s belief that Ginger would continue this conversation. She remembered that they were on a cruise to Alaska. She also remembered that the girl had said something kind to her.

The room was decorated to flatter the passengers into believing they were traveling in opulence. There were plaster Roman columns, painted gold, topped with bouquets of roses. The waiters’ jackets were adorned in rhinestones that said: Alaska ’03 . Ginger kept thinking about what the girl had said the night before — that she had wanted to be at the party that Ginger had attended. Ginger wanted her to say more nice things about her life. Outside the large glass windows, the water and sky, black and clear, surrounded the ship.

Tonight, Darlene’s hair was slicked up into a topknot and shone, a metallic blond, in the light. Her eyelids gleamed blue, unearthly.

“How are you?” asked Ginger.

“I just want to say... I am someone,” said Darlene. She looked dazed. “I am going to graduate with a B average in communications.” She sat down. “Listen.” She closed her eyes. “I left a message on his answering machine. I said, I’ll do anything. Let me. I’ll change.”

“What?” Ginger asked, alarmed.

“I tried to do what you said,” she said. “I know how to fool him. I’ll keep calling him. I’ll be what you said, generous, you’re right, I have been selfish—”

“No,” said Ginger. “That’s not what I meant—”

The girl stared at her with her reptilian eyes. “Then what do I do?” she said, and her voice was hoarse. “Tell me, what do I do?”

Music exploded from a band gathered near the stage. The audience clapped along. “Let’s hear where everyone’s from, all at once!” the cruise director called. The room rang with hundreds of voices. Los Angeles. Palm Springs. Ottawa. Denver. Orlando. New York. ‘Welcome aboard!” the cruise director called. “Time to relax. Shake off those fancy duds. We want to make you all a deal. We need a pair of pants. Someone take off a pair! We’ll give you fifty dollars! Come on, you’ll never see these people again in your life!” Ginger did not know what to tell the girl, and the sorrow in her eyes was unnerving. Instead, Ginger turned her attention to the stage. She used to love crowds, the way the people in them became one roar, one sound. But now, for the first time, all the people appeared vulnerable to her. Passengers drifted onto the stage, performing various tricks: singing “God Bless America,” attempting to juggle, dancing the rumba. They wanted to take off their pants in front of each other or scream out the names of their home cities; they were confused about their place in the world, and they wanted to be told that they did not deserve it. They had everything in common with her.

Yet everyone on the stage also looked pleased to be up there, happy to be briefly bathed in light. They smiled at the sound of cheering, their faces simple in their hunger for recognition. She did not know what to tell Darlene, and suddenly she envied everyone on the stage. She wanted to be with the others, to have a talent, to simply stand in the clear white light.

Ginger raised her hand. The emcee called on her, and she made her way to the stage. The lights glared hard and white in her eyes. Clutching her purse, she felt the weight of her money in it. “Passengers,” she called. They stood like sad soldiers before their futures.

“My name is Ginger Klein and I’m going to make you rich. Give me a dollar,” she called. “Everyone. A dollar.”

They dug into their pockets and a few brought dollars out. She enjoyed watching them obey her. But what was the next step?

“Catch,” she called.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a handful of bills. She threw them into the spangled darkness. There were screams of disbelief, laughter. She dug in her purse and tossed out more. The passengers leapt from their seats and dove for the money. They were unhinged, thrilled, alive. Their screams of joy blossomed inside her. Her purse grew lighter and lighter.

After a while, the emcee strode onto the stage and gently moved her off the stage. “Thank you, Ginger Klein!” he yelled. “Best talent of the night, huh?” She paused, wanting to tell them something more, but did not know what it would be. Applause thundered in her chest; she had, somehow, been successful. She walked slowly down the stairs, looking for Darlene. “Darlene,” she said, softly, then louder. “I’m here.”

She did not see her. Ginger imagined how the girl would walk, carelessly, off the ship by herself at the end of the week. Darlene would join the living pouring toward the shore, clutching her souvenir ivory penguins and Eskimo dolls, going to her future boyfriends and houses and lawns and exercise classes and book clubs and golf games. “Darlene,” she said, wanting to walk down the ramp with her, shading her own eyes against the dazzling sunlight, gripping Darlene’s arm.

Sometimes, Ginger could hear Evelyn laughing in her sleep, a harsh, broken sound, and she touched her shoulder, trying to feel the joy that her sister could experience most fully in her dreams. During the day, Evelyn talked about ordinary people, the loved and loving, with too much scorn; Ginger knew that her sister wanted her life to be like theirs. She believed that Evelyn wanted to get rid of her.

One evening in the bar, Evelyn was talking to a man who claimed to work in the movie industry. His hands jabbed the air with the hard confidence of the insecure. He gazed at Evelyn as though he could see a precious light inside of her, and Ginger watched Evelyn’s shoulders tremble, delighted, under his gaze. She told him offhand, that she was an orphan. He leaned toward her and took her hands in his.

“I’ll take care of you,” he said.

Evelyn went home with him that night. The next day, she met Ginger at their room and said, “I am going to go live with him. He loves me and likes the fact that I have no family.” She paused; her face was relieved. “You will have to be a secret.”

Ginger looked into Evelyn’s eyes and saw that this was the most truthful statement she had made in her life. Her own response was the most deceitful. She nodded. “All right,” she said.

Evelyn packed her suitcase and was gone, leaving only a lipstick the color of a rose. Ginger waited. Each morning, she put on a new costume, applied Evelyn’s lipstick, and murmured the same false pleas to strangers. Ginger made more money without Evelyn. Strangers could see a new emptiness in her eyes that touched them. After two weeks, she tried, briefly, to find Evelyn. She stood outside the walls of the movie studios, waiting to see the man. Her search paralleled her fantasies of what Evelyn would desire; she waited outside of expensive restaurants, wandered through fancy clubs, but as she rushed past the crowded tables, the patrons’ faces bloomed up, monstrous, unknown.