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  Something about being in that frigid diner and sipping spiked coffee made me all warm and fuzzy inside, like when we visited Tahoe in ‘97. We stayed at a huge ski-lodge in a suite with a view of the Sierra Mountains. We couldn’t ski so my mother and I rented snowshoes. We walked in circles around the lodge for hours. The lobby hosted a great hearth where a fire roared day and night, and I drank hot cocoa until I fell asleep in one of the giant oversized sofas. Doug even won $500 playing cards and we stayed an extra night.

  When I took my third sip, Joe arrived with the food, steaming hot.

  “Here you go, Mirn. Extra love on the house.”

  I thanked him but it was half-hearted and bittersweet. Joe was one of the only people who called me Mirn, a throwback to the days when I’d visit with Doug and pretend to be part of a family.

  I gave the eggs and hash a heavy dose of salt and pepper. No ketchup. Can’t stand the stuff. I used to mash it all around and plop the red sauce on top when I was little, but it makes me gag now. Maybe it was the coffee. I took another long sip, let the alcohol sizzle. A few bites in, I went back to the crossword, but my pen lay still on the counter. Four across, four letter word for Fancy-Schmancy? Six down, five letter word for bloodsucker? Doug is four letters. My brain was as empty as the paper.

  “Hey Joe, what’s a seven letter word for important work?”

  “Cooking,” he fired right back with a laugh. He twirled his spatula as he walked along the counter. He had a small limp that he disguised by dipping his right shoulder back as he strolled.

  “What’s happenin’, girl? You lookin’ down.”

  “Rough day,” I said swirling a spoon in the coffee, adding a bit more cream. I took a sip looking past him at the kitchen wall and then put the coffee down and picked up my fork. He caught a whiff of the alcohol and jumped back.

  “Hoo-wee, sweet mama,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel tucked into his belt. “It sure must’a been a hard day. Tell me about it.”

  I picked up the mug and held it, letting the scents of oak and charcoal tickle my nose.

  “Come on, Mirn.” He tapped his hands on the counter. “I’m your cook and bartender tonight. Out with it.”

  I liked Joe a lot. He and Doug went way back to high school. They ran with different crowds but would reminisce and swap stories when we visited the diner. Joe only heard the good ones.

  “A fight at work,” I said, not wanting to get into too much detail.

  He chuckled and spun the spatula. His raised eyebrows gave away his interest. He knew this would be a good one.

  “A fight? Come on, that can’t be too bad. With a customer? I have those on a daily basis.” It was true. Joe was a sweetheart but the diner attracted the occasional drifter who thought they could push around the staff. Joe enforced respect for the staff but had paid for it with the limp.

  New customers pushed through the front door. Joe glanced up as if expecting a fight. A family of four stood by Denise – mom and dad with two young kids.

  “An argument with my boss,” I said and then paused, reconsidering the details. I didn’t talk about Doug with anyone. Jazmín knew because I spilled it all the first day I walked into her shop. I couldn’t help it that time. Joe had a glimpse from seeing me over the years. Enough to know something was up when I was having dinner in the diner by myself as a teenager. But something itched bad that night. Bad enough I didn’t realize my hands were clenched around the mug so hard it was shaking until Joe touched my forearm.

  “Doug showed up again looking for money.”

  “Awe, darlin’,” he said with a sigh. He stopped twirling the spatula. “I’m sorry, girl. Sometimes a man don’t think it through before he acts. I bet he is feeling sorry about that now.”

  Sure Doug would be feeling sorry. He always felt ‘sorry’ at some level. But he did little if anything to ever pay me back or make it right.

  “I doubt it,” I said staring down at the cold remainder of my eggs. He stood in silence for a moment. The door opened again.

  “Remember that Christmas Eve you guys came in here,” he said, eyes all lit up with nostalgia. “All bundled up and carrying a fierce hunger set on putting us out of business.” He started twirling the spatula again, his mind racing into the past. “You must have been near five years old. I think we even needed a booster seat for you. Damn, I’m gettin’ gray.”

  “I remember,” I said, “The whole block lost power. That was one of my first times in here. The diner was the only restaurant open that night.”

  “Always open.”

  “I think your daughter was here too, right?”

  “Yep, good ol’ Christmas Eve with the family,” he said with a smile. “Mm, those days were good.”

  “Yes,” I said as a matter of fact. I couldn’t help but smile at the man.

  “It’ll get better. You’ll see,” he said.

  “Hey, ” said the new girl, quietly cutting in. She held up three food tickets, waving them in the air.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming. Better get back to work now. We should do this again sometime. Feels good to get things off your chest, don’t it?”

  He strolled back to the grill before I could answer. I didn’t know if it felt good, but it was something. Bittersweet at best, maybe, to get a little off my chest.

  That Christmas was the last before my mother died. An old tree fell on a transformer and knocked power out to the whole neighborhood. We ate at the diner and then drove around looking at the stars until I fell asleep. The power came back on in the morning in time for us to open presents and eat burnt cinnamon rolls.

  I forked the rest of the cold eggs and gave up on the crossword. Sometimes when you start off on a bad foot it’s best to pack it in. I left it unmarked for someone else to try their luck.

