And all she was doing was auditioning.

She gave it her best, as she always did, and maybe it was the total strangeness, the fantastical bigness, the mind-blowing color, light, and show-offishness of this city that provided the rush to get her through it. For sixty minutes she let the routines carry her along, let the pasts and futures and other places pitch and roll around her as she reached, moved, animated, levitated, and commanded her props, birds, and her own body from inside and outside herself, inside and outside of here and now. It was the same old madness that had dogged her for months but it got her work, and right now work was all there was.

Her closing tableau with hoops, birds, bottles, and cards was as good as some of the fountains she saw around town—did anybody else in Nevada have water?—and right on cue, the big automatic curtain dropped and the stage became a box.

She relaxed, deflated with relief, and stood quietly, letting her other worlds play out around her. Scenes from the ranch happened through: the shop with the tractor and the home-built stage passed over her; she could stand on the path outside the barn and look up the hill toward the house—the lights were on in the kitchen but she couldn’t see anyone; just a thought of the snowy meadow made it sweep past her like an ebbing ocean wave up to her knees. Hospital hallways—they always showed up for some reason—flashed across her vision in fast motion and then vanished, as they always did. An earlier version of herself, so solid and real they could have collided, danced around her doing stunts with the hula hoops, then broke into pieces and faded away. Suddenly, rudely, the casino just outside the lounge doors surrounded her, slot machines jingling, warbling, ding-a-linging. She braced herself, startled, as she, or part of her, or another one of her, raced past a row of elevators.

Doris Branson rode the elevator alone, mildly bored by the quiet until the door slid open and the pleasant sound of money and more money being raked in sang in her ears. It was like walking into a factory with hundreds of machines running except that the machines didn’t produce anything, they just transferred it. It was a business doing pleasure with these people.

Oops! She nearly collided with a pretty girl in a blue costume and holding a hula hoop. Great. A cabaret girl who hadn’t learned the rules: no costumed performers on the casino floor. She ought to know that!

“Miss! You don’t belong out here!”

The girl looked astounded that Doris would even address her, which only raised Doris’s temper another notch. “Don’t look at me like that!”

Where was Vahidi? She grabbed her cell phone from her pocket …

Well, now she felt silly and couldn’t remember the number. The phone was blurry and the floor was moving—

The phone dropped to the floor as Doris uttered a truncated scream, lurched and twisted with arms flailing, then toppled to the floor, an arm and a leg broken and blood trickling from her nose and mouth.

A lady vacationer screamed. Security personnel came running. Before she passed out, Doris dizzily searched for the girl in blue. “Not onna casino floor …”

But the girl was gone.

Did that lady really see me? Was I really there?

The girl in blue sank to one knee, her hand on the floor, and worked to keep her balance until there was only the stage and it wasn’t moving. She thought she heard a distant scream from the fading casino floor—somebody must have hit a jackpot—but after that, the only sound was her own windedness.

It was alarmingly quiet on the other side of the curtain. There was no applause at all, just a muffled conversation between two voices. With a mere whisper of a thought she reduced her twelve doves down to the original four—Carson, Maybelle, Lily, and Bonkers—received their cage from a stage guy, and tucked them safely away. She set the hula hoops aside, left the bottles, silks, and cards in a heap, and peeked through the curtain.

The place was empty except for Seamus and the hotel’s entertainment director, Mr. Vahidi, sitting at a center table just a few rows back from the stage.

“Don’t come into the lounge area, miss,” said Vahidi. “You’re underage.”

“She knows,” said Seamus. He had his planner open on the table in front of him.

Were they working a deal? She sat at the edge of the stage, trying to see their faces. The stage lights blinded her.

They were muttering, talking about dates, weeks available, dollar amounts. She heard Vahidi say “one-fifty,” then Seamus said “three hundred,” then Vahidi asked, “What’s she gonna wear?”

She looked at her blue pants outfit with gold embroidery. It was her newest and best, reminiscent of a certain blue gown. “This.”

Vahidi looked her over and told Seamus, “For three hundred you should get her into something striking.”

Seamus began explaining her choices in costume, how she didn’t normally present herself “that way.”

“Hey, this is Vegas,” said Vahidi. “She’s competing with some big shows out there, and she’s got what it takes. You kidding me?”

“We’ll discuss it,” said Seamus.

Come on, Seamus, do what you do best: look out for me.

The stage lights shut down and the house lights came up a little. Now she had a better view of Vahidi, a man who must have been raised on cheeseburgers and Crisco, with a face like a road map and a very expensive watch. Besides the wrinkles and folds on his face he had two scars he must have gotten from a street disagreement in his youth.

“So how’s she bill herself?” Vahidi asked.

“Eloise Kramer,” said Seamus. “Or the Amazing Eloise—”

“Mandy,” she said.

Seamus paused. Vahidi waited.

“What?” said Seamus. “I thought we were—”

“Mandy Whitacre.”

Seamus leaned toward Vahidi, “We can let you know.”

“It’s Mandy,” she said. “M-A-N-D-Y.”

Seamus gave her a corrective glare, which she bounced right back at him. He said to Vahidi, “Eloise Kramer is her legal name; Mandy Whitacre is a stage name. She’d like to use the stage name.” He threw her an inquiry with his eyes, Okay?and she threw him back an answer, Guess it’ll do for now.

Vahidi shrugged and wrote it down. “Does she do escapes?”

“Sure she does,” said Seamus.

Escapes?“Sure I do,” she said.

“We need something big to set up out front. Not just chains and handcuffs,” said Vahidi. “Everybody does that. We need something outrageous to get her in the papers, get her known by the tourist and visitors bureaus, get her in those, those whaddayacallits, the what-to-do loops they play in the hotel rooms. She’s got a great show, but people aren’t going to know if they don’t come in and see it.”

Oh. She had a great show. That was nice to know.

“We’ll come up with something,” said Seamus.

“End of this week? We have to premiere it the same day as she premieres, make a big splash.”

“We’ll get right on it.”

“All right, all right,” said Vahidi, scribbling with his pen. “We’re looking at three weeks starting next Saturday, two shows a night, six days a week, three hundred dollars a show. Sound good to you?”

It did sound good. Seamus was nodding at her. “Sounds good,” she said.

“Sounds good,” he told Vahidi.

Vahidi stood as he told Seamus, “We’ll work out the details and get you a contract.” He and Seamus shook hands.

Mandy sat there watching her life being managed, her flesh being peddled. So human warmth wasn’t part of the business down here. Well, okay. She’d live with that. She’d make the best of it. She’d show them.

“And don’t go out on the casino floor either,” Vahidi reminded her. “You’re underage.”

chapter

35

Doris Branson was tucked away in a private room at Clark County Medical Center, stabilized and sedated.