"It"s a tough place."
"I don"t care how tough it is." He laughed.
"As long as it"s the kind of place you can sell an ice cream bar for a hundred bucks, I"m there."
She nodded. Ice cream was worth a lot in Vegas.
But other things came pretty cheap.
"It"s a rich town," she said, because saying that was really like saying nothing.
"It"s full of rich men and women. I read somewhere that the entire budget for law enforcement in the United States is about a third of what it costs to power Vegas" air-conditioners for a month."
"Wow. That"s amazing."
"Not really. Vegas is a desert. It"s an empty place.
Everything that"s there, someone put it there. Only the rich can afford a place like that. They come and go as they please, jetting in and out in their fancy planes. Everybody else--they"re pretty much stuck there. That"s what happened to me. I was a dancer. I made pretty good money that way. But every dime I made was already spent on my apartment, or AC, or water or food. I kept waiting for my lucky break, but it never came. I just couldn"t get ahead. Before I knew it, I got behind. And then I got in trouble with my boss--" "Johnny Ringo?"
"You know about him?"
c.o.ker nodded at the one-armed bandit.
"I"ve heard of the Mojave Two-Step."
Kim swallowed hard.
"You never want to dance that one," she said.
"I"m here to tell you."
The guy looked down at the road, kind of embarra.s.sed.
Like he wanted to know her story, but was too shy to ask for the details.
"Well, maybe your luck"s due to change," he said.
"It happened to me. Or it"s going to happen. It"s like I can see it coming."
"Like a dream?"
"Or an omen."
Kim smiled.
"I like that word."
"Me too. It"s kind of like a dream, only stronger."
"I used to have this dream," Kim said.
"When I first came to Vegas. That I was going to hit it big.
That I"d live in a penthouse suite with the AC set at sixty-eight degrees. That the sun would never touch my skin and I"d be white as a pearl."
The guy didn"t say anything. Still shy. Kim had forgotten about that particular emotion. She hadn"t run across it much in the last few years. Not with Johnny Ringo, and not with any of his friends. Not even with the two-legged slots that followed her around the casino night after night until she fed them dollars just so they"d leave her alone.
In Vegas, everyone wanted something. At least the walking slots came a lot cheaper than their flesh-and blood counterparts.
Funny. She didn"t feel good about it, but she didn"t exactly feel bad, either.
That"s just the way it was in Vegas.
It was a rich man"s town.
Or a rich woman"s.
Kim finished her Eskimo Pie. She liked what the guy (what was his name again?) had said about omens.
That they were dreams, only stronger.
She stared at the ice cream truck.
She thought: it"s not often you get a second chance.
"You want another?" the guy asked.
She laughed.
"Just one more?"
Of course, he thought she was talking about an Eskimo Pie, when that really wasn"t what she wanted at all.
He went after the ice cream. She watched him go.
Past the dead guy on the highway.
Past the second chance that lay there on the yellow line.
Kim really didn"t have a choice.
She had to pick it up.
She heard the freezer door close. Watched the guy (Dennis, that was his name) step from behind the truck.
He was all right about it. He kind of smiled when he saw the shotgun, like he already understood.
"I"m sorry, Dennis," she said.
"But dreams die hard. Especially strong ones."
"Yeah," he said.
"Yeah."
c.o.ker stood in the middle of the road, eating an Eskimo Pie, listening to "Pop Goes the Weasel."
The ice cream truck was gone from view, but he could still hear its little song. That meant she was up ahead somewhere, playing the tape.
Maybe she was playing it for him. The music drifted through the night like a sweet connection. c.o.ker listened to the song while he finished his Eskimo Pie.
Anshutes couldn"t stand the music the truck made. He wouldn"t let c.o.ker play it at all.