E. Doctorow - Sweet Land Stories

IN VEGAS she waitressed at a coffee shop till she had enough money to have her hair straightened, which is what the impresario of the Starlet Topless told her she had to do if she wanted a job. So if she shook her head as she leaned back holding on to the brass pole, her hair swished back and forth across her shoulders. Wearing a thong and high heels was not the most comfortable thing in the world, but she got the idea of things quickly enough and became popular as the most petite girl in the place. The other girls liked her, too — they called her Baby and watched out for her. She rented a room in the apartment of a couple of them. Even the bouncer was solicitous after she lied to him that she was involved.

When she met Sal, a distinguished gray-haired man of some girth, it was at the request of the manager, who took her to a table in the back. That this man Sal chose not to sit at the bar and stare up her ass suggested to her he was not the usual bum who came into Starlet’s. He was a gentleman who though not married had several grandchildren. The first thing he did on their first date when she came up to his penthouse suite was show her their pictures. That’s the kind of solid citizen Mr. Sal Fontaine was. She stood at the window looking out over all of Vegas. Quiet and soft-spoken Sal was not only a dear man, as she came to know him, but one highly respected as the founder and owner of Sal’s Line, with an office and banks of phones with operators taking calls from people all over the country wanting Sal’s Line on everything from horses to who would be the next President. Without ceremony, which was his way, he put a diamond choker on her neck and asked her to move in with him. She couldn’t believe her luck, living with a man highly regarded in the community in his penthouse suite of six rooms overlooking all of Vegas. It had maid service every morning. From the French restaurant downstairs you could order dinner on a rolling cart that turned into a table. Sal bought her clothes, she signed his name at the beauty parlor, and when they went out, though he was so busy it was not that often, she was treated with respect by the greeters, and by Sal’s associates, mostly gentlemen of the same age range as his. She was totally overwhelmed. With all the leggy ass in Las Vegas, imagine, little Jolene, treated like a princess! And not only that but with time on her hands to develop a line of her own, of greeting cards she drew, psychedelic in style, sometimes inspired by her experience with tattoo designs but always with the sentiments of loving family relationships that she dreamed up, as if she knew all about it.

She never thought she could be so happy. Sal liked her to climb all over him, he liked her to be on top, and they were very tender and caressing of one another, certainly on her part, because always in the back of her mind was the fear of his overexerting himself. And he talked so quietly, and he believed or pretended to believe her life story — the parts that were made up as well as the parts that were true.

As she became used to the life, she reflected that Sal Fontaine did not give of himself easily. It wasn’t a matter of his material generosity. He never confided in her. There was a distance in him, or maybe even a gloom, that for all his success he could not change in himself. If she had questions, if she was curious, she met a wall. He moved slowly, as if the air set up a resistance just to him. When he smiled it was a sad smile despite his capped teeth. And he had heavy jowls and hooded sad eyes made darker by the deep blue pouches under them. Maybe he could not forget what he had lost, his old country or his original family, who was she to say?

She would tell him she loved him, and at the moment she said it, she did. The rest of the time she sort of shrugged to herself. The contractual nature of their relationship was all too clear to her, and she began to suspect that the regard Sal’s friends held for her was not what they might have expressed among themselves. Her life, once the novelty wore off, was like eating cotton candy all day long. Her long straight red hair now shone with highlights. In the mornings she would swim in the hotel Olympic-size pool with her hair in a single braid, trailing. She was this Jolene person who wore different Vegas-style outfits depending on the time of day or night. She saw herself in an I. Magnin fitting-room mirror one day and the word that came to her mind was hard. When had it happened that she’d taken on that set of the mouth and stony gaze of the Las Vegas bimbo? Jesus.

One evening they were sitting watching television and Sal said, out of the blue, that she didn’t have to worry, she would be taken care of, he would settle something on her. Thank you, sweetheart, she said, not knowing exactly how or when he would do that but understanding the essential meaning — that she was in a situation designed not to last. The next morning she took all her greeting-card designs to a print shop at the edge of town and spent two hours making decisions about the stock she wanted, the layouts, the typefaces, the amounts to print of each item, and so on. It was real business and it made her feel good, even though she had no idea of who would distribute her cards let alone who would buy them. Step by step, she told herself in the cab back. Step by step.

A week later the phone rang just when they were getting up and Sal told her quickly to get dressed and go have breakfast in the coffee shop because some men were coming for a meeting. She said that was okay, she would stay out of the way in the bedroom with a cup of coffee and the Sun. Don’t argue, he shouted, and threw a dress at her face. She was speechless — he had never yelled at her before. She was waiting for the elevator when the doors opened and they came out, the men to meet with Sal. She saw them and they saw her, two of them looking, like so many of the men in Vegas, as if they had never felt the sun on their face.

But then in the coffee shop it dawned on her. She all at once turned cold and then sick to her stomach. She ran to the ladies’ and sat there in a cold sweat. Such stories as you heard were never supposed to intrude into your own life.

How long did she sit there? When she found the courage to come out, and then out of the coffee shop into the lobby, she saw an ambulance at the front entrance. She stood in the crowd that gathered and saw the elevator doors open and someone with an oxygen mask over his face and hooked up to an intravenous line being wheeled on a gurney through the lobby.

That it was Sal Fontaine was quickly agreed upon by everyone. Exactly what had happened to him was less clear. Finally, a police officer walking by said it was a heart attack. A heart attack.

She did not even have her purse, just the orange print mini she wore and the sandals. She didn’t even have any makeup — she had nothing. She saw the name of the hospital on the ambulance as it drove off and decided to go upstairs and put something on and take a cab there. But she couldn’t move. She walked up the winding staircase to the mezzanine and sat there in an armchair with her hands between her knees. Finally, she got up the courage to go back to the penthouse floor. If it was a heart attack, what were the police and TV cameras doing there? Everyone in the world was in the corridor, and the door to the apartment was sealed with yellow tape and under guard and everything was out of her reach — Mr. Sal Fontaine, and all her clothes, and her diamond choker, and even the money he had given her over time, despite the fact that he never allowed her to pay for anything.

She had over a thousand dollars in the drawer on her side of the bed. She knew that eventually she could reclaim it if she wanted to be questioned by the police. But whatever was to happen to her now might not be as bad as what would happen if she risked it. Even if she told them nothing, what would Sal’s Line be on the chances of her living to her nineteenth birthday, which happened also to be the next day? He was not around to tell her.