Barbara Wilkins - Elements of Chance

“She was a prostitute,” Valerie said slowly.

“Well, not exactly. Cini was from a good family back East somewhere. She just liked to have a good time. She was gorgeous, baby, a showstopper. All delicate and fragile. But the way she walked … the way she looked at a guy. They couldn’t keep away from her. And fun. God, Cini was more fun than anyone.” Vicki paused, and the expression on her face was compassionate and loving.

“Are you okay, baby?” She touched Valerie’s hand.

“I’m fine,” she whispered numbly. “I’m just, well, surprised is all.”

“I’ve got some pictures of her. Do you want to see them?”

“No,” Valerie cried, wanting to run out of the apartment, run and run, until all this went away.

“I’ll get them,” Vicki said, jumping up, seemingly energized by relief. In a moment she returned with a bulging brown envelope.

“Here, come on. Sit with me on the couch.” Vicki pulled Valerie next to her and scattered dozens of snapshots over the magazines, newspapers, and ashtrays on the coffee table.

Gingerly, Valerie picked up a large black-and-white head shot of a face that could be her own in a few years’ time. Her hair was as fair as Valerie’s, her eyes pale, her cheekbones high. My mother, Valerie thought, with a thrill of recognition that took her breath away. The next snapshot, out of focus, showed Vicki, Al, her mother, and another man, all smiling for a nightclub photographer. There were drinks on the table in front of them, ashtrays, a little lamp with a metal shade.

“That was just after Al and I started going together,” Vicki said. “And Cini. Isn’t she gorgeous? I can’t remember who that guy was.”

Vicki picked up another picture and handed it to Valerie. It was a long shot in color of her mother sitting on the fender of a red Thunderbird, one of the little ones from the fifties that Valerie still saw driving around town.

“That was the car,” Vicki said. “Look at that dress. Her clothes were great.”

Photograph followed photograph. Cini, tall and slender, wearing a one-piece bathing suit on a beach, the ocean and blue sky behind her. Her legs were spread, her hands on her hips, and the look on her face seemed to dare the world to show her how good it was. “That was the weekend a couple of guys flew us down to Rosarito Beach in their private plane,” Vicki said. “We landed right in front of the hotel on the landing strip there, and went in for lunch. Everybody used to do that. And this is at a Jimmy Durante show in Las Vegas. What was that hotel?” Vicki paused to sip her beer. “Well, I can’t remember, but we had a ball. Here we were at Romanoff’s. Everybody used to go there. Bogart. Bacall. This is at the Coconut Grove. That’s in the Ambassador Hotel, down on Wilshire. We used to go there to see Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte. And here …”

Later that night, as she lay in bed, too exhausted to sleep, Valerie felt that nothing would ever be right again.

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