  All the talk about the past made me want to call home and check on Doug. That’s when I realized I left my phone at the salon. I panicked, rummaging through my purse. Liquor bottles, keys, wallet, makeup. No phone. There were bigger fish to fry. Home was the next stop and I could pick it up in the morning. I needed a reason to check my stubborn attitude and make amends with Jazmín anyway. In a life where my mind tended to drift to the past, she was one who anchored me to the present.

  I broke the hundred from Antonio and paid, leaving what little extra I could for Joe. On the way out I stopped and asked Denise if I could use the phone and she pointed me to a small black receiver on the wall. I tried the apartment but there was no answer. I wasn’t surprised. I cursed Joe for making me feel a renewed sense of pity for Doug. That we could recapture anything resembling that Christmas Eve so many years ago. I said my goodbyes and headed out the door into the heat. The family of four laughed and ate their food. That was how it was supposed to be.

  I scrunched up my sleeves for another night alone.

  5

  During the day, Reno looks like any other western tourist destination; an aging downtown surrounded by clustered suburban neighborhoods, tracts of fast food and mini-malls. The Sierra Nevadas loom high above Reno to the south, but the city adheres more to the constant flux of the surrounding desert, a bipolar thermometer. At night, the city is awash in strange colored light that’s visible for miles. Some say you can read the mood of the city by the dominant color of neon. They might be right, it’s been blue for years. I lit another cigarette upon exiting the diner, turned my back to the city and walked at a brisk pace toward home.

  The grass crunched under my shoes as I walked down South Virginia. The road lacked sidewalks, but it was the quickest route by foot from downtown to the old apartment complex where I spent my nights. I saved my money for the bus fare when rain was in the forecast. It hadn’t been for weeks. Nothing but time to kill.

  I passed a Walmart, then a cluster of billboards lit with advertisements for Vegas and Tahoe.

  Unforgettable Adventures Await You!

  I crossed the intersection and continued onto the four-lane highway. The Lucky Strike Casino loomed ahead,
massive spotlights lancing the sky, drawing revelers by the thousand. A miniature city, it rose up out of the ground on a pedestal, sparkling white with its namesake written in a rainbow splash across its tallest building. The casino’s concert arena stuck out in a narrow dome on the far side, like a space shuttle fueled and ready for launch. The entire complex had a futuristic look to it that didn’t fit with Old Reno. Traffic slowed to a crawl as tourists took in the extravagance, lining up to be the next to strike it rich at the city’s newest attraction. Downtown used to be the place to go, but Lucky Strike drew more and more of the crowds away with its splendor.

  Other than the expensive landscaping kept up by the casino, there wasn’t much to look at on my way home. Lucky Strike’s presence was so over-the-top that no challenger had stepped up to compete, leaving the surrounding land to decay as the owners patiently waited for a casino magnate to show up and buy their property for an inflated sum. The strip across from the casino had become a wasteland of cracked pavement and boarded up windows. I didn’t see any reason for change. Signs the size of semi-trailers touted Lucky Strike’s improving and updated lot. It was always under construction for something new, better, bigger: an expansion of the hotel, a new pool or games on the casino floor. Anything to stay in the papers and compete for the Las Vegas crowds. And with the growing crowds came drugs and violence that spilled into the apartments behind the casino, where I lived.

  I tossed the cigarette and lit my last.

  Most weekends I’d change my commute and cut down Hillcrest or Plumb and wander among the nice neighborhoods. I’d lean on a tall oak in Chester Park and watch the kids run around the field and the little league teams play ball. Be the girl dressed in black, chain-smoking with the wild hair. Parents minded me with pinched faces and moved their games of frisbee and catch. When I first started out at the salon, I played the guinea pig for Jazmín’s instruction. Perms, multicolor dye jobs, chopped, feathered, pixie, undercut, you name it. It changed weekly and I tried it all. If a mom didn’t want her toddler to turn out like me, I didn’t blame her.

  After we moved, it took me the entire summer and into the fall before I visited our old home. The front door had an additional padlock screwed in and one of the dining room storm windows was boarded over with plywood. It was dark but I could still see into the kitchen. The cabinets had been haphazardly ripped out off the walls and the microwave and sink were gone. The stove, a Viking, was the crown jewel, but it must have been too heavy for whoever broke into the house. I was sure that whatever copper I couldn’t see had been cleaned out as well.

  I walked around and sat on the back patio until the sun disappeared behind giant evergreens that fenced in the rear of the property. I used to run, weaving in between them, when I was little and they were still saplings. It looked like a forest then but now it was just a sickly row of dying things. Next to my feet, I lined up each cigarette butt like the trees. The divots were still in the ground from where the swing set used to be. I stayed there wrapped in memories until flashing red and blue lights reflected off the trees. I ran and hid between them from the officer who checked the parameter of the house with his long flashlight. I was nineteen but I looked sixteen, and while a free ride was tempting I didn’t want the destination to be the station. One of the neighbors must have seen me walking around and called it in. I didn’t blame them. I didn’t belong there and maybe I never did.

