Mary Miller - The Last Days of California

I took the Bible into the bathroom and sat on the cool tile, opened it and read: “. . . many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people . . . the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. ” Did standing firm mean believing in the rapture or not believing in it? Was Marshall a false prophet or a man trying to instill faith? Everything had become confusing all of a sudden. Was Elise betraying me or was I betraying her? I went back into the room and climbed in bed next to her, closed my eyes and opened the Bible to a random page.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“‘ Jesus said to him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head .’”

Elise took the Bible, opened the drawer, and dropped it in. “We’re not playing Bible 8-Ball right now,” she said. She was watching the hotel’s station, jazzy music and a smooth-talking man telling us about the hotel’s amenities. We watched pretty women laugh with their mouths open wide, lightly touching the shoulders of their handsome men. We toured each of the restaurants—the Mexican cantina, the steakhouse, the burger stand, the Irish pub—before moving on to the casino floor. We learned how many slot machines there were, how many table games. Craps lessons were held every afternoon at two o’clock and the annual poker tournament was at the end of the month. We toured the hotel rooms and the pool with its outdoor bars, the gym and spa, and then we were back at the pretty laughing women. We watched it all the way through a second time.

After our third trip through the restaurants, I asked her how many times we were going to watch it.

“Forever,” she said.

“How come you’re not calling Dan? You’re not even Googling anything.”

“ Dan ? Who cares about Dan?”

“You do.”

“It’s not like I love him.”

“Why would you date someone you didn’t love?”

She looked at me like she couldn’t believe I’d asked that. “You’ll see,” she said ominously.

“I’m not going to ever be with someone I don’t love.”

“You will,” she said. “You won’t believe the things you’ll do.” She handed me the remote control and got out of bed, picked up her suitcase. “When the food comes, just sign your name, the tip’s already been added.” She closed the door to the bathroom.

I changed the channels. On Wheel of Fortune, three nervous college students in their big college sweatshirts took turns spinning the wheel. As usual, they weren’t attractive or charming and I wondered how they’d been selected. I hadn’t watched it in a long time, but quickly remembered how all of the puzzles seemed so obvious once they were revealed, how stupid it made me feel.

At the bonus round, there was a knock. I opened the door and the guy walked past me with a tray, asked where he should put it.

“The bed.” He set it down and handed me the bill in a black book and I added another three dollars on top of all the tips and fees that had already been figured. He let himself out and I sat on the bed. I dug a spoon into my sundae, the ice cream still solid.

I muted the TV to listen for Elise, and then turned it to Anderson Cooper to try and lure her out.

“Anderson’s talking about the Eurozone again,” I called.

“Fuck the Eurozone,” she called back.

A few minutes later, she came out of the bathroom with her hair in a towel and got in bed next to me. We ate our hot fudge sundaes and drank our Diet Cokes and then she cut her veggie burger in half and everything felt right and good.

Elise slingshotted a pair of yellow bikini bottoms at me. She had at least eight swimsuits, which I considered an excessive number, but when you were beautiful you could insist on needing more, requiring more, and people would provide.

She put on her white one, the ruffles on top to make her chest look bigger. She hardly ever wore the white one because she didn’t want to get it dirty. She let her hair down and stood sideways in front of the mirror. There was a long pause while we assessed her stomach. She touched it, ran her hand over its smooth, flat surface. Her belly button was so deep you couldn’t see the bottom of it, but it was going to turn inside out.

“Do you know how many weeks?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

I took my swimsuit into the bathroom. It was still slightly damp; it felt awful, wedging it over my thighs.

We left all the lights and the TV on.

“Let’s take the stairs,” Elise said.

I didn’t feel like it, but I followed her to the stairwell. It wasn’t the kind that was meant for guests—concrete and gray, boxes of Urine Off advertising itself in neon yellow letters. We didn’t see anyone, but there were room service carts with trays of old food and housekeeping carts with stacks of freshly laundered towels.

“I’m not taking the stairs back up,” I said.

“You do what you want,” she said, “and I’ll do what I want.”

On the first floor, there was a table set up in the hallway that blocked the entrance to the pool, two guys sitting at it. They said we needed wristbands to get into the pool area, told us to write our names and room number in their book. They were brusque and mustached and important.

“I forget our room number,” Elise said. “Do you remember it?”

“No,” I said.

“You don’t know where you’re staying?” the older security guard asked, chuckling.

“We’re staying here,” Elise said. “We just checked in.” She found her room key in its little envelope and set it on the table and one of the guys wrote down the number. I held out my hand for the other guy to give me the wristband but he insisted on putting them on us. Then he stood and held the door.

“Jesus,” Elise said. “It’s like Fort-fucking-Knox.”

There were a lot of people milling about—couples and groups of boys and multicultural families, pretty girls like Elise taking drink orders. Old people. Babies. It was good to see so many of them. We walked to the far side of the pool and took off our dresses. After looking around to see who was looking at me—no one—I got out my phone and called Shannon. She picked up, sounding like she always sounded, slightly hoarse like she was still in bed.

Shannon and I had a very one-sided relationship—I asked her questions and she told me how bad things were, how they would never change. At the end of every conversation, she’d realize she had talked the entire time and say something like Next time we’re going to talk about you, though we never did, and I was mostly okay with it. Hearing her complain about her life made me feel better about my own — her life really was pretty shitty. But this time, when she asked how I was, I didn’t say fine and ask about her stepmom or the boy she liked who didn’t like her back. I told her about Gabe, relayed some of the sweeter things he’d said. I could tell she wasn’t happy about it. She said she was happy but she sounded very down and tried to steer the conversation back to herself. I told her he wanted to see me again and was trying to figure out a way to make that happen, that we were maybe in love. She said I should be careful—she didn’t want to see me get hurt.

“I’m not going to get hurt,” I said.

“I hope not,” she said. “I just know how excited you get.”

I didn’t like the way the conversation was going anymore. She was making me feel bad and I was tired of feeling bad. I was tired of relying on her unhappiness to make myself feel better. I wanted new friends, fun girls who laughed a lot and liked to do new things and go new places. Shannon and I always went to the same café where we sat in the same booth and ate the same sandwiches and my life was never going to be any different that way.