  Doug hadn’t paid the mortgage in months, maybe a year. When the recession hit, the rate on his loan skyrocketed to 20 percent. That’s when Doug really started to disappear. I saw the news—all of Nevada was getting crushed. Families were losing their homes left and right. But it couldn’t happen to us, right? Less than a week after my high school graduation I came home from grabbing lunch at the mall to find our possessions tossed to the curb. I cried my eyes out as I tried to gather all of my clothes, keep them clean and in order. Then I realized there was no place to put them and no place to go. I broke down when I couldn’t get a hold of Doug, leaving him message after message. One of the neighbors, Bernice, a stay-at-home-mom with four kids eventually came out with a glass of water and an explanation. She stood back from me after handing me the water like I might carry an infection and give her a disease. Touch me and your house will be next!

  Her four children crawled all over the furniture like it was a mysterious broken castle that needed to be explored. Doug showed up with a stranger and a U-Haul hours later. It was so surreal that I almost lost my anger, until realizing Doug had been out when he heard the news and paid a wino cash to come help. I launched into a tirade, screaming at him for what he’d done, pushing his neglect past the final straw. It was a fucking circus. Eventually everything got loaded in and we drove to a motel where we stayed for a few days, until Doug was able to call in a pity favor.

  After the surprise foreclosure, we moved to the apartment complex behind Lucky Strike. One of Doug’s card buddies hooked us up with a small two bedroom place. I say 'card buddy', but he was more like a professional who knew when to collect his chips compared to Doug’s amateur train wreck. I figure he felt sorrier for me than Doug. I never met the man, but I know Doug and he used whatever they could to survive.

  The apartment complex felt like it retained something from everyone who had ever lived there. Like the carpet was never ripped up or the walls given a fresh coat of paint. The combination felt dirty no matter how hard you cleaned and afterward you’d catch the same mixed odors of rot and Chanel No. 5. I stayed out for as long as I could during those years, roaming the streets at night, sipping cheap beer in one of the dives from a previous era that didn’t ask a young face for ID. One of the last holdouts dwarfed by the Lucky Strike.

  I left the glitz and dreams of the tourists and made my way around the backside of the casino to the quiet complex. The soft glow of television screens reflected what little life inhabited the dark apartments. It was that time of night when you’re either asleep or not coming home for another four hours.

  The place I called home was one of four identical units with wide red awnings over the second floor, and two high-walled patios on each side of the first floor entryway. A couple of chairs and a table occupied each debris-strewn corner. An elderly man with a ragged gray beard and thick coke bottle glasses lived in one of the first floor apartments, but the other two turned over so often, I’d lost track of who was a visitor and who actually lived there. Sometimes the less you know, the better. I wasn’t about to strike up a conversation with the intention of making friends while counting the days until my big move.

  I stuffed the cigarette butt into the container overflowing outside and unlocked the front door.

  The linoleum lining the entryway was cluttered with bright orange flyers promising VIP access and lap dance specials alongside tri-fold Chinese take-out menus. The usual Friday night marketing blitz from a runner who pressed all of the intercom buttons until someone buzzed him in to stop the noise. The previous week had been neon green, and prior to that blue, some of which laid matted in front of one of the first floor units covered in dusty shoeprints.

  I checked the mail but it was nothing better than the junk on the floor. Catalogs and credit card offerings ripped and torn around the edges, jammed into the smallest mailbox on the planet by a careless mailman. At least there weren’t any bills.

  I took the carpeted steps one at a time, headed for the second floor to apartment 3C. The center of each stair had transitioned from a mud brown to black in recent weeks and there were scuffs up and down the walls from a lanky college student who’d bought a big screen off a former neighbor and tried to carry it out by himself. A guy who dropped in with a vacuum to clean once a month but he spent more time outside on his phone than doing any work.

  My ears picked up a high pitch electrical whine near the door, interspersed with the flutter of a moth repeatedly bouncing against the fluorescent ceiling tubes above my head. I inserted my key into the deadbolt, the light pressure forcing the door open, unlocked. I f
roze, fingers still wrapped around the keys. Doug always remembered to throw the deadbolt, even after his heaviest binges when he couldn’t make it to the couch and collapsed on the floor. Reno might be a gambler’s town, but that was one game you didn’t play.

  I took a step back, shivered as frigid air soaked in cigar smoke seeped through the door and listened to a low hum coming from within. There were no obvious signs of a break-in. Maybe Doug had finally forgotten?

  Hugging my arms tight to my chest, I slowly pressed the door inward, the dampness of the inside washing over me. The living room was dark except for the television in the far corner, its picture cascading snow static. It gave off a low crackle that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The air conditioner had been turned to max, cold air blasting through floor vents, refrigerating the room. I hurried to find the controls and switched it off. I stood rubbing my arms for warmth with my back against the wall, scanning the dark room for signs of Doug.

  Then I saw the bathroom.

  The door was closed and ringed with light. I set my bag down on the couch and tiptoed across the thick living room carpet. I hugged the wall, careful not to bump any of the frames hanging along the hallway. The silence was chilling. Then I heard something. A drip, and then another, constant and uneven.